OT--AC Flyer: Given your experience in N. Ireland, do you have any books to recommend about that conflict? I have an ancestral devotion to Ireland and some historical knowledge of what Britain did to the Irish, yet I have long respected and admired many things about Britain, imperialism and recent social decline aside. (Much as I find more to admire about my own nation from 40 years ago vs. today).
Seems to me the Brits have done a mostly respectable job of disengaging, post-WWI and -WWII, from places they colonized. But when you've annexed a place, it's a bit hard to disengage. At least when the U.S. seized and later annexed what is today the U.S. Southwest in the Mexican War of 1846, we weren't displacing the Mexicans--indeed, we were hardly ruling any in that mostly desolate land. True, the settlers and Army proved hard on the Indians, but at least it is plainly true that freedom and economic opportunity in the U.S. Southwest have since been far better (for non-Indians) than life there would have been under what we've seen of Mexican rule since 1846.
I suppose many N. Ireland residents would say the same. The truth in that parallel (albeit on a far lesser scale) seems to me to be a large part of the problem facing those who seek to devolve N. Ireland to the Republic.
I have the impression that even those Brits who would like to pack up the troops and return Ireland to the Irish won't ever vote in large enough numbers to do so, for fear of a civil war erupting on the heels of departing troops, and in recognition that many in N. Ireland have ancestry, social and economic ties, and identity that are as much or more British (English) than Irish. It's not as though the Republic of Ireland wants a civil war up North, either.
My U.S.-based, Irish-centric perspective is that a united Ireland (obviously, not now a common goal up North) would be more attainable if the Republic would adopt a constitution that one-ups the Brits as a modern and irrevocable commitment to protect the rights Britain (and, it seems, the EU) protects. (Recalling your reasons for leaving Britain, it seems almost funny to me that the Irish might shrink from guaranteeing protection of British rights and freedoms as too capitalistic--i.e., too incompatible with traditional Irish communitarian society).
Perhaps nothing would assuage the structural-political concerns of the purely British remnant, and certainly not their emotional need to be British. However, a strong (and then fully implemented) charter that first alters the Republic might later dispel fears of Catholic hegemony in the North by foreswearing it (by word and deed) in the South. No one should have to live under the thumb of the Catholic Church--or any other.
If that fantasy scenario of dangling a reformed Irish Republic as enticement to N. Irish voters were to unfold, might that tilt the probably decisive number of N. Irish residents who have layers of attachment to both Britain and Ireland, and just want an end to conflict and their existing rights and lifestyle? Some nation has to be sovereign, and right now I suppose the Brits still look stronger and thus better even to those whose vote would not turn upon history. From my admittedly outside perspective, it doesn't seem that Britain ruling part of Ireland (even if they call it part of Britain) is a peaceful LT solution. Am I off base here? |
