MacGill Summer School 2019

23 July

It is a pleasure to be invited back to speak at the Magill Summer School. I looked back at the comments I made last year, when I confessed I wasn’t optimistic about the year ahead, but I don’t think I realised quite how far through the looking glass we’d go, with Boris Johnson due to become UK Prime Minister in the next few minutes!

Introduction

I’ve been on holiday in Connemara, where I was born, for the last week. While procrastinating, instead of preparing for this event, I read James Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’. This collection of short stories, published in 1914, describes Dublin middle and working class life at the turn of the twentieth century: a Dublin exhausted, having lost its way after the fall of Parnell, economically stagnant, frustrated at the repeated thwarting of Home Rule and with the nascent rise of cultural and separatist Irish nationalism (about which Joyce was sceptical), and conveying an overall sense of paralysis and ennui, with the fate of the whole society. being in the hands of, and at the mercy of others.

For me, ‘Dubliners’ prefigures the situation today in Northern Ireland. The near collapse of the Good Friday Agreement institutions, the looming probability of a no-deal Brexit and the sense that decisions were being made, or our fate decided, not in Belfast but in London, Dublin or Brussels.

A major feature last two generations in the political life of the North has been the ingrained lack of responsibility-taking, and that a willingness not to take hard decisions brings political dividends. Politicians are resigned, even happy, to let others decide our fate, and the voting population, including through hopelessness and frustration, has endorsed this. Collectively the parties which have had the upper hand over the last decade and a half, co-dependent as they are, have been happy to implement power-division rather than power-sharing, playing the zero-sum game of flexing their competing nationalisms.

North/South dimension

Of course our topic this morning is developing North South arrangements, but I would like locate my comments within the context of Hume’s three strands because, neglected as it has been, the three stranded approach as enshrined in the GFA is still the only viable pathway we have for progress – under whichever constitutional configuration you desire – and for charting a course out of the Brexit dilemmas, that aren’t going away soon. Meaningful progress in any one of the Agreement’s three strands needs movement in all three.

For all that the two dominant parties have spent the last decade dividing the spoils, little meaningful North South integration has emerged, precious little use has been made of the North South bodies so hard fought for in the 1998 negotiations. To me then, calls now for border poll are akin to removing the scaffolding before the structures are built. Some advances have been made, in health and energy, but other highly achievable possibilities surely exist in the areas of economic development, third level education and transport.

Currently it does look like a somewhat forlorn hope, but in the benign backstop scenario that would have allowed Northern Ireland to remain in both the customs union and single market and also in a post-Brexit UK ( truly a Good Friday style compromise – where we are currently both Irish & British so too could be both EU and Non-EU )- and which would have conveyed significant competitive economic advantages. Given that the demand for skilled labour, especially in areas such as IT, is at full capacity in the Republic it would make sense to promote Foreign Direct Investment on an all-island basis, thereby bringing Invest NI and the Industrial Development Authority into a closer and mutually beneficial working arrangement.

In setting the tone for deepening North / South work, I believe that nationalism is unduly self-limiting by continued advocacy for Irish Unity as ‘the righting of an historic wrong’, and failing to create the conditions where the North would be an attractive (or even plausible) proposition for the Republic in the event of a future unity poll.

Many in the Republic have what Diarmuid Ferriter has called a “rhetorical empathy” for closer relationships with the North, but while we project only dysfunction, hostility and cost, while we focus only on the “how” rather than the “why” of Irish Unity, while we just loudly repeat that change is inevitable, while the narrative is always of nationalist struggle and defensive unionism, I fear that empathy Professor Ferriter identifies will remain just rhetorical.

Instead we have to articulate positive, progressive alternatives to the status quo, for what a new Ireland could look, feel and actually be in the future, and how it can deliver greater social and economic cohesion for each of us and our families, in the North and in the South. And particularly for those of my political persuasion, to articulate how a new social democratic state can deliver more for working people than by continuing to exist as a UK region, consistently near the bottom in many indicators of economic and social well-being.

