Path to unity
I agree, as argued in Andrew Adonis’s article on the rise of Sinn Féin (“The re-greening of Ireland,” March), that the party currently has impressive leadership. There is also considerable hypocrisy in many of those who refuse to work with it. I recall being lacerated by the media—including the nationalist press—when presenting the findings of the 1993 Opsahl Commission, which recommended that Sinn Féin be helped into full participation in the democratic process. It took some time, but the result is the party’s current electoral success. There is, as Adonis’s piece acknowledges, still a whiff of cordite around Sinn Féin and its leaders deserve credit for keeping the majority of the old guard on board. There will come a time when they may have to emulate Éamon de Valera, who distanced himself from his IRA past.
As for the re-unification of Ireland, pursuing this goal is now entirely constitutional and Sinn Féin’s supporters expect it. We need, however, to ask whether Ireland is ready for it—and not only financially. I see few signs of recognition—even among political leaders—of what might be involved. At the time of partition, Ireland’s 7 per cent Protestant population had little choice but to integrate. Even then, sectarianism was rife in Irish Catholic attitudes. How would very large numbers of northern Protestants be welcomed—upwards of 800,000— to say nothing of those Catholics who privately identify as unionist?
I for one would welcome re-unification, not least because it would release northern Protestants from the centuries-old condescension of London. But the fears of Protestants should not be dismissed lightly. Is the Irish Republic really ready to abandon its national anthem, with its reference to the “Saxon foe”? To reconsider its tricolour flag, so often the badge of the IRA? To accept that service to the British Crown did not make people any less Irish?
The recent vandalism of the wall in Glasnevin commemorating all sides who died in Ireland’s War of Independence— sullying the otherwise impressive evenhandedness of Ireland’s decade of commemoration—suggests we still have some way to go.
Marianne Elliott, professor emerita, Liverpool University