Making Sense of a United Ireland: Should it happen? How might it happen?

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I would want the Irish flag, as it is, to stay. But if we are serious about this conversation, then we all have to advocate and put forward our argument for that,” said Mr Finucane. There have, however, been several unionist surrenders – as well as British betrayals. Ulster unionists parted with their Southern counterparts, who wanted all of Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, or in the British empire or in the British Commonwealth. Southern unionists would have settled for “dominion status” for the entire island in 1917–18 so that they would have been part of a larger minority rather than the small one they became. They feared an Irish Republic, but they did not want partition. Ulster unionists preferred to leave Southern unionists behind rather than bolster them in a sovereign united Ireland. As retreating generals do, they cut their losses. Moderate Unionists have turned to the centrist Alliance, which is Northern Ireland’s third largest party and is neither Unionist nor nationalist. It also has no position on reunification. Irish reunification was long deemed impossible. For many it still is, especially because of the long conflict – or war, or ‘troubles’ – between 1966 and 2005, or 1968 and 1998. The dates and names are contested. Yet reunification is now certainly possible, indeed highly probable, though not inevitable – at least, not yet. But even those who want it to happen are not prepared – at least not adequately prepared, even if they may think otherwise. And if the Protocol survives for the North, its own economy will benefit from tariff-free access to the EU and British markets. O’Leary believes that a united Ireland will benefit from a larger national market, more closely integrated into the European single market and attractive to US foreign investment – all as part of the most dynamic and largely English-speaking economic unit in the western EU. “The North will benefit most, but the South would make net gains too if the economic modeling described here is broadly correct. A united Ireland may also be judged a comparatively better democracy than its immediate neighbor.”

The UK’s poorest region cannot ignore how well Ireland’s economy is performing, partly thanks to its low corporate tax rate attracting foreign investment, and despite the Republic’s housing crisis. Neale Richmond, a Fine Gael member of the Irish parliament, believes that Brexit has brought the prospect of a unified Ireland closer, but says the rights of those who identify as British must be respected. “The challenge for those who believe in unity is to reach out to the unionists and other communities to convince and reassure. We need a new Ireland that is genuinely inclusive of a minority British population, one whose identity will be respected and who will see no diminution of their rights.”

My party’s vision is for a republic. But why not, for example, have a role for the royals in terms of patronages and civic society?” he added. Conor Burns: The Tory minister from a nationalist family on rebuilding relationships between Britain and Ireland ] If there is a referendum, everyone would start fighting again’ … former Ulster Defence Association paramilitary Richard Stitt by a mural for the organisation in east Belfast. Photograph: Paul McErlane/The Guardian Six into 26 won’t go!” I saw that painted on a Belfast gable wall when I was a boy. Being a competitive little lad, I thought the graffiti author didn’t understand fractions. After all, six goes into 26 “four and a third times.” Of course, the statement was not about division, where it may have been correct according to certain schoolteachers, but about partition.

The German case seems more promising as a model, although Making Sense cites the work of Gerhard Albert Ritter, who has argued that unification in 1990 encouraged a neoliberal turn across Germany as a whole in his book The Price of German Unity. O’Leary sounds a warning about following such a path in Ireland “when the average Southerner may well be turning away from an overdose of neo-liberalism.” At no point, however, does he discuss the practicalities of how we might iron out the worst tendencies of Irish neoliberalism through reunification.

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Prof Brendan O’Leary, in his book Making Sense of a United Ireland, has suggested a united Ireland could rejoin the Commonwealth, although that is deeply unpopular with Irish voters. Spectre of violence after reunification This week’s assembly election won’t settle any of the big constitutional issues that have loomed over the region since the creation of Northern Ireland 100 years ago. Indeed, there’s the chance it could aggravate them. But some are hoping it will one day be seen as a turning point. DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, center, with fellow election candidates | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images The Government of Ireland Act of 1920, the instrument of partition enacted by the Westminster parliament, was the most enduring gerrymander of the last century. With some truculence Ulster unionists accepted a six-county Northern Ireland rather than one consisting of all nine counties of Ulster. Their local leaders had made a strategic decision. In the words of James Craig, Northern Ireland’s first prime minister, they would secure those counties they could control, and thereby create “a new and impregnable Pale”, behind which loyalists could withdraw and regroup to maintain the union with Great Britain. The most famous Ulster unionist slogan is “no surrender,” still cried at the annual August and December parades of the Apprentice Boys over Derry’s walls—or Londonderry’s. The “boys” are nowadays mostly somewhat-matured men. The slogan means no surrender either to Irish Catholics or to illegitimate British power. O’Leary and his colleague John McGarry went on to publish two influential works on the Northern Irish conflict, The Politics of Antagonism (1993) and Explaining Northern Ireland(1995). The first was a narrative history of one of Europe’s most intractable conflicts from its origins to the present day, while the second was a critical survey of theoretical perspectives on that conflict.

