Abstract
Over the past few years, the news coverage relating to Ireland has been dominated by two major ideas: that the reunification of Ireland is inevitable, and that Sinn Fein is likely to come to power nor just in Northern Ireland but also in the Republic of Ireland. This talk will challenge both ideas. A border poll is the supposed mechanism that will enable the reunification of Ireland, and five reasons will be advanced why this will not work. This is entirely divorced from questions of social and economic equality. As one critic ironically put it the question in the border poll is very much: “Under which constitutional arrangements (United Kingdom or United Ireland) would you prefer to be unemployed?” Far more important than simply the unification of Ireland is the social and economic transformation of Ireland. The electoral growth of Sinn Fein both north and south of Ireland has been built on increasingly moving to the right of the political spectrum. Reunification in the party’s strategy relies on the European Union and the British, US and Irish elites. This is a top-down rather than a bottom-up process, a reunification from above not from below. Reunification of Ireland as it is currently on the agenda is very much an example of what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci referred to as a “passive revolution”: the unification of Italy was not made on the Jacobin model through the mobilization of the subaltern classes but elite driven through the leadership of the ruling classes. The unification of Ireland through the work of the EU, the Commonwealth and NATO will not result in national liberation and social emancipation. It is at best a “passive revolution”. Those who currently press for a border poll also neglect the fact that the British state now officially declares that it is in its strategic and military interests to remain in Ireland. The political space to build an opposition movement is narrow, as both objective and subjective conditions are not favorable. We are stuck in between a period of de-composition and one of re-composition.
I. A ‘Protestant State' No More
The 3rd of May 2021 marked the 100th anniversary of Northern Ireland. When it was set up it was supposed to be a “Protestant state for a Protestant people”. In terms of demography, for every Catholic living there there were two Protestants. Protestants held the monopoly of political and economic power. But one hundred years later the situation is very different.
In terms of demography, there has been an undeniable Protestant decline over the last few decades. The census carried out on 21 March 2021, whose results were released on 22 September 2022, showed that Northern Ireland was a “Protestant state” no more. (1)
The 2001 census on 29 April 2001 had shown a Protestant majority of 53 per cent in Northern Ireland, compared with 44 per cent from a Catholic background, 0.4 per cent other religions and 2.7 per cent no religion.
In the next 27 March 2011 census, those from a Protestant background dropped below 50 per cent for the first time: 48 per cent were Protestant, 45 per cent Catholic, 0.9 per cent of other religions and 5.6 per cent had no religion.
The 2011 census was the very first time the question of national identity was asked (person based – not nationality based): 40 per cent described themselves as British, 25 per cent as Irish and 21 per cent as Northern Irish.
The following 21 March 2021 census showed that for the first time in Northern Ireland, Catholics outnumbered Protestants: 45.7% were brought up as Catholic, 43.5% as Protestant, 1.5% other religions, and 9.3% no religion.
In terms of national identity there was just a 3% gap between British and Irish identities compared to 15% ten years previously: 31.9% were British only (down from 40%), 29.1 % Irish only (up from 25%), 19.8% as Northern Irish (down from 21%). (2)
In 2025 on the six counties of the Northern Ireland entity, four now have a Catholic majority, only counties Antrim and Down still have a protestant unionist majority. Out of the five largest cities in Northern Ireland just one, the city of Lisburn, has a Protestant unionist majority.
It is also interesting to note that Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 subjects in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those citizens who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911) More Irish than UK passports were being issued in Northern Ireland for the first time. (3)
The same goes in terms of the labour market. According to the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, based on 3,879 returns received from 105 public authorities and 3,474 businesses, there were only 349 more Protestants than Catholics in the workforce in 2021. Out of the total workforce of 564,296, 43.5 % were Protestants (245,419) and 43.4 % were Catholics (245,070). At 73,807 the religious background of 13.1 % of the workforce was described as ‘non-determined’. After decades of discrimination in the labour market, there is religious equality in the Northern Ireland workforce for the first time. (4)
Protestants held the bulk of the region’s land, wealth, jobs and power when Northern Ireland was created in 1921. But between 2001 and 2017, they lost more than 21,500 jobs, while Catholics gained more than 56,000, according to data from the North’s Equality Commission, highlighting the gulf in the two communities’ experiences since the 1998 Belfast Agreement promised equal opportunities. (5)
Election results (to the Northern Ireland Assembly, to the House of Commons and local elections) also show the forward march of nationalists and decline of unionists.
The 2 March 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election marked a significant shift in Northern Ireland's politics, being the first election since Ireland’s partition in 1921 in which unionist parties did not win a majority of seats, and the first time that unionist and nationalist parties received equal representation in the Assembly (39 members between Sinn Féin and the SDLP, 39 members between the DUP, UUP, and TUV). In the 5 May 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election Sinn Féin became the largest party with 29% of the total vote, marking the first time an Irish nationalist party won the most seats in an Assembly election in Northern Ireland, This gave the party the right to nominate Northern Ireland's first nationalist First Minister. Sinn Féin Vice-President Michelle O'Neill assumed office on 3 February 2024 becoming the first ever Irish nationalist, republican or Catholic to hold that position. The prospect of a nationalist or Catholic first minister "would have been unimaginable" to her parents' generation, she said after her appointment. (6)
A similar electoral trend can be seen in the UK general elections to the House of Commons in London. On 12 December 2019, for the first time in history nationalist parties in Northern Ireland won more seats than unionist parties: 9 Members of Parliament (MP) between Sinn Féin and the SDLP compared to 8 MPs for the DUP. The following and most recent UK general election to the House of Commons on 4 July 2024 saw 9 MPs elected for Sinn Féin and the SDLP compared to 7 MPs for the DUP, UUP and TUV combined. The most recent 18 May 2023 local council elections in Northern Ireland also marked the first time that nationalist parties had garnered a greater share of the vote (39.6%) than unionist parties (38.1%). However, despite this, there were more unionist councillors elected than nationalists. In electoral terms the nationalist advance seems unstoppable.
This does not represent an advance for the politics of anti-imperialism. Sinn Féin in position of power in the Stormont Northern Ireland Assembly is no threat to the British establishment. If in theory it is supposed to be “republican” in practice it bows down to the British monarchy. Since 2012 Sinn Féin embraces British Royalty, Former IRA Chief of Staff Martin McGuinness was raising a glass to toast the Queen’s health during a banquet at Buckingham Palace in April 2014. (7) In 2017 Gerry Adams then President of Sinn Féin stated that his party bore the Queen no ill will. (8) In 2022 Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald congratulated Queen Elizabeth – whose official title is “Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of her other realms and territories Queen, Head of Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith”- for her “lifetime of service”. (9) When Queen Elizabeth II died on 08 September 2022, Sinn Féin vice-president Michelle O’Neill said she learnt with “deep regret” of the passing of a woman who had “led by example”. (10) Sinn Féin was present at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth on 19 September 2022. After her death, Sinn Féin stated it was looking forward to working with King Charles (11) Alex Maskey and Michelle O'Neill as elected representatives of Sinn Féin met the King at Hillsborough Castle on his formal first visit to Northern Ireland on 14 September 2022 when he was asserting his claim to sovereignty over the area. By bowing to the monarchy O'Neill and her party were showing that they are not Republicans. O’Neill, in complete betrayal of Republican values and the principle of the right to self-determination, legitimised the occupation by attending the coronation of King Charles on 6 May 2023. (12) As former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre concluded:
Sinn Féin’s relationship to British royalty is deferential whereas it used to be defiant. Its odyssey marks the party's transition from radical opponent of the establishment to compliant team player within the establishment.(13)
The party now goes as far as to commemorate British military personnel. First Minister Michelle O’Neill was the first senior Sinn Féin figure to take part in an official Remembrance Sunday ceremony for dead British soldiers on 10 November 2024. In a public statement, more than 100 close relatives of over 60 IRA members and civilians killed by state forces and loyalist in county Tyrone have criticised First Minister Michelle O’Neill attending this event to honour the British army war dead. “It is beyond belief that any so-called Tyrone republican would wish to lay a wreath in honour of these forces who caused mayhem and murder on hamlets, hills, villages and towns – the killing grounds of Tyrone where the cries for truth and justice about collusion, state murder and counterinsurgency haunt the entire county and hundreds of families” relatives said. (14) Michelle O’Neill (then Deputy First Minister) and Gerry Kelly (the party’s policing spokesman) became the first senior Sinn Féin figures to attend a Police Service of Northern Ireland recruitment campaign in Garnerville on 4 February 2020, and presided the PSNI graduation ceremony there on 9 February 2024, which was a first for Sinn Féin as members of the party to attend. In 2020 it was also revealed that Michelle O’Neill has broken with the republican tradition as is now using PSNI bodyguards.
II. Passive Revolution
The demographic and political changes outlined in the previous section are evidence for Sinn Féin that a border poll is required. A border poll is a referendum in Northern Ireland on whether the region should remain part of the United Kingdom or re-unite with the Republic of Ireland. In her New Year’s Message on 1 January 2025 Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald stated: “Irish unity referendums must happen in this decade. The people, North and South, must have their say. It is the responsibility of both governments, in Dublin and London, to play a leading role in fostering a mature and positive conversation about the future.” (15) (My emphasis – LOR) But how is this to be achieved? Through lobbying the European Union that a united Ireland is “realistic, achievable, necessary” to use the words of Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald, and calling on the Irish Government to "plan, prepare, and advocate for unity” as well as convincing the US government to intervene for a border poll as a Sinn Féin MP put it. (16) In December 2024 the latest phase of the ‘struggle’ according to Sinn Féin was to call for the opening of a mini EU embassy in Belfast. (17)
Such a strategy is blind to the realities of geopolitics. As Henry McDonald, the former Ireland correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer put it six months before he died regarding Sinn Féin’s lobbying of US and Australian governments for a border poll:
Also, the strategy to put pressure on the Dublin government to call for a border poll ignores that its objective is a “Shared Island” and an “agreed Ireland” but not a united Ireland. The Dublin government talks about a ‘Shared Island’ initiative, which is just about “increasing synergies and co-operation” between the two partitioned entities rather than a means to re-unite Ireland. (19) It is about promoting 'practical' co-operation between North and South. Also note that the Dublin government spends per head of population up to three times more than the British government does for maintaining the border, as the price of political stability in the 26 counties is instability in the 6 counties north of the border. (20)
Suzanne Breen, the political editor of the leading Northern Ireland newspaper The Belfast Telegraph noted how Unionists should be delighted at just how little Northern Ireland and the re-unification of Ireland were mentioned by political parties in the Republic’s elections of November 2024. Aside from Sinn Féin and People Before Profit – Solidarity to a lesser extent none of the political parties ranked re-unification as a priority or called for a border poll. (21)
It is also very important to clarify the political language being used. A ‘Shared Island’ and an ‘Agreed Ireland’ are not a united and free Ireland, ‘self-determination’ is not the same as a limited form of ‘co-determination’, an ‘Ireland of equals’ and ‘parity of esteem’ between different ‘traditions’ is not a universalist concept of egalitarianism. Also note how for example the leading Irish daily newspaper The Irish Times uses the word ‘Ireland’ as being synonymous with the 26 counties state rather than the 32 counties. Northern Ireland is dealt with by the Dublin government via the Department of Foreign Affairs, as if the North was like Uzbekistan or Outer Mongolia, Belfast being as Irish as Ulaanbaatar. As an Irish Times article recently put it the fundamental question is: “Do we want a shared island or a united Ireland?” and the answer clearly looks like the former. (22) The ‘shared island’ is not a united Ireland. The language of a ‘struggle’ for national liberation and socialism has been replaced by some “conversation” about a border poll for a re-united Ireland being part of the EU. (23)
Reunification in the party’s strategy relies on the European Union and the British, US and Irish elites. This is a top-down rather than a bottom-up process, a reunification from above not from below. As stated in Sinn Féin’s 2025 New Year statement, the emphasis is upon the Dublin and London governments “to play a leading role” in this strategy. Reunification of Ireland as it is currently on the agenda is very much an example of what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci referred to as a “passive revolution” (Rivoluzione passiva): the unification of Italy was not made on the Jacobin model through the mobilization of the subaltern classes but elite driven through the leadership of the ruling classes. (24) The unification of Ireland through the work of the EU, the Commonwealth and NATO will not result in national liberation and social emancipation. It is at best a “passive revolution”.
It is also worth looking at the social nature of the forces calling for a border poll. The most prominent group working for that agenda is called “Ireland’s Future” and was formed in 2017. It has been very visible in the media asking the Taoiseach to protect northern citizens’ rights. When 200 then 1000 people associated with this group sent a series open letters to the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the Dublin government they made much of their professional standing : names from the world of sport, the arts, business, community work and the legal sector. (25) This was at best an initiative of the upper middle classes, the new Catholic bourgeoisie,, not one of the subaltern classes. The working class organized or not is absent from this debate as a social agency.
III. Border Poll
Aside from the objections raised above, one can be skeptical of the border poll as a strategy for five reasons.
First, it’s only up to the British government to call a border poll. However the current criteria for calling a referendum on the question of Irish unity lacks transparency. The trigger for a border poll under the 1998 Agreement is for a nationalist victory to appear ‘likely’ to the secretary of state. Likelihood is not defined but has been assumed to mean a census or election result showing a Catholic or nationalist majority, or perhaps a combination of these. Even before Brexit, these supposedly conjoined indicators were diverging – the Catholic population rising to 45 per cent, the nationalist vote falling to 36 per cent. So which should the secretary of state use? Former Northern Ireland secretary of state Brandon Lewis refused to state circumstances under which a secretary of state would call an Irish unity referendum. “The British government has said it has no legal requirement and would not be acting in the public interest if it was to set out criteria that would lead to a Border poll.” (26)
Second, it is not clear who would be entitled to vote in a border poll in Northern Ireland. For instance, those holding a Republic of Ireland passport in the north may not be allowed to vote in a united Ireland poll. (27)
Third, it is not clear what would constitute a ‘majority’ for deciding the outcome of the poll. The simple majority rule to decide the referendum (ie 50 per cent plus one) has been challenged by some form of ‘qualified majority’ or ‘weighted majority’ or ‘super-majority’ suggested by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Leo Varadkar, as well as Seamus Mallon, the late Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. (28) Moreover, proposed changes in the UK to referendum rules would override the `simple majority': according to the Referendum Criteria Bill there needs to be a turnout of more than 55 per cent of the electorate and a majority of 60 per cent for the outcome to be successful. (29)
Fourth, it is not clear if a single referendum would be sufficient to decide whether Ireland should be re-united. Constitutional experts argue that a united Ireland could need up to four referendums. (30)
Fifth, the Dublin political elites did not respect the democratic decisions of their people in two referendums on EU treaties (cfr. the Nice treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon treaty in 2008). Their British counterparts have also shown hesitations to respect the Brexit vote. These are not positive precedents for a referendum on a united Ireland.
