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With Donnelly effectively a columnist for Sinn Féin, a surrogate tasked with flying its kites, it must be asked is he ‘readying ground’ for his betters, who can’t yet be seen to be making such runnings for fear of unsettling the support base and membership? Someone, perhaps, ought to remind those concerned that no amount of normalising the artificial gerrymander now presented as ‘home’ by Donnelly will make it so for Irish Republicans.
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He writes of the ‘inescapable logic of the Good Friday Agreement’, ignoring that an Irish Republican honours the logic of the 1916 Proclamation, a document which, unlike the Good Friday Agreement, contains no British terms and conditions for Irish Unity; a document voted for overwhelmingly in a 32-county election, when Sinn Féin placed it at the heart of its 1918 election manifesto — an election in which Britain made clear her true regard for the consent principle. The Proclamation spurns the sectarian dynamic the Agreement nourishes in any hypothetical ‘unity’ forged under its auspices, as now given succour by Donnelly.
Setting aside that the sovereignty of Ireland should in no way depend on a vote of any description — being an inalienable right of the Irish people — the idea, should the occupiers terms be met and a ‘Yes’ vote border poll realised, that we would move onto a revision of the Good Friday Agreement, still bound within the totality of relationships, rather than an independent 32-county republic is a British strategy and not an Irish one.
Given how the Agreement has been sold this twenty years — that once a majority in the Six Counties is arrived upon that a 32-county republic will then follow — why are we seeing these efforts emerge to game the future? Do those concerned, here, have one good reason as to why we should settle for anything less than the political integrity of all Ireland?
The political entity styled Northern Ireland was carved on a sectarian headcount, against the wishes of the Irish people for the purposes of British colonialism. It has been upheld ever since through same. It should, though, and will perish when that headcount no longer holds and in no way should be given further succour. Other than the unionist, who among the Irish will seriously bemoan its tossing onto the scrapheap of history?
Setting aside that the sovereignty of Ireland should in no way depend on a vote of any description — being an inalienable right of the Irish people — the idea, should the occupiers terms be met and a ‘Yes’ vote border poll realised, that we would move onto a revision of the Good Friday Agreement, still bound within the totality of relationships, rather than an independent 32-county republic is a British strategy and not an Irish one.
Given how the Agreement has been sold this twenty years — that once a majority in the Six Counties is arrived upon that a 32-county republic will then follow — why are we seeing these efforts emerge to game the future? Do those concerned, here, have one good reason as to why we should settle for anything less than the political integrity of all Ireland?
The political entity styled Northern Ireland was carved on a sectarian headcount, against the wishes of the Irish people for the purposes of British colonialism. It has been upheld ever since through same. It should, though, and will perish when that headcount no longer holds and in no way should be given further succour. Other than the unionist, who among the Irish will seriously bemoan its tossing onto the scrapheap of history?
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Sean Bresnahan is an independent Republican from Co. Tyrone who blogs @ Claidheamh Soluis. Follow Sean Bresnahan on Twitter @bres79 |
Crude majoritarianism of the type advocated by Sean in the name of an abstract entity - "the Irish people" or its Brexiteer analogue vis-a- viz the EU referendum is no solution to conflicts in ethnically divided territories such as thde islands of Ireland or Cyprus (or Mandate Palestine)
ReplyDeleteIn the words of the late, great John Hume it is an agreed Ireland that is the desired outcome not forced territorial unity.
By this point TPQ policy should be pretty clear.
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