Much of my summer reading this year has been 20th century Irish history, and the work of superb historians like Alvin Jackson, Paul Bew, Diarmaid Ferriter, Oliver MacDonagh and others. One thing that has struck me forcibly is how many mistakes were made by successive Irish governments during the fifty years after independence when dealing with the single largest and enduring block to Irish unity: the fierce opposition of Northern unionists.[A separate, even longer article could be written about the abandonment of Northern nationalists by the Free State and successive governments].
It started early. Alvin Jackson writes that “perhaps the supreme paradox of the reunification strategy was that Dublin sought an end of partition through consolidating the structures and attitudes that maintained it. When – as in early 1922 – the Belfast government was politically vulnerable and open to moderate concession on the constitutional question, the Dublin ministry, sensing blood, ruthlessly applied the principal of northern subordination to any cross-border deal. When, in early 1923, the Northern government was economically vulnerable, the Dublin ministry sought to reinforce the economic divide between the two territories. Reunification was admittedly never likely in the early twenties, but there were certainly junctures when perhaps critical cross-border institutions might have been put in place. These passed unattended, partly because of the Free State government’s untenable claims to absolute supremacy over its northern counterpart.”1
The most striking example of this was the Free State government’s refusal to have anything to do with a Council of Ireland, proposed in Westminster’s 1920 Government of Ireland Act. Edward Carson told the House of Commons in November of that year: “I am optimistic enough to believe that it is in this Council…that there is the germ of a united Ireland in future.” The Northern finance minister, H.M.Pollock, when asked in the following year about the “ultimate unity of the country”, replied: “Through the Council of Ireland – Yes. North and South would be brought into constant contact, and the possibilities of ultimate union are, on the whole, great.”2 That British proposal remained stillborn for the following 53 years, until it was resurrected as part of the abortive Sunningdale Agreement in 1974.
Ernest Blythe, a rare republican from a Northern Protestant background and a minister in the first Cumman na nGaedheal government, said there was no need for a full-time, permanent post in the Free State government for North-South cooperation. One consequence of this extraordinary short-sightedness was that there was no senior Dublin official responsible for and/or knowledgeable about Northern Ireland affairs for nearly 50 years, leading to ignorance, confusion and panic in the Irish cabinet when the ‘Troubles’ broke out there in the summer of 1969.
Oliver MacDonagh’s view was that “Britain’s ultimate objectives in the 1921 [Anglo-Irish] negotiations were to keep Ireland within the empire, and to maintain the system of imperial defence intact. The fate of the Ulster Protestants was a secondary concern…Thus in return for an oath of allegiance to the Crown, no larger measure of independence than dominionhood for the Irish Free State, and three naval bases, the British government was prepared to coerce Northern Ireland into either some form of union with the remainder of the island or the cession of (in all likelihood) something between 30 and 45% of its total territory” [through the ill-fated Boundary Commission]. MacDonagh concluded that any far-sighted British statesman should have seen that this would be preferable to storing up future trouble by keeping the six counties of Northern Ireland intact.3
During the debates on the Anglo-Irish Treaty in January 1922, it seems extraordinarily revealing of the already partitionist mindset of most TDs that less than 3% of speaking time was devoted to the North. Things had not improved by 1935, when Taoiseach Eamon de Valera admitted in the Dail in relation to ending partition, “we have no plan…by which we can inevitably bring about the union of this country.”4 Four years later, in a speech to the Seanad, he said he would not sacrifice 26 county sovereignty or the policy of gaelicisation for the possibility of unity.
In June 1940, with the German threat to Britain at its height, an emissary from British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, Malcolm McDonald, came to Dublin with an offer to De Valera. If the Free State joined the Allies and set up an All-Ireland Defence Council, Britain would immediately declare its acceptance of the principle of a united Ireland and create a North-South body to work out the practical details of such unity. De Valera and his cabinet rejected the proposal, sceptical about the British government’s ability to deliver the Unionists.
Northern premier James Craig may have angrily rejected such a proposal. But Henry Patterson writes that Basil Brooke, a future prime minister, had told his son that faced with the choice between the destruction of ‘western civilisation’ by the Nazis and Irish unification, he would have had to accept the latter. However De Valera’s preference for maintaining the neutrality of the 26-county state (a popular position in the country) and the unity of Fianna Fail, which would have split over any jettisoning of that neutrality, saw the end of “a historic opportunity to undermine partition.”5
Then in April 1949 came the South’s witless departure from the Commonwealth, nine months before India declared itself a republic and stayed in the Commonwealth. Predictably, this was followed by legislation in the Westminster parliament to consolidate Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom.