Those five reasons indicate that it is very easy to change the goal posts in the border poll question.
IV. "No Selfish Strategic Interests"?
Also in a letter in April 2023 to the Irish Times, Gay Mitchell (Former TD and MEP) made the following important point:
People in this audience may not know that the Republic of Ireland is a neutral state and not part of NATO defence arrangements. The NATO aspect is absent from discussions about border polls and Irish unity, although one should note that Sinn Féin has softened its position on the military alliance, dropping undertakings to exit defence arrangements with EU and NATO. (32)
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Brooke’s stated on 9 November 1990 that the British state had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland and would accept unification, if the people wished it". This "no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland” was reiterated in paragraph 4 of the 15 December 1993 Downing Street Declaration which laid the political parameters of the so-called "peace process". Referring to the famous Brooke speech in 1990 in which he declared that the British state had 'no selfish strategic or economic interest' in Ireland, in October 1999 the British daily newspaper:
This point was proved right on 5 February 2024, when in a study backed by former Tory and Labour defence secretaries, the Policy Exchange think tank called for the Government to step up its naval and air presence in Northern Ireland to deter a growing Russian threat off Ireland’s Atlantic coast where virtual undersea cables arrive in the British Isles. In a foreword to the report, Sir Michael Fallon, who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 2014 to 2017 and Lord George Robertson who was Defense Secretary of the United Kingdom between 1997 and 1999 and Secretary General of NATO and Chairman of the North Atlantic Council from 1999 to 2004 warn it is time to “reassert the strategic importance of Ireland, and especially Northern Ireland, to the UK’s national security”. (35)
This document explicitly states that:
The 66 pages study contains detailed analyses of current cyber, underwater fibre optic cable, pipeline, interconnector and other marine threats. (37) On page 3 it quotes Admiral Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC PC, Former First Sea Lord, former Security Minister and Chief of the Naval Staff from 2002 to 2006:
Britain’s strategic interests are seen as superior to Irish democratic demands.
That the British state has not just selfish strategic but also a political interest in maintaining the Union is evident from a 77 pages command paper (a command paper is an official document in the United Kingdom which is issued by His Majesty's Government and presented to Parliament) published on 31 January 2024 entitled Safeguarding The Union:
II. Passive Revolution
The demographic and political changes outlined in the previous section are evidence for Sinn Féin that a border poll is required. A border poll is a referendum in Northern Ireland on whether the region should remain part of the United Kingdom or re-unite with the Republic of Ireland. In her New Year’s Message on 1 January 2025 Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald stated: “Irish unity referendums must happen in this decade. The people, North and South, must have their say. It is the responsibility of both governments, in Dublin and London, to play a leading role in fostering a mature and positive conversation about the future.” (15) (My emphasis – LOR) But how is this to be achieved? Through lobbying the European Union that a united Ireland is “realistic, achievable, necessary” to use the words of Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald, and calling on the Irish Government to "plan, prepare, and advocate for unity” as well as convincing the US government to intervene for a border poll as a Sinn Féin MP put it. (16) In December 2024 the latest phase of the ‘struggle’ according to Sinn Féin was to call for the opening of a mini EU embassy in Belfast. (17)
Such a strategy is blind to the realities of geopolitics. As Henry McDonald, the former Ireland correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer put it six months before he died regarding Sinn Féin’s lobbying of US and Australian governments for a border poll:
Down Under in Australia, Mary Lou McDonald appealed to the newly elected (Australian) Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to campaign in favour of a united Ireland on the international stage.
...To imagine that the Australian Prime Minister would have time, let alone the motivation, to lobby on behalf of Sinn Féin and bash the Brits into submission over a Border Poll is simply deluded. Australia has just signed post-Brexit trade deal with the UK and has entered into a defence pact with the British military in alliance with the Americans, with particular focus on security in the Pacific. Which means beefing up their armed forces in the region as a deterrent against an expansionist China. Why would Mr Albanese risk a rupture with a global trading partner and key military ally by taking sides in Northern Ireland?
Meanwhile, in Washington DC, Michelle O’Neill was also banging the drum for a united Ireland and imploring (Joe Biden) to send a Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, preferably one, of course, willing to threaten to scupper any trans-Atlantic trade deal if the British did overturn the Northern Ireland Protocol through the legislation passing through Parliament. President Biden might talk the kind of talk that friends of Sinn Féin on Capitol Hill like to hear but he and the advisers around him trying to keep him propped up have other more important matters on their mind.
Soaring inflation, the energy supply crisis, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the cracks emerging in the EU over Putin’s gas supplies, and the mid-term elections in November that could see the President and the Democrats lose Congress to the Republicans.
Add to all those crises, the necessity to have reliable military allies like the UK when facing Putin or Xi in China, and you can imagine what the hard-headed realists in the State Department really must be thinking when they hear Sinn Féin leaders pressing the US to go on a collision course with the UK. 18)
Suzanne Breen, the political editor of the leading Northern Ireland newspaper The Belfast Telegraph noted how Unionists should be delighted at just how little Northern Ireland and the re-unification of Ireland were mentioned by political parties in the Republic’s elections of November 2024. Aside from Sinn Féin and People Before Profit – Solidarity to a lesser extent none of the political parties ranked re-unification as a priority or called for a border poll. (21)
It is also very important to clarify the political language being used. A ‘Shared Island’ and an ‘Agreed Ireland’ are not a united and free Ireland, ‘self-determination’ is not the same as a limited form of ‘co-determination’, an ‘Ireland of equals’ and ‘parity of esteem’ between different ‘traditions’ is not a universalist concept of egalitarianism. Also note how for example the leading Irish daily newspaper The Irish Times uses the word ‘Ireland’ as being synonymous with the 26 counties state rather than the 32 counties. Northern Ireland is dealt with by the Dublin government via the Department of Foreign Affairs, as if the North was like Uzbekistan or Outer Mongolia, Belfast being as Irish as Ulaanbaatar. As an Irish Times article recently put it the fundamental question is: “Do we want a shared island or a united Ireland?” and the answer clearly looks like the former. (22) The ‘shared island’ is not a united Ireland. The language of a ‘struggle’ for national liberation and socialism has been replaced by some “conversation” about a border poll for a re-united Ireland being part of the EU. (23)
Reunification in the party’s strategy relies on the European Union and the British, US and Irish elites. This is a top-down rather than a bottom-up process, a reunification from above not from below. As stated in Sinn Féin’s 2025 New Year statement, the emphasis is upon the Dublin and London governments “to play a leading role” in this strategy. Reunification of Ireland as it is currently on the agenda is very much an example of what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci referred to as a “passive revolution” (Rivoluzione passiva): the unification of Italy was not made on the Jacobin model through the mobilization of the subaltern classes but elite driven through the leadership of the ruling classes. (24) The unification of Ireland through the work of the EU, the Commonwealth and NATO will not result in national liberation and social emancipation. It is at best a “passive revolution”.
It is also worth looking at the social nature of the forces calling for a border poll. The most prominent group working for that agenda is called “Ireland’s Future” and was formed in 2017. It has been very visible in the media asking the Taoiseach to protect northern citizens’ rights. When 200 then 1000 people associated with this group sent a series open letters to the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the Dublin government they made much of their professional standing : names from the world of sport, the arts, business, community work and the legal sector. (25) This was at best an initiative of the upper middle classes, the new Catholic bourgeoisie,, not one of the subaltern classes. The working class organized or not is absent from this debate as a social agency.
III. Border Poll
Aside from the objections raised above, one can be skeptical of the border poll as a strategy for five reasons.
First, it’s only up to the British government to call a border poll. However the current criteria for calling a referendum on the question of Irish unity lacks transparency. The trigger for a border poll under the 1998 Agreement is for a nationalist victory to appear ‘likely’ to the secretary of state. Likelihood is not defined but has been assumed to mean a census or election result showing a Catholic or nationalist majority, or perhaps a combination of these. Even before Brexit, these supposedly conjoined indicators were diverging – the Catholic population rising to 45 per cent, the nationalist vote falling to 36 per cent. So which should the secretary of state use? Former Northern Ireland secretary of state Brandon Lewis refused to state circumstances under which a secretary of state would call an Irish unity referendum. “The British government has said it has no legal requirement and would not be acting in the public interest if it was to set out criteria that would lead to a Border poll.” (26)
Second, it is not clear who would be entitled to vote in a border poll in Northern Ireland. For instance, those holding a Republic of Ireland passport in the north may not be allowed to vote in a united Ireland poll. (27)
Third, it is not clear what would constitute a ‘majority’ for deciding the outcome of the poll. The simple majority rule to decide the referendum (ie 50 per cent plus one) has been challenged by some form of ‘qualified majority’ or ‘weighted majority’ or ‘super-majority’ suggested by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Leo Varadkar, as well as Seamus Mallon, the late Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. (28) Moreover, proposed changes in the UK to referendum rules would override the `simple majority': according to the Referendum Criteria Bill there needs to be a turnout of more than 55 per cent of the electorate and a majority of 60 per cent for the outcome to be successful. (29)
Fourth, it is not clear if a single referendum would be sufficient to decide whether Ireland should be re-united. Constitutional experts argue that a united Ireland could need up to four referendums. (30)
Fifth, the Dublin political elites did not respect the democratic decisions of their people in two referendums on EU treaties (cfr. the Nice treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon treaty in 2008). Their British counterparts have also shown hesitations to respect the Brexit vote. These are not positive precedents for a referendum on a united Ireland.
Those five reasons indicate that it is very easy to change the goal posts in the border poll question.
IV. "No Selfish Strategic Interests"?
Also in a letter in April 2023 to the Irish Times, Gay Mitchell (Former TD and MEP) made the following important point:
A border poll on unity can take place within Northern Ireland when the Secretary of State believes a majority exists there for unity. Should a majority vote for change, the British government would then initiate the process of negotiating a united Ireland. If this were to come about, there is no way the UK, the US or other NATO members (mostly EU states) would accept Northern Ireland leaving NATO, not to mention the people of Northern Ireland themselves. (31)
People in this audience may not know that the Republic of Ireland is a neutral state and not part of NATO defence arrangements. The NATO aspect is absent from discussions about border polls and Irish unity, although one should note that Sinn Féin has softened its position on the military alliance, dropping undertakings to exit defence arrangements with EU and NATO. (32)
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Brooke’s stated on 9 November 1990 that the British state had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland and would accept unification, if the people wished it". This "no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland” was reiterated in paragraph 4 of the 15 December 1993 Downing Street Declaration which laid the political parameters of the so-called "peace process". Referring to the famous Brooke speech in 1990 in which he declared that the British state had 'no selfish strategic or economic interest' in Ireland, in October 1999 the British daily newspaper:
The Guardian learned that Lady Thatcher only approved the controversial phrase which the Northern Ireland Office had been trying to use for years after the end of the cold war. It is understood she was reluctant to use such neutral language earlier because British nuclear submarines passed close to Ireland to patrol the Atlantic." (33)
That shows the the British state had strategic interests in Northern Ireland.
Has the end of the Cold War after 1989-1991 made the British state's strategic interests in Ireland redundant? G.R. Sloan, of the University of Reading and formerly Deputy Head of Strategic Studies at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Darmouth, argued that the end of the Cold War had not diminished Ireland's strategic importance; compelling the British state to pursue a strategic policy of 'geopolitical dualism': on one hand ensuring that part of Ireland remains within NATO, and on the other claim 'no selfish strategic interests' to further the peace process.
Take note of this:
Has the end of the Cold War after 1989-1991 made the British state's strategic interests in Ireland redundant? G.R. Sloan, of the University of Reading and formerly Deputy Head of Strategic Studies at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Darmouth, argued that the end of the Cold War had not diminished Ireland's strategic importance; compelling the British state to pursue a strategic policy of 'geopolitical dualism': on one hand ensuring that part of Ireland remains within NATO, and on the other claim 'no selfish strategic interests' to further the peace process.
Take note of this:
Following the end of the Cold War and the decision taken by a Conservative government in 1990, Northern Ireland strategy might be described as geopolitical dualism. It was premised on the assumption of being able to differentiate between a strategic policy which was designed to send a signal to the Republican movement on the one hand and the continued availability of Northern Ireland to the NATO alliance. Yet the ending of the Cold war has not spelt the end of potential threats to the security of the United Kingdom and consequently Has Resulted In A Potential Increase in the strategic importance of Ireland. (34) (my emphasis - LOR)
This point was proved right on 5 February 2024, when in a study backed by former Tory and Labour defence secretaries, the Policy Exchange think tank called for the Government to step up its naval and air presence in Northern Ireland to deter a growing Russian threat off Ireland’s Atlantic coast where virtual undersea cables arrive in the British Isles. In a foreword to the report, Sir Michael Fallon, who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 2014 to 2017 and Lord George Robertson who was Defense Secretary of the United Kingdom between 1997 and 1999 and Secretary General of NATO and Chairman of the North Atlantic Council from 1999 to 2004 warn it is time to “reassert the strategic importance of Ireland, and especially Northern Ireland, to the UK’s national security”. (35)
This document explicitly states that:
…the UK quite obviously has a strategic interest in Northern Ireland by territorial definition, and per the contours of geopolitical rivalry…the interests of the island of Great Britain and the territories of Northern Ireland are indissolubly intertwined…Northern Irish and British strategic interests are one and the same…Northern Ireland is therefore the key to addressing the UK's security concerns…preserving the strategic unity of the Union is an inextricable component of British grand strategy. In doing so, the strategic indivisibility of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – which, despite subsequent interpretations, the Downing Street Declaration did enshrine – must be rediscovered. (36)
The 66 pages study contains detailed analyses of current cyber, underwater fibre optic cable, pipeline, interconnector and other marine threats. (37) On page 3 it quotes Admiral Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC PC, Former First Sea Lord, former Security Minister and Chief of the Naval Staff from 2002 to 2006:
There is no doubt that for reasons of geography the island of Ireland has considerable strategic importance to the UK and NATO. The Western Approaches and wider Atlantic and Arctic oceans and their sea-beds have become the front line in the grey war that Russia is waging. To counter this we need bases ‘up threat’, which means West of the UK mainland, should hot war break out bases in Northern Ireland become even more crucial.
Britain’s strategic interests are seen as superior to Irish democratic demands.
That the British state has not just selfish strategic but also a political interest in maintaining the Union is evident from a 77 pages command paper (a command paper is an official document in the United Kingdom which is issued by His Majesty's Government and presented to Parliament) published on 31 January 2024 entitled Safeguarding The Union:
The Government is committed to strengthening Northern Ireland’s place in the Union. We have been clear that we will never be neutral on this issue and note this is a position held on a broad, cross-party basis in Parliament. (38)
This is a British government declaration of intent to remain in Northern Ireland. So much for no selfish interest… While the government at that time was a Conservative one, Sir Keir Starmer and his new British Labour Party government elected on 4 July 2024 will make no difference. When asked about a border poll Sir Starmer replied:
"It’s not even on the horizon.” He has previously said he would campaign for Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK if such a referendum was held in his lifetime. (39) Sir Keir Starmer in an interview with BBC Northern Ireland Political Editor Enda McClafferty on 9 July 2021 stated that he was a committed Unionist: "I personally as leader of the Labour Party believe in the United Kingdom strongly and want to make the case for the United Kingdom strongly." (40)
V. Trasformismo Irish Style
On 8 February 2020 there was a general election in the Republic of Ireland. With 24.5% Sinn Féin got the highest share of the vote. It succeeded in getting 37 TDs (members of the Irish parliament) elected out of a total of 160. After that election it looked that Sinn Féin as the main opposition party could soon become the party of government and increase pressure for a border poll.
