Celebrating our friendship
President Michael D Higgins’s State visit to the United Kingdom next week brings one momentous period of British-Irish relations to an end and opens up a new one that will be more friendly yet still challenging. His host Queen Elizabeth II is no ordinary monarch to Irish citizens but the head of a state and a former empire to whom a required oath of allegiance provoked civil war after the 1921 Treaty. Residual resentment, which alongside the Northern Ireland troubles, prevented her predecessors coming here until her extraordinary visit in 2011 has now been transformed into a close interdependence demanding strategic political attention.
An impressive effort has been made by Queen Elizabeth and the British government to ensure full ceremonial symbolism and political links are made available so Mr Higgins can connect fully with the Irish involvement in Britain. His contacts with the royal family, the government and parliamentarians, and with business, community, arts and entertainment leaders will give ample opportunity to express these intimate links. The Irish emigrant involvement in building Britain’s canals, railways, roads, hospitals and other infrastructures over the last 300 years leaves an indelible and abiding imprint, as does Irish participation in Britain’s wars, social movements, cultural life and politics. So does the equivalent and continuing British influence here.