TIME AND TIDE
The arrival of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, first identified in South Africa in November 2021, threatened to overcome the hospital services North and South as the second pandemic Christmas approached. When the infection began to circulate more widely in schools across the country, the shortcomings of the government strategy in the South to deal with Covid-19 became more apparent. Most negligent was the failure to introduce more effective ventilation systems, and the decision to suspend contact tracing, in schools to combat the airborne virus. Despite a successful roll-out of vaccinations across most age groups during the summer and autumn, the new, more transmissible Omicron variant threatened to engulf the country in a massive fourth wave of infection. The new version turned out to be milder, leading to fewer hospitalisations and ICU admissions, but it did have the ability to infect people who were doubly vaccinated and boosted. As the year turned, daily Covid-19 cases were officially exceeding 20,000 in the South, with proportionally higher figures in the North. As the virus spread rapidly through the population, PCR testing facilities were unable to keep up with demand and case numbers were estimated to be three times those reported by the health authorities.
Covid generated another political scandal in the UK when photos emerged of Boris Johnson and his wife, Carrie, celebrating with his staff in the garden of 10 Downing Street during the strict Covid-19 lockdown in May 2020. Claims by ministers that those present were working, while enjoying cheese and wine and eating pizza, were widely rubbished. Days later, in a by-election in North Shropshire, one of their safest seats, the Tories suffered a devastating defeat to the Liberal Democrats. The by-election was called following the departure of former NI minister Owen Patterson in the wake of a lobbying and financial scandal, and the result saw his majority of more than 20,000 overturned.
As the new year dawned, Johnson was fast losing his friends and allies in his cabinet, his party and the establishment media while coming no closer to attaining the dream of the sovereign, global and prosperous Britain he had promised. Among those to jump ship was chief Brexit negotiator David Frost, who resigned over the direction of the government under Johnson and was replaced by Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. For unionism, the declining popularity of Johnson and the sudden departure of Frost made their ambition to get rid of the protocol and the ‘border in the Irish sea’ all the more unrealistic. An announcement by Jeffrey Donaldson, reported in the Belfast Telegraph in early January 2022, to ‘pause’ his threat to bring down the Stormont institutions and to allow Truss time to resolve the problems created by the protocol in renewed negotiations with the EU was an acknowledgement of these shifting realities. A month later, First Minister Paul Givan resigned as the DUP collapsed the executive.
The soaring support for Sinn Féin in the end-of-year opinion polls in the South, with the party gaining 15 points over both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, raised the real prospect that Sinn Féin might, within a few years, lead the government in the South while also being the largest party in the North. An Ipsos/MRBI poll for the Irish Times showed the party at 35 per cent (compared to 20 per cent for both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael) in early December.
Warning unionism to prepare for the inevitable, Alex Kane wrote for the same publication at the end of that month:
Sinn Féin is now topping opinion polls on both sides of the Border and remains on a continuing upward swing in the south. While nothing is ever inevitable in politics, only a fool would dismiss the possibility of there being a Sinn Féin first minister and Sinn Féin taoiseach in office at the same time in or around early 2025. And if losing their overall majority in the Assembly and possibly even the role of first minister in a few months are clearly psychological blows for unionism, I’m not sure how a first minister/taoiseach tag-team would be described.
Whether as Taoiseach or leader of the opposition in the coming years, Mary Lou McDonald will have a crucial role to play in negotiating the course to a successful unity referendum which, she insisted, can be achieved by the end of the decade.
Asked by the author what preparations she would make if she were in power, McDonald said that the first would be to declare that the government was committed to a strategy to achieve unity ‘not just rhetorically but as a matter of contemporary imperative in the here and now’.
At the same time, London has to decide to act within the spirit of their claim that Britain has ‘no selfish or strategic interest in Ireland’ and within the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, which explicitly says that it is for the Irish and the Irish alone acting without impediment to decide our future. The EU has to decide to protect its interest as it now emphatically has skin in the game. The Irish border is now not just our problem, it is now an ongoing European problem. The EU needs to become a vehicle and a persuader for Irish reunification. There is precedent for them taking [such] an approach in the past in Cyprus and Germany.
