Create the Republic to Unify the People

A conundrum that seems to beset some Irish republicans concerns both the Irish Republic and reunification of the island, and the issue of which of these must come first. Some argue that the republic can only exist in a unified 32 County Irish State. They most often use the Proclamation of the Irish Republic as justification for that stance, but to do so allows Britain, or more precisely the English establishment, to maintain a semi-permanent barrier to both the republic and reunification by continuing to manipulate public opinion in the Six Counties, and political opinion, and consequently public opinion, in the 26 Counties.

The Proclamation states ‘We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people’. Adopting the approach to resolving the conundrum of ‘republic first or unification first?’ that is suggested in this article does not alter that declaration one jot, or the desire that is evidently present among a significant majority of the Irish people that it should so come to pass.

It is an unfortunate, inescapable fact that the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, imposed under threat of terrible war, partitioned Ireland by creating a border between the six north-eastern counties and the rest of the island. Despite the desire of a majority of the people on this island ever since to see the border removed, and despite almost three decades of war between the republican movement and Britain in the most recent campaign, there has been no change to the territorial status of either entity.

It has suited the political class north and south of the border to maintain this status quo. In the north, unionist domination of a nationalist minority prevailed from partition to the Good Friday Agreement when its worst aspects were ameliorated, while in the south what was effectively an ultra-conservative Catholic State was maintained through from 1922 to the 1990s when it finally morphed into a full-blown plutarchy, a combination of plutocracy and oligarchy – never a republic, despite the spurious description. This situation allowed for a carving up of political, administrative and professional posts along sectarian lines on either side of the border, and allowed for two entities in which right-wing regressive policies could be pursued, benefiting the upper middle class, large farmers and business, and the wealthy in both societies.

To any rational mind, the border must have seemed, from the outset, a ridiculous concept – unless the selfish interests of the English establishment and local self-interest in both parts of Ireland demanded the suspension of rational thought. For the English, the border provided a way to weaken any prospect of an independent Irish economy threatening British economic interests. For the northern unionists, the border provided the means by which the Unionist Party could maintain its hold on power, its dispensing of privilege and therefore wealth on a social class basis, and its domination of an antagonistic minority –  northern nationalists including republicans. For the southern political class, from independence through to today, the border allowed for the creation of a hegemonic capitalist state aided by an extreme form of the Catholic church, organised along ultramontanist lines, whose use to the political class was, among other things, its capacity and determination to inculcate obedience to authority into the citizens of the state, the vast majority of whom were Catholics, and its absolute rejection of the validity of either socialism or republicanism which suited the interests of the political, professional and business ‘elite’.

What partition has given us today is a small island with a contrived, porous border that distorts the political, social and economic life of both entities, demands two separate civil administrations and a duplication of the full range of public services, operates with two different currencies and tax systems, and two often very different legal systems and sets of legislation and regulation. That porous border creates a black economy on both sides, damaging local business and farming interests, diminishing tax revenue receipts, and thereby cumulatively affecting employment and economic expansion. It separates cities, towns and villages from their natural hinterlands. But worst of all, that border has divided the Irish people, not just northern Protestants and Dissenters from their southern Catholic counterparts, but as the recent presidential debates in the South showed, the citizens of the 26 Counties from those ‘north of the border’. Over the past 90 years partitionist thinking, and suspicion of the ‘other’ has become embedded among elements on both sides of the border.

In those circumstances, getting rid of that border so as to reunify the island is impossible in the short term, highly unlikely in the medium term and problematic in the long term – as long as the status quo in both parts of the island remains more or less the same. What would change that is a radical transformation in either or both parts of the island. There has been change north of the border in recent years, not enough to satisfy some, but it is incremental and reasonably progressive. If the North wrests economic independence from Whitehall that could speed up the rate of change. But south of the border, despite the virtual annihilation of Fianna Fáil at the recent general election, no change. The emperor is dead, long live the emperor. The right-wing political hegemony persists, albeit wearing the fig-leaf of Labour Party participation in a government determined to follow the diktats of the Goldman Sachs dominated EU.

If those ‘republicans’ who insist on no Irish Republic prior to the eradication of the border have their way, then not only will the border stay put for a very long time, but the 26 Counties will likely remain a hegemonic right-wing plutarchy. If the border is an absurdity, then equally absurd is the belief that a northern unionist, or a northern nationalist for that matter, would want to be part of such a corrupt, regressive plutarchy as is the southern state, that falsely describes itself as a republic when it is patently not.