It is worth looking at the nature of this so-called ‘opposition’ party. “Sinn Féin are pro-business,” said the party’s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty. (41) Elsewhere he said that “Big business and investors know Sinn Féin won’t go after them.” (42) In private briefings, business leaders such as the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC), have been told that life under a Sinn Féin government will not be all that different. Industry lobbyists and property developers, who have been regularly meeting the party’s key spokespeople and advisors, said they are happy with the message they are hearing from the opposition party. (43) There has been a concerted effort at the highest levels of the party to court big business, with its leader Mary Lou McDonald even travelling to the Silicon Valley to reassure investors that her party was not a threat to their interests. According to the Davy Group, Ireland's largest stockbroker, wealth manager, asset manager and financial advisor, Sinn Féin's approach to the economy is more 'New Labour’ than ‘Corbyn Labour’ and notes that the party “does not plan to fundamentally change Ireland’s economic policy”. (44) On the basis of this, given that the economy is the most influential system in the country, it is hard to see how the party can brand itself as the party of change.
In the Republic of Ireland, in 2016 Sinn Féin was looking for a 7 per cent levy on incomes over €100,000. By late 2023 that proposal had changed to a 3 per cent “solidarity” levy on incomes over €140,000 . (45) Sinn Féin favours a single 12.5 % corporation tax for small firms on both sides of the border, The British state wants a 19 % tax rate, so who is more to the left in terms of taxation of businesses?… (46) The party’s proposal, for example, to alleviate the housing crisis in the Republic of Ireland states an aspiration for houses to be available for purchase at €250,000 or rented for €1,000 a month. While these sums are below current averages, they remain beyond the means of much of a working population for whom the minimum wage is €12.70 an hour. (47) While in the south Sinn Féin tries to present itself as a left-wing party in theory, its actions in the north demonstrate in practice how fiscally right-wing the party has become. On 9 December 2024, Sinn Féin’s Stormont Finance Minister, Caoimhe Archibald, announced that she was going to continue the system whereby the poorest homeowners in Northern Ireland subsidise the tax bills of the wealthiest people living in multi-million-pound mansions. (48)
The right wing drift is not just in terms of economics. The party’s President Mary Lou McDonald now even states that she would not attend any Provisional IRA commemoration if elected as Taoiseach-Prime Minister. So for the party it is now perfectly OK to attend events in favour of the British Royal Family, but wrong to attend any relating to Bobby Sands or any of the other 1981 hunger strikers. (49) It now backs the Green Street Special Criminal Court, a non-jury special tribunal that prosecutes republicans. (50) The party seriously believes that the idea of the Republic of Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth should be discussed. (51) Adapting to anti-immigrant sentiment, Sinn Féin hardened its position on migration. Research has shown that attitudes on immigration are toughest among supporters of Sinn Féin. (52)
Palestine probably illustrates best the drift to the right by the party. (53) After the Russian special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, Sinn Féin called that year for the expulsion of the Russian ambassador to Ireland on at least three occasions. (54) But after the Israeli assault on Gaza following the 07 October 2023 Hamas Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Sinn Féin refused to vote for expulsion of the Israeli ambassador on at least two occasions – on 25 October 2023 in Derry City and Strabane District Council as well as 01 November 2023 in Belfast. (55) In contrast, on 7 February 2024 Palestinian protesters were forcibly ejected from a Sinn Féin rally in Belfast. (56) While in Ireland there were widespread calls to boycott the White House celebrations of St Patrick’s Day on 17 March 2024 in protest at US support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, Sinn Féin refused not to attend, which actually put the party to the right of other mainstream political parties such as the SDLP. (57) Sinn Féin also had meetings with the right-wing Israeli Likud party and provides uncritical support to the Palestinian Authority. (58)
In late December 2022, Martin Kenny who would have become Sinn Féin’s Minister for Justice in the Dublin government had the party been able to win the elections stated: “I’m sure there’s plenty of Guards that vote for us”. (59) “Guards” refers here to members of the Garda SÃochána, the national police and security service of the Republic of Ireland, who are the main repressive state apparatus used by the Dublin government against Irish republicans and left-wing activists, harrassing them with Section 30 of the Offenses Against The State Act. The Garda SÃochána unit tasked with investigating republicans and other subversives is the Special Detective Unit (SDU). This shows how much Sinn Féin has changed. The Irish Times, the leading daily Irish newspaper even said Sinn Féin was now “the leading party of middle-class Ireland”. (60) As The Economist magazine concluded, the quest of respectability and votes has transformed Sinn Féin. (61) This is possibly an Irish example of Gramsci’s concept of “transformism” (Trasformismo), meaning the co-optation and neutralisation of radical parties through the absorption of their active elements in parliament.
In the most recent election in the Republic of Ireland on 29 November 2024, Sinn Féin’s share of the vote fell from first to third position with 19% of the total vote. The party presented this as an advance as its number of TDs/members of parliament increased from 37 to 39. However the numbers of seats in the parliament had increased from 160 in 2020 to 174 in 2024, meaning that if in 2020 the party got 23.1% of the seats in parliament in 2024 it actually got less this time with 22.4%. The public’s faith in Sinn Féin decreased far more than it has in any of the other major parties. While the main establishment parties got more or less the same votes they had in the last election in 2020 - Fine Gael gained 2,500 votes from 2020 (0.4% more), while Fianna Fáil dropped 3,000 (0.3% less)- the numbers voting for Sinn Féin dropped by 116,968 since February 2020 – a decline of 5.5 per cent, the worst performance by a main opposition party in the Dublin parliament since 1943. This lead some sections of the media to ask if Sinn Féin was the worst opposition party in Europe. (62)
This leaves the party with two paths if it intends to become a party of government in Dublin. The first one involves building an alliance with centre left parties. Sinn Féin points to the gradual decline in combined support for the two centre-right parties from 68.9% in 2007 to 42.7 % in the 29 November 2024 election as a sign that the left may soon be able to form a government for the first time. But at the end of 2024 with the Social Democrats (11 TDs), the Labout Party (11 TDs), People Before Profit – Solidarity (3 TDs) and the Green Party (1 TD) having a total of 26 TDs, added to the 39 Sinn Féin TDs this would be a total of 65 TDs which falls short of the 88 TDs required for a government majority. Also note that People Before Profit-Solidarity, the party to the furthest of the Left in the Dublin parliament lost two of its TDs in the 2024 elections. The idea of a left wing coalition is a non-starter. The other path is a coalition with one of the two main right wing parties, Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil (48 TDs) or Simon Harris’ Fine Gael (38 TDs). But this is unlikely at this stage as both parties have ruled out forming a coalition government with Sinn Féin. A border poll is definitively not on the agenda. If Sinn Féin is integrated into any ruling coalition in the future, it will be an example of trasformismo or transformism.
VI. Apathy As A Material Force
Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald predicted that a border poll will be held before 2030, For years the party has told us that there will be a united Ireland within 10 years. (63) “You need only consider that in 2011, Gerry Adams told us Northern Ireland would have left the UK by 2016. By August 2021, Gerry had changed 2016 to 2024. In May 2022, Mary Lou McDonald called for a border poll by 2027 and by July 2022, Mary Lou McDonald had changed 2027 to 2030. And just this month, Michelle O’Neill had shifted the Sinn Féin goalposts again to call for a border poll by 2034.” (64) However prospects of Irish unification remain remote. Sinn Féin can sloganize abstractly about border polls and fantasize about reunification because it is safe to do so as there are very little chances this will happen over the next twenty years. (65)
Note that Irish republicanism has always been against a border poll. (66) The first time the Provisional IRA put bombs in London was on 8 March 1973, the same day as the 1973 border poll - “they were delivering a message showing their contempt for the Border Poll in Northern Ireland.”. (67) It is ironic that what they are showing as the way forward today is what they had posed bombs against in 1973. The fact that there exists legislation for a border poll is not the product of the “success” of their armed campaign, it had been there all along.
Also demographic change was never seen by republicans as the means to achieve their political objectives. The traditional republican position was to boycott the population census. If in 1961 just 1.9 % of the population of Northern Ireland boycotted the census following instructions from republicans, in 1971 this rose to 9.4% and in 1981 doubled to 18.5%. In the absence of any official nationalist boycott campaign in 1991, non-response fell, but it remained significant at 7.3%. There are photographs showing republicans burning census forms. In their opposition to population census, on 7 April 1981 the IRA went as far as to execute Joanne Mathers, a 29 years old mother of one collecting census forms. (68) Yet from 2001 Sinn Féin has urged people to fill and hand in the same census forms that Joanne Mathers had been executed for collecting. (69)
While there is much talk about a united Ireland, there is far less discussion about the nature of unity. For example should a united Ireland be independent and neutral, or should it be within the EU, and allied to NATO and the US? This is also particularly the case in terms of social and economic equality. As Daniel Finn reminds us:
V. Trasformismo Irish Style
On 8 February 2020 there was a general election in the Republic of Ireland. With 24.5% Sinn Féin got the highest share of the vote. It succeeded in getting 37 TDs (members of the Irish parliament) elected out of a total of 160. After that election it looked that Sinn Féin as the main opposition party could soon become the party of government and increase pressure for a border poll.
It is worth looking at the nature of this so-called ‘opposition’ party. “Sinn Féin are pro-business,” said the party’s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty. (41) Elsewhere he said that “Big business and investors know Sinn Féin won’t go after them.” (42) In private briefings, business leaders such as the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC), have been told that life under a Sinn Féin government will not be all that different. Industry lobbyists and property developers, who have been regularly meeting the party’s key spokespeople and advisors, said they are happy with the message they are hearing from the opposition party. (43) There has been a concerted effort at the highest levels of the party to court big business, with its leader Mary Lou McDonald even travelling to the Silicon Valley to reassure investors that her party was not a threat to their interests. According to the Davy Group, Ireland's largest stockbroker, wealth manager, asset manager and financial advisor, Sinn Féin's approach to the economy is more 'New Labour’ than ‘Corbyn Labour’ and notes that the party “does not plan to fundamentally change Ireland’s economic policy”. (44) On the basis of this, given that the economy is the most influential system in the country, it is hard to see how the party can brand itself as the party of change.
In the Republic of Ireland, in 2016 Sinn Féin was looking for a 7 per cent levy on incomes over €100,000. By late 2023 that proposal had changed to a 3 per cent “solidarity” levy on incomes over €140,000 . (45) Sinn Féin favours a single 12.5 % corporation tax for small firms on both sides of the border, The British state wants a 19 % tax rate, so who is more to the left in terms of taxation of businesses?… (46) The party’s proposal, for example, to alleviate the housing crisis in the Republic of Ireland states an aspiration for houses to be available for purchase at €250,000 or rented for €1,000 a month. While these sums are below current averages, they remain beyond the means of much of a working population for whom the minimum wage is €12.70 an hour. (47) While in the south Sinn Féin tries to present itself as a left-wing party in theory, its actions in the north demonstrate in practice how fiscally right-wing the party has become. On 9 December 2024, Sinn Féin’s Stormont Finance Minister, Caoimhe Archibald, announced that she was going to continue the system whereby the poorest homeowners in Northern Ireland subsidise the tax bills of the wealthiest people living in multi-million-pound mansions. (48)
The right wing drift is not just in terms of economics. The party’s President Mary Lou McDonald now even states that she would not attend any Provisional IRA commemoration if elected as Taoiseach-Prime Minister. So for the party it is now perfectly OK to attend events in favour of the British Royal Family, but wrong to attend any relating to Bobby Sands or any of the other 1981 hunger strikers. (49) It now backs the Green Street Special Criminal Court, a non-jury special tribunal that prosecutes republicans. (50) The party seriously believes that the idea of the Republic of Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth should be discussed. (51) Adapting to anti-immigrant sentiment, Sinn Féin hardened its position on migration. Research has shown that attitudes on immigration are toughest among supporters of Sinn Féin. (52)
Palestine probably illustrates best the drift to the right by the party. (53) After the Russian special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, Sinn Féin called that year for the expulsion of the Russian ambassador to Ireland on at least three occasions. (54) But after the Israeli assault on Gaza following the 07 October 2023 Hamas Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Sinn Féin refused to vote for expulsion of the Israeli ambassador on at least two occasions – on 25 October 2023 in Derry City and Strabane District Council as well as 01 November 2023 in Belfast. (55) In contrast, on 7 February 2024 Palestinian protesters were forcibly ejected from a Sinn Féin rally in Belfast. (56) While in Ireland there were widespread calls to boycott the White House celebrations of St Patrick’s Day on 17 March 2024 in protest at US support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, Sinn Féin refused not to attend, which actually put the party to the right of other mainstream political parties such as the SDLP. (57) Sinn Féin also had meetings with the right-wing Israeli Likud party and provides uncritical support to the Palestinian Authority. (58)
In late December 2022, Martin Kenny who would have become Sinn Féin’s Minister for Justice in the Dublin government had the party been able to win the elections stated: “I’m sure there’s plenty of Guards that vote for us”. (59) “Guards” refers here to members of the Garda SÃochána, the national police and security service of the Republic of Ireland, who are the main repressive state apparatus used by the Dublin government against Irish republicans and left-wing activists, harrassing them with Section 30 of the Offenses Against The State Act. The Garda SÃochána unit tasked with investigating republicans and other subversives is the Special Detective Unit (SDU). This shows how much Sinn Féin has changed. The Irish Times, the leading daily Irish newspaper even said Sinn Féin was now “the leading party of middle-class Ireland”. (60) As The Economist magazine concluded, the quest of respectability and votes has transformed Sinn Féin. (61) This is possibly an Irish example of Gramsci’s concept of “transformism” (Trasformismo), meaning the co-optation and neutralisation of radical parties through the absorption of their active elements in parliament.
