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Mike Burke ✍ The following eight narratives are part of the contemporary discussion of the north’s constitutional future.

The right of Irish self-determination embedded in the Good Friday Agreement represents a significant constitutional advance that helped to open a democratic pathway to a united Ireland. The Secretary of State should clarify the criteria for calling a border poll by specifying the evidence he will use to determine if there is a likely majority for unity. Political stability requires that unionists possess the unilateral power to block a united Ireland. Irish unity must await the achievement of reconciliation and consensual politics in the north. The GFA gives the north a comprehensive veto over the form and substance of a united Ireland. Constitutional change in the north can occur without reunification. The unity part of the union-unity binary is inherently divisive and needs to be buried. Advocates of a united Ireland are crude and tribal, with a troubling affinity for authoritarian politics.

My aim is to reveal some central properties of these constitutional narratives. All of them in their own way marginalize Irish unity, with the first five implicated in supporting some form of veto over constitutional change. All of them are in some sense outrageous, employing faulty reasoning to offer more or less absurd commentary on the state of the constitutional conversation. And yet all of them have a certain allure, with devoted fans and new converts—even if the motley collection of true believers, fresh recruits and curious onlookers may not fully grasp the implications of narrative loyalty.

This paper can be considered an embellishment and update of my 2020 piece entitled “Stealing Irish Unity: The Repertoire of Thieves” in which I examined various arguments that could delay, obstruct or defeat a united Ireland (Burke, 2020). The constitutional debate has developed quickly in the years since I wrote “Stealing”. My purpose here is to analyze new narratives and renewed emphases on old narratives that may have the effect of stifling constitutional change. I trust readers will find some value in a critical compilation of current constitutional arguments.

The constitutional obfuscation of which these narratives are a major part is only a glimpse of what is to come should talk of Irish unity continue to intensify. We’ve recently witnessed the blatant scaremongering evoked by John FitzGerald and Edgar Morgenroth’s recent paper warning that Irish unity could cost Ireland “€20 billion a year for 20 years” (Hennessy, 2024)[1]. John Doyle of Dublin City University dismisses this estimate as “wildly inaccurate” and “completely wrong”, but notes that “The phrase ‘20 over 20’ is obviously very memorable. Everybody remembers it, so it sticks in your head” (Joint Committee, 2024, pp. 2, 3 & 9; see also Doyle, 2024). That is, the coming public contest over the costs of a united Ireland may be framed by FitzGerald and Morgenroth’s very memorable phrase, however much in error it is. The quality of debate will be poorer as a result.

The narratives I’m addressing attempt—much like FitzGerald and Morgenroth—to set some major terms of the constitutional debate that I believe will push discussions in many wrong and unproductive directions. My critique aims to alert readers to the potential damage.

I’ve partitioned (sometimes that’s a good thing) my comments into eight sections that will be posted separately over the coming weeks. I hope these shorter segments are more easily digestible than is one seemingly endless post. I assure readers that today’s installment—about six pages of substantive text, excluding notes and references—is the lengthiest one. The remaining section titles are:

  • What Border Poll Criteria?
  • The Unionist Veto Again
  • Love Thy Neighbour (Sometimes)
  • A Comprehensive Northern Veto By Stealth
  • “Constitutional Change” without Constitutional Change
  • A One-Sided Binary
  • Of Demons and Angels

I append the notes and references to the end of each section.

“Self-Determination” Without Self-Determination

The discussion of self-determination and consent in the making of the GFA first alerted me to the whole notion of beguiling but outrageous constitutional narratives. I simply could not believe that many political actors and commentators were selling the Agreement’s self-determination provisions as a positive development and a republican achievement. Those provisions were neither. They undermined completely the republican notion of the Irish right of self-determination because they entrenched a unionist veto over constitutional change (Burke, 2017).[2]

Prior to the mid-1990s, the republican view and Sinn Féin’s oft-repeated position was that the Irish people as a whole, considered as a single unit, holds the right of self-determination, which is inalienable and indefeasible (McGlinchey, 2019 & 2023). The conception of self-determination emerging from the peace process directly challenged this conventional republican understanding (Ó Beacháin, 2019). It embedded partition in an entirely new Irish formulation saying that, for the purpose of self-determination, the Irish people as a whole does not exist. It asserted that, constitutionally, the Irish people is made up of two distinct parts, north and south, and that each part has a wholly separate right to self-determination. In the words of leading political scientist John Coakley:

The crucial change was in effect in counting rules: the people who would make a decision on the relationship between North and South would now be the people of Northern Ireland (and, separately, the people of the Republic), not the people of the whole island - (Coakley, 2017, p. 207).

The British and Irish governments’ Downing Street Declaration (1993) formally introduced the language of self-determination into the Irish peace process. The Declaration’s real innovation was the inextricable link it established between Irish self-determination and the unionist veto over constitutional change, the latter dressed up in its usual guise as the principle of consent.[3] The Irish government agreed that the new and abiding connection meant that northern majority consent became a necessary condition of exercising “the democratic right of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole”. The very fact of linkage changed utterly the meaning of self-determination, so much so that, in the Declaration, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds agreed to change the Irish constitution to “fully reflect” the need for northern consent to a united Ireland.

The ensuing Dáil debate hailed the Declaration as an historic constitutional milestone that opened the way to peaceful agreement. Discussion emphasized the significance of Britain recognizing, for the first time ever, the Irish right to self-determination, and minimized the importance of attaching self-determination to the unionist veto (Dáil Debates, 1993a & 1993b). The British parliamentary debate about the Declaration’s constitutional implications was very different. Prime Minister John Major was brutally honest in assessing that the new language recognizing Irish self-determination meant absolutely no change to Britain’s existing constitutional policy and practice. He began his Commons speech by addressing unionist fears of a constitutional sell-out. Unionists should be “reassured” by the commitments in the Declaration:

In summary, let me make it clear what is in the declaration and what is not. What is in the declaration is a renewed commitment by the British Government to Northern Ireland's constitutional guarantee; an acknowledgement by the Taoiseach that a united Ireland could only be brought about with the consent of a majority of the people in Northern Ireland; a willingness on the Taoiseach's part to make changes in the Irish constitution if an overall settlement can be reached; ... What is not in the declaration is any suggestion that the British Government should join the ranks of persuaders of the "value" or "legitimacy" of a united Ireland; that is not there. Nor is there any suggestion that the future status of Northern Ireland should be decided by a single act of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole; that is not there either. Nor is there any timetable for constitutional change, or any arrangement for joint authority over Northern Ireland - (Hansard, 1993, col. 1073).


