The predictable howls from all quarters, bar a very conspicuous one, greeted the pronouncement from British direct ruler Andrew Burnham that a border poll is ‘off the table’. Like a theatrical cue card all the players in this political farce saw these remarks as their moment to take centre stage and deliver their shibboleths with suitable indignation or glee, only to realise that once they had done so, a cold reality dawned that they have zero control over the British script.
What was equally exposed was the vacuous nature of slogan politics, tribal politics, sectarian politics, partitionist politics and the greatest whore of them all, electoral politics. And all of that before we delve into the ignorant abyss of the implications of not studying in detail what you have irreversibly subscribed to.
In a carefully crafted and impeccably timed intervention Burnham was actually telling us what is on the table, only, and what is required of the principal actors (who have absolutely nowhere else to go) if the British and Irish governments are to treat them like grown ups. And the endorsement of this British position was confirmed by Dublin due to their strategic silence amidst the rhetoric and din.
The lynchpin of the Good Friday Agreement is the complete control ceded to the British government regarding issues of sovereignty and constitutional change. The British direct ruler has just exercised that control. What is left to domestic politics is the responsibility of administering devolved issues within the Stormont Assembly.
Their ability, and suitability, to do so will not be measured by their posturing on issues outside of their remit and control. And this is why Burnham’s remarks were as much aimed at unionists as it was nationalists. Some of the more astute unionist commentators recognised this fact and urged moderation over the usual triumphalism.
Both Provisional Sinn Féin and the DUP face the same conundrum posed by Burnham’s intervention; Stormont not working will no more usher in a border poll than it will secure the union in a post-Brexit and Scottish Referendum environment. The only way they can be relevant to their electorate is to make Stormont work and that is wholly dependent on British funding, who simply cannot contemplate funding a failed entity.
Both parties stepped into the shoes of their respective predecessors, UUP and SDLP, and both now realise the shoes do not fit as comfortably as they thought they would. You can’t play opposition whilst in government. Stormont, regardless of its status, is an instrument serving British interests. And that is the trap closed.
But republicans were also caught short, the broad nature of the response falling into the ‘we told you so’ category. Like most others, republicans reacted to what they wanted to hear rather than sit back and listen to what the British and Irish governments intended everyone to hear.
It can be no coincidence that a former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar should weigh in on the heels of Burnham with talk of the inevitability of Irish unity once agreement can be reached over a protracted period of time. That agreement is not confined simply between Unionist and Nationalist, it must also find agreement with the British establishment.
We can no longer entertain outdated notions of why the British remain in Ireland. The Six Counties are not as British as Finchley. The right to walk the Queen’s Highway was deemed silly by that very same Queen. The sacrifices and sufferings of Irish generations under their occupation mean nothing to a people who learn more about their history from Netflix than they do from their schools and universities.
The waltzing choreography of British long-term interests in our country are being played out in unison with Dublin’s incremental compliance. The political reasoning behind partition alters and adapts to the differing needs of the British establishment to preserve it. Those contemporary needs have a definitive international and security dimension to them as the world enters yet another cold war scenario.
Almost every day we see an assault on the neutrality of the Southern state, the primary weapon for which is ridicule. Its latest manifestation concerned the recent EU Defence Ministers meeting in Wicklow. Much was made of the fact that the security apparatus surrounding the gathering was dependant on a Royal Navy ship hovering outside of territorial waters.
Prominent Statist commentators call Ireland the ‘weak link’ in the European defence system and that we live a ‘charmed existence’ due to the benevolence of other EU countries who spend more on their defence budgets to ensure Ireland remains safe from the ‘threat of Russian aggression’.
This is the type of lens through which Westminster views her interests in Ireland. And what republicans need to urgently recognise is that the core issue of our national sovereignty may well find more strategic value in issues like neutrality to promote that sovereignty as a pragmatic and practical solution.
We cannot allow our position on national sovereignty to be constrained by simply defining it as an historic right and position ourselves as the gatekeeper of that stance but rather promote it aggressively as a solution to a range of issues that continually capture our people’s attention.