As O’Leary wryly comments, the focus of unionist discourse about the economics of Irish unity has shifted dramatically, from stressing the weakness of the southern economy to emphasizing the reliance of its northern equivalent on financial support from the British state: “‘We’d cost you too much’ became the new unionist line, aimed at tax-conscious southerners.” He insists that the southern economy is robust enough to bear the cost of reunification, which is in any case exaggerated in much of the media commentary.

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In a short section on the island’s future, O’Leary identified what he considered to be the dominant “mega-trends” in the world at large that might ensnare Ireland. Those trends included “de-democratization, plutocracy, inequality,” “the erosion of social-democratic and social-liberal parties,” and “the hollowing-out of political parties” in general. This gives us some valuable insight into O’Leary’s thinking on the EU (which is largely absent from Making Sense). The idea that Germany might one day submit to the sovereignty of the EU’s many smaller member states is quixotic. Of course, the statement was not about division, where it may have been correct according to certain schoolteachers, but about partition. The six counties of Northern Ireland could not, would not, and should not fit into the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. Monarchist, Protestant, English-speaking people could not live in the Republican, Catholic, and Gaelic nation-state. The statement was a slogan – a word derived from the Irish for ‘war cry’. It proclaimed an ‘impossibility’.

While he is drawing up blueprints for a united Ireland, the campaigning organization Ireland’s Future — cross-party in composition but skewed heavily toward Sinn Féin — is seeking to make gains on the political front. Both embody a form of liberal civic nationalism that is steadily engulfing the intellectual debate on Irish reunification. Academic Statecraft The catch here is that Irish unity will require a yes vote in the Republic of Ireland as well as Northern Ireland, and the republic’s voters and northern nationalists do not like Model 1. Nationalists throughout Ireland consider Northern Ireland a “failed entity” and prefer a unitary Ireland in which the north would be governed from Dublin in exactly the same way as Cork or Galway. This scenario is O’Leary’s “Model 2.” Making Sense of a United Ireland is a landmark exploration of this most contentious of issues. Distinguished political scientist Brendan O'Leary - a global expert on divided places, who has been profoundly engaged with the Irish question for nearly four decades - argues that the time to consider the future of the island of Ireland is now.So did the MacBride campaign, begun among the Irish diaspora in the United States under the auspices of the former Irish foreign minister Seán MacBride, which begat the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act of 1989, enacted by Margaret Thatcher’s government to replace the failed act of the same name of 1976. The draft bill was effectively redrafted by Belfast-born legal scholar Prof Christopher McCrudden, then lead adviser on law to Kevin McNamara MP, the British Labour Party’s frontbench spokesman on Northern Ireland. The Fair Employment Act proved to be remarkably effective legislation. Among other accomplishments it made cultural Catholics more likely to stay in Northern Ireland. Ulster unionists had made a solemn covenant on ‘Ulster Day’ in September 1912. In it, they pledged loyalty to their brothers and sisters throughout Ulster. The covenant was signed by more than 235,000 men, with a matching declaration signed by nearly the same number of women. The three counties of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan, however, had large Catholic and nationalist majorities. A nine-county Ulster would have meant, according to the census of 1911, a Protestant-to-Catholic ratio of 57 to 43 rather than the 66-to-34 ratio of what became Northern Ireland. The UUP leadership’s ‘inner circle’ effectively surrendered the unionists of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan to what became the Irish Free State. But unification is not inevitable. Sinn Féin’s rise, and the census results, are in some ways deceptive. The party is popular in the south because it promises free-spending leftwing solutions to a housing crisis and other problems unrelated to a united Ireland. Opinion polls suggest support for unification in the republic is wide but shallow, with only 22% prepared to pay more tax to fund it. A Sinn Féin-led government will be expected to prioritise housing, income and welfare. Its electoral surge in the north comes at the expense of the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP), which also favours unification. In recent elections, the overall nationalist vote has plateaued at about 40%, as has the overall unionist vote. How do we encourage Dublin governments in the next decade to prepare properly for the momentous possibility of Irish reunification? Time for a Department of Reunification? The nationalist party, which always opposed violence to gain unity, has been battered at the ballot box after losing swathes of support to Sinn Féin.