In its public derision of nationalism and republicanism, Major’s refrain of “not in, not in, not in” is reminiscent of Thatcher’s curt “out, out, out” dismissal of the proposals of the New Ireland Forum report. The elements of Major’s appeal to unionists and assembled MPs involved: reaffirming the unionist veto over constitutional change (“Northern Ireland’s constitutional guarantee”), underlining that the south too had formally accepted the veto, mocking the value and legitimacy of a united Ireland, rejecting that the Irish people as a whole had any right to self-determination, dismissing the prospect of constitutional change, and reasserting unfettered British sovereignty over the north. In more polite circles, Major’s gloating and calculated insults to nationalists and republicans might be considered bad form. In the Commons they were not so recognized. John Hume, for instance, expressed his deep appreciation both to Major and Reynolds, with cries of “hear, hear” all round. Nor did Major’s boastful and swaggering posture have any impact on the way politicians in the south and north continued to sell the Declaration’s reference to self-determination as a major constitutional achievement for Ireland. One senior official of the Northern Ireland Office articulated the extent of this sophistry: “the Declaration revealed Reynolds’s great skill as a politician as he was able to give nationalists the impression that they had made a gain while accepting the principle of consent” (Mac Ginty et al., 2001, p. 475).

The constitutional innovations (read deceptions) of the Downing Street Declaration helped to propel the peace process forward. The two governments’ Framework Document (1995) and the final paper of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation (1996)[4] repeated verbatim the Declaration’s language on self-determination. And, in 1998, London and Dublin essentially cut and pasted these constitutional provisions into the GFA.

The Agreement gives the most succinct statement of the novel and unbreakable connection of self-determination to unionist veto that the Declaration first devised. The GFA, like the Declaration, refers to the veto using the more palatable but also more obscurant language of “agreement” and “consent.” Paragraph 1(ii) of the GFA’s section on Constitutional Issues recognizes:

that it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish, accepting that this right must be achieved and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.

Here, in plain language, we see that the cryptic reference to the Irish people’s right of self-determination is everywhere hedged in by and subordinated to three unequivocal acknowledgements of the unionist veto, which I’ve highlighted in underlined text.[5]

Let me emphasize what the GFA’s language represents, for Ireland and Britain. On the Irish side, it is highly significant. In endorsing the Agreement, the Irish government, major southern parties and Sinn Féin gave absolute victory to Britain on the crucial question of Irish self-determination. It’s true that mainstream southern parties had in effect legitimized partition long before the peace process began, and, with the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement and 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, had accepted the unionist veto over Irish unity. It’s also true that Sinn Féin had conceded defeat on entering the peace talks in September 1997, recognizing that further entrenchment of consent was an inevitable outcome, although the party continued for years to equivocate and dissemble on the issue.[6] In the GFA, though, the main southern parties and Sinn Féin went further, in effect acknowledging that the conventional republican position on self-determination was undemocratic, wrong and needed to be explicitly changed. One immediate consequence of this admission was of course the south’s formal commitment to amend its constitution to remove the territorial claim to the north. The SDLP never took a republican position, and saw the Declaration and the Agreement as confirmation of its long-standing championing of the unionist veto over constitutional change (Farren, 2010; Murray, 2021; McLoughlin, 2010 & 2021). On the British side, the much-heralded GFA language on Westminster’s recognition of the Irish right of self-determination was meaningless. John Major was right: adding references to self-determination did not in any way alter the British government’s traditional position that unionists rightfully possess the capacity to block the process of constitutional change.

In the end, self-determination played a contradictory and ultimately deceitful role in the Irish peace process. On the one hand, it was constitutionally superfluous in that its inclusion in peace documents had no impact whatsoever on the existing mechanics of constitutional change. On the other, it was politically essential in that it depicted Irish defeat and British victory as fair and reasonable compromise. Self-determination—the very issue on which nationalists and republicans abandoned fundamental principles—became an Irish negotiating accomplishment. In essence, repeated references to “self-determination” proved to be an effective marketing strategy, or rather, a cheap merchandising trick. The Declaration’s language on the democratic right of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole became the “republican concept” or “green language” that supposedly counter-balanced the previous preoccupation with the unionist notion of northern consent (O’Donnell, 2003, p. 76, quoting Martin Mansergh; Tonge, 2002, p. 139; Murray & Tonge, p. 183).[7] Britain’s official recognition of Irish self-determination (for the first time ever!) gave the illusion of a constitutional breakthrough.

For Sinn Féin, the notion of self-determination was especially useful. The party found—in its peace strategy, the series of secret talks leading to the Declaration and the Declaration itself—that “self-determination” was a form of words it could manipulate to help justify its current direction of travel, culminating in the IRA’s decision to abandon armed struggle and the party’s acceptance of a settlement far removed from its goal of British withdrawal and Irish unity.[8] For Gerry Adams, Britain’s addressing the issue of self-determination at all was “a significant departure” that marked “a further stage in the development of the peace process”, in which Sinn Féin would eventually wrap its acceptance of the unionist veto (Adams, 1994 & Irish Times, 1994; see also Adams, 2003 & Tonge, 2006).[9]

Many peace process players used the language on self-determination to help convince nationalist and republican voters in the May 1998 referendums that the GFA was a balanced and honourable constitutional settlement. But the reference to self-determination in the GFA was a public relations ruse to cement the unionist veto. That is, the entire purpose of London’s affirmation of the right of Irish self-determination was to prevent the Irish people as a whole from ever exercising that right. The unionist majority in the north, as always, stood in the way of constitutional change. The peace process entrenched, under the pretense of self-determination, a formula designed to block the pathway to a united Ireland. It offered, in the most cynical way possible, “self-determination” without self-determination. The sheer brazenness of the offer and its widespread acknowledgement as a wonderful constitutional moment for Ireland still astound me.

The questionable use of the term “self-determination” should have been obvious in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the Agreement. It wasn’t, partly because of the prevailing public sentiment in favour of ending violence. Now, decades later, the deception of self-determination should be beyond dispute. It’s not. There are new and continuing efforts to sell the vanquishing of self-determination as an Irish victory. The year 2023—marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Downing Street Declaration and twenty-fifth anniversary of the Agreement—witnessed a deluge of effusive reflections on the peace process. In September, Tánaiste Micheál Martin eulogized the Declaration, whose provisions became “a powerful motor for peace” and “cornerstones of the Good Friday Agreement” (Martin, 2023). In December, Lord Caine of the Northern Ireland Office roundly praised all those involved in constructing the Declaration and noted: “In charting what became known as the peace process, I would contend that next to the 1998 Agreement itself no single event was more ground breaking or important” (Caine, 2023). The following day, Stephen Collins of the Irish Times called the signing of the Declaration “one of the key moments in 20th century Irish history” (Collins, 2023).

All three commentaries agreed that the Declaration’s finely-balanced constitutional accommodation gave the document its innovative character and ensured its long-lasting significance. In the words of Stephen Collins, both sides made key and equal concessions, consisting of:

the acceptance by the British of the principle of self-determination for the people of the island and the acceptance by nationalist Ireland of the principle of consent as a prerequisite for unity - (Collins, 2023).