In the most recent election in the Republic of Ireland on 29 November 2024, Sinn Féin’s share of the vote fell from first to third position with 19% of the total vote. The party presented this as an advance as its number of TDs/members of parliament increased from 37 to 39. However the numbers of seats in the parliament had increased from 160 in 2020 to 174 in 2024, meaning that if in 2020 the party got 23.1% of the seats in parliament in 2024 it actually got less this time with 22.4%. The public’s faith in Sinn Féin decreased far more than it has in any of the other major parties. While the main establishment parties got more or less the same votes they had in the last election in 2020 - Fine Gael gained 2,500 votes from 2020 (0.4% more), while Fianna Fáil dropped 3,000 (0.3% less)- the numbers voting for Sinn Féin dropped by 116,968 since February 2020 – a decline of 5.5 per cent, the worst performance by a main opposition party in the Dublin parliament since 1943. This lead some sections of the media to ask if Sinn Féin was the worst opposition party in Europe. (62)
This leaves the party with two paths if it intends to become a party of government in Dublin. The first one involves building an alliance with centre left parties. Sinn Féin points to the gradual decline in combined support for the two centre-right parties from 68.9% in 2007 to 42.7 % in the 29 November 2024 election as a sign that the left may soon be able to form a government for the first time. But at the end of 2024 with the Social Democrats (11 TDs), the Labout Party (11 TDs), People Before Profit – Solidarity (3 TDs) and the Green Party (1 TD) having a total of 26 TDs, added to the 39 Sinn Féin TDs this would be a total of 65 TDs which falls short of the 88 TDs required for a government majority. Also note that People Before Profit-Solidarity, the party to the furthest of the Left in the Dublin parliament lost two of its TDs in the 2024 elections. The idea of a left wing coalition is a non-starter. The other path is a coalition with one of the two main right wing parties, Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil (48 TDs) or Simon Harris’ Fine Gael (38 TDs). But this is unlikely at this stage as both parties have ruled out forming a coalition government with Sinn Féin. A border poll is definitively not on the agenda. If Sinn Féin is integrated into any ruling coalition in the future, it will be an example of trasformismo or transformism.
VI. Apathy As A Material Force
Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald predicted that a border poll will be held before 2030, For years the party has told us that there will be a united Ireland within 10 years. (63) “You need only consider that in 2011, Gerry Adams told us Northern Ireland would have left the UK by 2016. By August 2021, Gerry had changed 2016 to 2024. In May 2022, Mary Lou McDonald called for a border poll by 2027 and by July 2022, Mary Lou McDonald had changed 2027 to 2030. And just this month, Michelle O’Neill had shifted the Sinn Féin goalposts again to call for a border poll by 2034.” (64) However prospects of Irish unification remain remote. Sinn Féin can sloganize abstractly about border polls and fantasize about reunification because it is safe to do so as there are very little chances this will happen over the next twenty years. (65)
Note that Irish republicanism has always been against a border poll. (66) The first time the Provisional IRA put bombs in London was on 8 March 1973, the same day as the 1973 border poll - “they were delivering a message showing their contempt for the Border Poll in Northern Ireland.”. (67) It is ironic that what they are showing as the way forward today is what they had posed bombs against in 1973. The fact that there exists legislation for a border poll is not the product of the “success” of their armed campaign, it had been there all along.
Also demographic change was never seen by republicans as the means to achieve their political objectives. The traditional republican position was to boycott the population census. If in 1961 just 1.9 % of the population of Northern Ireland boycotted the census following instructions from republicans, in 1971 this rose to 9.4% and in 1981 doubled to 18.5%. In the absence of any official nationalist boycott campaign in 1991, non-response fell, but it remained significant at 7.3%. There are photographs showing republicans burning census forms. In their opposition to population census, on 7 April 1981 the IRA went as far as to execute Joanne Mathers, a 29 years old mother of one collecting census forms. (68) Yet from 2001 Sinn Féin has urged people to fill and hand in the same census forms that Joanne Mathers had been executed for collecting. (69)
While there is much talk about a united Ireland, there is far less discussion about the nature of unity. For example should a united Ireland be independent and neutral, or should it be within the EU, and allied to NATO and the US? This is also particularly the case in terms of social and economic equality. As Daniel Finn reminds us:
A form of Irish unity that reproduced the inequalities of the 26-county state on a 32-county level would be an unwelcome and dispiriting conclusion to one of Europe’s oldest political disputes. It would also be much less attractive to those who care more about the social content of a state than about its national coloration. (70)
Up to now the majority of the discussion of the social and economic nature of a united Ireland is made within the ideological parameters of The Financial Times and The Economist. (71) If divorced from questions of social and economic equality, the question of the border poll will very much be “Under Which Constitutional Arrangement (United Kingdom or United Ireland) Would You Still Prefer to be Unemployed?” (72)
It is worth recalling here David Lloyd’s distinction between the unification and the transformation of Ireland:
Key here is the continuing dynamic by which nationalism is formed in articulation with other social movements such as the labour, feminist and environmental movements:
As a number of influential authors and activists put it back in 2018: "For republicans, the challenge is...to offer something concrete and attractive that rises above nationalism." (75) To give just one concrete example it is absurd to talk of a ‘nationalist’ solution to the global ecological crisis. In the chapter on ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ ('Mésaventures de la conscience nationale') in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre) Frantz Fanon writes:
It is worth recalling here David Lloyd’s distinction between the unification and the transformation of Ireland:
The unity of Ireland in itself is of less value than the transformation of Ireland. This is a project that republicanism shares with labour movements, with radical feminism and with environmental activists, and it is a project that involves the radical rethinking of all our political imaginaries.
... These form a network of alternative practices from which we can learn as much by our differences as by our identifications. (73)
Key here is the continuing dynamic by which nationalism is formed in articulation with other social movements such as the labour, feminist and environmental movements:
If the nationalisms with which we are in solidarity are to be emancipatory, rather than fixed on the repressive apparatuses of state formations, it is their conjunctural relation to other social movements that needs to be emphasized and furthered, at both theoretical and practical levels. The possibility of
nationalism against the state lies in the recognition of the excess of the people over the nation, and in the understanding that it is, beyond itself, within the very logic of nationalism as a political phenomenon to open and mobilize alternative formations. (74)
As a number of influential authors and activists put it back in 2018: "For republicans, the challenge is...to offer something concrete and attractive that rises above nationalism." (75) To give just one concrete example it is absurd to talk of a ‘nationalist’ solution to the global ecological crisis. In the chapter on ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ ('Mésaventures de la conscience nationale') in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre) Frantz Fanon writes:
If nationalism is not made explicit, if it is not enriched and deepened by a very rapid transformation into a consciousness of social and political needs, in other words into humanism, it leads up a blind alley. (76)
As Edward W. Said warned, nationalism can become “not only a fetish, but ...also turned into a kind of idol, in the Baconian sense – an idol of the cave, and of the tribe.” (77) The step from national consciousness to political and social consciousness is crucial. This indicates the move to go beyond nationalism, not simply independence but liberation as the objective. For Fanon: “National consciousness which is not nationalism, is the only thing that will give us international dimension.” (78) We need to move from separatist nationalism towards a more integrative view of human community and human liberation, a transformation of social consciousness beyond national consciousness. As Edward W. Said argued it is necessary to connect the popular strength of nationalist struggles with the consciousness of a “new universality”. (79)
But such a project faces two major obstacles today. The first is the nature of the crisis. What Ireland and possibly the rest of Western Europe is facing is an economic crisis, but not what Gramsci called an “organic crisis” (Crisi organica) where the very legitimacy of the system is questioned. What one author refers to as “the capitalism of boredom” is hegemonic in Ireland north and south. (80)
The second is apathy. This was noted by The Irish News, one of the leading Northern Ireland newspaper regarding the recent general elections in the Republic of Ireland. 59.7 percent of eligible voters participated, the lowest turn-out since the foundation of the state in 1922. Around the same number of people stayed at home as voted for the two largest right-wing parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined. The turnout was down from almost 63% in 2020, which was about 2% lower than in 2016. (81) This of course not just limited to the Republic of Ireland. In the latest general elections in July 2024 just 52% of adults living in the UK exercised their right to vote – the lowest proportion since universal suffrage was introduced in 1918 for men and 1928 for women. (82) As James Heartfield put it, “apathy too becomes a material force when it grips the masses”. (83)
To conclude with Antonio Gramsci: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” (84)
Thank you.
Notes
(1) Editorial, A Protestant state no more, Irish News, 23 September 2022
(2) Colin Coulter, Eoin Flaherty, Peter Shirlow (2023) ‘Seismic’ or stalemate? The (bio)politics of the 2021 Northern Ireland Census, Space and Polity, 27:1, 57-77 for a critical discussion of the census and its figures
(3) Brian Hutton, More Irish than UK passports being issued in Northern Ireland for first time, Irish Times, 3 May 2022
(4) Margaret Canning, Religious equality in NI workforce for the first time, Belfast Telegraph, 21 April 2023
(5) Laura Noonan, ‘You have to be violent to be heard’: why Northern Ireland’s teens take to the street, Financial Times, 1 July 2021
(6) Brendan Hughes & Matt Fox, Stormont: Michelle O'Neill makes history as nationalist First Minister, BBC News, 3 February 2024 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-68180505)
(7) Rebecca Black, Ex-IRA leader McGuinness toasts Queen in her own house at Windsor, Belfast Telegraph, 9 April 2014
(8) Suzanne Breen, Sinn Féin bears Queen no ill will, says Gerry Adams, Belfast Telegraph, 16 June 2017
(9) Jonathan McCambridge and David Young, Sinn Féin leader congratulates Queen on ‘lifetime of service’, Belfast Telegraph, 10 February 2022
(10) Suzanne Breen, Queen Elizabeth II: Northern Ireland’s politicians unite in tribute to woman ‘who led by example’ during peace process, Belfast Telegraph, 8 September 2022
(11) Conor Humphries and Amanda Ferguson, Irish nationalists Sinn Féin looking forward to working with King Charles, Reuters, 9 September 2022
(12) Rory Carroll, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill to attend King Charles’s coronation, The Guardian, 26 April 2023
(13) Anthony McIntyre, He’s Our King Too, You Know, The Pensive Quill, 20 September 2022
(14) Connla Young, Troubles bereaved ‘devastated’ by O’Neill’s cenotaph decision, Irish News, 8 November 2024
(15) Pat Leahy, Mary Lou McDonald reiterates demand for Border poll ‘in this decade’, Irish Times, 1 January 2025
(16) Jack Horgan-Jones, ‘Realistic, achievable, necessary’ : Mary Lou McDonald pushes EU to back Irish reunification, Irish Times, 22 March 2022, James Martin McCarthy, Sinn Féin MP calls on US to intervene on Border Poll, Belfast Live, 9 October 2024
(17) James Crisp, Allow EU to open a mini-embassy in Belfast, says Sinn Féin, Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2024
(18) Henry McDonald, Sinn Féin leaders Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald engage in ‘politics of illusion’, The Newsletter, 23 July 2022
(19) Harry McGee, Taoiseach distances himself from united Ireland, points to co-operation as way forward, Irish Times, 23 October 2020
(20) Harry McGee, Troubles were costing Irish taxpayer ‘up to three times more than British counterpart’, Irish Times, 29 December 2021
(21) Suzanne Breen, Unionists here will be delighted at just how little NI is mentioned by parties in Republic’s election race, Belfast Telegraph, 22 November 2024
(22) Stephen Collins, Do we want a shared island or a united Ireland? Irish Times, 18 December 2020
(23) For example of this monologue rather than ‘conversation’ see: Mary Lou McDonald: People want to be part of the conversation on the future of Ireland, on the shape of constitutional change and how best to navigate the next steps of the journey to reunification, Irish News, 16 December 2024
(24) Kieran Allen (2021) 32 Counties. The Failure of Partition and the case for a United Ireland, London: Pluto Press,, 127-128.
