Sir, – All commentary, informed and otherwise, seems to assume that Irish reunification is now inevitable – and sooner rather than later. In parallel with this, much of the academic discourse on the history and politics of Northern Ireland has become anchored in “colonial theory” – more accurately, anti-colonial rhetoric – with no sense of the history and traditions of Ulster Protestants (other than when they, or at least the Dissenters, revolted in 1798).
“Colonial theory” provides a cloak of intellectual respectability for the view that Ulster Protestants have no right to be on the island of Ireland unless they embrace Irish nationalist culture and politics. One even sees references to the exodus of the pieds-noirs from Algeria as a precedent for those who are not prepared to conform to the new dispensation after reunification. The fact that the “Planters” have been in Ireland for as long as European settlers have been in North America is conveniently disregarded.
Nobody in Northern Ireland seems capable of articulating a moderate, inclusive nationalist agenda – one which not only rejects violence today but desists from valorising the violence of the recent past. Likewise, there is a poverty of vision and an absence of intellectual heft among the leadership of Ulster unionism. Their simplistic attitude is that nationalists don’t belong in Northern Ireland, just as the nationalists believe unionists don’t belong there. Neither side seems to appreciate that politics is the art of the possible and that compromise is necessary if there is to be lasting peace on this island.
The Border was an attempt in 1920 to accommodate the conflicting aspirations of nationalists and unionists on the island of Ireland. It was a compromise which nobody really wanted, but nobody could think of a better option – and it satisfied nobody except the smug little oligarchy whose misrule between 1921 and 1972 carried the seeds of its own destruction. The Belfast Agreement of 1998 was another compromise, but sadly the institutional framework it put in place has now collapsed – and, since it was rooted in the premise that both parts of Ireland would be within the European Union, there seems little prospect that it can be resuscitated in the post-Brexit environment.
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If there is no will to compromise in Northern Ireland, what are the consequences for both polities on the island of Ireland – and for the United Kingdom and the European Union? Instead of planning for Irish reunification, we all need to address that issue. – Yours, etc,
FELIX M LARKIN,
Cabinteely,
Dublin 18.