 

Here we have an unreconstructed regurgitation of a major deceit at the heart of the peace process still playing a prominent role in contemporary discussions of Ireland’s constitutional journey. There was no balance or symmetry in this purported constitutional accommodation. Britain’s “concession” meant nothing; Ireland’s meant something very significant, with Irish parties discarding any meaningful conception of Irish self-determination.

Advocates of Irish unity need to reconsider their flattering evaluations of the GFA and its predecessor documents if they are to construct an effective campaign for constitutional change. The leading party-political and civic proponents of a united Ireland—Sinn Féin and Ireland’s Future—view the Agreement’s provisions on self-determination and consent as real opportunities for democratic constitutional change. But those provisions are in fact obstacles to change that masquerade as democracy.

Declan Kearney’s recent contribution to An Phoblacht is an illustration of this gross misunderstanding of the constitutional implications of the Agreement. Sinn Féin’s national chairperson notes:

The people of Ireland have been denied their right to self-determination for over 100 years. That democratic option was finally recognised in 1998 through its inclusion as a provision of the GFA.

And in a clear expression that the party formally and unequivocally accepts the northern block on Irish self-determination, he says that the Agreement “provides the mechanism to allow for the exercise of self-determination through concurrent unity referenda [in the north and south]” (Kearney, 2024). Kearney is gravely mistaken. The Agreement neither recognizes nor provides a mechanism to exercise the democratic right to self-determination; it denies the Irish people that right by confirming the unionist veto over constitutional change, the same veto that has been in place for over 100 years. Sinn Féin’s embrace of veto does not change the fact of veto. A border poll is less an exercise in democratic self-determination than it is a flawed and unjust mechanism that entrenches an undemocratic obstacle to the right of the Irish people as a whole to determine their political future.

Pro-unity groups should cease blathering on about the GFA’s delightful conception of self-determination. They need instead to argue from the premise that the very flaws and unfairness of a border poll may provide discursive space for democratic arguments in favour of unity. The major southern parties, Sinn Féin and the SDLP, are too invested in the peace process to challenge the democratic deficit and deceit in the GFA’s conception of self-determination. Some in these organizations see neither deficit nor deceit; some regard them as assets; and some are reluctant to admit their role in entrenching such an undemocratic process, wary of the consequences of publicly acknowledging the extent of the deficit and the magnitude of the deceit. But other organizations and grassroots advocates of reunification are not so compromised. They are beginning to formulate proposals for social and economic change in a united Ireland, which I trust will include republican notions of active citizenship and substantive equality. But they should also confidently reassert republican conceptions of democracy and self-determination that highlight the base injustice of partition and veto. Ireland’s Future, for instance, needs to reconsider and embellish its polite criticism that the Agreement’s notion of consent “provides a significant limitation on the exercise of the right of self-determination” (Ireland’s Future, 2024, p. 6 & 2020). “Significant limitation” is much too mild a description of what is in essence a wholesale undermining of that right. Agreeing to abide by the border-poll provisions set out in the GFA does not necessarily mean that Ireland’s Future cannot mount appealing arguments about the need to transcend the Agreement’s serious constitutional debilities. A powerful democratic argument about the right of self-determination for the Irish people as an undiminished whole could inject added energy into the constitutional debate and mobilize new constituencies in support of reunification.

To bring about a united Ireland will require breaking through the restrictions imposed by the one-sided constitutional settlement of 1998. The role of the Secretary of State in the process of constitutional change further reveals the severity of the GFA’s constraints that advocates of unity must address. It also confirms the hollowness of the intertwined notions of self-determination and consent. As the next installment in this series shows, the Agreement’s solemn commitment that “it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, ... and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent” is pure bunkum.

Notes

[1] All direct quotations for which I do not cite a page or paragraph number are from internet documents that do not use a numbering system. Otherwise, I indicate the page, paragraph or column number of direct quotations.

[2] Mac Ginty (2006, p. 126) notes that republicans “may have been beguiled into de-prioritising their principal constitutional goal of Irish unification” because of the complexity and ambiguity of the peace process.

[3] The Declaration was the culmination of a series of secret talks involving Sinn Féin and the IRA, the SDLP, London, Dublin, various intermediaries and others (Mallie & McKittrick, 1996; Moloney, 2007; Ó Dochartaigh, 2021). It was widely understood at the time that references to “majority consent” meant that unionists hold a veto over constitutional change (Mac Ginty et al., 2021; Hayes & McAllister, 2013). In his 2023 opening statement to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, former PM John Major tersely voiced the conventional understanding, noting that in the Downing Street Declaration, “The unionists were reassured a united Ireland would only come about with their consent” (Joint Committee, 2023, p. 5). This notion of veto/consent is also sometimes officially referred to as the “constitutional guarantee”.

[4] In the Downing Street Declaration, the Taoiseach mentioned the possibility of convening such a Forum. The Dublin government established the Forum in 1994, in the wake of the first IRA cessation, to examine ways to achieve peace and reconciliation. Numerous party groups from the north and the south attended the Forum. Northern unionists refused the invitation to participate. The Drafting Committee issued its final paper, “Paths to a Political Settlement: Realities, Principles and Requirements,” on 2 February 1996 (Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, 1996).

[5] The Downing Street Declaration displays a similar imbalance: abstract mentions of self-determination are accompanied by five recognitions of consent, two by each government and one by both governments (Power, 1996 & 1999).

[6] Sinn Féin was well aware before entering negotiations that majority northern consent was a non-negotiable item and would be an integral part of any settlement. The signs were unmistakable, even if we ignore the foundational provisions of the Downing Street Declaration and Joint Framework Document. In launching a multiparty talks process as far back as 1991, Secretary of State Peter Brooke established the inviolability of consent (Brooke, 1991). In a public address to Sinn Féin in the wake of the Declaration, Prime Minister John Major made it clear that there would be no departure from the fundamental requirement that the people of the north must separately and independently consent to any change in constitutional status (Major, 1994). Two weeks after the 1994 IRA cessation, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds affirmed that the Irish government would not in any circumstances deviate from the principle of majority northern consent to constitutional change (Reynolds, 1994). Commenting immediately after the 1997 IRA ceasefire, Secretary of State Mo Mowlam reiterated that majority consent was inviolable and central to any agreement (Mowlam, 1997). In the months leading up to Sinn Féin’s entry into the GFA talks in September 1997, newly-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair emphasized that there was no possibility his government would resile from the principle of northern consent (Blair, 1997).