(25) Prominent nationalists ask Taoiseach to protect northern citizens’ rights, Irish News, 11 December 2017 ; John Manley, Brexit : One thousand sign letter to Leo Varadkar urging him to protect nationalists’ rights, Irish News, 5 November 2018 ; Ronan McGreevy, Making the argument for a united Ireland, Irish Times, 26 February 2022
(26) Ronan McGreevy, British government declines to set out criteria for a border poll, Irish Times, 13 January 2021
(27) Connla Young, Irish citizens in north may not be allowed to vote in united Ireland poll, Irish News, 5 April 2019
(28) Peter Kissel, Troubling Words Undermine Border Poll, The Irish Echo, 7 December 2023
(29) Bimpe Archer, Proposed changes UK to referendum rules would override the `simple majority' terms of the Good Friday agreement, Irish News, 15 January 2020
(30) Ronan McGreevy, A united Ireland could need four referendums, says expert, Irish Times, 13 September 2019
(31) Gay Mitchell, NATO membership and Irish unity, Irish Times, 22 April 2023
(32) Pat Leahy, Sinn Féin drops undertakings to exit defence arrangements with EU and Nato, Irish Times, 13 May 2023
(33) Nicholas Watt, Thatcher gave approval to talks with IRA, The Guardian, 16 October 1999
(34) Geoffrey R. Sloan, The geopolitics of Anglo-Irish relations in the twentieth century, Leicester University Press, 1997, 295
(35) Marcus Solarz Hendriks & Harry Halem (2024), Closing The Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security, London: Policy Exchange, 8
(36) Ibid, 9. 5. 6. 12
(37) Paul Gillespie, Revisiting NI’s role in UK military security, Irish Times, 10 February 2024
(38) HM Government (2024) Safeguarding The Union. Presented by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland by Command of His Majesty, His Majesty’s Stationary Office Command Paper 1021, Annex B, 1
(39) Irish unity poll not on horizon, says Sir Keir Starmer, BBC website, 5 October 2023
(40) Watch the video here:
(41) Joe Brennan, Sinn Féin’s high-wire act: courting big business and those ‘left behind’, Irish Times, 14 April 2023
(42) Hugh O’Connell, Pearse Doherty Interview: ‘Big business and investors know Sinn Féin won’t go after them’, Sunday Independent, 10 October 2021
(43) Killian Woods, Businesses told ‘life under Sinn Féin government won’t be that different after all’, Sunday Business Post, 2 July 2023
(44) Pat Leahy, London investors told Sinn Féin-led government would be ‘more New Labour than Corbyn Labour’, Irish Times, 7 May 2024
(45) Cliff Taylor, How will Sinn Féin’s plan to tax the rich affect the economy? Irish Times 4 November 2023
(46) Sarah Collins and Steven Alexander, Sinn Féin favours a single 12.5 % corporation tax for small firms on both sides of the border, Belfast Telegraph, 22 February 2022
(47) Steve James, Sinn Féin poll ratings collapse in advance of Irish general election, World Socialist Website, 26 November 2024
(48) David Young, Finance minister pushes ahead with rate reform plan despite Executive shut out, Belfast Telegraph, 9 December 2024, Sam McBride: Sinn Féin presents itself as a left-wing party, but its actions tell a completely different story, Sunday Independent, 15 December 2024
(49) Cormac McQuinn, McDonald signals she would not attend Provisional IRA commemorations as Taoiseach, Irish Times, 12 June 2023
(50) Justine McCarthy, Sinn Féin backs non-jury courts, Sunday Times, 31 October 2021
(51) Christina Finn, Mary Lou McDonald: The idea of Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth needs to be discussed, The Journal, 11 August 2018
(52) Daniel Murray, The Right Turn? Inside Sinn Féin’s shift on immigration as make-or-brake elections loom, Sunday Business Post, 21 January 2024; Pat Leahy, Attitudes on immigration toughest among supporters of Sinn Féin and Independents, Irish Times, 17 May 2024
(53) On this issue more generally see: Suzanne Breen, Sinn Féin has preached about Palestine but party’s actions cast doubt on its sincerity, Sunday Life, 18 February 2024; Farrah Koutteineh, To stand with Palestinians, Sinn Féin must not silence us, The New Arab, 16 May 2023, ; Seán Óg Ó Murchú, Are Irish Republicans shunning Sinn Féin over Gaza? The New Arab, 19 May 2024
(54) Dominic McGrath, Sinn Féin calls for expulsion of Russian ambassador to Ireland, The Independent, 25 February 2022
(55) Adam Kula, Sinn Féin affirms change of stance on expelling the Israeli ambassador after vote last night contrasts with near-identical one in 2021, The Newsletter, 2 November 2023
(56) John Manley, Palestinian protesters criticise Sinn Féin after being ejected from Belfast rally, Irish News, 8 February 2024
(57) Gerry Carroll: Why Sinn Féin is wrong to travel to Washington, Irish News, 28 January 2024
(58) Connla Young, Palestinians voice concerns about Sinn Féin Likud meetings, Irish News, 08 September 2016; David Cronin, Why is Sinn Féin in love with the Palestinian Authority? Electronic Intifada, 12 February 2024,
(59) Sinn Féin’s Martin Kenny: ‘I’m sure there’s plenty of guards that vote for us’, Irish Times, 30 December 2022
(60) Damian Loscher, Sinn Féin now the leading party of middle-class Ireland, Irish Times, 10 December 2021
(61) The quest for respectability – and votes – has transformed Sinn Féin, The Economist, 4 December 2021
(62) Finn McRedmond, Is Sinn Féin the worst opposition party in Europe? The New Statesman, December 2024
(63) Pat Leahy, Sinn Féin’s McDonald says there will be a united Ireland within 10 years, Irish Times, 9 December 2020; David Young, Irish unity border poll will be held before 2030, Mary Lou McDonald predicts, The Independent, 8 February 2024
(64) David Thompson, Sinn Féin swerves issue of what people would be voting for in a border poll, The Newsletter, 5 March 2024
(65) Rory Carroll, Prospect of Irish unification referendum remains remote despite Sinn Féin gains, The Guardian, 16 July 2024
(66) Kevin Kelley (1982) The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA, London: Zed Books, 194-195
(67) Gary McGladdery (2006) The Provisional IRA in England: The Bombing Campaign, 1973-1997, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 66
(68) Laurence Cooley (2024) ‘No status – no census!’ The causes and consequences of the 1971 and 1981 Northern Ireland census boycotts, Contemporary British History, 1–38. ; Laurence Cooley (2020), Census politics in Northern Ireland from the Good Friday Agreement to Brexit: Beyond the ‘sectarian headcount’?, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 23: 3, 451-470
(69) Sinn Féin changes tack on form filling, Irish Times, 09 April 2001
(70) Daniel Finn, Challenges from the Peripheries. SNP and Sinn Féin in the British Party System, New Left Review #135, May/June 2022
(71) For example: Could it really happen? Why the unification of Ireland is becoming likelier, The Economist, 15 February 2020; David McWilliams, Why the idea of a united Ireland is back in play, Financial Times, 30 November 2018
(72) Colin Coulter (2014). Under Which Constitutional Arrangement Would You Still Prefer to be Unemployed? Neoliberalism, the Peace Process, and the Politics of Class in Northern Ireland. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 37: 9, 763–776
(73) David Lloyd (1999) Ireland After History, University of Notre Dame Press in association with Field Day, 107-108
(74) Ibid, 36
(75) Paul Stewart, Tommy McKearney, Gearóid Ó Machail, Patricia Campbell, Brian Garvey (2018) The State of Northern Ireland and the Democratic Deficit: Between Sectarianism and Neo-Liberalism, Glasgow: Vagabond Voices, 184
(76) Frantz Fanon (1961) Les Damnés de la Terre. Préface de Jean-Paul Sartre, Paris: François Maspero, 151
(77) Edward W. Said (2001), Power, Politics and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, edited by Gauri Viswanathan, New York: Pantheon Books, 129
(78) Frantz Fanon (1961), op.cit, 184
(79) Edward W. Said (2000), Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press, 428
(80) George Legg (2018) Northern Ireland and the Politics of Boredom: Conflict, capital and culture, Manchester University Press
(81) The Irish News View, Political Apathy is An Emerging Force in Irish Elections, Irish News, 3 December 2024
(82) Rowena Mason, Lowest turnout in UK general election since universal suffrage, report shows, The Guardian, 12 July 2024
(83) James Heartfield (2006), The ‘Death of the Subject’ Explained, School of Cultural Studies - Sheffield Hallam University, 205
(84) Antonio Gramsci (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 276
But such a project faces two major obstacles today. The first is the nature of the crisis. What Ireland and possibly the rest of Western Europe is facing is an economic crisis, but not what Gramsci called an “organic crisis” (Crisi organica) where the very legitimacy of the system is questioned. What one author refers to as “the capitalism of boredom” is hegemonic in Ireland north and south. (80)
The second is apathy. This was noted by The Irish News, one of the leading Northern Ireland newspaper regarding the recent general elections in the Republic of Ireland. 59.7 percent of eligible voters participated, the lowest turn-out since the foundation of the state in 1922. Around the same number of people stayed at home as voted for the two largest right-wing parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined. The turnout was down from almost 63% in 2020, which was about 2% lower than in 2016. (81) This of course not just limited to the Republic of Ireland. In the latest general elections in July 2024 just 52% of adults living in the UK exercised their right to vote – the lowest proportion since universal suffrage was introduced in 1918 for men and 1928 for women. (82) As James Heartfield put it, “apathy too becomes a material force when it grips the masses”. (83)
To conclude with Antonio Gramsci: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” (84)
Thank you.
Notes
(1) Editorial, A Protestant state no more, Irish News, 23 September 2022
(2) Colin Coulter, Eoin Flaherty, Peter Shirlow (2023) ‘Seismic’ or stalemate? The (bio)politics of the 2021 Northern Ireland Census, Space and Polity, 27:1, 57-77 for a critical discussion of the census and its figures
(3) Brian Hutton, More Irish than UK passports being issued in Northern Ireland for first time, Irish Times, 3 May 2022
(4) Margaret Canning, Religious equality in NI workforce for the first time, Belfast Telegraph, 21 April 2023
(5) Laura Noonan, ‘You have to be violent to be heard’: why Northern Ireland’s teens take to the street, Financial Times, 1 July 2021
(6) Brendan Hughes & Matt Fox, Stormont: Michelle O'Neill makes history as nationalist First Minister, BBC News, 3 February 2024 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-68180505)
(7) Rebecca Black, Ex-IRA leader McGuinness toasts Queen in her own house at Windsor, Belfast Telegraph, 9 April 2014
(8) Suzanne Breen, Sinn Féin bears Queen no ill will, says Gerry Adams, Belfast Telegraph, 16 June 2017
(9) Jonathan McCambridge and David Young, Sinn Féin leader congratulates Queen on ‘lifetime of service’, Belfast Telegraph, 10 February 2022
(10) Suzanne Breen, Queen Elizabeth II: Northern Ireland’s politicians unite in tribute to woman ‘who led by example’ during peace process, Belfast Telegraph, 8 September 2022
(11) Conor Humphries and Amanda Ferguson, Irish nationalists Sinn Féin looking forward to working with King Charles, Reuters, 9 September 2022
(12) Rory Carroll, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill to attend King Charles’s coronation, The Guardian, 26 April 2023
(13) Anthony McIntyre, He’s Our King Too, You Know, The Pensive Quill, 20 September 2022
(14) Connla Young, Troubles bereaved ‘devastated’ by O’Neill’s cenotaph decision, Irish News, 8 November 2024
(15) Pat Leahy, Mary Lou McDonald reiterates demand for Border poll ‘in this decade’, Irish Times, 1 January 2025
(16) Jack Horgan-Jones, ‘Realistic, achievable, necessary’ : Mary Lou McDonald pushes EU to back Irish reunification, Irish Times, 22 March 2022, James Martin McCarthy, Sinn Féin MP calls on US to intervene on Border Poll, Belfast Live, 9 October 2024
(17) James Crisp, Allow EU to open a mini-embassy in Belfast, says Sinn Féin, Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2024
(18) Henry McDonald, Sinn Féin leaders Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald engage in ‘politics of illusion’, The Newsletter, 23 July 2022
(19) Harry McGee, Taoiseach distances himself from united Ireland, points to co-operation as way forward, Irish Times, 23 October 2020
(20) Harry McGee, Troubles were costing Irish taxpayer ‘up to three times more than British counterpart’, Irish Times, 29 December 2021
(21) Suzanne Breen, Unionists here will be delighted at just how little NI is mentioned by parties in Republic’s election race, Belfast Telegraph, 22 November 2024
(22) Stephen Collins, Do we want a shared island or a united Ireland? Irish Times, 18 December 2020
(23) For example of this monologue rather than ‘conversation’ see: Mary Lou McDonald: People want to be part of the conversation on the future of Ireland, on the shape of constitutional change and how best to navigate the next steps of the journey to reunification, Irish News, 16 December 2024
(24) Kieran Allen (2021) 32 Counties. The Failure of Partition and the case for a United Ireland, London: Pluto Press,, 127-128.
(25) Prominent nationalists ask Taoiseach to protect northern citizens’ rights, Irish News, 11 December 2017 ; John Manley, Brexit : One thousand sign letter to Leo Varadkar urging him to protect nationalists’ rights, Irish News, 5 November 2018 ; Ronan McGreevy, Making the argument for a united Ireland, Irish Times, 26 February 2022
(26) Ronan McGreevy, British government declines to set out criteria for a border poll, Irish Times, 13 January 2021
(27) Connla Young, Irish citizens in north may not be allowed to vote in united Ireland poll, Irish News, 5 April 2019
(28) Peter Kissel, Troubling Words Undermine Border Poll, The Irish Echo, 7 December 2023
(29) Bimpe Archer, Proposed changes UK to referendum rules would override the `simple majority' terms of the Good Friday agreement, Irish News, 15 January 2020
(30) Ronan McGreevy, A united Ireland could need four referendums, says expert, Irish Times, 13 September 2019
(31) Gay Mitchell, NATO membership and Irish unity, Irish Times, 22 April 2023
(32) Pat Leahy, Sinn Féin drops undertakings to exit defence arrangements with EU and Nato, Irish Times, 13 May 2023
(33) Nicholas Watt, Thatcher gave approval to talks with IRA, The Guardian, 16 October 1999
(34) Geoffrey R. Sloan, The geopolitics of Anglo-Irish relations in the twentieth century, Leicester University Press, 1997, 295
(35) Marcus Solarz Hendriks & Harry Halem (2024), Closing The Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security, London: Policy Exchange, 8
(36) Ibid, 9. 5. 6. 12
(37) Paul Gillespie, Revisiting NI’s role in UK military security, Irish Times, 10 February 2024
(38) HM Government (2024) Safeguarding The Union. Presented by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland by Command of His Majesty, His Majesty’s Stationary Office Command Paper 1021, Annex B, 1
(39) Irish unity poll not on horizon, says Sir Keir Starmer, BBC website, 5 October 2023
(40) Watch the video here:
(41) Joe Brennan, Sinn Féin’s high-wire act: courting big business and those ‘left behind’, Irish Times, 14 April 2023
(42) Hugh O’Connell, Pearse Doherty Interview: ‘Big business and investors know Sinn Féin won’t go after them’, Sunday Independent, 10 October 2021
(43) Killian Woods, Businesses told ‘life under Sinn Féin government won’t be that different after all’, Sunday Business Post, 2 July 2023
(44) Pat Leahy, London investors told Sinn Féin-led government would be ‘more New Labour than Corbyn Labour’, Irish Times, 7 May 2024
(45) Cliff Taylor, How will Sinn Féin’s plan to tax the rich affect the economy? Irish Times 4 November 2023
(46) Sarah Collins and Steven Alexander, Sinn Féin favours a single 12.5 % corporation tax for small firms on both sides of the border, Belfast Telegraph, 22 February 2022
(47) Steve James, Sinn Féin poll ratings collapse in advance of Irish general election, World Socialist Website, 26 November 2024
(48) David Young, Finance minister pushes ahead with rate reform plan despite Executive shut out, Belfast Telegraph, 9 December 2024, Sam McBride: Sinn Féin presents itself as a left-wing party, but its actions tell a completely different story, Sunday Independent, 15 December 2024
(49) Cormac McQuinn, McDonald signals she would not attend Provisional IRA commemorations as Taoiseach, Irish Times, 12 June 2023
(50) Justine McCarthy, Sinn Féin backs non-jury courts, Sunday Times, 31 October 2021
(51) Christina Finn, Mary Lou McDonald: The idea of Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth needs to be discussed, The Journal, 11 August 2018
(52) Daniel Murray, The Right Turn? Inside Sinn Féin’s shift on immigration as make-or-brake elections loom, Sunday Business Post, 21 January 2024; Pat Leahy, Attitudes on immigration toughest among supporters of Sinn Féin and Independents, Irish Times, 17 May 2024
(53) On this issue more generally see: Suzanne Breen, Sinn Féin has preached about Palestine but party’s actions cast doubt on its sincerity, Sunday Life, 18 February 2024; Farrah Koutteineh, To stand with Palestinians, Sinn Féin must not silence us, The New Arab, 16 May 2023, ; Seán Óg Ó Murchú, Are Irish Republicans shunning Sinn Féin over Gaza? The New Arab, 19 May 2024
(54) Dominic McGrath, Sinn Féin calls for expulsion of Russian ambassador to Ireland, The Independent, 25 February 2022
(55) Adam Kula, Sinn Féin affirms change of stance on expelling the Israeli ambassador after vote last night contrasts with near-identical one in 2021, The Newsletter, 2 November 2023
(56) John Manley, Palestinian protesters criticise Sinn Féin after being ejected from Belfast rally, Irish News, 8 February 2024
(57) Gerry Carroll: Why Sinn Féin is wrong to travel to Washington, Irish News, 28 January 2024
(58) Connla Young, Palestinians voice concerns about Sinn Féin Likud meetings, Irish News, 08 September 2016; David Cronin, Why is Sinn Féin in love with the Palestinian Authority? Electronic Intifada, 12 February 2024,
(59) Sinn Féin’s Martin Kenny: ‘I’m sure there’s plenty of guards that vote for us’, Irish Times, 30 December 2022
(60) Damian Loscher, Sinn Féin now the leading party of middle-class Ireland, Irish Times, 10 December 2021
(61) The quest for respectability – and votes – has transformed Sinn Féin, The Economist, 4 December 2021
(62) Finn McRedmond, Is Sinn Féin the worst opposition party in Europe? The New Statesman, December 2024
(63) Pat Leahy, Sinn Féin’s McDonald says there will be a united Ireland within 10 years, Irish Times, 9 December 2020; David Young, Irish unity border poll will be held before 2030, Mary Lou McDonald predicts, The Independent, 8 February 2024
(64) David Thompson, Sinn Féin swerves issue of what people would be voting for in a border poll, The Newsletter, 5 March 2024
(65) Rory Carroll, Prospect of Irish unification referendum remains remote despite Sinn Féin gains, The Guardian, 16 July 2024
(66) Kevin Kelley (1982) The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA, London: Zed Books, 194-195
(67) Gary McGladdery (2006) The Provisional IRA in England: The Bombing Campaign, 1973-1997, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 66
(68) Laurence Cooley (2024) ‘No status – no census!’ The causes and consequences of the 1971 and 1981 Northern Ireland census boycotts, Contemporary British History, 1–38. ; Laurence Cooley (2020), Census politics in Northern Ireland from the Good Friday Agreement to Brexit: Beyond the ‘sectarian headcount’?, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 23: 3, 451-470
(69) Sinn Féin changes tack on form filling, Irish Times, 09 April 2001
(70) Daniel Finn, Challenges from the Peripheries. SNP and Sinn Féin in the British Party System, New Left Review #135, May/June 2022
(71) For example: Could it really happen? Why the unification of Ireland is becoming likelier, The Economist, 15 February 2020; David McWilliams, Why the idea of a united Ireland is back in play, Financial Times, 30 November 2018
(72) Colin Coulter (2014). Under Which Constitutional Arrangement Would You Still Prefer to be Unemployed? Neoliberalism, the Peace Process, and the Politics of Class in Northern Ireland. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 37: 9, 763–776
(73) David Lloyd (1999) Ireland After History, University of Notre Dame Press in association with Field Day, 107-108
(74) Ibid, 36
(75) Paul Stewart, Tommy McKearney, Gearóid Ó Machail, Patricia Campbell, Brian Garvey (2018) The State of Northern Ireland and the Democratic Deficit: Between Sectarianism and Neo-Liberalism, Glasgow: Vagabond Voices, 184
(76) Frantz Fanon (1961) Les Damnés de la Terre. Préface de Jean-Paul Sartre, Paris: François Maspero, 151
(77) Edward W. Said (2001), Power, Politics and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, edited by Gauri Viswanathan, New York: Pantheon Books, 129
(78) Frantz Fanon (1961), op.cit, 184
(79) Edward W. Said (2000), Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press, 428
(80) George Legg (2018) Northern Ireland and the Politics of Boredom: Conflict, capital and culture, Manchester University Press
(81) The Irish News View, Political Apathy is An Emerging Force in Irish Elections, Irish News, 3 December 2024
(82) Rowena Mason, Lowest turnout in UK general election since universal suffrage, report shows, The Guardian, 12 July 2024
(83) James Heartfield (2006), The ‘Death of the Subject’ Explained, School of Cultural Studies - Sheffield Hallam University, 205
(84) Antonio Gramsci (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 276
Liam Ó Ruairc is the former co-editor of The Blanket.