The kingdom of heaven comes in a way not foreseen by man: perhaps the same can be said for a sovereign republic.
⏩ The Fenian Way was a full time activist during the IRA's war against the British.
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TFW What do you suppose is the British interest in keeping the 6 counties?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp80n0x7rvzo
Northern Sinn Fein is now the defender of the colonial devolution power apparatus. They are now beyond constitutional nationalism and have most certainly jettisoned "Republicanism" of the hue they espoused for years.
It's very strange to me as a Loyalist to see the knives out for Brendan Hughes by former comrades. Don't get me wrong, I am steadfast in the cause of peace between our communities particularly on a working class basis but he was clearly a man of principle. I have often wondered if he and Davy Ervine had lived whether they would have reached common ground. I have little doubt they would have. Both our communities are poorer for their loss.
The Fenian Way comments
DeleteSteve R. The British are not simply interested in the Six Counties but the island of Ireland as a whole. Consider the following from then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw:
“A broken-up United Kingdom would not be in the interests of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but especially not England.
Our [England's] voting power in the European Union would diminish. We'd slip down in the world league GDP tables. Our case for staying in the G8 would diminish and there could easily be an assault on our permanent seat in the UN. [security council]”
That’s a mindset that transcends the local and prioritises the national for its own interests. I personally believe that the constitutional question is now dependant on the type of Ireland that could emerge and what its relationship with Westminster, and its national interests, will be. Burnham is correct, any reading of the GFA will confirm this. But so also is Gordon Browne when he says that Ireland will be eventually united, once agreement can be reached. And as I say in the article that agreement will be between any future unitary state and British interests.
The Twenty Six Counties are currently moving toward that ‘British interests’ trajectory with its incremental abandonment of neutrality. That inevitably involves membership of some form of Western/EU security confederation which is currently realigning itself in the face of Ukraine, the Middle East and Taiwan.
Parochial politics in the Six Counties are broadly incidental to this direction.
Have to agree. It would be astonishing if the UK state security apparatus hadn't infiltrated the Dail by now too.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read articles like this, I get a knot in my stomach, a sense that I wasted twenty years of my life on what, with the benefit of retrospective 20/20 vision, was an impossibilist mission.
ReplyDeleteThat is not because I have suddenly discovered an affection for partition, nor because I think the constitutional settlement we ended up with represents some great historical resolution. It is because the argument presented here leaves me wondering what, precisely, the alternative republican strategy was that could actually have succeeded.
There is much in the analysis that I recognise. Stormont is undoubtedly a trap of sorts for Sinn Féin. It cannot easily walk away from Stormont, yet participation in Stormont has not demonstrably brought Irish unity any closer.
Recognising that contradiction is the easy part. The harder question is what republicans were supposed to have done instead.
We can agree that accepting the Agreement was a concession that the British analysis was correct; that electoralism domesticated the republican project; and that Sinn Féin exchanged revolutionary politics for the administration of a partitionist settlement. But by 1998, what credible route remained to achieving a British withdrawal that did not ultimately require persuading a majority in the North?
Armed struggle had not achieved it. Abstentionism had not achieved it. International pressure had not achieved it. Demographic change had not achieved it. And almost thirty years after the Agreement, electoral politics has not achieved it either.
That is the uncomfortable point which republican retrospection too often avoids. We are very good at explaining how the strategy adopted failed to deliver the Republic. We are considerably less convincing when asked to identify the strategy that would have delivered it.
It is my belief that no such strategy existed.
The problem was deeper than the decisions made in 1986, 1994 or 1998. It was the belief that sufficient sacrifice, discipline, military pressure or political ingenuity could overcome a fundamental political reality: Britain was not going to leave simply because republicans demanded it, and unionists were not going to consent simply because republicans believed history was moving inexorably in their direction.
That is what gives me the knot in my stomach.