We haven’t done that yet.

The border poll should be the last, and not first, piece of the jigsaw.

That of course is not to say that the dyamic in this conversation is not changing, due to forces both organic and manufactured. Many of the moderate nationalist tradition that I come from are increasingly of the view that if we are going down to constitutional Ground Zero on Brexit that we should absolutely be recasting relationships on a more North-South basis. The instinct towards maintaining the status quo, to minimise turbulence by doing our work primarily within NI, has less weight in the current turbulent context.

But to put the foot hard on the pedal for reunification as a direct consequence of Brexit is to risk repeating the lasting, profound and mirror image mistake of the past, simply a rerun of the last century and of an unhappy minority trapped. Our modern, pluralist new Ireland will not built on a narrow electoral win slipped through in a period of chaos. The academic Mary Murphy, writing on the EU and Northern Ireland, points to the necessity of majority support across both traditions for major change. The 1998 Agreement had it; Brexit does not, and currently Irish Unity does not. Seamus Mallon’s excellent new book makes wide ranging moral and technical points on how UI can be achieved, and the vicious response he received from some within nationalism points to the generosity and creativity deficit this debate still contains.

Though decades old, and with areas largely overtaken by EU level co-operation, the New Ireland Forum’s comprehensive reports from the mid-80s show what is possible when this conversation is invested in and bought into, though I have much sympathy with the argument that the current Irish government cannot credibly and safely cross the wires of Brexit and Irish Unity. This is exactly why our focus has to be on restoring the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement in the first instance, so that we could be convening the New Ireland Forum at a point when there is trust, credibility and legitimacy, which would give meaning and authority to its outcomes, and limit the excuses of those who won’t engage.

Alongside detailed propositions on areas including transport, legal systems, the economy and agriculture, the New Ireland Forum was progressive and creative on the constitutional model a new Ireland could take, that a unitary state is not the only model, generous ideas advanced in particular by John Hume and Garrett Fitzgerald. Richard Humphrey builds on this in this in his recent book, Beyond the Border, arguing that in fact that various institutions in the North provided for in the GFA, including the Assembly but also like the PSNI, will have to exist – that there is no legal provision for them to be abolished or to expire unless formal changes are agreed to that treaty. As a starting point, we should make clear that all minority protections that currently apply will continue – that unionists in the UI would have the same status as nationalists in NI.

East-West relations

Anglo-Irish relationships are in a parlous state due to the disruption caused by Brexit and the rhetoric around ‘No Deal’. For the North the history of the past three decades shows clearly that for solutions to have the confidence of all communities in the North, both governments must be cooperating in a meaningful way, and independently of political expediency practised by the UK government as is currently the case in its ‘confidence and supply’ arrangements with the DUP.

It took two decades of engagement to get to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Any change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland isn’t going to be a 1997 Hong Kong type situation, where there was a defined date for a change of sovereignty and a neat ceremonial handing over of the flag.

If the Brexit ‘nervous breakdown’ continues in the UK, we would have to be realistic about the capacity and willingness of the UK government to meaningfully engage on practical issues like continuing citizenship rights, pension contributions etc.

Relations within NI

The Northern poet John Hewitt, mentor of Heaney and Longley and so many others, called on of us Northerners,

“to make amends by fraternising by small friendly gestures,

“hoping by patient words I may convince my people and this people that we are changed, if not to kin to cohabitants,

“As goat and ox may graze in the same field and each gain something from proximity”

That is the task the Agreement sets before us – challenging, sometimes tedious, work-but whatever happens in constitutional terms the goat and the ox will be grazing in the same field.

This is hardly rocket science, but closer North/South co-operation and reconciliation simply cannot happen without co-operation and reconciliation within the North, and whatever our newly enhanced possibilities and optimism, nationalists have a responsibility to make clear that we haven’t checked out of the Strand One relationship.

We need a functioning executive to drive a functioning North South Ministerial Council and pulling down those structures with no plan to re-establish them is every bit as injurious to the Agreement as some of the rights suppressions and Brexit moves of the DUP and UK government.