‘The next phase is preparation and that is where a citizens’ assembly comes in. It is also where unionism needs to step up and to engage in the first instance. Following that, the modalities of the referendums themselves have to be worked out, the timing of them and the nature of the question,’ she said. This involves clarity on the basis of calling a referendum ‘whether that is demographics, election results or a combination of those’. This will require detailed engagement between Dublin and London, with the Irish government pressing for clarity on the metrics and measures the British propose to apply, McDonald continued.
She said there should be detailed policy analysis and preparation on an all-island health and education system and on constitutional changes, and that following the referendums there is likely to be a transition period of up to a decade.
Even with the referendum campaign successfully run and taken over the line, you are then into a phase of transition. So the question arises, not just in terms of duration, what does that look like? That’s the core issue. So we can have a policy position around an all-island healthcare system or implementing a new constitution and we can draw from examples internationally as to how others have done that. But what will be unique to us here in Ireland is the question around how quickly, at what pace, what’s the dynamic of actually finally delivering that?
My working assumption is that, post-referendum, you will probably have a decade of transitioning. Some of the changes will happen very quickly. The economic, trading dynamic across the island will knit together very quickly. The evidence, post-Brexit, on how all-island trade has spiked gives an indication of that. It will take a longer-term transition to deliver on the models of education, plural, and what they look like. If you have kids and young people somewhere on their educational path and journey, we can’t disrupt that and put very young lives into disarray. We have to be mindful of real people living their real lives, looking after their families in real terms while trying to reach the higher-level transitional objectives.
Based on the political experience of previous campaigns, the Sinn Féin leader has a view on how successful unity referendums can be achieved.
People look to the campaigns around repeal of the eighth and marriage equality and there are elements of that approach that will apply. For the referendums to pass and to translate into a successful transition, civic society outside of the political bubble has to be fully engaged. All of this has to be informed by what people actually want. The political system on its own will not have broad enough shoulders to carry this on its own, so politics will need the expertise and engagement of NGOs, the voluntary sector, business and trade unions. That can have the really positive, knock-on effect of engaging people at the grass roots, ordinary punters who normally would not be part of a big political campaign or a big political transition. We will be forced to make room for people, and I think that’s a healthy thing.
Given the scale of the task of preparing for a transformation of political and constitutional structures and of society, she envisages a rolling process of citizens’ assemblies. This would ensure a representation of citizens across both jurisdictions reflecting gender, class, region and identity.
‘It has to be regarded as a rolling process that is populated and then re-populated and the work for which would be very intense. These would be supplemented by a dedicated Oireachtas committee on a united Ireland following the Green and the White Papers and that more formal political process,’ she said. A department for a united Ireland would only be useful if the government ‘has declared for unity and [is] making moves’.
Returning to the campaigning during the referendums, McDonald expects that each political party would have its own campaigns.
Unionists will argue for the union and those who want reunification will argue for that. You will have the persuadables, the immovables and a collection of the indifferent somewhere in the middle. The contours of that campaign are going to be very interesting and very different from anything that we’ve ever seen before in the North. However, during the big constitutional debates on marriage equality and on reproductive rights there was as big an interest north of the border in those campaigns. Those were essentially all-Ireland campaigns even though it affected the 1937 constitution and only the 26 counties. The impetus for reunification includes Brexit, the shift in demographics and electoral realities. But there is also the generational shift which to me is perceptible all across the island and where I believe younger people and activists will coalesce in ways which would not have happened 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.
McDonald believes that more people will come out to answer the big and ‘profound’ questions posed by a unity referendum than would normally participate in national elections.
Once these great questions are asked, a different and a deeper type of sentiment is rallied. You got a snapshot of that with marriage equality, with abortion. Watch this space because it will speak to something very profound. These changes will be fundamental. We have got lots of things wrong on our partitioned island. This is our big chance to get things right. Nobody is saying we have the referendum tomorrow. What we are saying is start deciding and preparing today.
McDonald said that women will be a hugely influential force in this process of change as they were in the recent referendums. ‘Women will be essential. Women were at the heart of marriage equality and the change for women’s reproductive rights. That is not to discount men at all, but women as an emerging and really strong political force will be key to this. I think we will find common ground in a way that many wouldn’t expect and that our young people, in whom I have the most immense confidence, will drive this really hard.’