Because if we are going to revisit the choices of that generation, including choices made by people like me, it is not enough to say that the destination we eventually reached was not the destination for which we set out. I know that. The question that matters now is whether the destination we believed in was ever reachable by the road we were travelling.
Increasingly, I suspect it wasn't.
The article itself and the comment raise the debate to a level we don't often see, No snarky jibes, no screaming - just clear headed analysis.
DeleteI agree with Muiris on the impossibilist nature of the task set. I used the term impossibilist back in the 90s to describe the lack of fit between the objective and the goal. When SF would say its critics had no strategy it was easy to point out to the party that no one had a strategy to achieve a united Ireland.
For me it was a question of how to manage what was doable and SF failed on that, simply becoming another version of everything they opposed.
Now they are left with a Frankenstein administration in Stormont; the type of political aberration from anything remotely radical and described in political discourse as the type of woeful government sustained only by the need to survive by the politicians who staff it. A classic property of careerism which has universally served as the graveyard of revolutionary movements.
My above comment should read "lack of fit between the strategy and the goal"
DeleteCompletely agree with the point made by Muiris and Mackers and is actually a point he been arguing myself now for quite a few years, for a bit of background I’m a Republican of the “ceasefire generation” born in 1994
ReplyDeleteLooking back at the war in retrospect and where we have arrived today I think honestly the objective for Republicans simply was unachievable, like Muiris I am not suddenly pro partition, however a defeat is a defeat and needs to be recognised as such
Far too often the “what’s your alternative” line gets parroted by SF as a way to fend off any legitimate criticism
However I think it is something which needs to be explored, I am a firm believer in, that in politics you must take things as they present themselves within the political circumstances and framework of that time
With that being said in 1998, armed struggle had reached a dead end (pardon the pun), abstentionism had not/will not achieve anything either so where does that leave us? Stormont exists now purely for the purpose of existing and enriching the political class and hasn’t moved us one inch toward Irish unity of any sort
Could the Éire Nua policy maybe not have been further explored before it was abruptly rubbished by the Adams regime?
Therein lies another problem, no space was allowed for any alternative of any sort, as the Adams regime ruthlessly moved to shut down and isolate any obstacles to their strategic interests
On a more broader point I feel we are now at a stage were Republicanism is ceasing to exist, it is a dead redundant ideology in today’s world. People will not say that out of fear of being demonised, but I am saying it, it is time Republicans accept that reality and simply move on with their lives
Take it from me, when I was growing up and to a much greater extent today people my age and younger are not remotely interested by in large in politics let alone Republicanism
Leftist politics now is utterly unrecognisable, working class politics has been replaced by identity bullshit and transgender rights
Just my opinion
Daniel - the way I have come to see it is this: If Germany were to sink to the bottom of the sea, there would be no Germany but there would still be Germans - those that survived.
DeleteRepublicanism as we knew it has sunk, but republicans still exist.. It might not follow that for republicans the only thing to do is move on with their lives. Perhaps it is a matter of them trying to live the most authentic republican lives they can. Some do this by campaigning for republican prisoners; others by commemorating those who died. There are those who involve themselves in issues not essentially republican but which an authentic republican life would lead them to take up - opposing genocide, tackling poverty, pushing back against capital, defending rights, calling out political unionism and the Career Catholics who bagged an outcome that only fitted an internal conflict model (the one favoured by the Brits) of the North's politically violent circumstances, tackling the far right inter alia.
Those are the things republicans could be doing if they wish to maintain a fidelity to a republicanism that motivated them to be on the right side of history. You seem to be doing many of those things which suggests that while you feel the Republic is lost your republicanism is not.
That is a far cry from former republicans shafting and screwing each other over shady Portuguese property deals.
On the trans thing and the Left. - identity politics is not Left politics even though they can intersect at points where both are progressive. Regardless, of what your own view on trans is, the fascistic cancel culture that is often used by trans ideologues and activists to suppress better public understanding of the matter has poisoned the well and moved trans as a form of identity politics even further from the core issue that has been the anchor of the Left. I was speaking to a Marxist friend recently and he told me about an article written in the Economist a number of years back in which the conservative author argued that the Trans issue offered the right a great opportunity for splitting the Left. Make of that what you will.
