Sam McBride
The conventional reading of post-partition Irish history emphasises the significance of certain key moments: Bunreacht na hÉireann in 1937, the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969, the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and so on. Whatever this island’s constitutional future, that framework for understanding our history is unlikely to change.
But there is another way to understand history: the way in which small details shape epoch-making change. The future of the world has turned on battles and military alliances, but it has also turned on births, lust, and petty jealousies.
One potentially significant development for Ireland’s future became clear a fortnight ago with the defeat of the referendums on family and care. The details are already almost forgotten to most people, if they ever understood them, but the damage they have done to the Government’s reputation, and the energy they have given to the growing band of inchoate populist nationalists could be consequential.
This unheralded ability to defeat the entire political system has fired up those who want to see fewer foreigners around — yet it could also lead to the great bulk of moderate voters being energised to come out and vote for the established parties out of horror at the growing stories about the normalisation of previously repugnant ideas.
However, there is another far more intriguing outcome from this upset. No one emerged stronger from the campaign than Michael McDowell. The barrister and former tánaiste provided not only the intellectual heft to defeat all the major parties, but the ability to communicate to voters why they shouldn’t believe what virtually all of the establishment — including a swathe of publicly funded NGOs (a misnomer in itself ) — were telling them.
In doing so, he has arguably emerged as the pre-eminent Irish referendum expert. This is no oneoff. He has been central to getting notable referendum proposals over the line from inside government, and from outside government, and as a private citizen has been central to blocking referendum proposals at the ballot box. It’s a rare skill.
As justice minister, McDowell proposed the 2004 referendum on citizenship, which led to the 27 th Amendment to the Constitution. He was prominent in the successful second Lisbon campaign in 2009 and supported the legalisation of abortion in the 2018 referendum, even if he eschewed campaigning.
He had a star role in defeating the proposed abolition of the Seanad in 2013, and now has acted the part of David to the establishment’s Goliath in defeating two further referendums. It’s not all one-way traffic; he was on the losing side in the first Lisbon referendum.
Ireland’s constitutional arrangements mean there have been, by the standards of most comparable democracies, a remarkably large number of referendums — some dramatic and controversial; others dull tidying-up exercises.
But while each of these has been important, in some ways they are all warm-ups for the big one: the referendum on a united Ireland. The closest to that has been the vote on the Good Friday Agreement, which