Sir, – Once upon a time, I was an ardent nationalist; it wasn’t, in retrospect, an intellectual position. I was younger then and easily moved by simplistic slogans and melancholic tunes. Education, maturity and the power of empathy ended my conceited sense of myself as belonging to a race of people that were intrinsically more noble and superior to anyone else, except perhaps the ancient inhabitants of Sparta.
Owen Bennett (September 8th) pontificates disparagingly on Irish people who by reason of history, ethnicity or simple choice, choose to define themselves as British. Mr Bennett informs us that "Britain is not a nation, but combination of nations".
We are given this nugget of political geography as if it negates the unionist position. It does not; the opposite is true.
The four sister nations that make up the UK add something to the singular, to make those who define themselves as British greater than they might otherwise be.
It is similar for those who describe themselves as both Irish and European.
To imply that Northern Ireland unionists describe themselves as exclusively British is both untrue and unfair. The Irish rugby team, to cite one example, is a 32-county organisation and enjoys widespread support in Northern Ireland. They happily shout for the Irish team and many of them travel on British passports in order to do so.
Certainly Mr Bennett is correct in his analysis of the unionism of the past; it wasn’t, to say the least, a sane or welcoming place for people with differing traditions.
Unfortunately, unionists didn’t have a monopoly on sectarianism, and the South too was a cold and unwelcoming place for those who didn’t fit in with the ethos and the snobbery of the time.
Many of us regret the idiocy of the past. An idiocy in which each tradition utilised the weapons of the state or its paramilitaries in an effort to impose some joyless utopia upon themselves and their neighbours. But in the interim, in the silence between the bomb and the bullet, sovereignty as imagined by the founders of these states, be it Carson or de Valera, was slowly becoming as outmoded as the French monarchy. Sovereignty is something we now pool and share with our European partners, as we journey with our national sat nav set towards “ever closer union”.
With the diminishing of the narrow bonds of sovereignty and nationhood comes an opening up of ourselves to different cultures and experiences.
It no longer troubles me if an Irish person defines themselves as British. That’s their freedom and their prerogative.
All that should matter is their capacity to be good, peaceful citizens and to co-operate to make this small island a better and a happier place. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN RYAN,
Richmond,
London.