Throughout the peace negotiations, Sinn Féin continued rhetorically to oppose the official conceptions of consent and self-determination. In the early stages of the process, the party formally rejected the notion of consent on two occasions. The first was in February 1996, when it declined to agree to those sections of the final report of the Drafting Committee of Dublin’s Forum for Peace and Reconciliation that repeated, word for word, the Joint Framework’s language on consent (Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, 1996). The second occasion was in a plenary session of the peace talks on 24 September 1997, at which Sinn Fein voted against a section of the procedural motion launching substantive negotiations. While the party supported the motion’s overall objective of moving the proceedings into inclusive talks on the three strands, it argued that the UUP was using the section in question to resurrect decommissioning as an obstacle to negotiations and to impose on the talks its own restrictive and partitionist interpretation of the principle of consent (Sinn Fein, 1997; MacDonncha, 1997). Both Sinn Féin and the IRA also frequently voiced their rejection of the peace process’s notion of the right of self-determination (Adams, 1994 & 1998b; NIO, 1994; IRA, 1994, 1996 & 1997), and denied that the GFA referenda in the north and south were legitimate exercises of that right (Adams, 1998a; IRA, 1998). Practically and politically—as opposed to rhetorically—both organizations accepted the official versions of self-determination and consent the moment Sinn Féin entered negotiations, and consolidated that acceptance when the party endorsed the GFA (McIntyre, 2008; McKearney, 2011; Ó Ruairc, 2019). Sinn Féin has since dropped even its rhetorical resistance: today, it celebrates the GFA’s conceptions of self-determination and consent as key republican achievements (Sinn Féin, 2020). I embellish this last point in the body of the paper.

[7] Some loyalists and unionists sporadically engaged the concept of self-determination to advocate for independence. These attempts never garnered much public support. Arthur Aughey (1991) suggests that unionism employs a highly peculiar, unconventional notion of self-determination. It is less a call for constitutional separation than it is a plea that the British government regard northern unionists as fully equal citizens who cannot be expelled from the UK against their will. In the end, the unionist interpretation of self-determination is a roundabout way of expressing unionism’s right to veto constitutional change in the north. At the time of the Downing Street Declaration, self-determination was an idea unquestionably linked to nationalism and republicanism, just as consent was closely conjoined to unionism and loyalism.

[8] Gerry Adams recently traced the important role that the concept of self-determination played in the evolution of Sinn Féin’s peace strategy. This article is noteworthy for Adams’s continued dissembling on what self-determination in the GFA really means (Adams, 2021). Ó Dochartaigh argues that the Provisionals reformulated the demand for self-determination in 1972. He further contends that the Declaration’s inextricable connection of self-determination to unionist consent went “some way to meeting a key ideological demand of republicans” (Ó Dochartaigh, 2021, p. 260). I disagree fundamentally with Ó Dochartaigh. The peace process’s novel conception of Irish self-determination resulted in the Provisionals repudiating central tenets of republican ideology. The leaders of Republican Sinn Féin, who Ó Dochartaigh sees as the main architects of the Provisionals’ purported 1972 reformulation of self-determination, continually and unequivocally rejected any dilution of a 32-county definition of Irish self-determination (White, 2006; Republican Sinn Féin, 1991) This persistent position undermines Ó Dochartaigh’s argument in two ways: it suggests that any Provisional reformulation of self-determination that occurred in 1972 was much more limited than he maintains, and that connecting self-determination to the unionist veto was incapable of meeting a key ideological demand of republicans. What actually happened is the opposite of what Ó Dochartaigh asserts. From the mid-1980s, the new Adams-McGuinness leadership incrementally but fundamentally abandoned the republican notion of self-determination to ensure compatibility with the new direction the leaders wished to take the movement. This new direction was also, of course, compatible in many ways with the British government’s position in peace talks.

[9] In 1994 and for years thereafter, Adams and his party continued rhetorically and misleadingly to oppose the Declaration’s linked interpretations of self-determination and consent. See the previous endnote and especially endnote 6.

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Martin, M. (2023). Speech: Tánaiste’s remarks at the British Irish Association Conference. Department of Foreign Affairs. 4 September. Retrieved from.

McGlinchey, M. (2019). Unfinished Business. The politics of ‘dissident’ Irish republicanism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

McGlinchey, M. (2023). “Irish Nationalist and Republican Attitudes to the Good Friday Agreement: Sell-Out or Steppingstone?” Treatises and Documents, Journal Of Ethnic Studies 90 (June): 79-95. Retrieved from.

McIntyre, A. (2008). Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism. New York: Ausubo Press.

McKearney, T. (2011). The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament. London. Pluto Press.

McLoughlin, P.J. (2010). John Hume and the Revision of Irish Nationalism. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

McLoughlin, P.J. (2021). “Redefining Partition: John Hume and the Evolution of Nationalist Thinking on a Divided Ireland.” In Ireland and Partition: Contexts and Consequences. ed. N.C. Fleming and J.H. Murphy, 223-242. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Moloney, E. (2007). A Secret History of the IRA. 2d ed. London: Penguin Books.

Mowlam, M. (1997). “Parties now have a chance to move towards peace.” Irish Times. 22 July. Retrieved from the Factiva (Dow Jones) electronic database of news articles.

Murray, C.R.G. (2021). “The Constitutional Significance of the People of Northern Ireland.” In The Brexit Challenge for Ireland and the United Kingdom: Constitutions Under Pressure. ed. O. Doyle, A. McHarg and J. Murkens, 108-128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Murray, G., and J. Tonge. (2005). Sinn Féin and the SDLP: From Alienation to Participation. Dublin: The O’Brien Press.

NIO. (1994). Northern Ireland Office Statement. British Response to Sinn Féin Request for Clarification of the Joint Declaration on Peace: The Downing Street Declaration. CAIN. 19 May. Retrieved from.

Ó Beacháin, D. (2019). From Partition to Brexit: The Irish Government and Northern Ireland. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Ó Dochartaigh, N. (2021). Deniable Contact: Back-Channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

O’Donnell, C. (2003). “Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin: The 1988 Talks Reappraised.” Irish Political Studies 18:2 (Winter): 60–81.

Ó Ruairc, L. (2019). Peace or Pacification? Northern Ireland after the Defeat of the IRA. Winchester and Washington: Zero Books.

Power, P.F. (1996). “Revisionist Nationalism's Consolidation, Republicanism's Marginalization, and the Peace Process.” Éire-Ireland 31: 1&2 (Spring/Summer): 89-122.

Power, P.F. (1999). “Republicanism, Revisionism, and the Belfast Agreement, 1998.” New Hibernia Review 3:2 (Summer): 61-83.

Republican Sinn Féin. (1991). “Towards a Peaceful Ireland.” Irish Left Archive. 21 January. Retrieved from. 

Sinn Féin. (1997). “Sinn Fein Statement on the Procedural Motion.” Sinn Fein. 24 September. Retrieved from.

Sinn Féin. (2020). Giving Workers & Families a Break: A Manifesto for Change. Sinn Féin General Election Manifesto 2020. Retrieved from.  

Reynolds, A. (1994). “Now It’s Time for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” Irish News. 15 September, p. 7.