A thought provoking and challenging analysis.
ReplyDeleteA very interesting article.
ReplyDeleteit seemed that way to me also but I want to read it closer today. Formatting it yesterday before heading to Dublin it was hard to focus on the detail. Liam is fastidious and forensic. I always loved his take on things. He was co-editor of The Blanket back in the day.
DeleteIn conjunction with what John said on the other thread it made me think of why the UK would view NI as a strategic imperative. It could be that the UK is playing the long game, and that they recognise just how important trade routes will be around the arctic specially due to global warming. When the last ice sheet outside of the Arctic in Greenland melts it opens up a vast amount of hydrocarbons and minerals for exploitation. I don't believe Russia to be a significant threat, their armed forces have stagnated since the early 90's due to funding cuts, and even now they couldn't overpower a neighbour by themselves and instead throw hapless North Koreans in as cannon fodder.
DeleteAlways follow the money. I think John and Liam are both right. NI is an unsinkable aircraft carrier in a very important geographical position. No power would simply give that away.
I found it a very interesting article too. But I have one caveat. What Liam describes as the Russia' "special military action" in Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was an unprovoked invasion intended to strangle Ukrainians independence, national sovereignty and democracy. It is strange that an opponent of imperialism should use such language about Putin's naked land grab.
ReplyDeleteBarry why you still beat this drum is beyond me, there's zero excuse for Putin's invasion but calling it unprovoked is so far off the mark it's bordering on myopia. We've had this discussion before; Putin/Russia had repeatedly over many years drawn a red line on NATO expansion that would include the Ukraine. Ukraine has vast mineral wealth. They repeatedly made noises wanting to join NATO. NATO made encouraging overtones yet did sweet fuck all over Crimea. Stevie Wonder sitting backwards on a galloping horse going through a dense fog could have seen what was going to happen.
DeleteFor clarity; not justified but not unprovoked.
Steve,
Deletenot justified but not unprovoked concisely does it
A good read but I think O Rauirc is too pessimistic. I feel that Brexit completely changed the state of affairs and that this sort of analysis hasn't been valid for a decade or so. It would be good to see some debate on the topics raised in this piece but there doesn't seem to be too much exchange of ideas these days. Republicans themselves even appear totally disinterested - the very apathy that O Rauirc touches upon in this piece.
ReplyDeleteAlex Mc comments
ReplyDeleteLiam's piece provides food for thought. He touches on some of the arguments I have been making vis-a-vis a future border poll.
As per usual, his arguments are well supported by extensive research and statistics.
The problem in the future is that ideology shall struggle to compete with pure pragmatism on the question of a border poll.
Steve, Putin had zilch right to veto the defence and foreign policy choices of independent, democratic nations. That is the nub of the matter. Appeasement of Hitler failed in the 1930s, for Putin today read the same.
ReplyDeleteBarry agreed. But Netanyahu is more like Hitler than Putin and the West arms his invasions. Biden appeased him at every turn.
DeleteNATO expansionism has been evident since the collapse of the USSR and while I doubt Putin's reasons for the war have any validity, Russia was being squeezed and treated with contempt by the West.
Steve, Ukraine gave up all its nuclear weapons in 1994. They got their reward three decades later.
ReplyDeleteBarry, having nukes wouldn't have stopped anything. In fact if memory serves it was the West who pushed for Kiev to dispose of them. Not sure what point your making.
DeleteWell done, Liam. I agree that the inevitability narrative around the re-unification of Ireland is dangerously entrenched and needs to be carefully examined to expose Britain’s genuine strategic intentions in Ireland and not simply accept their ‘White Man’s Burden’ theme. That is, of unselfishly and altruistically keeping sectarian factions from killing each other until the Irish can one day get their act together and have Ireland safely handed back to them in one piece instead of in two pieces as is the case at the moment.
ReplyDeleteChanging demographics and Brexit have given an impulse to the concept of a re-united Ireland, but as you correctly point out, it is a top-down process. An important point to remember, which is consistently missed, is that anyone supporting the Good Friday Agreement version of Irish unity is not working toward Irish unity in the republican sense. They may wish to end partition, but that is not the same thing as uniting our people under the common name of Irishman (civic unity), in other words, ending the partition of our territory but retaining the partition of our people by baking in the British/Irish cleavage in national loyalties and giving it constitutional legitimacy on an all-Ireland basis.
According to this analysis (shared by FF, FG, SF, SDLP, and the Brits), to achieve permanent peace, we must amicably share Ireland with 'the other' nation in our country. That other nation in the Six Counties that is represented by the British Crown and the Crown forces. For a Republican, reaching out to unionists does not mean reaching out to them as foreigners who happen to live here. It does not mean treating them as the civil garrison of an alien government.
Ireland cannot and will not be united under the auspices of the Good Friday Agreement (in a republican sense) because the sectarian dynamic and conflicting national allegiances are baked into it.
The GFA states that the parties to the agreement:
"…recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
Those who extol the concept of a dis-united Ireland rooted in British/Irish identity politics undermine republican principles by striving to ensure that differences that would become incidental in a genuine Republic remain fundamental in their 'Shared Island'.
Republicans are often asked, 'What's the alternative'? The alternative to the two nations Shared Island in the one nation Republic. The alternative to embracing differences in national allegiances for the sake of peace is to end those differences for the sake of peace.
It has always been the republican position, and remains so, that crucial to beginning a genuine process of national reconciliation is ending British jurisdiction in Ireland; this includes Britain's entitlement to retain the allegiance of Ulster unionists in a future 32-County state. A right the Ulster unionists of Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal were never given. The UK often refers to a sectarian war in Ulster which took place between indigenous factions in the Six Counties, but there was no trouble between these factions in the Three Counties outside of Crown jurisdiction after the British government left in 1922. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when you take the Brits out of the mix.
Henry Joy comments
DeleteJohn, what I like about your comment is the recognition that the GFA was indeed the death of the Irish Republicanism.
Likewise, I agree with your insightful comment, that Britain's true intention is that they'd have Ireland "safely handed back to them in one piece instead of two pieces as it is at the moment". Brexit withstanding that's by far and far the most likely outcome.
The 'Republic' is lost. As the gaffer says in the title of his book, it's dead; it's fucking. dead Jim! And despite the sacrifices you made, that you made along with countless others, and as noble as they were, Dolours was right, in the end of the day "It wasn't worth missing breakfast for"!
Yes, the Republic as myth survives. And as of now, and for eons since, it's only utility is in sustaining the careers of those who exploit it. Much of the ongoing ruminations, to my mind at least are largely an avoidance, a failure to look into the abyss.
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murders of all murders? What was holiest and mightiest of all the world has yet owned and bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"
Steve, Putin's apologists accuse the West of surrounding Russia with hostile states with NATO nuclear bases. This helps to nail that lie.
ReplyDeleteSometimes Barry I do wonder if you are being willfully blind.
Delete"The Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine in 1990 stated that Ukraine would not accept, acquire, or produce nuclear weapons, and its government declared on 24 October 1991 that Ukraine would be a non-nuclear-weapon state.[12]
ReplyDeleteOn December 5, 1994 the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States signed a memorandum to provide Ukraine with security assurances in connection with its accession to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state. The four parties signed the memorandum, containing a preamble and six paragraphs. The memorandum reads as follows:[13]
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
Welcoming the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as non-nuclear-weapon State,
Taking into account the commitment of Ukraine to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time,
Noting the changes in the world-wide security situation, including the end of the Cold War, which have brought about conditions for deep reductions in nuclear forces.
Confirm the following:
1. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
2. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
3. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.
5. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm, in the case of Ukraine, their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a State in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon State.
6. Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America will consult in the event a situation arises that raises a question concerning these commitments.
— Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons[13]"
Henry Joy – thanks for your kind comments. I don’t believe the ‘Republic’ is lost. It will only be lost when there is normative agreement from the Irish people that it is lost. That is very far from the case. It is true, however, that it is lost among the political elites of Northern and Southern nationalism. It’s not that these elites don’t support the concepts of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. They do so on a daily basis for Ukraine. They just don’t believe these principles should apply to Ireland.
ReplyDeleteImagine how disheartened the Proclamation signatory Thomas Clarke must have felt when after years of struggle and imprisonment in England, he and his comrades seemed little more than an insignificant group of irrelevant cranks calling from the margins for an Irish Republic against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people they fought for. An Irish electorate who wanted nothing more than a devolved Home Rule assembly within the British Empire and voting exclusively for candidates who pursued that agenda. How dismayed he must have felt at the visits to Ireland of England’s Queen Victoria in 1900 and King Edward VII in 1903 when they were met by rapturous union flag waving crowds in the streets of Dublin and Irish nationalist politicians falling over themselves to shake their hands and welcome them to Ireland. But, in the words of former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan ‘Events, dear boy, events’.
Henry Joy comments
DeleteJohn,
As stated in one of my profiles, I abhor tendencies towards addiction; particularly either addictions to fear and/or to hope.
Most of our neuroticism is grounded therein. The past ought be remembered but we can't effectively live there. The past is a different country. They do things differently there.
We were right in the past, me, you, Clarke, McDiarmada, et al. Such claims are not necessarily true in current, normal or 'normative' times. (there're differences between adjectives, advebs, and verbal adjectives).
In Greek mythology Pandora closed the jar before all the woes the gods sent to punish the world were released. In her haste, hope was left contained within, suggesting perhaps some ambiguity as to hopes value and/or polarity.
Alas John, historically you may be right, dead right as you speed along,⁶ but at a functional level, in my opinion, you've got the wrong end of the stick. Yes, we can remember the past but there's always a price for trying to live there.
Henry Joy - Thanks for your comment. I wouldn't say I'm living in the past more than any republican can be doing so, but without a knowledge of the past there is no way to frame a perspective or interpret contextual threads we inherit from the past. Every Irish republican has a choice: pick up the gauntlet or throw in the towel. What choice we make is determined by our ideological mooring, political analysis, personal temperament, and lived experience.
ReplyDeleteHenry Joy comments
DeleteThanks for your responses John.
We could go down another bunny hole and debate determinism versus freewill but rather than that I'll concede and admit that this former Republican has become untethered from his previous ideological moorings.
By your analysis you predict (as per previous comments) that unity will eventually emerge in some shape or form but not the Republic. And furthermore that this outcome will will be largely shaped by the extraneous geopolitical and military needs of others. It confuses me then that yet you remain ideologically entrapped.
But hey we're all free to choose our own thoughts and lifestyle. We're free to choose our own paths. You may patiently await the re-emergence of the phoenix if that's your thing.
In the unlikely event of that happening others of us will watch on and await further betrayals.
Time, failure and a shift in Zeitgeist have pretty much rendered republicanism a cult. Its dilemma to my mind is that it cannot abandon its foundational principle without ceasing to be republican. Yet when it holds onto its foundational principle it ends up marginalised. Despite their best efforts no one yet has been able to navigate a course out of the corner it has been painted into.
DeleteReggie Maudling is famous/notorious for his comment, on leaving the North - "God, what an awful country!"
ReplyDeleteOne can imagine the Royals, having met McGuinness, and back in the company of their own buddies, commenting - "God, whatan awful man!"
This was worth publishing and worth writing. I'll make a few points.
ReplyDeleteFirst, this seems so abstract that it could be written about the orbits of Jupiter's moons. What makes it so is that it never considers the question of participation, or consent as it gets called in the Irish context. Nobody is mobilised or likely even voting for this program, or probably not even offered the opportunity, or taking up arms for it, or running a union or a charity. Most of all, there's no state involved, and a people without a state, to quote an early Zionist, are the orphans of humanity.