The implications of leaving the Commonwealth for further alienating the unionists didn’t seem to have occurred to Fine Gael Taoiseach John A.Costello or his external affairs minister Sean MacBride. British prime minister Clement Attlee concluded that “the government of Eire considered the cutting of the last links which united Eire to the British Commonwealth was a more important objective of policy than ending partition.”6 The ultimate irony was that 1949 also marked the launch of the Irish government’s hopeless international anti-partition campaign.
In 1959 the new Taoiseach, Sean Lemass – who would overturn the old nationalist taboos by seeking friendly relations with the Northern unionist government – told the British ambassador that “a great number of mistakes have been made here in relation to Northern Ireland.” In 1967 the Committee on the Constitution recommended the replacement of Article 3 of the Irish Constitution with the more conciliatory wording: “The Irish nation hereby proclaims its firm will that its territory be re-united in harmony and brotherly affection between all Irishmen.” (Women were not considered!) This was not well received by the ruling Fianna Fail party and no action was taken on it. 31 years and three and a half thousand deaths in the North later, an almost identical wording was voted into the Constitution by the Irish electorate, following the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Are we done with Irish governments making grave errors in their Northern policies? I fear not. I fear that some Sinn Fein-led government in the near future will pile pressure on the British government to hold a premature, ill-prepared Border poll on unity. And people in the South need to actually want unity with the difficult Northerners, something I have doubts about after more than 50 years of conversations with Southern friends and colleagues. I believe that not much has changed since Frank McDermot, a rare independent TD who argued in the 1930s for persuading rather than coercing the unionists, said “the question of curing the evil of partition is our own job and nobody else’s job. If we are to undertake it, the first essential is that we should be in earnest about it, that we shall really want the reunion of Ireland on a voluntary basis.”7
1 Alvin Jackson, Ireland 1798-1998: War, Peace and Beyond, p.277
2 Paul Bew, Ireland: the Politics of Enmity 1789-2006, p.
3 Oliver MacDonagh, States of Mind: Two Centuries of Anglo-Irish Conflict, 1780-1980, p.136
4 Diarmaid Ferriter, ‘De Valera’s Long Shadow’, Irish Times Weekend, 23 August
5 Henry Patterson, Ireland since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict, p.58
6 Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, p.455
7 Clare O’Halloran, Partition and the Limits of Irish Nationalism, p.165
2 Irelands together 
Excellent blog, as ever, Andy. Thanks.
Should ‘Northern premier William Craig” be James Craig?
All the best,
Philip.
The Irish bourgeoisie, to coin a phrase, were far too concerned to consolidate their own power in the south to worry about rapprochement with those difficult northerners. Every shaky regime needs an outgroup as a focus of frustration and blame when Irish independence turned out to be not quite the bed of roses as promised by poets and dreamers. What better out group than those pesky unionists who loved to blame the south for their own shortcomings?
Things only changed in the south very gradually as it became comfortable in its own skin as an independent nations, and as the Troubles reminded all of the limitations of the “deal with the devil” made in 1922. However that guilty conscience never quite extended to constructive engagement – there was more a doubling down and repression of that guilt.
Membership of the EEC and it’s 1958 Treaty of Rome commitment to “an ever closer union between the peoples of Europe” was the game changer. It enabled Ireland to develop it’s economy to a par with the leading countries in Europe and ensured it was treated with equality and respect in international relations. The was no longer a cap in hand, begging bowl, inferiority complex and it became politically possible to have an adult relationship with Britain, and by extension, with Northern unionism.
That is not to say that Ireland has become any less distinct or independent in its mindset even with a near doubling of it’s population since EEC accession in 1973 largely through net immigration and the development of a more cosmopolitan culture. If anything, it has moved further away from economic and cultural dependence on Britain with trade down from 90% of exports in the 1950’s to c. 10% now, and a western global culture replacing a largely British centred one.
Northerners are welcome to join the south on this journey, but not at the cost of returning Ireland to a British centric pre-EU political, economic, and social orientation. This is often misunderstood as sectarian indifference but the reality is that Ireland is on a different trajectory now which is moving it further away from the emperialism, religious triumphalism and the political, social and economic subservience of the past.
Any initiative on Irish reunification will far more likely come from Britain and Northern Ireland as a political choice rather than as a result of nationalist demands, and this is as it should be. The GFA gives Northerners the right of constitutional self determination and doesn’t give either Britain or Ireland much of a say on the matter, although the details of how it is to be implemented may be subject to a new referendum in the south and Treaty between Britain and Ireland covering areas of common interest.