Tonge, J. (2002). Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change. 2d ed. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Tonge, J. (2006). “Polarisation or New Moderation? Party Politics since the GFA.” In A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement. ed. M. Cox, A. Guelke, and F. Stephen, 70-88. 2d ed. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

White, R.W. (2006). Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.


⏮ Mike Burke has lectured in Politics and Public Administration in Canada for over 30 years.


Beguiling Constitutional Narratives 1 🪶 “Self-Determination” Without Self-Determination

Mike Burke ✍ The following eight narratives are part of the contemporary discussion of the north’s constitutional future.

The right of Irish self-determination embedded in the Good Friday Agreement represents a significant constitutional advance that helped to open a democratic pathway to a united Ireland. The Secretary of State should clarify the criteria for calling a border poll by specifying the evidence he will use to determine if there is a likely majority for unity. Political stability requires that unionists possess the unilateral power to block a united Ireland. Irish unity must await the achievement of reconciliation and consensual politics in the north. The GFA gives the north a comprehensive veto over the form and substance of a united Ireland. Constitutional change in the north can occur without reunification. The unity part of the union-unity binary is inherently divisive and needs to be buried. Advocates of a united Ireland are crude and tribal, with a troubling affinity for authoritarian politics.

My aim is to reveal some central properties of these constitutional narratives. All of them in their own way marginalize Irish unity, with the first five implicated in supporting some form of veto over constitutional change. All of them are in some sense outrageous, employing faulty reasoning to offer more or less absurd commentary on the state of the constitutional conversation. And yet all of them have a certain allure, with devoted fans and new converts—even if the motley collection of true believers, fresh recruits and curious onlookers may not fully grasp the implications of narrative loyalty.

This paper can be considered an embellishment and update of my 2020 piece entitled “Stealing Irish Unity: The Repertoire of Thieves” in which I examined various arguments that could delay, obstruct or defeat a united Ireland (Burke, 2020). The constitutional debate has developed quickly in the years since I wrote “Stealing”. My purpose here is to analyze new narratives and renewed emphases on old narratives that may have the effect of stifling constitutional change. I trust readers will find some value in a critical compilation of current constitutional arguments.

The constitutional obfuscation of which these narratives are a major part is only a glimpse of what is to come should talk of Irish unity continue to intensify. We’ve recently witnessed the blatant scaremongering evoked by John FitzGerald and Edgar Morgenroth’s recent paper warning that Irish unity could cost Ireland “€20 billion a year for 20 years” (Hennessy, 2024)[1]. John Doyle of Dublin City University dismisses this estimate as “wildly inaccurate” and “completely wrong”, but notes that “The phrase ‘20 over 20’ is obviously very memorable. Everybody remembers it, so it sticks in your head” (Joint Committee, 2024, pp. 2, 3 & 9; see also Doyle, 2024). That is, the coming public contest over the costs of a united Ireland may be framed by FitzGerald and Morgenroth’s very memorable phrase, however much in error it is. The quality of debate will be poorer as a result.

The narratives I’m addressing attempt—much like FitzGerald and Morgenroth—to set some major terms of the constitutional debate that I believe will push discussions in many wrong and unproductive directions. My critique aims to alert readers to the potential damage.

I’ve partitioned (sometimes that’s a good thing) my comments into eight sections that will be posted separately over the coming weeks. I hope these shorter segments are more easily digestible than is one seemingly endless post. I assure readers that today’s installment—about six pages of substantive text, excluding notes and references—is the lengthiest one. The remaining section titles are:

  • What Border Poll Criteria?
  • The Unionist Veto Again
  • Love Thy Neighbour (Sometimes)
  • A Comprehensive Northern Veto By Stealth
  • “Constitutional Change” without Constitutional Change
  • A One-Sided Binary
  • Of Demons and Angels

I append the notes and references to the end of each section.

“Self-Determination” Without Self-Determination

The discussion of self-determination and consent in the making of the GFA first alerted me to the whole notion of beguiling but outrageous constitutional narratives. I simply could not believe that many political actors and commentators were selling the Agreement’s self-determination provisions as a positive development and a republican achievement. Those provisions were neither. They undermined completely the republican notion of the Irish right of self-determination because they entrenched a unionist veto over constitutional change (Burke, 2017).[2]

Prior to the mid-1990s, the republican view and Sinn Féin’s oft-repeated position was that the Irish people as a whole, considered as a single unit, holds the right of self-determination, which is inalienable and indefeasible (McGlinchey, 2019 & 2023). The conception of self-determination emerging from the peace process directly challenged this conventional republican understanding (Ó Beacháin, 2019). It embedded partition in an entirely new Irish formulation saying that, for the purpose of self-determination, the Irish people as a whole does not exist. It asserted that, constitutionally, the Irish people is made up of two distinct parts, north and south, and that each part has a wholly separate right to self-determination. In the words of leading political scientist John Coakley:

The crucial change was in effect in counting rules: the people who would make a decision on the relationship between North and South would now be the people of Northern Ireland (and, separately, the people of the Republic), not the people of the whole island - (Coakley, 2017, p. 207).

The British and Irish governments’ Downing Street Declaration (1993) formally introduced the language of self-determination into the Irish peace process. The Declaration’s real innovation was the inextricable link it established between Irish self-determination and the unionist veto over constitutional change, the latter dressed up in its usual guise as the principle of consent.[3] The Irish government agreed that the new and abiding connection meant that northern majority consent became a necessary condition of exercising “the democratic right of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole”. The very fact of linkage changed utterly the meaning of self-determination, so much so that, in the Declaration, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds agreed to change the Irish constitution to “fully reflect” the need for northern consent to a united Ireland.

The ensuing Dáil debate hailed the Declaration as an historic constitutional milestone that opened the way to peaceful agreement. Discussion emphasized the significance of Britain recognizing, for the first time ever, the Irish right to self-determination, and minimized the importance of attaching self-determination to the unionist veto (Dáil Debates, 1993a & 1993b). The British parliamentary debate about the Declaration’s constitutional implications was very different. Prime Minister John Major was brutally honest in assessing that the new language recognizing Irish self-determination meant absolutely no change to Britain’s existing constitutional policy and practice. He began his Commons speech by addressing unionist fears of a constitutional sell-out. Unionists should be “reassured” by the commitments in the Declaration:

In summary, let me make it clear what is in the declaration and what is not. What is in the declaration is a renewed commitment by the British Government to Northern Ireland's constitutional guarantee; an acknowledgement by the Taoiseach that a united Ireland could only be brought about with the consent of a majority of the people in Northern Ireland; a willingness on the Taoiseach's part to make changes in the Irish constitution if an overall settlement can be reached; ... What is not in the declaration is any suggestion that the British Government should join the ranks of persuaders of the "value" or "legitimacy" of a united Ireland; that is not there. Nor is there any suggestion that the future status of Northern Ireland should be decided by a single act of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole; that is not there either. Nor is there any timetable for constitutional change, or any arrangement for joint authority over Northern Ireland - (Hansard, 1993, col. 1073).


