Ireland’s Future is taking a leaf out of Brexit campaign

Reconciliation claim has echoes of Vote Leave absurdities

IN its most recent report, Ireland 2030 — Proposals for the period between 2024 and 2030, Ireland’s Future declared that, in their view, reconciliation “will follow the transition to new constitutional arrangements on our shared island”.

Rather bizarrely, another snippet from the same report — “…‘reconciliation’ (however this concept is defined)” — makes it sound as though they don’t fully understand the concept.

Still, they understand enough about reconciliation to claim that it will somehow happen, as if by magic, if or when Ireland is reunited. They can’t seriously believe that, can they?

Such a claim is reminiscent of the “sunny uplands” absurdities of the Brexit campaign.

Ireland’s Future seems not to have considered what impact the sudden injection of nearly two million unreconciled people into its social and political bloodstream would have on the liberal democracy that currently exists south of the border.

Or, more particularly, how the close to one million northern Protestants in our midst are to be reconciled to, and accommodated within, any new unitary state.

Perhaps Ireland’s Future believes that northern Protestants will simply keep their heads down and somehow fade into the background in a new Ireland. Much like that other (seldom-mentioned) post-partition minority: the sprinkling of Protestants who remained in the south, abandoned and often discriminated against.

The organisation’s flimsy excuse (delivered via Twitter/x) for not pursuing reconciliation before a border poll is that it would run the risk of “incentivising those [unionists, presumably] who seek to see fraught relations in perpetuity”.

No matter then that “fraught relations in perpetuity” are guaranteed here, whatever the future constitutional arrangements, if reconciliation is not pursued?

Uniting territory seems to be Ireland’s Future’s main, if not only, consideration. They should hardly need reminding that the overriding objective of the Good Friday/belfast Agreement, which they reference so often, is reconciliation.

In this regard, First Minister Michelle O’neill and Deputy First Minister

Emma Little-pengelly have, thus far, been setting a fine example. But, to put it mildly, promoting reconciliation can’t be entrusted to politicians alone.

Actively pursuing reconciliation by word and deed should, for its own sake, be the objective of every right-thinking person in Northern Ireland regardless of their constitutional preference or the actions or inactions of others.

Even in purely practical terms, Ireland’s Future’s position seems strange.

For either side to succeed in a border poll, they must win over a large section of the middle-ground here.

All but the farthest reaches of political unionism and nationalism seem — albeit belatedly, in some cases — to have realised this. So, beyond a tiny minority, who exactly does Ireland’s Future believe would “seek to see fraught relations in perpetuity”?

And anyway, why would anyone serious about reconciliation allow themselves to be distracted and derailed by opponents?

By the middle-ground, I don’t just mean Alliance voters. I’m thinking also, or even most particularly, of the substantial section of our population that seldom darken the door of a polling station. This group, made up of people from both sides of our community, long ago gave up on what passes for politics here.

But they do tend to vote on major issues, such as the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit. And they will most certainly turn out in large numbers to vote in a border poll.

This middle-ground vote will lean heavily towards whichever side is deemed to have made the greatest effort to advance reconciliation.

Put another way, they’re hardly going to be attracted to a vague “it’ll be alright on the night” campaign that appears to have dispensed with the very notion of pursuing reconciliation.

If Ireland’s Future had limited themselves to declaring that reconciliation is not, and cannot be, a precondition for a border poll, then no one could have argued with them.

That position is perfectly in line with the Good Friday/belfast Agreement.

But for them to suggest, at its best interpretation, that reconciliation can wait until after a new Ireland is achieved defies not only the spirit of the Good Friday/belfast Agreement, but common sense and historical experience. As John Hume so often stressed, uniting our people must be the primary goal. That is the only way we can create a future worth having.

I hope to make these and other points as a panellist at the Ireland’s Future — Pathway to Change event in Belfast on June 15.