The Fenian Way comments
ReplyDeleteThe question of strategy has always loomed large in any discourse on the 1998 settlement. This includes both military and political efforts to secure republican objectives. But at this remove the issue of strategy occupies the realm of retrospective justification for the path a given leadership took and also for the parrying of criticism of that path and indeed of that leadership itself.
Some context is essential. Within that leadership there emerged what was called the ‘integrated strategy’. Ostensibly this was described as complimentary political and military activity directed toward specific key objectives to propel the movement closer to its broader aims. In essence it was the Armalite and Ballot Box approach but this time there was more meat on the slogan’s bones.
The only problem however was that there was no military strategy to integrate. A colossal failure of the IRA leadership! And whilst the seductive charms of the slogan beguiled the membership the British were patiently exploiting the massive inherent contradiction at its core. Electoralism demanded a peace settlement which was not dependent on constitutional change to achieve it. There was no quid pro quo for the removal of Articles 2 & 3, again a colossal failure of both strategy and leadership.
And this brings us to another vital point raised, what was armed struggle intended to achieve? There is no question of a military victory, no British military or political capitulation. But there was the very real prospect of armed struggle impacting on the issue of sovereignty in such a way that the constitutional question could have been genuinely placed within the gift of the Irish people.
For example, Peter Brooke’s declaration of British neutrality could have been given legal effect and the issue of sovereignty could have been lodged with a neutral third party whilst bona fide peace and reconstruction negotiations took place.
Or a Hong Kong scenario could have been devised wherein a time frame for the transfer of sovereignty to a unitary state was agreed upon allowing for a suitable period for negotiations to manage the transition.
After all the Six Counties was a failed political entity. Ultimately there was only one constitutional direction if and only the first sovereignty domino was toppled.
We can argue the ins and outs of such an approach until the cows come home but as pointed out by our astute commentators that leadership had no interest in alternative strategies let alone alternative leadership, both of which were available to the Republican Movement. That in itself is also a massive failure of leadership.
And I use the term ‘that leadership’ deliberately. The Good Friday Agreement was the product of bad leadership, political illiteracy and military indifference. The Irish Republican Army was never better armed in its entire history as it was in that period yet its contribution to the settlement reached was its own destruction, retrospective criminalisation and a near fatal legacy as to the future use of effective armed struggle.
The 1981 Hunger Strikes elevated the republican struggle to an unprecedented level on the international political stage yet this was squandered in the pursuit of parochial votes again ending in a settlement where not one republican objective was achieved.
It is a strange and self destructing irony that bad strategy uses the charge of the absence of alternative strategy to ensure the continuance of the bad strategy going forward. Cui bono?
As to Danny Gallagher’s opinion on the death of republicanism, that fate will most certainly come to pass if we anchor republicanism in past recriminations, if we continue to insist that we must reduce republicanism to a slogan, Marxist or otherwise, and present it wearing sunglasses and masks as some form of visual pornography to seduce impressionable youths.
The way forward for Irish republicanism is to look out the window and dress accordingly to the weather that is now presented!
Daniel, the one thing I have learned from writing for TPQ is that all views are welcome and debate is encouraged, so thank you for your contribution. You have raised some important points, and it would be great to hear more from you.
ReplyDeleteMy own view is that republicanism is not dead. The strategy adopted by Provisional Sinn Féin, however, is dead in the water. Indeed, I would go further. I no longer regard Sinn Féin as a republican party in any meaningful sense of the term. It is a broadly social democratic party which retains Irish unity as a constitutional aspiration.
I don’t think we need to endlessly rehearse the history of the last phase of our liberation struggle. Decisions made cannot be undone. Paths chosen cannot simply be retraced. There is no road back to 1986, 1996 or 1998 where republicans, armed with the benefit of hindsight, can choose differently.