There is a way of speeding up the whole process. It involves a radical transformation that lies within the collective power of the citizens of the southern state to achieve, if they have a mind to do it. Given the on-going destruction of our economy and with it the extreme social disruption that that has caused a sufficient number of citizens may be much more amenable to consider radical options than they might have been in the past. That way of speeding up transformational change is to put back into place in the 26 Counties the Irish Republic as outlined in the Proclamation of 1916, ratified in the Declaration of the first Dáil in 1919, and in suspension since the passing into law of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922.

In the history of the independent Irish state there has never been a more auspicious time to place the Irish Republic on the table as a major part of the process of reunifying the people of this small island. The election of a new president whose main election pledge was to work towards creating for the first time since independence a ‘true republic’ provides one opening for discussing what the Irish Republic outlined in paragraph four of the Proclamation might offer, not just to the citizens of the southern state, but to the people of the island as a whole. A series of centenaries of key moments and events in modern Irish history will occur over the next four years which will inevitably involve consideration of the various ‘isms’ – nationalism and unionism, republicanism and socialism, feminism, sectarianism, and so on.

In considering these things, it will be important to go further back in history, to the late 18th century and to the aims and objectives of the Society of the United Irishmen, and the Society’s origins among Protestants and Dissenters, mainly in the northeast of the island. Arising out of that, the imp of sectarianism will need to be confronted, and its origins in the machinations of the English coloniser , acknowledged in paragraph four of the Proclamation. In other words, the English succeeded through fomenting sectarianism from 1795 using the newly created Orange Order to turn the importers into Ireland of Enlightenment republicanism, Protestants and Dissenters, into becoming unionists, dividing them in the process from the Catholic majority. There lies the origins of partition.

The ethos of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic springs directly from the ethos of the United Irishmen of – “forwarding a brotherhood of affection, a communion of rights, and an union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion”. Written in the main by Protestants and Dissenters, it is echoed in the text of paragraph four of the Proclamation, updated to address Irish women as well as Irish men – ‘The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past’. No better guarantee of Liberty, Equality and Community than this to be found, and it is a legacy left by the Protestants and Dissenters – and Catholics – of the 18th century to all of the people of the island today.

None of the above should be taken to imply that the process of bringing the northern unionist population to consider the potential of having direct input into the shaping of a new republic will be simple or easy. There is the central question of personal and national identity, no simple thing to deal with in any community. Understanding why and how unionism in its modern maifestation came into being and how it was developed through to the signing of the Ulster Covenant in 1912 and beyond, and whether its central aim can be realised at a time when the British government is implicitly showing a willingness to disengage from the northern state for, of course, its own selfish reasons, can and should be explored during the centenary of the Ulster Covenant in 2012. The question to be asked of Ulster unionists is what ‘ism’ will replace unionism if the link with Britain is substantially broken, as it will be.

Ulster unionists are descended substantially from the Plantation of Ulster by mainly Scottish ‘settlers’ imposed by the English on lands owned by the indigenous Irish people. The Protestant people of the six counties are most often described as ‘Ulster-Scots’. It is well worth exploring the possibilities of forging a strong alliance between an independent Scotland – with the possibility that it will be a Scottish Republic – and a 32 county Irish Republic,  and of this connection being the source of a realignment of the main source of identity for northern unionists while simultaneously acknowledging the very strong connection over thousands of years between the people of Scotland and the people of Ireland. Such a solution, part of a very progressive Green Party policy document on resolving the conflict in the north in the mid 1990s, that regrettably fell at the last hurdle of ratification by the party, would represent a win-win solution for Irish nationalists and unionists and for Scottish nationalists and unionists.

How to engage Ulster unionists in the process of dismantling an absurd border? The answer lies in demonstrating serious intent to construct in the 26 counties a true republic that protects religious and civil liberties, that aims to create the conditions not just for prosperity for its citizens but their happiness too, that guarantees to treat all citizens equally and in a just and fair manner, and that sees all of the children of the nation – all of them – as the greatest resource for the future, to be encouraged and fostered in their development to full citizenship through progressive and enlightened policies.

The greatest prize for the republic would be the active participation in all decision-making and implementation of policy of the people of the six north-eastern counties, Catholic, Protestant, Dissenter and people of other religions and none, with their particular attributes and characteristics adding to the governance of a republic owned by its citizens for the benefit of all and the exclusion of none. When those voices from the north are part of a national parliament and administration the revolution will be complete, and the vision of the United Irishmen, kept alive by the revolutionaries of 1916 in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, can at last be realised.

