WORLD VIEW:Any new alliance with Britain holds certain potential pitfalls for Ireland, writes PAUL GILLESPIE
ACCORDING TO John Hume and William Hague, relations between Ireland and Britain are being “transformed” following Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the Republic. Enda Kenny spoke of a new “self-belief and sense of who we are”, and of a potentially “transformed” agenda in North-South relations at a conference in UCD.
These terms invite critical appraisal after the initial euphoria that greeted such a successful event.
Political identities are constructed when emerging national selves create others, based on antagonistic or otherwise differentiating relationships. Since there have been few more potent or enduring “Others” than Ireland’s relationship with Britain, or England, it is not surprising that euphoric relief follows such a symbolic reconciliation. History and geographical scale ensure it is felt more strongly on the Irish than on the British side.
Normalisation sounds banal, inadequate to describe the sentiments on display last week. It has been used to analyse improving relations between the US and China, Vietnam and Cuba, or between Turkey and Armenia or India and Pakistan after their conflicted enmities. These are rawer and less developed than the historically entangled or entwined relations between Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. Eamon Gilmore and William Hague say only now can we begin to realise the full potential inherent in relations between our two states.
The promise of stronger relations is not only sentimental, according to David Cameron, but because Britain and Ireland “need each other”, economically, politically and in the European Union. The prime minister’s presence in Dublin, along with foreign secretary Hague, was a significant part of the Queen’s visit. This invites careful political examination of whether, and how, normalisation of British-Irish relations might be transformed. What direction could that take? Are the interests and values at stake the same on both sides?
Normalisation comes after several other major changes in the British-Irish relationship since the 1960s. A decisive shift from dependence to interdependence between the Republic and the UK saw relations become more equal, despite the evident asymmetries of size and power. They were internationalised first through joint EEC/EU membership and then in changing relations with the US. This gave us the confidence to make the transition from unity to stability based on consent as the primary focus of policy on Northern Ireland in the Belfast Agreement. “Normal” Assembly elections seem to complete the process.
Fresh electoral mandates certainly provide a mutual commitment to intensify North-South co-operation. Whether Northern reaction to the Queen’s visit reinforces that is less obvious. It was widely noted there that from Northern Ireland, only the Down GAA executive attended the Croke Park event, and that Sinn Féin abstained from the visit. Some conclude that this, along with the highly controlled security, made it a 26-county event rather than an all-Ireland one. The big question is whether there is fresh energy to extend co-operation economically, and what effect lower corporation taxes in the North might have.
That links North-South issues in Ireland to east-west ones with Britain.
The spectacular outright victory of the SNP in this month’s Scottish elections makes a referendum on independence likely in the next four years. While many more Scottish voters favour the SNP than independence, this dynamic is volatile, with the Conservatives seen more and more as the bearers of an English Eurosceptic nationalism impatient with overspending and assertive Celtic peripheries.
Conceivably, then, we could face the prospect of a more normal and stable Ireland alongside a more abnormal and unstable Britain, however improved the relations between Dublin and London. What are the implications for Ireland of an independent Scotland and a scaled-down UK successor state?
Would it put Irish unification more squarely on the agenda? Would such a successor state not need a deeper engagement with Europe to preserve its international influence?
Thus the east-west dimension raises a deeper “macro-political” issue that translates Britain’s European question into Ireland’s British one. Since 1994, I worked with Garret FitzGerald and others analysing these issues at the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin, publishing two books and several reports on them. The UK could have an outsider, opportunist, late joiner, gambler or leadership role in Europe, depending on circumstances and issues.
This aspect of his work is worth recalling alongside his political work for reconciliation. He believed Ireland’s interests were best served by a constructive UK engagement with the EU, but that the greater independence achieved by Ireland through Europe should not be sacrificed to facilitate this.
In the current euro zone crisis the UK is arguably gambling on the euro collapsing or fragmenting and seeking allies in that event. Ireland’s interests lie rather with it surviving by deepening, in order to lessen the burden on us and other indebted states. We should be careful not to be bounced into an ill-advised new alliance with the UK until both these dramas fully unfold.