Within political parties in the Republic, with the exception of Sinn Féin, reuniting the island is an aspiration but not a priority
AN ELECTION is looming in the Irish Republic — or Ireland, as it calls itself — and the prospects of Irish unity, or absorbing Northern Ireland into the State, will play some part in the debates. But how great a part?
Sinn Féin, as a political party, exists primarily for the purpose of uniting Ireland and was the political wing of the IRA a generation ago, so every major speech by the party leader Mary Lou McDonald emphasises the need to merge the two jurisdictions on the island, one British and one Irish, into a single Irish state for the good of all.
And she and her senior party colleagues routinely speak of a future united Ireland as an inevitability, a fulfilment of destiny, a restoration of a natural order, something that will be good even for those who oppose it.
McDonald talks of it as something that is unquestionably right but which she is willing to debate, in order to engage with doubters, sceptics and hostile opponents.
So she’ll discuss it with you on the understanding that you might change your mind but she won’t.
Two other parties have their roots in IRA activism too, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
Fianna Fáil grew out of the IRA that was led by Michael Collins during the war of independence. The party leader, Eamon De Valera - later taoiseach and Irish president - led the faction that rejected the treaty of 1921 that established the Irish Free State. This was a dominion that he would turn into a 26 county republic while pledging to later bring in the other six counties that remained British.
So you would expect Fianna Fáil, currently led by Micheál Martin to be committed to Irish unity, and theoretically it is. It just never seems to be all that passionate about the issue.
A century of statehood for that part of Ireland has established habits of governing and a sense of identity that won’t admit to feeling threatened by such change but might well be.
Martin leads a Shared Island initiative for developing relations between the two parts of the country. This initiative provides generous funding for cross border projects, from roads and bridges to academic collaborations. But this appears almost to be about slowing down the process of unification, seeking out a possible reconciliation in some indeterminate future in which those opposed to unity, mostly northern unionists, will soften their resistance and fit in.
It is certainly not about forcing the pace.
Fine Gael is the residue of the party which, at the time of the War of Independence, was also in the IRA but later accepted the treaty and even fought former comrades to defend it.
The party leader Simon Harris, currently Taoiseach seems blithely unfussed about Irish unity but his predecessor, Leo Varadkar has come out as dead keen on it. He argues now that all parties should define their attitude to unity not as an aspiration but as an objective.
In this he clearly identifies the lukewarm enthusiasm currently being expressed by many in the Republic. It’s in line with Augustine’s urge to be holy, but not yet. And he wants to stimulate interest.
Political parties in Ireland, aside from Sinn Féin are well used to saying, in effect, that it would be nice if we could have unity, but there’s no great urgency about it.
What makes the issue urgent within Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is the need to steal the issue away from Sinn Féin and thereby undermine its growth in the country.
Fianna Fail’s approach is to signal interest while taking the slow route.
Vardakar’s - and Fine Gael’s if they take up his thinking - is to drive the issue.
Sinn Féin wants to get a people’s assembly debating it, policy papers published, perhaps a minister for unification.
All these seemed imminent a couple of years ago when the trajectory of Sinn Féin’s growth made it likely that it would lead the next Dail.
Now Sinn Féin’s standing in the polls is slipping badly.
It may be finding that the cause of Irish unity is not one that they can rally the people around when there are issues of more immediate concern to be dealt with.
The party is losing support from the kind of Irish ultra nationalists who Ireland to be for the Irish, not for migrants. Sinn Féin, to its credit, is determinedly anti racist while trying to articulate an argument that migration has to be handled better through dialogue with communities that feel impinged upon.
The cause of Irish unity, like any nationalism, can encompass people of right wing and left wing thinking, chauvinists and liberals. It is an insecure policy to peg a party’s hopes to because practical and contemporary concerns can split those factions apart.
Ireland - as it calls itself - had already come to an accommodation with the unity question. It had deferred it in order to concentrate on state building.
Who’s to say an accommodation like that won’t still be working fine for them in the future?
Malachi O’Doherty’s latest book
How To Fix Northern Ireland is
published by Atlantic Books