The conundrum resolved, and important work to be done. The prize is worth it. Let’s start talking.

Republicanism Versus Nationalism(s) 2

By the time the American and French revolutions had taken place at the end of the eighteenth century, Ireland had been dominated by the English for half a millennium.  Substantial parts of the island, especially the north-eastern area, had been planted with Protestant and Presbyterian settlers from Britain. The Treaty of Limerick had turned Protestants into first class citizens, Non-Conformists into second-class, and Catholics into non-citizens and the subject of Penal Laws.

Parliament was reserved for the Protestant landlord class, who controlled, according to Wolfe Tone ‘…five-sixths of the landed property of the nation…the quiet enjoyment of the church, the law, the revenue, the army, the navy, the magistracy, the corporations – in a word, of the whole patronage of Ireland.’

Although there were twice as many Dissenters (mainly Presbyterians) as Protestants, they did not enjoy the same privileges, and were engaged mainly in farming and manufacturing, centred principally in Antrim and Down.  The Dissenters had supported the American Revolution and saw, both in it and in the French Revolution, the model which they could adopt and, by uniting with their Catholic fellow-countrymen, create an independent democratic secular republic.

A growing number of radical intellectuals in Dublin who were also informed by Enlightenment ideas and excited by developments in Europe and in America, including Thomas Russell, William Drennan, Napper Tandy and Wolfe Tone, began to formulate a  political philosophy which was grounded on modern democratic principles.

Wolfe Tone’s pamphlet An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland helped convince the northern Dissenters of the possibility of common cause.  In October 1991 Tone was in Belfast to assist in the formation of the first United Irishmen’s club, and a short while later formed a club in Dublin. The constitution of the Society of United Irishmen stated in its first article its intent as “forwarding a brotherhood of affection, a communion of rights, and an union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion”. By 1797 records show that the United Irishmen had 128,000 sworn members spread mainly across nine counties.

The society was legal until 1794 when it was finally suppressed by the government, but it continued to operate underground.  By now, its well organised propaganda campaigns had succeeded in politicising the population at large, and the British were very well aware that the unity of purpose between Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter looked set to threaten its carefully worked out project of colonising, dominating, and eventually assimilating Ireland. A reaction to this was necessary.

In the north, in 1795, the Protestant Orange Order emerged.  Members quickly took up positions in large numbers in the yeomanry, whose function was to supplement the military arm of government at local level. This could not have happened so quickly without the government’s consent, or more likely encouragement.

The second event of significance in 1795 was the founding of the Catholic seminary at Maynooth which cemented relations between the Roman Catholic church and Dublin Castle.  The French Revolution and the closure of seminaries there had cut off the supply of priests, just as the Catholic population in Ireland was expanding.  The fear was that if those seminaries were to reopen in the future, then young seminarians who were sent there for their education might pick up bad revolutionary habits.

That is the basis of the paradox that has beset Irish republicanism, the weaning away of the very people who might most consciously adhere to the ideals of republicanism – the Protestants and Dissenters, and the beginnings of a new brand of Catholicism known as Ultramontanism in Ireland.

Ultramontane Catholicism puts an emphasis on the supremacy of the Pope over local spiritual leaders such as Bishops, but also over rulers and governments. The British had never been able to subdue the rebellious Catholic Irish, the intention now was that the Pope and his bishops and priests in Ireland would take over that task, and that Maynooth College would turn out the new brand of priest with a new authoritarianism and a sectarian message which had not been explicit in the old semi-autonomous Irish Catholic  Church.

So there is the double wedge that the British government used to destroy the unity of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter under the banner of Irish republicanism. We live with the consequences of that to this day.

What was it that Wolfe Tone said? It was“England, the never-failing source of our political evils…”.

It is not that the English, or more properly the British, were done with that double act in Ireland. It became the standard British policy all around the world in every country that the emerging British Empire colonised – ‘Divide and Conquer’. The effects of setting tribe against tribe, religion against religion, do not disappear when the coloniser leaves, or in the case of Ireland, leaves partially. The negative, destructive, destabilising consequences live on and on with lethal outcomes.

Despite all that the British did to destroy Irish republicanism it survived and adopted to new ‘isms’ – nationalism, socialism, feminism – and absorbed them into the movement’s evolving ideals, the best expression of which is to be found in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic of 1916. There is a line in paragraph four of the Proclamation which refers back to the events of 1795 and the British manipulation of Irish society for its own ends – “…oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past“.

There is more, of course to this story. It will be continued.