McDonald does not believe that the question of the flag, anthems and symbols of a new Ireland will be deal breakers in the process of constitutional change. ‘The belief that I hold is that the green, white and orange tells the story of a united Ireland. It shows the two anchor traditions of the island in peace. Others will take a different view. Let them bring that case to the table. Similarly with the anthem. As long as it’s not “Ireland’s Call” people will be happy!’ she joked.
For me, the flag is the tricolour, ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ is our anthem. Others will come to the table with a different view, that’s fine, let’s hear it. But is that going to be the deal breaker? No. For me as a woman, for young people, for people with ambition and drive who want the best chance and opportunity, for people with disabilities, for people who really believe and see how Ireland can do so much better, are they going to be the deal breakers? I don’t believe so.
McDonald does not accept the contention that there will inevitably be violent resistance to a transition to unity.
There is an assumption by some people of an inevitability of violence. I will not accept that. It is very important that people like me in leadership roles and perhaps even more importantly people from the loyalist and unionist tradition agree at the outset in our deciding that this is done peacefully, in an orderly and democratic fashion.
Whatever happened in the past has happened. That is not to discount people’s passionately held views and the experiences and the scars that are real and that are still sore. I know all of that, but this conversation ultimately and essentially is about the future. It is about what your life looks like, for your kids, grandchildren. It’s about what we can achieve together. It is the ultimate reconciliation programme.
Among the ‘immovables’ who will never be persuaded by the argument for unity is loyalist activist, Jamie Bryson, who edits and publishes the Unionist Voice. Early in the new year, he generated controversy over his claim that nationalists have taken over many professions in the North, including in the public service, and are using their position to promote a united Ireland. His view was supported by Baroness Kate Hoey, a former Labour Party MP in Britain.
‘There are very justified concerns that many professional vocations have become dominated by those of a nationalist persuasion, and this positioning of activists is then used to exert influence on those in power,’ she said in her foreword to a document entitled ‘Vetoing the Protocol’ published by Unionist Voice.
Bryson went further, accusing nationalists – including legal, business, media and sporting personalities who signed the IF letters to the Taoiseach – of weaponising their professional status.
The actual issue is the weaponisation of the professional class by those of a predominately nationalist political persuasion. I call this an elite nationalist network of influence. I am bemused at the outrage of nationalists who suggest no such network exists, they literally created a ‘civic nationalist’ movement to try and use the professional status of its members to credential nationalist political ideas.
This was not some clandestine movement. They published multiple letters in a national newspaper with the signatories not identified as merely individuals, but rather by their professional status. They therefore self-identified as nationalist academics, lawyers, journalists, etc.
Commentator and author, Susan McKay, accused Hoey and Jeffrey Donaldson, who welcomed the former MP’s remarks, of re-igniting sectarianism against nationalists. Such attitudes, McKay suggested in an Irish Times article, contributed to loyalist attacks in the past, including against members of the legal profession and journalists in the North. Hoey’s comments were also criticised in a statement by the Belfast branch of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) who said her remarks represented ‘an appallingly blinkered view of professional journalists in Northern Ireland’.
The NUJ is affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), the largest civic society organisation in the country, representing almost 800,000 workers across the island. The ICTU can play an important role in managing the discussion on unity referendums, particularly across communities in the North, according to its general secretary, Patricia King. Congress includes union members who both support and oppose a united Ireland, she said, and the motion agreed at its BDC in October 2021, supporting the idea of preparing for referendums, is discussed at each monthly meeting of its general purposes committee.
There are a number of people on the Congress executives, both North and South, who have an interest in this and who didn’t want to see the motion just going off into the ether. The plan will come together as to how we can integrate the conversation into the debate. We have a membership in Northern Ireland, some of whom would be very actively in favour of a united Ireland. We have some who would not be in favour in the Protestant work force. It’s going to be a tricky enough debate but I don’t think it is one Congress can or will shy away from.
Speaking personally, King said that the debate on a united Ireland cannot happen without the labour movement being at the forefront. ‘We need to get into a place where we identify the social and economic issues that need to be addressed in both jurisdictions and where we can establish beyond doubt that having one economy and one society is better and more pleasing for the population than having a divided economy and a divided society.’
