RE-UNITED IRELAND

Public discussion  about re-uniting Ireland has become more open and more positive than at any time since the British government imposed a border in the country. By one of those ironies of history that should make politicians more cautious the border that seemed to solve London's problems in the nineteen twenties is creating its biggest problem now. And doing away with the artificial border in Ireland is clearly the most rational way to solve London's Euopean problem and give Ireland a bit of peace.

In the discussion about re-union an Irish politician said with obvious irritation - and aiming at a political rival - it would be wrong to demand reunification without planning what shape it should take. But for hundreds of years that is exactly what we in Ireland have been doing, working out the shape and structures of Ireland in the future. Even a British king, George the Fifth, said he hoped that one day the Irish people would come together and he had a plan -  Ireland united within the British empire;  the Empire became the Commonwealth,  India (Victoria's "Jewel in  her crown" ) has become a major independent competitor in world trade, other nations are anxious to do the same and Ireland has thrown in its lot with fellow Europeans on that road and not with the  remains of the king's empire.

Wolfe Tone, "father of Irish republicanism" could think comfortably of a king as head of an Irish state -  in his day kings were believed to have divine credentials for ruling people. He and other republicans could hardly have foreseen that  the great French Revolution would produce Napoleon and make an Emperor of him or that the American revolution  could ever produce an emperor-like leader not from divinely assisted blue blood but from market place and vaudeville. In Ireland people appreciated kings - although they tended usually to favour small ones and to fight for centuries against big ones; for many centuries a nation without a king or queen seemed somehow not quite right. But once people got away from the notion that kings and queens were sacred essentials for good government, exciting ideas emerged. Many people stopped looking for good people to govern them and demanded they should govern themselves instead.

From the nineteen sixties onward Irish people put forward various ideas about the shape of a future  re-united Ireland. Time came when even in the north-east you could do this without being arrested and interned without trial.

It is interesting then to think about the various suggestions put forward by people in those days and during the decades following. These included :

Continuing (or restoring) Stormont government as London had set it up;

 United Ireland with one central government;

Independent Ulster ( six counties separate from the rest of Ireland);

Federal Ireland, with four provinces ( Ulster of nine counties) with central government not necessarily resident in Dublin ; each province having a  measure of self government ;

Federal Ireland of two units but one central government;

Full integration of six counties of Ulster with Britain (which would remove the title Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the north eastern counties would become, as Mrs Thatcher might have said, even more British than Finchley.  It is said however that when Mrs Thatcher was canvassing for election in her young days she said Yes to re-uniting Ireland to get votes.

All these and  other "solutions" to what was called "the Irish problem"- although, like the border and the backstop now it was not an Irish but a London problem - were discussed by Irish people even in politically difficult  times.

So when voices from London, Dublin, New York, the Vatican and all over cried out to us to sit round the table and discuss our future, most people were more than willing to do so.

When however discussion times came - and there were more than one through the years - the natural question was, "Now, here we are ready to discuss, so what's on the agenda , what do we discuss ?

Can we discuss a United Ireland ? No you can't. 

Federal Ireland? No

Independent Ulster ? No,

Restoring Stormont as it was ? No.

As Mrs Thatcher put it so cleverly: Out, Out, Out, to every suggestion. The only thatcher in  Ireland who thought tearing the roof from off  our heads was a good idea.

So the question was put : What can we discuss then?

The answer was, You can discuss government from Westminster with a greater measure of devolution in Belfast.

And the most interesting thing about that was: Nobody in Ireland had suggested it. The only item for discussion was a London solution the Irish had not asked for !

Just as nobody in Ireland wanted the border in the nineteen twenties. Including Edward Carson.

We don't have a problem of  demanding a re-united Ireland without planning ahead for it. We have be planning ahead for it for centuries. Our problem is that people with bigger fingers on bigger triggers are always telling us what we can discuss and what we cannot.

Footnote: John Mc Keague , leader of the Red Hand Commandos, said " A united Ireland will probably come; but when it does we ( he was referring to  the unionist  community) want to go into it as a free people - even if we are free only from 12 midnight to 5 past, we must go in  as a free people."

He was familiar with the thinking of Desmond Boal and both of them were more open to ideas than many people  thought they were.  So were a lot of others.