Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has said the threat of political violence in Northern Ireland cannot be allowed to “throw us off our democratic course” and predicted a referendum on the reunification of Ireland would take place “in this decade”.
Ms McDonald, who was addressing the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra, said Ireland was “in the end days of partition”.
“We’ve built the peace, and we now we look to the next phase: the reunification of Ireland,” she said. “We are living now in the end days of partition. The momentum behind Irish unity is unprecedented. We are energised with the opportunity to build a new united Ireland.
“We have the generation that can – that will – redefine our nation. The Good Friday [Belfast] Agreement provides for referendums on Irish unity, and I believe that these will happen in this decade, so we must prepare. Both governments have a responsibility to prepare.”
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Ms McDonald openly appealed to new Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese to lobby for the cause of Irish reunification on the international stage.
‘Logical leg’
“Ireland needs our international friends,” she said. “We need Australia to join us on our journey. We ask our friends to be energetic and proactive in advocating for Irish unity at every opportunity.
“So, yes, we will certainly be talking to everybody. I believe European leaders, just as Australian leaders, should advocate for the final leg – the final logical leg – of the peace journey in Ireland, and that is reunification.
“Of course I wouldn’t presume to say to your new prime minister what he should do, or how he should articulate that, but I would hope in a bipartisan way that there would be an understanding and a tacit support for the Irish cause.”
The Sinn Féin leader said the reunification agenda was “not about reclaiming territory” but about “uniting our people”, and that all communities in the “new Ireland” would have “a say and a stake” in it.
“The winning margin is 50 per cent plus one – the standard democratic norm – but of course we would have an ambition to win the referendum by a much more substantial margin than that,” she said. “It’s our ambition to win it, and to win it well.
“It is very, very important that everybody, including unionism, understands they have a voice, stake and a say in the journey to a united Ireland and in shaping the final destination.
Bonfire effigy
“I can’t give you a date, but I can certainly say that all of the signs – even for those who had their heads buried deepest in the sand – all of the evidence of political change is now manifest right across Ireland.”
Asked at what cost she would pursue the referendum and how she would ensure it did not reignite violence in Northern Ireland, Ms McDonald said she could not accept a situation whereby the threat of violence derails “our democratic course”.
“The process for reunification will be orderly. It will be peaceful, and it will be democratic. I will not give an inch on that, and really believe there is a strong onus on every political representative and leader to state that categorically.
“I will not even countenance the scenario you have painted. That cannot happen under any circumstances, and I say that as one of the effigies that was hanged on the bonfire.
“People decided for peace. The truth is – a big bonfire, a bus lit on the Falls Road – these are very limited phenomena. The war is over. We are moving to the future, and there is no appetite across wide society to return to armed actions and conflict.
“I cannot accept – I don’t think any democrat could accept – that some unspoken possibility of perhaps tensions somewhere would throw us off our democratic course. We can’t operate like that. We cannot start adding in a calculus of threat into all that.
“I’m stating very clearly as the leader of Sinn Féin – as a republican leader – that any notion that we descend back into any form of threat, coercion or violence, is not on, and we need to hear that from unionists and we need to hear it loudly.”