The views of people and the demographics are changing all the time and generational change is key to shaping a new Ireland, King added. While there will be those who will resist any change, she believes that a ‘good majority’ of people will accept that a single economy and society can work better for everybody and that change can be managed by consensus. ‘That is where Congress should be aiming for. We should be shaping our policies to push both jurisdictions to improve the societal and economic benchmarks and to show a better life for a majority of people,’ King said.
Employers are already engaged in the discussion on building the all-island economy and Congress regularly meets with their representative organisation, Ibec, at meetings organised through the Shared Island Unit in the Department of the Taoiseach, she said. ‘The labour movement has a part to play in the discussion on a united Ireland. We are an all-island body that has managed for decades and decades to traverse both sides of the divide in the North. There is no reason why we can’t have the debate respectfully.’
For President Michael D. Higgins, the debate on a new Ireland ‘should be preceded by discussion on the matters about which we might be united’. In an interview with this author, President Higgins said that:
If we had a discussion on the matters about which we might be united, you could get an intergenerational agreement on the importance of ecology, you could get an intergenerational agreement on the importance of gender equality and social inclusion, on new forms of institutional arrangements. You could get a general agreement on the separation of Church and state, in terms of integrated education.
For many years and particularly in the British political system, President Higgins suggested, there were too few people who grasped the concept of Irish people solving their own problems. ‘They did not get the idea of all of the Irish people, whatever their backgrounds, possessed and dispossessed, Catholic and Protestant, men and women, discussing on an Irish basis a future for the island of Ireland. That is where we are at now,’ he said.
The issues of constitutional change and of territory would be best discussed after people find the points on which they agree: President Higgins provided one recent example where there has been a broad unity on the question of the proposed and controversial amnesty for conflict killings by the British government. ‘We’re already united on something very important. We’re united on the immorality of the so-called amnesty. The united Irish view from all sides, from both victims of the IRA or victims of state executions and so forth, is that it is better to acknowledge and transact than to invent a bogus amnesia. We’re united on that.’
For his first series of Machnamh discussions and reflections, the president invited a range of academics and writers to examine the key components of history that led to the War of Independence and partition, to consider neglected or under-represented issues, including the role of class and gender in the events of the revolutionary period. This will be followed by further inquiries into the civil war and the evolution of the two states, which can, he said, inform the discussions now taking place on a united Ireland.
In his speech at the opening of the Northern Ireland parliament in 1921, President Higgins recalled, King George V clearly assumed that partition was a temporary arrangement. What evolved was, instead, a mould or shell around each state, one that grew harder and less inclusive as each developed in its own form. In both North and South, and not least to do with clerical influence, ‘in the 1920s and by the time you come to the ’30s it has a shell that is so hard that it is almost impenetrable’.
‘Yes, the migration from the southern state was based on economic reasons but it’s always implicit that sexual oppression and the monstrous treatment and misogynistic nature in relation to its institutions was an important factor,’ President Higgins continued.
‘The oppression of the minority nationalist community in housing, employment and basic civil rights formed a different, but no less undemocratic and unequal, society in the North. Neither state had as its primary purpose providing for the wellbeing of all its citizens on an inclusive basis,’ he said.
It is possible, he argued, for the welfare state and socialised healthcare models that people enjoyed in the North for decades to be extended in a modern, intelligent and effective way to the whole island. There is also a need to adopt a regional approach across the island to ensure that there is more local democracy in the provision of public services, he said.
What you need are devolved powers of meaningful and effective regionalism with budgets that are made accountable. If necessary, and to facilitate all of this, change the local government system completely. Get rid of the county system. Reconsider the design of the cities. You could have a whole series of satellite towns with good communications and transport. That is what people are interested in. An active, well-educated, energetic, caring society. We need to redefine the world of work to say that working in the care environment will be as important as working in the financial area. We need agriculture to take account of sustainability. It won’t be all volume producers but sustainable production for genuine farmers.
Separating people in relation to education isn’t helpful, President Higgins said, and a citizens’ assembly might be a way of exploring a new system that improves outcomes for children, with an inclusive curriculum reflecting the needs and aspirations of all.