ReplyDeleteI think that this whole analysis suffers from a fatally ahistorical approach: We've just passed a century of government in Dublin, born and weaned weak, poor and unarmed but at a minimum, commanding the loyalty of the majority enough that it is never seriously at risk of being replaced by any competing regime on the island. One of the jarring things about Sinn Fein for many people is that they are competing to be the government of a state they don't believe in. I'd go further and say that many activists give every impression of contempt for the Irish nation, similar to that of the harder end of political Catholicism, that they want to take it by the hand. Daddy's home and he's taking off his belt, as Mel Gibson has said recently.
ReplyDeleteThe unavoidable debate is how to run the existing state and change it where necessary, but the idea that there is any irresistible historical force about to sweep it away is wishful thinking.
Henry Joy – I’m sorry you now consider yourself a former republican. In my opinion, republicanism outlines the best model of the concept of ‘the citizen’ yet developed. Historically, it presented the greatest existential threat to the monarchies of Europe, which formed coalitions to resist it tooth and nail, not least in England, which fought republicanism unsuccessfully in France and America but with better results in Ireland. Republican ideology isn’t wrong, but the forces against it in our own country are immense and lavishly resourced.
ReplyDeleteAnthony – The point about Zeitgeists is they are moments in time. They change, as do people’s minds. That’s why we have periodic elections. Republicanism can hardly be described as a cult when more than 90% of the sovereign states in the United Nations are, or claim to be republics. Despite the best efforts of most Southern and Northern nationalist parties (who have internalised Britain’s analysis of the nature of the conflict), the Irish Republic, proclaimed in 1916 and democratically endorsed by the First Dáil in 1919, continues to carry immense moral authority with many Irish people. Undermining that authority has been a major objective of Southern nationalism since the first Free State shell struck the Four Courts in 1922. The fact that Fianna Fail insists on calling itself ‘the Republican party’ and Sinn Fein calls itself ‘the Republican movement’ despite following completely counter-republican agendas (and their hysteria when publicly challenged on their republican credentials) reveals that they have a greater appreciation, or perhaps fear, of the core republican principles of many Irish people than we give them credit for.
John, I'd be interested to hear from Henry Joy whether he considers himself a former republican. While your comment was observational rather than pejorative, I don't feel that to cut previous ideological moorings would make him a former republican. I have always viewed him as a current republican rather than a former republican. But I never gave it much thought until now.
DeleteA Zeitgeist, like a paradigm, tends to be a long moment in time. They invariably outlive election cycles. Periodic elections don't change Zeitgeists but maintain in position those who have bought into the Zeitgeist. So it doesn't really matter who is in government - the Zeitgeist remains.
The Zeitgeist I refer to is the change in Northern attitudes. There is a very substantial rejection of the core republican tenet of no veto on unity. Sinn Fein, the political embodiment of that rejection, is easily in the hegemonic position within northern nationalism whereas republicanism is wholly marginalised.
It was primarily from the North that the dynamic for the post 1969 republican project came rather than from the rest of the country. It invites the question of what it was that was in the main part opposed - British presence or British behaviour. The British did not withdraw for the change in Zeitgeist to occur, but merely modify their behaviour.
Republicanism as a global phenomenon is not in a cult but that is not the point being made. Irish republicanism as applied is in a cultic position. It is confined to graveyards, prisons and the occasional activism, sometimes bizarrely and embarrassingly described as resistance. When socialism was a reasonably popular project there were still socialists cults and sects. Same for Irish republicanism.
The Irish Proclamation seems to means as much as the Bible to Irish people. They cite it but hardly abide by it. This is why they do not oppose governments and parties who support the North's consent principle, instead backing parties who demonstrably and resolutely oppose the republican position. The Dublin establishment's embrace of the British monarchy with little opposition to it gives some indication of how little republicanism influences them. It is suffice for all the parties not to openly abandon the Proclamation to allow them to get away with abandoning it anyway.
I simply fail to see this immense moral authority you refer to. Those who insist on the Proclamation being honoured are rejected while those who reject it are honoured. Outside of these discussions I can't recall the last time the Proclamation was mentioned. It never features in everyday discourse.
I think those most likely to have success in making 'republicanism' relevant is the far right who are more opposed to an immigrant presence than a British one. They have certainly been much more to the fore than the type of non racist republicanism you hold to.
If political activists fail for whatever reason to identity the irrelevance of their political project, they are most unlikely to overcome the obstacles that make the project irrelevant.
Ultimately, the SF strategy of shedding leaves while avoiding breaking branches, has led to a situation where there was no organisation or organising principle around which republican activists could have coalesced. The leaves just fell away. The time for this type of discussion was thirty years ago when there was a chance to make an intervention.
The Policy Exchange report got some notice, but its motivation, that smothers any chance of a useful analysis, is to make a Unionist argument that Northern Ireland is essential for the defence of the UK and Europe. Comments that the parachute drop on Arnhem in WW2 was somehow betrayed from Dublin, don't build confidence, nor does its but "Ireland's historical-political neuroses". Ultimately, it's a claim for government money and jobs, but Scotland has more voters - for government parties - and reaches hundreds of kilometers further north and east than NI, so it gets the spending. In any case, any major building programme like it recommends would likely end up with millions of pounds ending up siphoned off in their accustomed way by northern SF politicians and their allies in the construction trade.
ReplyDeleteDeaglan,
Delete"In any case, any major building programme like it recommends would likely end up with millions of pounds ending up siphoned off in their accustomed way by northern SF politicians and their allies in the construction trade."
Where does this money go? At the height of the Provo campaign it had a fair amount of financial resources to draw on, hard to imagine that it all simply ceased to exist.
But as John states any critique was simply not tolerated. Guess we'll never know.
How much are holiday houses in Donegal? Or the Algarve?
Anthony - I, of course, would not be perjorative toward Henry Joy or anyone else by calling him a former Republican but he wrote 'I'll concede and admit that this former Republican has become untethered from his previous ideological moorings'. I'm not sure how else to interpret that. I'm away for a walk in the park and will address the rest of this later.
ReplyDeleteJohn - there is only one way to interpret it and your point stands. I missed or completely forgot the part where he described himself as a former republican. A senior moment!!
DeleteHenry Joy comments
DeleteYes, I described myself as a former Republican but as nonsensical as this will seem to some still a republican at heart. (note the upper/lower case change in 'r')
History suggests that pragmatism invariably trumps ideology. Alas there's no coming to such truth without pain. As the woman I currently live with often used remind me, "Every adult is a brokenhearted idealist".
Evolutionary consensus is the preferred way now, not revolution!
Anthony – I know what you mean by a senior moment. I’m lucky if I can remember what day of the week it is! I think where we tend to arrive at cross purposes is the conflation of the Provisional movement and its strategic failure to achieve the Republic with republican philosophy. By ‘the Republic’ I mean a national democracy within an all-Ireland republic. A polity where Irish constitutional authority resides exclusively within the Irish people, where conflicting national allegiances are replaced by civic unity and the sectarian dynamic a thing of the past. There is a saying that if you can’t do what counts, make what you can do count. Key elements of the Provisional leadership, unwilling or unable to make the personal sacrifices required to continue to pursue republican objectives, cynically jettisoned that struggle when thrown a lifeline by the British government. They were co-opted to Britain’s vision of a non-partitioned but dis-united Ireland that retains its sectarian scaffolding in any new constitutional arrangements. The so-called ‘New’ Ireland or ‘United’ Ireland envisioned by the Good Friday Agreement is neither new nor united. It is predicated on all the old divisions. Thus, the political malignancy through which Britain historically manipulated and controlled Ireland will remain intact.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the Proclamation of 1916 being little more relevant than the Bible to most Irish people that’s true but that is understandable since most people struggle to progress in life and have little time to study and interpret these political documents and their nuances. Yet, this Easter an Irish defence forces officer will read the 1916 Proclamation from the GPO at an official Irish government ceremony in which all the parties of government, and those who aspire to government, will listen respectfully and dutifully nod in approval the republican and democratic principles proclaimed by the Proclamation while working assiduously to negate those principles through the mechanism of the Good Friday Agreement. There is no harm in calling that out.
As to why there is no concrete plan outlined to proceed to republican objectives who in our history ever had that? Tone and Emmet declared and died for the principles but had no practicalities worked out that I’m aware of. The leadership of 1916 proclaimed the Irish Republic but the signatories knew they would never see that republic as they were unlikely to survive the week. In the words of James Connolly ‘We are going to be slaughtered’. Bobby Sands said ‘What is lost here is lost for the Republic’ and in a comm passed during a prison mass said ‘Tell the boys the Republic is safe with me’ knowing full well he would not live to see it. I doubt Bobby had a costed programme for government worked out or a blueprint for unity on a rolled-up cigarette paper hidden in a blanket. Who would expect him to?
It’s the idea the Brits fear and it’s the idea the Brits attempt to kill. Having so many Irish politicians helping them in that endeavour is disheartening but not surprising. These careerists have few qualms about British rule that cannot be squared with their conscience or their ambitions. The Brits may kill the revolutionary but they pay the counter-revolutionary quite well.
John - they compare it to the dog at the bottom of the stairs - not knowing if it is about to pop up or has just come down!
DeleteConnolly said that even to boil an egg we need a plan. For no more obvious reason than not falling prey to the logic that if people do what they always did they get what they always got.
I am not opposed to the careerists being called out but know that calling them out can be done by anybody. There is nothing specifically republican about that. It might help clear debris but to what avail if there is no plan to build something? I am not arguing for something to be built because I don't believe it shall work.
I often feel that republicans can continue, if they choose, to live authentic republican lives even if the possibility of a Republic has been lost. As I sometimes say, if Germany was to sink beneath the sea never to reemerge, there would still be Germans. Republicans can continue doing good without thinking a Republic can be achieved. Even from the point of view of becoming a potent oppositional force. Every country in the world has a government but good governance flows from sitting governments being faced with an effective opposition. And that doesn't always mean sitting on the opposition benches.
Your earlier comment about going for a walk put me in the mood so I did the Boyne with the dog for two hours. Too tired now to even think much!
Anthony - I would be delighted to see an Irish republican government or, failing that, a potent oppositional force in Irish politics that stood for genuine republican values and led by example. All we can do is be true to ourselves, keep our principles, preserve our integrity, and maintain our republican values even through these dark times when hope shines its farthest light. Hope you enjoyed your walk!
ReplyDeleteHenry Joy comments
ReplyDeleteAh come on lads (along with a majority of Provisionals it's time to recognise and admit ye were at nothing with your 'rocking-horse' trajectory in '86. [I acknowledge both of ye were locked up at the time.]
Between 1985-87 Adrian Hopkins landed 150 tons of arms including significant supplies of Semtex, AM 7's, and RPG 7's into Ireland (as compared to the 7 tons you worked for and courageously risked your life for John). Yes, Hopkins got caught on the 5th run and captured too. My point; in '86 there was either a 'rocket response' or a 'rockin-horse' one.
A majority backed the 'rockin-horse' one. They backed the 'rockin-horse' and can't look into that void. They avoid painful reflection. They avoid it by minimising Republican history, and previous histories of betrayal. They stuck their heads in the sand and denied the 'accumulated corporate wisdom' of those who had gone before.
Those who lived painfully & stoically through previous betrayals.
Finally. those who choose the 'rock-in horse' banally arrived at the denouement. Some as 'Johnny come lately' with belated & renewed fervour for the Republic. Others as unconscious participants in some form of collective amnesia that minimised their error in embracing Partitionist Assemblies almost 40 years ago, denying the significance of their stance, and pontificating otherwise.
Too late, too late is the cry.
Henry Joy – You may well take the attitude ‘ball burst, game over’, but the treacherous antics of a core group of Provisional leadership figures does not negate the republican values of national liberation, civic unity, and non-sectarianism. Values that are needed now more than ever. Would that we all had the comprehensive view of what was going on that British intelligence had. Instead, most volunteers, lacking a devious mindset and surrounding themselves with sound and oftentimes quite inspirational people, ploughed on determined to win the war without an inkling they were being played by those determined to survive the war. It’s not ending the war that bothers me (the quickest way to end a war, of course, is to lose it) but ending the republican analysis of the nature of the conflict and internalising Britain’s.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I came across an interesting letter written by a fellow working as an American national security advisor at the Pentagon called Linton Wells. Nothing to do with Ireland but flags up the folly of making deterministic predictions on future trends;
Thoughts for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review
• If you had been a security policy-maker in the world's greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit, looking warily at your age-old enemy, France.
• By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany.
• By 1920, World War I would have been fought and won, and you'd be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the U.S. and Japan.
• By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said "no war for ten years." Nine years later World War II had begun.
• By 1950, Britain no longer was the world’s greatest power, the Atomic Age had dawned, and a "police action" was underway in Korea.
• Ten years later the political focus was on the "missile gap," the strategic paradigm was shifting from massive retaliation to flexible response, and few people had heard of Vietnam.
• By 1970, the peak of our involvement in Vietnam had come and gone, we were beginning détente with the Soviets, and we were anointing the Shah as our protégé in the Gulf region.
• By 1980, the Soviets were in Afghanistan, Iran was in the throes of revolution, there was talk of our "hollow forces" and a "window of vulnerability," and the U.S. was the greatest creditor nation the world had ever seen.
• By 1990, the Soviet Union was within a year of dissolution, American forces in the Desert were on the verge of showing they were anything but hollow, the U.S. had become the greatest debtor nation the world had ever known, and almost no one had heard of the internet.
• Ten years later, Warsaw was the capital of a NATO nation, asymmetric threats transcended geography, and the parallel revolutions of information, biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, and high density energy sources foreshadowed changes almost beyond forecasting.
• All of which is to say that I'm not sure what 2010 will look like, but I'm sure that it will be very little like we expect, so we should plan accordingly.
I think the burst ball can be easily replaced but the pitch has moved so far that there might be no place to use the ball.
DeleteIrish republicanism has always crashed on the rock of consent. So entrenched is the consent principle that it has proven an immovable force. Any republican strategy needs to factor in ways of usurping the consent principle without using armed coercion because that only strengthens the consent principle. No easy task.
Even if Ireland is united on current terms it is still a substantial achievement for British state strategy.
Anthony - Britain has never recognised the consent principle in Ireland. When did Ireland ever consent to its conquest and colonisation? Partition was a British decision not a unionist one. Unionists wanted Ireland to remain united under Crown jurisdiction. Even as a euphemism for the unionist veto the so-called 'principle’ falls down as it is actually a British government veto on Irish unity. The future of the Northern state rests securely in a political and legal framework of terms and conditions comprehensively safeguarded within an intricate web of constitutional constraints controlled exclusively by the British government. No Irish citizen, unionist or otherwise, can call an Irish unity poll in Ireland. That decision lies firmly in the hands of the North's Secretary of State, an English politician belonging to a political party that doesn't organise in Ireland and who personally hasn't received a single vote in Ireland. No unionist will ever vote for a united Ireland anyway as in doing so they cease to be unionist. As for the 'consent principle' being an immovable force we'll see how quickly it can be moved when the demographics prove conclusively in nationalism's favour yet Britain continues to see a bridgehead in Ireland as being of crucial strategic importance to its defence strategy.