Unionism and nationalism are falling into the trap of caricaturing each other and. dismissing any hints of our shared identity. The last twenty years saw the slow, positive growth of. a regional, ‘Northern Irish’ identity – often a subset of Irishness or Britishness, but with pride in what we share. Many dismiss that as insufficiently Irish, or partitionist, and I generally ask them… “Have you ever met anyone from Cork?”. Many have spent the last week arguing viciously about whether Rory McIlroy is British or Irish. (The Golf has also given us a beautiful illustration of successful North South Co-operation, in the pairing of Ardglass’ Bo Martin and Offally’s Shane Lowry).

For some political leaders, vision has not extended beyond ‘separate but equal’ and no role in governance is imagined for those who do not identify primarily as Nationalist or Unionist (but whose votes will be crucial in a future constitutional poll). I do not exclude the SDLP for some responsibility for this. Not allowing the Agreement. to evolve to capture what is now around 20% of the electorate, who may have views on constitutional future but who don’t wish to be defined by it, will ensure we remain trapped in the vicious cycle of whereby DUP and SF intransigence feeds the other at every election.

Compounding this is a system for forming government that offers no incentive for compromise, no need for shared purpose other than just filling the seats around the table, and no mechanism to prevent either larger party vetoing the whole project. The Institutions have been allowed to develop in a way that inadvertently incentivises intransigence and division.

In the necessary conversation about fine tuning the structures, perhaps now is also the time to consider a more structured and systematic way to assess when the time is right for the Border Poll arrangement in the Northern Ireland Act. The border doesn’t move an inch in either direction on the basis of an Assembly, local or Westminster, but you wouldn’t know that from the lampposts in and around Belfast before the local elections in May.

Conclusion

Sometimes, even using the “we want Unionists to be part of the conversation” trope can come across as meaningless political rhetoric. Speaking as a social democrat and as someone who wants Ireland to be governed by all the people in this island, if I was asked to join a forum or conversation on imagining the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the coming decades, can I honestly say that I’d jump at the chance?

The is a danger that we are speaking only to those who agree with our point of view, and we are yet to fully understand the position and concerns of Unionism and those who identify as neither nationalist nor unionists, many of whom are open to a convincing argument.

The Ulster Hall is in my South Belfast constituency. It is there that an increasingly ill Charles Stewart Parnell, deposed as Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, harried and at bay, in May 1891 gave his last great speech; he died five months later. What he said still has resonance:

“It is the duty of the majority to leave no stone unturned, no means unused to conciliate the reasonable or unreasonable prejudices of the minority… …Ireland can never be united, practically united, so long as there is this important minority who consider…that the concession of legitimate freedom to Ireland means harm and damage to them, either to their spiritual or temporal interests {Until addressed} the work of building up an independent Ireland will have upon it a fatal clog and a fatal drag.”

This need not mean pandering, nor appeasement, nor veto, but will mean the courage and honesty to answer fair questions. To get this wrong risks realising an Ireland that is anything but united. As John Hume constantly reminded us, a New Ireland is about bringing together people and not just territory, and Brexit has done very little to unite people.

For every scenario ahead of us, evolved, strong and practical North South arrangements are necessary, to synchronize two very divergent economies-one very open and the other quite closed- to weather the Brexit storm, and to give shape to the legitimate aspirations of those of us who seek to leave the United Kingdom.

What both the Brexit and current accelerated border poll campaigns ignore is the fact that there is no constitutional arrangement for this island or continent that makes all your problems or your neighbours go away.

Northern Ireland political dialogue sometimes appears Janus-faced: the past for retrospective justification, and the unclear future , as a justification. from distracting ourselves from the job of improving the daily lives of the population today. But we live in the here and now, and need solutions for the here and now.

We can’t fall back on the easy answer that because we are currently setting each other’s teeth on edge, that the North is ungovernable – someone gets to govern it, we just have to decide if we want that to be in a way that is accountable and consistent with principles of power-sharing.

Thank you.

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