In its public derision of nationalism and republicanism, Major’s refrain of “not in, not in, not in” is reminiscent of Thatcher’s curt “out, out, out” dismissal of the proposals of the New Ireland Forum report. The elements of Major’s appeal to unionists and assembled MPs involved: reaffirming the unionist veto over constitutional change (“Northern Ireland’s constitutional guarantee”), underlining that the south too had formally accepted the veto, mocking the value and legitimacy of a united Ireland, rejecting that the Irish people as a whole had any right to self-determination, dismissing the prospect of constitutional change, and reasserting unfettered British sovereignty over the north. In more polite circles, Major’s gloating and calculated insults to nationalists and republicans might be considered bad form. In the Commons they were not so recognized. John Hume, for instance, expressed his deep appreciation both to Major and Reynolds, with cries of “hear, hear” all round. Nor did Major’s boastful and swaggering posture have any impact on the way politicians in the south and north continued to sell the Declaration’s reference to self-determination as a major constitutional achievement for Ireland. One senior official of the Northern Ireland Office articulated the extent of this sophistry: “the Declaration revealed Reynolds’s great skill as a politician as he was able to give nationalists the impression that they had made a gain while accepting the principle of consent” (Mac Ginty et al., 2001, p. 475).

The constitutional innovations (read deceptions) of the Downing Street Declaration helped to propel the peace process forward. The two governments’ Framework Document (1995) and the final paper of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation (1996)[4] repeated verbatim the Declaration’s language on self-determination. And, in 1998, London and Dublin essentially cut and pasted these constitutional provisions into the GFA.

The Agreement gives the most succinct statement of the novel and unbreakable connection of self-determination to unionist veto that the Declaration first devised. The GFA, like the Declaration, refers to the veto using the more palatable but also more obscurant language of “agreement” and “consent.” Paragraph 1(ii) of the GFA’s section on Constitutional Issues recognizes:

that it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish, accepting that this right must be achieved and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.

Here, in plain language, we see that the cryptic reference to the Irish people’s right of self-determination is everywhere hedged in by and subordinated to three unequivocal acknowledgements of the unionist veto, which I’ve highlighted in underlined text.[5]

Let me emphasize what the GFA’s language represents, for Ireland and Britain. On the Irish side, it is highly significant. In endorsing the Agreement, the Irish government, major southern parties and Sinn Féin gave absolute victory to Britain on the crucial question of Irish self-determination. It’s true that mainstream southern parties had in effect legitimized partition long before the peace process began, and, with the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement and 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, had accepted the unionist veto over Irish unity. It’s also true that Sinn Féin had conceded defeat on entering the peace talks in September 1997, recognizing that further entrenchment of consent was an inevitable outcome, although the party continued for years to equivocate and dissemble on the issue.[6] In the GFA, though, the main southern parties and Sinn Féin went further, in effect acknowledging that the conventional republican position on self-determination was undemocratic, wrong and needed to be explicitly changed. One immediate consequence of this admission was of course the south’s formal commitment to amend its constitution to remove the territorial claim to the north. The SDLP never took a republican position, and saw the Declaration and the Agreement as confirmation of its long-standing championing of the unionist veto over constitutional change (Farren, 2010; Murray, 2021; McLoughlin, 2010 & 2021). On the British side, the much-heralded GFA language on Westminster’s recognition of the Irish right of self-determination was meaningless. John Major was right: adding references to self-determination did not in any way alter the British government’s traditional position that unionists rightfully possess the capacity to block the process of constitutional change.

In the end, self-determination played a contradictory and ultimately deceitful role in the Irish peace process. On the one hand, it was constitutionally superfluous in that its inclusion in peace documents had no impact whatsoever on the existing mechanics of constitutional change. On the other, it was politically essential in that it depicted Irish defeat and British victory as fair and reasonable compromise. Self-determination—the very issue on which nationalists and republicans abandoned fundamental principles—became an Irish negotiating accomplishment. In essence, repeated references to “self-determination” proved to be an effective marketing strategy, or rather, a cheap merchandising trick. The Declaration’s language on the democratic right of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole became the “republican concept” or “green language” that supposedly counter-balanced the previous preoccupation with the unionist notion of northern consent (O’Donnell, 2003, p. 76, quoting Martin Mansergh; Tonge, 2002, p. 139; Murray & Tonge, p. 183).[7] Britain’s official recognition of Irish self-determination (for the first time ever!) gave the illusion of a constitutional breakthrough.

For Sinn Féin, the notion of self-determination was especially useful. The party found—in its peace strategy, the series of secret talks leading to the Declaration and the Declaration itself—that “self-determination” was a form of words it could manipulate to help justify its current direction of travel, culminating in the IRA’s decision to abandon armed struggle and the party’s acceptance of a settlement far removed from its goal of British withdrawal and Irish unity.[8] For Gerry Adams, Britain’s addressing the issue of self-determination at all was “a significant departure” that marked “a further stage in the development of the peace process”, in which Sinn Féin would eventually wrap its acceptance of the unionist veto (Adams, 1994 & Irish Times, 1994; see also Adams, 2003 & Tonge, 2006).[9]

Many peace process players used the language on self-determination to help convince nationalist and republican voters in the May 1998 referendums that the GFA was a balanced and honourable constitutional settlement. But the reference to self-determination in the GFA was a public relations ruse to cement the unionist veto. That is, the entire purpose of London’s affirmation of the right of Irish self-determination was to prevent the Irish people as a whole from ever exercising that right. The unionist majority in the north, as always, stood in the way of constitutional change. The peace process entrenched, under the pretense of self-determination, a formula designed to block the pathway to a united Ireland. It offered, in the most cynical way possible, “self-determination” without self-determination. The sheer brazenness of the offer and its widespread acknowledgement as a wonderful constitutional moment for Ireland still astound me.

The questionable use of the term “self-determination” should have been obvious in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the Agreement. It wasn’t, partly because of the prevailing public sentiment in favour of ending violence. Now, decades later, the deception of self-determination should be beyond dispute. It’s not. There are new and continuing efforts to sell the vanquishing of self-determination as an Irish victory. The year 2023—marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Downing Street Declaration and twenty-fifth anniversary of the Agreement—witnessed a deluge of effusive reflections on the peace process. In September, Tánaiste Micheál Martin eulogized the Declaration, whose provisions became “a powerful motor for peace” and “cornerstones of the Good Friday Agreement” (Martin, 2023). In December, Lord Caine of the Northern Ireland Office roundly praised all those involved in constructing the Declaration and noted: “In charting what became known as the peace process, I would contend that next to the 1998 Agreement itself no single event was more ground breaking or important” (Caine, 2023). The following day, Stephen Collins of the Irish Times called the signing of the Declaration “one of the key moments in 20th century Irish history” (Collins, 2023).

