I want a united Ireland, but only through dialogue
Youths in Lurgan face PSNI officers following the arrest of leading republican Colin Duffy at the weekend
I have this in common with dissident republicans -- and indeed with orthodox Sinn Fein: I believe in a united Ireland. NOT through violence, murder and coercion, but through consent, dialogue and democratic support.
Following the atrocities of the last eight days, I have read calls for people to renounce the idea of a united Ireland for once and for all. I have also read strong denouncements of those who affirm belief in a united Ireland.
But why should the dissident IRA take possession of a perfectly legitimate and honourable aspiration, which many Irishmen and Irishwomen have held throughout the decades? You don't have to be an advocate of physical force to hold such a view: you don't even have to be a republican, or even a nationalist.
One of the most surprising champions of a united Ireland was the unionist Edward Carson. Carson vehemently opposed Home Rule, but he also passionately opposed partition.
He refused to attend the opening of the Belfast parliament -- opened by King George V in 1921 at Belfast City Hall, Stormont only following in 1932 -- because, to him, the creation of Northern Ireland represented a kind of failure. Carson wanted all Ireland as one -- under the crown.
Carson, the Dubliner, saw himself as both a unionist and an Irishman. In 1914, he had said to the Home Rule nationalist Tom Kettle going off to join the Great War -- "We're both Irishmen, and that is what matters."
In 1925, at Westminster, Carson argued against erecting a statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the mother of parliaments. He believed it was insensitive to his fellow Irishmen. (He lost the debate and the Lord Protector's statue stands outside the Commons to this day.)
Carson could not have the united Ireland that he wanted -- a "union of hearts", with England, Scotland and Wales. Yet he was never reconciled to the partition of Ireland. If Edward Carson could believe in a united Ireland -- then it is obvious that you do not have to be a violent republican to support the very idea. Partition was always an imperfect solution to an incorrigible problem. Yet politics is 'the art of the possible' and we have lived with the compromise arrived at, and accepted by democratic majorities in both parts of the island.
Irish nationalists have traditionally aspired to a united Ireland, but Garret FitzGerald spoke for the majority of southern nationalists in the 1970s when he said: "You cannot bomb a million Protestants into a united Ireland." Hear, hear.
Efforts to abolish partition over the 20th century either invoked violence, or a sour-minded and negative campaign. In the 1950s, as Conor Cruise O'Brien recalls in his great book 'State Of Ireland', Irish diplomats around the world were urged to pursue "the policy of the sore thumb" -- that is, to embarrass Britain on every occasion about the injustice of partition.
Such a policy led precisely nowhere. It merely cemented partition deeper, as Ulster unionists affirmed ever louder their determination never to be forced into a united Ireland.
After many decades of blood and tears, a new maturity of co-operation emerged, and a democratic mandate recognised that the respective parts of Ireland shall be governed according to the electorate's wishes. The special demographics of Northern Ireland have ordained that power-sharing must be made workable.
But there is still nothing amiss with aspiring to a united Ireland, through peaceful means. The whole country would be all the better for such an arrangement.
I can hardly think of a more stimulating tonic for Dail Eireann than to have a phalanx of sharp-witted Northern politicians taking their seats in Leinster House. At last we would have a parliament with a full spectrum of left, right, conservative, liberal, labour and property interests. It would be hugely exciting.
As for the Seanad -- which at present many commentators want to abolish -- it could be reconstructed in a manner modelled on the excellent Free State Senate of the 1920s, in which southern unionists such as Lord Mayo and Lord Granard, businessmen such as Andrew Jameson, feisty old landowners like Sir John Keane -- who argued mightily against literary censorship -- served the nation.
These individuals had not supported Home Rule, but they were willing to recognise the will of the majority and do their best to bring their expertise to the service of the State. It was a very useful device for inclusiveness.
A reconstructed Seanad/Senate could serve to bring into the Oireachtas those people who could serve the whole 32 counties usefully -- experienced individuals like Nuala O'Loan, fine veterans like Seamus Mallon, even, possibly, someone like the Duke of Abercorn, whose family has a long tradition of Ulster unionism, but are friendly visitors to Dublin.
A united -- or shall we say 'reconstituted'? -- Ireland would take a lot of imaginative thinking. How to reconcile the two traditions in their flags and symbols, just for starters: very possibly some kind of special status might need to be arranged for the six counties, at least over a transitional period. It would also require compromise on all sides -- as the country and western ballad puts it: "When you take, you gotta give/So live and let live ... " ('I Never Promised You a Rose Garden'.)
It may not come about for a very long time, but there is nothing dishonourable, or wrong, about aspiring to the island of Ireland operating in unison. And it is entirely possible -- indeed, more probable -- that this vision could come to pass without ever having recourse to violence or coercion.
If Edward Carson believed in a united Ireland -- so can anyone, right across the political spectrum. To be sure, Carson's terms of reference were different from those of Irish nationalists, but terms of reference are just details: it is the principle that matters.