ReplyDeleteJohn, Britain does not recognise the consent principle as asserted by republicans which is based on a belief that the consent must come from the entire thirty two counties. But republicans are the only body asserting that consent principle. The others agree with the consent/partition principle as framed by the British. This underscores the success of the consent principle.
DeleteIn international law the right to self determination is broader than national. In nebulous fashion it emphasises people without specifying what constitutes people. Formally, the people in the North are free to self determine their own future. Back in the 90s when the leadership were finding weasel words to ease their way into accepting the consent principle (the partition principle which Britain oversees) Martin Mansergh wrote in the Sunday Business Post (I think) that self determination can be applied in a number of ways that do not mean national self determination. I knew what he was doing and whose path he was clearing of debris. Around this time I stated at the RDS that:
One of the reasons that it cannot secure a declaration of intent lies in the compromise made on the question of national self-determination. There has been a fracturing of the concept. In 1972 when the republican delegation went to meet the British in Chelsea, the first demand, recorded in the British House of Commons library, was for the right of the Irish people to national self-determination. Since then the concept has taken on an SDLP connotation. Republicans are now saying that no longer have the Irish people just the right to national self-determination, but they also have the right to decide how to exercise national self-determination. And this means that if a majority of people in Ireland as a whole decide that there will be no united Ireland until a majority of people in the North decide to come into one, that, by the very logic of the new definition, constitutes national self-determination. It is, I regret to say, a partitionist compromise.
And so we are here with republicanism snookered by the consent principle.
Whether Britain recognises the consent principle or not is a secondary consideration. If as you suggest, Britain very much wants to retain the North for strategic purposes, the consent principle works quite well.
In terms of republicanism the consent principle has proved an immovable force. It is firmly entrenched. As for republicanism . . . that we are even having this discussion answers that.
Anthony - And yet the Irish government claims the 1916 Proclamation as its foundational document (when the state was actually legislated into existence by the British government) and by implication it's democratic and republican vision of national consent (which, when put into practice, the state views as subversive). The contradictions and hypocrisies are everywhere, Anthony.
ReplyDeleteJohn - contradictions abound across life. We are riddled with them and contradiction is at the heart of compromise. We compromise every day of our lives in social situations both at home and on the street. That makes compromise so seemingly natural, that when it comes to politics most people easily compromise. So stating that contradictions are everywhere is a description rather than a prescription. The Christian world is a maze of contradictions where people pick and choose from the bible. The churches do not give up on the bible but few are biblical literalists. The fundamentalists are but not many want to be like them. The Proclamation is a reference point for many, a special relic but not sacred, more than one hundred years on.
DeleteA persuasive republican argument has to do more than sound turgidly logical otherwise to the ears of most it will likely seem theological. I think a republican argument rooted in current conditions and driven by the lived experience of injustice rather than rooted in the past and Proclamations has a more likely chance of succeeding.
Republicans must be asking themselves how the far right is making more impact than republicans are and are even appropriating the imagery, iconography and ideas of republicanism. The answer seems to be that they have tapped into a current concern.
And I am certainly not advocating moving onto that ground. If republicanism is far right then I am anti-republican. But that is a rhetorical rather than a reasoned line.
Liam O Ruairc comments
ReplyDeleteFurther to the Closing The Back Door report mentioned in the speech, see this interesting article from last Saturday's The Guardianon Ireland's strategic importance: "With 75% of all transatlantic cables going through, or close to, Ireland, it has an outsized strategic importance in relation to the UK and Europe."
Anthony – I don’t see the Proclamation as sacred but the finest espousal (with the least amount of words) of the root cause of conflict in Ireland and the prescription to fix it - an end to British rule and national unity across the sectarian divide. The fact every signatory was shot to death by the British suggests that they were on to something. There were plenty of rebels directly responsible for far more enemy casualties and physical damage that the Brits didn’t shoot, in fact, released from custody a year later. The signatories, however, had to go because the idea had to go. Didn’t work though.
ReplyDeleteI don’t see how the far right are making much of an impact. Their vote was derisory. It’s hard to judge the republican vote in Ireland as there are many in Fianna Fáil and other parties who are genuinely republican in their outlook while many in Sinn Féin are very counter-republican in their actions. You’re correct in pointing out that the far right are appropriating the imagery, iconography and ideas of republicanism but then so did the Provos.
I think even without a Proclamation the British would have shot those they believed to be leaders. With the signatories the Brits felt they had a bullseye. It was the same old colonial attitude that they used elsewhere - shoot the big bugger at the front with the white turban is how it has been described. Then they were for taking out leaderships whereas now they coopt them.
DeleteWhile the shootings did not work the relevance of the Proclamation has dissipated. It is no longer a serious motivational force. The largest threat to the British state in the past half century came from those who are probably best not described as Proclamation Provos.
I suppose the Lenin question What Is To Be Done? in terms of making the Proclamation relevant to the world of today is something republicanism has to consider. To me the Proclamation is a bit like a church: people walk past it, bless themselves but never go in. How are they to be drawn inside? If republicans make the Proclamation sound like the Latin Mass, very few will cross the portal.
The Provos were very effective when they had no votes. The far right, likewise despite its derisory vote, over the past two years has created a problem for the state and this society whereas republicans have made nothing happen. And they have done it while waving the tricolour.
It is easy to judge the republican vote in Ireland. There is none. All the parties that get the votes are not republican if an indispensable component of republicanism is opposition to unity only by consent.
Martin McAuley appeared in court after being extradited - haven't heard one voice from those supposed republicans in Fianna Fail hitting out at it - no different from SF silence.
There are plenty of issues on which you can cooperate with Fianna Fail members and other parties but the Republic is hardly one of them. From the mid 80s on Gerry Adams began floating the line that FF were second cousins to SF. It soon became clear what he was doing.
If the Republic is to rely on support from members of the partitionist nationalist parties, farewell the Republic. We at least predicted that in the 1990s. The Bobby Sands Discussion was closed down by the leadership after it raised this very issue at a public meeting in Derry to Mitchel McLaughlin.
I always liked MItchel without seeing eye to eye with him on these matters.
Further to the Closing The Back Door report mentioned in the speech, see this interesting article from last Saturday's The Guardian on Ireland's strategic importance: "With 75% of all transatlantic cables going through, or close to, Ireland, it has an outsized strategic importance in relation to the UK and Europe." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/25/could-ireland-longheld-neutrality-make-it-vulnerable-to-infrastructure-attacks
ReplyDeleteAnthony – As far as the Fianna Fáil leadership are concerned mention of Proclamation concepts such as ‘the whole nation and all of its parts' and the notion of a ‘permanent National government…elected by the suffrages of all her men and women’ are blithely ignored. Far from being ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past’ they endorse the very mechanisms invented by Britain to harness these differences to British interests by validating the British government’s veto on Irish unity and supporting the artificial statelet that incubates and nurtures the sectarian dynamic in Irish politics. The Provos have joined them in this. On the other hand, I have met sound Fianna Fáil members who are good republicans and I know Shinners who would hang us both from an ESB pole. One cannot say no Fianna Fáilers are republicans because they have no republicans to vote for. Well, one can say it but I disagree. I believe many Fianna Fáil grassroots members that I met in places like Tipperary and Cork would be very unhappy with Martin McAuley’s extradition but they can no more make their voices heard within the party than we could while we were still with the Provos.
ReplyDeleteJim Gibney said in an interview some years ago that the Good Friday Agreement is Sinn Féin’s template. Mine is the Proclamation and will remain so until somebody comes up with something better. I’ll not hold my breath.
The Brits shot every man who signed the Proclamation because they signed the Proclamation. De Valera who commanded the Boland’s Bakery garrison was by association responsible for 216 British military casualites, including 28 dead on Mount Street Bridge. The Brits didn’t shoot Dev. There are many other examples but I haven’t time to detail it.
John - there is nothing new in Proclamations being ignored by party leaderships. They might feel that their political success is the result of ignoring the Proclamation and pointing to the failure of those who uphold it, very much feeling there is no argument with success.
ReplyDeleteThe Proclamation is not a bible, the adherents of which can insist on everybody believing that the earth is 6000 years old. There is only a minority of practising Christians who claim to believe that. The Proclamation is without doubt your template but it has to be made real for it to become the template of others. Gibney has made his template real to the extent that those who support it do not feel it is an illusion but something tangible. For the Proclamation to succeed it can't be abstract where those who wield it are treated like sandwich board men on a Dublin street. People have to be persuaded to do more than merely bless themselves - they need to feel it worthwhile to walk inside. I see very little of that persuasion work happening.
As for sectarianism, while less societally entrenched down here its violent expression is often as bad if not worse than it is in the north. The target of it here is just different - the migrant, people of a different colour from us, gays. That is a sectarianism that needs challenged and so far Proclamation republicans have not stepped up to the plate ahead of the bigots.
The Far Right are actually using the Proclamation in a more strategically productive manner in that they are wrapping it around current concerns and frustrations, in the course of doing so creating a social protest movement despite the abhorrence of its dynamic.
It is an opinion that the Brits shot those who signed the Proclamation for the mere act of having siged it. For it to be accepted as a fact we would need to access the papers that reveal decision making processes at the time. It is also an opinion that they were shot because they were an identifiable group of leaders by virtue of having signed the Proclamation. While we would also need to see the same papers to hold that up, there is nothing inconsistent with the British practice of executing leaders. Brian Hanley or somebody like that might have better insight as it is an area of history he specialises in.
It can be offered in defence of those who stayed silent within the Provos that they did not see what was happening in real time. These Fianna Failers see this man being extradited in front of their eyes yet opt for silence. And when we are being hanged from lampposts they will likely also turn the other way.
Anthony - The Proclamation was not made real for others because the Brits stopped it in its tracks. The aims and objectives of the 1916 Proclamation formed the ideological backbone of the Sinn Féin manifesto of December 1918. We all know the outcome of that election and we know the British government answered that mandate with partition and the Black and Tans. The 'consent principle' was utterly disregarded.
ReplyDeleteI know nothing about the far right.
As to why the Brits killed everyone who signed the Proclamation there are different views. Some would say the reference to 'our gallant allies in Europe' following the scuppering of the Aud when England was at war with Germany meant they were done for 'treason'. I could care less how the Brits rationalised killing them. The fact is, they killed them. Losing Clarke, Connolly, and Pearse did untold damage to the republican cause.
I don't want to go down a rabbit hole as to whether Fianna Fáilers are republican or not. The worst screw in Portlaoise Prison was an ardent Fianna Fáiler as were members of the Heavy Gang. Fianna Fail executed and interned republicans. Fianna Fáilers also supplied guns to the Provos and kept volunteers on the run at great personal risk. It's a funny world.
John - the Proclamation might have been made real by the Brits once they executed the leaders. Had the Rising have happened but not the executions the Proclamation might have been marginalised.
DeleteI think you raised an important point earlier when you stated your view that the signatories were executed because they signed the Proclamation, such was its power. But if they were executed not because of the document but as a result of it identifying them as a powerful leadership figures, then the Proclamation might not just be as powerful an idea as republicans feel. And that has consequences for strategy.
The consent principle today is alive and well. It is the ideological and political legitimisation of Partition. It has gained in legitimacy since 1998 when it was endorsed in joint referenda. Whether we see republicanism as Proclamation based as you do or as social protest driven as I do, that was the turning point at which republicans failed to turn. After that there was no getting the partition-affirming genie back into the bottle.
It is not my business to go around telling people what they should know about. But I do feel its beneficial, arguably crucial, that republicans familiarise themselves with the far right. I believe that there is more strategic mileage to be accrued from mobilising against the far right than there is from mobilising around the Proclamation. I view the far right much as I viewed violent loyalism. It stands to usurp republicanism and emerge as the standard bearers of the Proclamation.
That will be my last comment on this as I think it risks going stale. Everything does after a while. But it would be unfair to object to you having the final word if you feel so inclined in response to anything I have said.
Henry Joy comments.
DeleteAgreed AM "The consent principle is alive and well".
Yes, the consent principle and thereby partition's legitimisation by a majority of the Irish people was indeed formalised in 1998.
Yet both you, John, and most Provisionals, fail to acknowledge, nor recognise that, that those formalised response had their genesis as far back as 1986. Recognition of 'Partitionist Assemblies' was in truth where the Republic was yet again abandoned.
Henry Joy - we can trace it back even further if we wish to the early 1980s which three years later saw expulsions from the Movement of those opposed to the leadership strategy which they had clearly identified as a means to collapse the project.
DeleteFor doctrinaire republicans the sacredness of the Second Dail may indeed be the determining factor. What 1986 demonstrated however was that those who walked proved incapable of fighting a war while those that stayed did. A number of people who I have spoken to felt the ability to fight on was the determining factor. What they saw as doctrinal matters did not much concern them.
For social protest republicans, much of the abstentionist stuff is republican theology. What made the GFA a turning point was the consent principle that lay at the heart of it. It was entirely possible for republicans in parliament to continue with the republican project (as distinct from armed campaigning) and refusing to accept the principle of consent. It was never possible once they accepted the principle of consent.
But I come to this in a particular way - Proclamations mean little to me. If there was a public meeting today to discuss the Proclamation and another to discuss Gaza, I would attend the Gaza one. It would seem the most pressing.
To paraphrase Voltaire I may not agree with everything you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Maith thú, a chara
ReplyDeleteHenry Joy comments.
DeleteJohn as a republican (small r) I too would aspire to Voltaire's proclamation.
I first heard it at a Joe McManus memorial workshop in Sligo in or around '96. A slightly inebriated, and I guess uninvited participant, from literally the door, heckled that we might consider re-entering the Commonwealth. The Sligo crowd were less than enthusiastic and most would have happily tossed the interloper into the Garravogie.
The main speaker MMG, skillfully played the crowd and paraphrased Voltaire.
Henry Joy - I wouldn't be surprised if your man who suggested re-entering the British Commonwealth was used as a stalking horse to test the waters but needed a drink or two to steady himself first. My own experience on free speech and the right to hold an opposing opinion within the Provos was not met with a quote from Voltaire but a severe admonishment for not showing 'leadership'. What a clown show!
ReplyDeleteJohn - that was my experience as well. They used a range of suppressors to ensure a proper discussion did not take place. They wanted critique strangled at source.
DeleteTake note of this: "Only one in six (17 per cent) of southern Sinn Féin supporters favour joining Nato under unification. In contrast, northern Sinn Féin supporters are almost twice as supportive (31 per cent). They indicate more pro-Nato sentiment than either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael supporters." https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/02/08/southern-and-northern-nationalists-dislike-commonwealth-more-than-nato/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIXRwpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQJ43kvfSi0sc72dgct-ecTsBiw-4PPhshstV_fj3cpS9sRx5yl0Qr4RFQ_aem_E7a7lkBvHtNK_4H0-41wuw
ReplyDelete