There could be a citizens’ assembly to discuss the matters upon which we might agree. You could start with work on the curriculum. I’m not talking about a secular curriculum being imposed either but an open curriculum in the sense of the adequate literacy for our times, a moral guide. You do that work first. Then you look at the control of the schools. You also need to have better school buildings, more teachers. For the first time we might say we’re not going to abandon parents of children who have special needs.
The future Ireland, for President Higgins, ‘isn’t a continuity or a simple modification of what happened North or South. What is necessary is a transcendental leap that passes the excesses of both of these great institutional failures. And they are institutional failures. Emigration is the test of it for so many of the decades.’
We have always been a migrant people. In 1901 there were more people born on the island of Ireland living abroad than living on the island. Now when I visit schools, primary schools in particular, I see people from 50 nationalities being taught by bright young national schoolteachers, working with school management committees which are now mostly lay people.
The future on a shared island is about Irish people solving Irish problems. The role of the state is central to all of this as we have learned from Covid. The recognition suddenly that the person who cleaned the hospital was very, very important. In relation to the new future, the trade union movement should be at the front of the change. Theirs in relation to resisting false divisiveness is the best record in our history.
They include some of the best people to talk about the green economy, the invaluable intersection between housing, education, social policy, ecological change, the value of work and the importance of the shared social space.
President Higgins argued that the discussion on the future of the island has to include consideration of universal basic services to remove the insecurities facing working people, including the curse of low-paid, precarious work.
‘The integration of social responsibility and ecological responsibility also offers an opportunity to improve workers’ rights while eliminating the tedium of work. The idea of universal basic services is to remove the insecurities and fears associated with food, education and housing,’ he said. All of this discussion has to take place from the ground up, including through local and regional discussion, citizens’ assemblies and debate among elected politicians.
We need to have discussions and seminars, North and South, on the title ‘Of That Upon Which We Might Agree’ and that has to precede any simple head counts. Those people who want to call themselves Irish, British or both, or Internationalists, isn’t a difficulty. There is no difficulty about multiple identities. We are not locking our versions of the contemporary Other into the ancestor’s actions. The character of the new place has to be specified as a space of non-exclusive participation and we must be willing to think about new forms and shapes of institutions.
The future has to be made an attractive one. It is not about accommodating old prejudices, it’s a matter of accommodating present realities and future possibilities. We need to be able to live as sensate responsible people, recognising difference. We’re not near that at the moment, for example, in relation to most of the gender politics. The discussion has been about moderate recognition of absolute rights or about moving from the minimal recognition of difference in many cases as a tolerance. My view is we have to get to a point where we see the richness and celebration of difference.
President Higgins said he wants to ‘encourage the maximum openness of mind in relation to institutional change on the issue of unity’.
I’m simply saying the foundations have to be laid for a discussion that will be adequate and positive and that means that we also need to discuss institutional failures and successes, North and South. We haven’t brought our co-operative efforts to where it matters, beyond the handshaking classes. The next stage is where you start into new forms of community exchanges that come from the ground up. The government has a responsibility to encourage patience and understanding. It’s not a matter of making demands. I think there is a big difference between what is an aspiration and what is a demand.
We need to achieve a transcendence. This is what happens at a concert when people actually have a moment of transcendence, it happens in good writing. This is possible, by children and people of all ages, in any part of this island and they must be invited to do that. It’s the quality of the invitation that matters.
The historic and current expression of unionist identity and culture can be protected, while nationalists in the North have a right to the full equality and parity of esteem promised by the GFA.
The issue isn’t in reality the drums or the parades. It is the purpose, the motivation behind it. If it is so important culturally, why would you not do so in the more open spaces rather than go through areas where you have people who have actually struggled with the excesses and the exclusions of your previous regimes. There’s a need for a new sophistication in all of this. Equally, I would invite nationalists to see the difference between seeking any mimic of how they were treated as a minority and the emancipatory challenge of how they must now treat a minority.
President Higgins said that he hopes the Machnamh series will address the question of institutional change in a way that can facilitate a discussion on ‘the issues upon which we are united’.
I do have views on it. I want to encourage the maximum openness of mind in relation to institutional change and a discussion on the issues upon which we’re united. We need to recover a form of utopian thinking. People think that utopian thinking is abstract. In fact, it is from the Greek word ‘eu-topos’, which means a good or better place. We need to have courage and find that better place.