All three commentaries agreed that the Declaration’s finely-balanced constitutional accommodation gave the document its innovative character and ensured its long-lasting significance. In the words of Stephen Collins, both sides made key and equal concessions, consisting of:

the acceptance by the British of the principle of self-determination for the people of the island and the acceptance by nationalist Ireland of the principle of consent as a prerequisite for unity - (Collins, 2023).

 

Here we have an unreconstructed regurgitation of a major deceit at the heart of the peace process still playing a prominent role in contemporary discussions of Ireland’s constitutional journey. There was no balance or symmetry in this purported constitutional accommodation. Britain’s “concession” meant nothing; Ireland’s meant something very significant, with Irish parties discarding any meaningful conception of Irish self-determination.

Advocates of Irish unity need to reconsider their flattering evaluations of the GFA and its predecessor documents if they are to construct an effective campaign for constitutional change. The leading party-political and civic proponents of a united Ireland—Sinn Féin and Ireland’s Future—view the Agreement’s provisions on self-determination and consent as real opportunities for democratic constitutional change. But those provisions are in fact obstacles to change that masquerade as democracy.

Declan Kearney’s recent contribution to An Phoblacht is an illustration of this gross misunderstanding of the constitutional implications of the Agreement. Sinn Féin’s national chairperson notes:

The people of Ireland have been denied their right to self-determination for over 100 years. That democratic option was finally recognised in 1998 through its inclusion as a provision of the GFA.

And in a clear expression that the party formally and unequivocally accepts the northern block on Irish self-determination, he says that the Agreement “provides the mechanism to allow for the exercise of self-determination through concurrent unity referenda [in the north and south]” (Kearney, 2024). Kearney is gravely mistaken. The Agreement neither recognizes nor provides a mechanism to exercise the democratic right to self-determination; it denies the Irish people that right by confirming the unionist veto over constitutional change, the same veto that has been in place for over 100 years. Sinn Féin’s embrace of veto does not change the fact of veto. A border poll is less an exercise in democratic self-determination than it is a flawed and unjust mechanism that entrenches an undemocratic obstacle to the right of the Irish people as a whole to determine their political future.

Pro-unity groups should cease blathering on about the GFA’s delightful conception of self-determination. They need instead to argue from the premise that the very flaws and unfairness of a border poll may provide discursive space for democratic arguments in favour of unity. The major southern parties, Sinn Féin and the SDLP, are too invested in the peace process to challenge the democratic deficit and deceit in the GFA’s conception of self-determination. Some in these organizations see neither deficit nor deceit; some regard them as assets; and some are reluctant to admit their role in entrenching such an undemocratic process, wary of the consequences of publicly acknowledging the extent of the deficit and the magnitude of the deceit. But other organizations and grassroots advocates of reunification are not so compromised. They are beginning to formulate proposals for social and economic change in a united Ireland, which I trust will include republican notions of active citizenship and substantive equality. But they should also confidently reassert republican conceptions of democracy and self-determination that highlight the base injustice of partition and veto. Ireland’s Future, for instance, needs to reconsider and embellish its polite criticism that the Agreement’s notion of consent “provides a significant limitation on the exercise of the right of self-determination” (Ireland’s Future, 2024, p. 6 & 2020). “Significant limitation” is much too mild a description of what is in essence a wholesale undermining of that right. Agreeing to abide by the border-poll provisions set out in the GFA does not necessarily mean that Ireland’s Future cannot mount appealing arguments about the need to transcend the Agreement’s serious constitutional debilities. A powerful democratic argument about the right of self-determination for the Irish people as an undiminished whole could inject added energy into the constitutional debate and mobilize new constituencies in support of reunification.

To bring about a united Ireland will require breaking through the restrictions imposed by the one-sided constitutional settlement of 1998. The role of the Secretary of State in the process of constitutional change further reveals the severity of the GFA’s constraints that advocates of unity must address. It also confirms the hollowness of the intertwined notions of self-determination and consent. As the next installment in this series shows, the Agreement’s solemn commitment that “it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, ... and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent” is pure bunkum.

Notes

[1] All direct quotations for which I do not cite a page or paragraph number are from internet documents that do not use a numbering system. Otherwise, I indicate the page, paragraph or column number of direct quotations.

[2] Mac Ginty (2006, p. 126) notes that republicans “may have been beguiled into de-prioritising their principal constitutional goal of Irish unification” because of the complexity and ambiguity of the peace process.

[3] The Declaration was the culmination of a series of secret talks involving Sinn Féin and the IRA, the SDLP, London, Dublin, various intermediaries and others (Mallie & McKittrick, 1996; Moloney, 2007; Ó Dochartaigh, 2021). It was widely understood at the time that references to “majority consent” meant that unionists hold a veto over constitutional change (Mac Ginty et al., 2021; Hayes & McAllister, 2013). In his 2023 opening statement to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, former PM John Major tersely voiced the conventional understanding, noting that in the Downing Street Declaration, “The unionists were reassured a united Ireland would only come about with their consent” (Joint Committee, 2023, p. 5). This notion of veto/consent is also sometimes officially referred to as the “constitutional guarantee”.

[4] In the Downing Street Declaration, the Taoiseach mentioned the possibility of convening such a Forum. The Dublin government established the Forum in 1994, in the wake of the first IRA cessation, to examine ways to achieve peace and reconciliation. Numerous party groups from the north and the south attended the Forum. Northern unionists refused the invitation to participate. The Drafting Committee issued its final paper, “Paths to a Political Settlement: Realities, Principles and Requirements,” on 2 February 1996 (Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, 1996).

[5] The Downing Street Declaration displays a similar imbalance: abstract mentions of self-determination are accompanied by five recognitions of consent, two by each government and one by both governments (Power, 1996 & 1999).

[6] Sinn Féin was well aware before entering negotiations that majority northern consent was a non-negotiable item and would be an integral part of any settlement. The signs were unmistakable, even if we ignore the foundational provisions of the Downing Street Declaration and Joint Framework Document. In launching a multiparty talks process as far back as 1991, Secretary of State Peter Brooke established the inviolability of consent (Brooke, 1991). In a public address to Sinn Féin in the wake of the Declaration, Prime Minister John Major made it clear that there would be no departure from the fundamental requirement that the people of the north must separately and independently consent to any change in constitutional status (Major, 1994). Two weeks after the 1994 IRA cessation, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds affirmed that the Irish government would not in any circumstances deviate from the principle of majority northern consent to constitutional change (Reynolds, 1994). Commenting immediately after the 1997 IRA ceasefire, Secretary of State Mo Mowlam reiterated that majority consent was inviolable and central to any agreement (Mowlam, 1997). In the months leading up to Sinn Féin’s entry into the GFA talks in September 1997, newly-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair emphasized that there was no possibility his government would resile from the principle of northern consent (Blair, 1997).