So the mistakes you refer to on all sides are part of a pattern governed by imperial self interest, the realities of an impoverished and divided nascent state, and the self interest of an economically dominant but politically beleaguered minority in the north. All those realities have changed profoundly, but political structures can have great longevity and far outlive the realities which brought them into being. Whether they still optimally address the interests of a majority in the north is a question only they can answer, but don’t blame Ireland or Britain for being focused on other priorities.
Northern unionism is at the centre of their own universe, but nobody else’s, and their ability to sell themselves as vital to the interests of either Britain or Ireland is in increasing doubt. Who needs the trouble? What positive contribution have unionists got to offer a changing world? The greater danger is that history will simply bypass them and relegated them to a stagnant backwater while everyone else moves on. Show me a unionist leader who inspires admiration beyond their beleaguered tribe. Does anybody else (besides you!) even care about them any more? Those who offer a helping hand are spurned, and they bite the hands that feed them. Only they can, ultimately, help themselves.
For most people in the Republic, a united country is a sacred cow that they are not willing to feed.
And your evidence for this is…?
It is rather a throwaway or kneejerk remark that reflects my sense over many years that people in the Republic would be delighted with a united country if it did not entail too much hassle and change, and that it is an aspiration low on their list of priorities.
Which is a more succinct way of saying roughly what I said in my rather long comment above. My only quibble with this is that people often say what you said in a rather pejorative way about the Irish, whereas I think it is a perfectly rational way to respond to a situation over which people have little potential benefit or control. People often ask the question as to what’s in Irish reunification for unionists. Fair enough. But it is equally fair to ask why should Irish people put themselves to a lot of expense and bother to placate unionism? Any re-unification process has to work for both sides. I don’t see the Union working for Britain at the moment, so why should it work for Ireland? I think there are reasons as to why it could, but not while unionism remains a backward looking political movement interested mainly in sectarian advantage..
Indeed, it seems to indicate a relatively healthy attitude to unification – one that is not characterised by the kind of irredentist fanaticism and territorial greed that is currently responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands.
Andy,
Some people’s obsession with joining the British Commonwealth has become something of a shibboleth. We don’t want the humiliation of having a High Commissioner to London. We’re happy with an Ambassador, like other countries.
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I think even unionists realize the Commonwealth is little more than a historical and sporting association nowadays, and I have not met one who would vote for a united Ireland if Commonwealth membership was offered as part of the deal. The British and Irish Lions might have had more appeal if a single Ulsterman had made the squad. They’re hard pressed to get even a token representation in the Ireland squad these days.
I think Irish voters generally would be quite sanguine about conceding Commonwealth membership if they thought it made a substantial difference to unionist sentiment. After all, Irish people helped build, colonise, and “Christianise” much of it. How the British choose to address our ambassador is a matter for them, frankly, that few in Ireland would care about.
Of far more substance would be a new British Irish treaty formalising and extending existing cooperation on defence, security, policing, justice, common travel, immigration, worker mobility, civil service transfers, third level educational access, recognition of educational and professional qualifications, pensions, social welfare, sustainable energy generation and transmission, environmental conservation, fishing, tourism, culture etc.
Would Irish nationalism have any objection if such a treaty was between sovereign equals and of balanced mutual benefit? It could do much to ease real unionist fears about a loss of access to British services and opportunities without harming Irish interests in any way. It could also highlight a way forward for British/EU relations post Brexit – i.e. a deeper cooperation agreement rather than any form of membership.
Could I make so bold as to suggest pursuing such a treaty would serve unionist interests better than burning effigies on bonfires of stolen goods in sensitive locations in defiance of local policing and the law? Again I ask, what positive contribution has unionism got to make to the future of all the peoples on these islands?
Sorry, Frank, but how the British address our Ambassador is most definitely not a matter for them. It is part and parcel of international usage and the comity of nations. What you are saying is a gross distortion of accepted international relations.
International relations is a good deal more nuanced and situation dependent than you appear to suggest. We appoint ambassadors in consultation with host governments. Should they also wish to bestow some other title on our ambassador, that is a matter for them and the ambassador which we can otherwise ignore. At most it might be the subject of some amused dinner time conversation. “What hat are you currently wearing, your excellency?” Real diplomacy is about recognising and building on common interests to mutual benefit. Ireland can be quite good at that. We left our extreme sensitivity to perceived slights behind when we grew up as a nation.
Many thanks, Andy.
Hope you had a good summer.
For years I had been talking about visiting the north and this summer we spent
a couple of weeks we visited Armagh, Hillsborough, Belfast and back to Derry.
On our way home to Cork we visited Omagh, Strabane and Ennskillen.
Regards,
Tom McCarthy