But refusing to become imprisoned by history is not the same thing as refusing to learn from it. Indeed, it would be foolish not to.
The Fenian Way makes another important contribution to this discussion when he argues that republicanism must now “look out the window and dress accordingly to the weather that is now presented.”
That strikes me as considerably more useful than another journey around the well-travelled arguments about what might have been.
It brings me back to the very first article I penned for The Pensive Quill, when Anthony McIntyre posed a deceptively simple question: where now for Irish republicanism?
My answer then was that I really didn't know. My answer now remains much the same.
What the discussions on TPQ in the intervening years have led me to conclude is that perhaps we have been too eager to search for an answer before properly defining the question.
Before asking where Irish republicanism goes next, we need to establish what Irish republicanism actually means in 2026.
Is it simply support for Irish unity? If so, the term has become so broad as to be almost meaningless. Plenty of constitutional nationalists favour unity without being republicans.
Until republicanism establishes what it is, discussion about strategy is premature. Strategy is the means by which an objective is pursued. If the objective itself is unclear, then arguing about strategy amounts to little more than choosing roads before deciding where we are trying to go.
That, perhaps, was one of the lessons of the Provisional experience. A strategy initially presented as a means of advancing republican objectives gradually acquired an institutional and electoral logic of its own.
Partition does not become desirable because republicanism failed to end it. The Northern state does not become a satisfactory political arrangement because the IRA failed to overthrow it. And the failure of the Provisional strategy does not invalidate the idea of an Irish republic.
Sometimes the good guys lose. Sometimes strategies fail. The question being asked is did republicanism survive that failure?
If it did and if it is to have any relevance beyond commemoration, nostalgia and increasingly empty declarations of continuity, it needs to rediscover what it means in the Ireland that actually exists.
So where now for Irish republicanism?
Almost 3 years after Anthony first put the question to me, I still don't know.
I think that a point that confuses many people is when the claim is made that any united Ireland that emerges from a border poll will not be the The Republic. It might sound semantical to the bulk of people who would vote for a united Ireland.
DeleteMuiris touches on this in his observation 'Plenty of constitutional nationalists favour unity without being republicans.' I suppose what needs to be spelled out is what it is that sets apart those who want a Republic from those constitutional nationalists who favour Irish unity.
Of course there's also the little problem of defining what a 'United Ireland' looks like. It's almost the equivalent of asking the woke 'What is a woman?'
ReplyDeleteThe answer is always circular leaving nobody any the wiser as to what they want. Louth highlights this extremely well.
Steve - we would hope the answer is not as chameleon and evasive. I have often observed the response to that, even when put by that far right figure, Matt Walsh - it is cringeworthy the contortions that are devised to not answer.. That likely explains the rush to cancel culture, It is aimed to prevent the question even being asked.
DeleteIn the case of a United Ireland, the hope (and the Agreements) on the part of those advocating it is that the border poll shall occur and they can work it out after. That is not satisfactory to you but it is what was agreed to - much as SF agreed to a British Secretary of State holding veto power over the timing. At the very least if they were going to have the timing decided by individuals not accountable to the North's electorate, it should have been handed to an EU committee or a UN one. What type of Irish republican thought it a good idea to hand it to the British?
It has left SF no longer being a one trick pony, simply a no trick pony.
"In the case of a United Ireland, the hope (and the Agreements) on the part of those advocating it is that the border poll shall occur and they can work it out after. That is not satisfactory to you but it is what was agreed to'
DeleteNot sure I agree with this Anthony, I am above all a democrat. If the people of Northern Ireland vote in the majority for a UI then I would absolutely respect their wishes and defend the vote. I've said the same for years; If we believe in Northern Irelands right to exist then we must respect her democratic wishes.
Perhaps I'm an outlier for some of my community I will concede!
Interested Observer,
ReplyDeletepost your email as a comment.
It won't be published but I can email you directly once I have it.