Throughout the peace negotiations, Sinn Féin continued rhetorically to oppose the official conceptions of consent and self-determination. In the early stages of the process, the party formally rejected the notion of consent on two occasions. The first was in February 1996, when it declined to agree to those sections of the final report of the Drafting Committee of Dublin’s Forum for Peace and Reconciliation that repeated, word for word, the Joint Framework’s language on consent (Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, 1996). The second occasion was in a plenary session of the peace talks on 24 September 1997, at which Sinn Fein voted against a section of the procedural motion launching substantive negotiations. While the party supported the motion’s overall objective of moving the proceedings into inclusive talks on the three strands, it argued that the UUP was using the section in question to resurrect decommissioning as an obstacle to negotiations and to impose on the talks its own restrictive and partitionist interpretation of the principle of consent (Sinn Fein, 1997; MacDonncha, 1997). Both Sinn Féin and the IRA also frequently voiced their rejection of the peace process’s notion of the right of self-determination (Adams, 1994 & 1998b; NIO, 1994; IRA, 1994, 1996 & 1997), and denied that the GFA referenda in the north and south were legitimate exercises of that right (Adams, 1998a; IRA, 1998). Practically and politically—as opposed to rhetorically—both organizations accepted the official versions of self-determination and consent the moment Sinn Féin entered negotiations, and consolidated that acceptance when the party endorsed the GFA (McIntyre, 2008; McKearney, 2011; Ó Ruairc, 2019). Sinn Féin has since dropped even its rhetorical resistance: today, it celebrates the GFA’s conceptions of self-determination and consent as key republican achievements (Sinn Féin, 2020). I embellish this last point in the body of the paper.

[7] Some loyalists and unionists sporadically engaged the concept of self-determination to advocate for independence. These attempts never garnered much public support. Arthur Aughey (1991) suggests that unionism employs a highly peculiar, unconventional notion of self-determination. It is less a call for constitutional separation than it is a plea that the British government regard northern unionists as fully equal citizens who cannot be expelled from the UK against their will. In the end, the unionist interpretation of self-determination is a roundabout way of expressing unionism’s right to veto constitutional change in the north. At the time of the Downing Street Declaration, self-determination was an idea unquestionably linked to nationalism and republicanism, just as consent was closely conjoined to unionism and loyalism.

[8] Gerry Adams recently traced the important role that the concept of self-determination played in the evolution of Sinn Féin’s peace strategy. This article is noteworthy for Adams’s continued dissembling on what self-determination in the GFA really means (Adams, 2021). Ó Dochartaigh argues that the Provisionals reformulated the demand for self-determination in 1972. He further contends that the Declaration’s inextricable connection of self-determination to unionist consent went “some way to meeting a key ideological demand of republicans” (Ó Dochartaigh, 2021, p. 260). I disagree fundamentally with Ó Dochartaigh. The peace process’s novel conception of Irish self-determination resulted in the Provisionals repudiating central tenets of republican ideology. The leaders of Republican Sinn Féin, who Ó Dochartaigh sees as the main architects of the Provisionals’ purported 1972 reformulation of self-determination, continually and unequivocally rejected any dilution of a 32-county definition of Irish self-determination (White, 2006; Republican Sinn Féin, 1991) This persistent position undermines Ó Dochartaigh’s argument in two ways: it suggests that any Provisional reformulation of self-determination that occurred in 1972 was much more limited than he maintains, and that connecting self-determination to the unionist veto was incapable of meeting a key ideological demand of republicans. What actually happened is the opposite of what Ó Dochartaigh asserts. From the mid-1980s, the new Adams-McGuinness leadership incrementally but fundamentally abandoned the republican notion of self-determination to ensure compatibility with the new direction the leaders wished to take the movement. This new direction was also, of course, compatible in many ways with the British government’s position in peace talks.

[9] In 1994 and for years thereafter, Adams and his party continued rhetorically and misleadingly to oppose the Declaration’s linked interpretations of self-determination and consent. See the previous endnote and especially endnote 6.

References

Adams, G. (1994). “Gerry Adams Presidential Address to Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 1994.” Sinn Féin. 26 February. Retrieved from.

Adams, G. (1998a). “Gerry Adams [Closing] Presidential Address to [Reconvened] Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 1998.” Sinn Féin. 10 May. Retrieved from.

Adams, G. (1998b). “Rights, Justice, Equality: The Foundations for the Road to a Just and Lasting Peace Settlement.” Address to the American Irish Historical Society, New York. 27 May. An Phoblacht. 4 June. Retrieved from.

Adams, G. (2003). Hope and History: Making Peace in Ireland. Dingle: Brandon.

Adams, G. (2021). “The Rising of the Moon.” New Ireland/Éire Nua 1 (Summer 2001 [should be 2021]): 22-25.

Aughey, A. (1991). “Unionism and Self-Determination.” In The Northern Ireland Question: Myth and Reality. ed. P.J. Roche and B. Barton, 1-16. Aldershot: Avebury.

Blair, T. (1997). “Address by Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Royal Agricultural Society Belfast.” CAIN. 16 May. Retrieved from.

Brooke, P. (1991). “Peter Brooke Launches Northern Ireland Political Talks.” Northern Ireland Office Press Notice. 26 March. Retrieved from.

Burke, M. (2017). “Deepening the Unionist Veto.” The Pensive Quill. 1 November. Retrieved from.

Burke, M. (2020). “Stealing Irish Unity: The Repertoire of Thieves,” Part 1 of 5. The Pensive Quill.
5 September. Retrieved from. 

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⏮ Mike Burke has lectured in Politics and Public Administration in Canada for over 30 years.


border poll Irish Unity Mike Burke

3 comments:

  1. LOR9:29 PM, February 05, 2025

    I very much share the ideas expressed in this article. From the 1993 Downing Street Declaration to the 1998 Belfast Agreement self-determination was never at the heart of the pacification process, but rather (at the very best) a limited form of co-determination.

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  2. Steve R10:08 PM, February 05, 2025

    "The major southern parties, Sinn Féin and the SDLP, are too invested in the peace process to challenge the democratic deficit and deceit in the GFA’s conception of self-determination. Some in these organizations see neither deficit nor deceit; some regard them as assets; and some are reluctant to admit their role in entrenching such an undemocratic process, wary of the consequences of publicly acknowledging the extent of the deficit and the magnitude of the deceit. "

    Pretty much nails exactly why a border poll will never be called. The UK does what the UK always does, but the real obstacles are the parties named in the above, and a 'working' NI is the ultimate bulwark against any serious consideration of a UI. This, and with John Crawley's astute observation that NI is an unsinkable aircraft carrier for force projection into the arctic going into the next century that is unlikely to change.

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  3. LOR9:04 PM, February 06, 2025

    For the contrast between self-determination and co-determination in the Irish context see this article by Sean Farren:
    https://www.persee.fr/doc/irlan_0183-973x_1996_num_21_1_1299

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