The state of northern nationalists
By Mary Nelis
A member of the audience at Monday's RTE Questions and
Answers stated that the people in the south should drop
the word republic, that the southern Irish should not
refer to the 26 Counties as a republic, because this is
offensive to unionists. What the caller didn't say was
that the Irish state and indeed anything Irish is
offensive to unionists.
The questioner was correct in one respect. The 26
Counties has never been governed as a truly sovereign
republic. Nor can it be, until the unfinished business
in the north is resolved.
The attitude of the questioner is fairly typical of the
slave mentality which is still prevalent in the south
of Ireland 76 years after independence.
We are tired in the north of the timid apologists for
being Irish, never mind republican, which we see and
hear on radio and TV in the south. We are tired of the
subservient, lickspittle ``yes, your honour'' attitudes
of the southern establishment to the Ken Maginness's
and the Chris McGimpsey's.
Such attitudes are the product of a people who still
see the British as superior, who have rejected the very
traditions out of which the 26 Counties was born, for
if such traditions were valued as an integral part of
the psyche of the nation, we would not at this moment
be contemplating changing its national territory.
Those who claim to be the heirs of every national
struggle for freedom from 1798 to 1916 are those who
continually lecture northern nationalists on the future
of armed struggle. Unity by consent, or acceptance of
the status quo, has become the official Dublin
position. Yet they know that the British will never
consent to any such unity. Partition, its legality and
morality, may be addressed some day, but ``not yet
Lord''.
Prior to 1969, no Dublin government had ever exercised
the jurisdiction which they claim over this island and
enshrined in Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish
constitution, by protesting the abuse, the humiliation,
and denial of rights of northern nationalists.
The north would remain a place apart, and its people,
excluded from the unionist state, abandoned by the
republic, would live at the mercy of a regime which
never conceded their right to exist in the first place.
The consequences of that situation has produced the
conflict of the past thirty years. Its central message
has been that partition has failed, that the status quo
is not acceptable, and that the British and their de
facto caretakers in the north, the Unionists, must not
be allowed to impede the search to bring the conflict
to an end.
The British claim to rule Ireland is embodied in the
Governments of Ireland Act 1920, amended by the Ireland
(sic) Act 1949 and the Northern Constitution Act 1973.
These acts represent a territorial claim in every sense
of the word. There is no comparison between the British
claim and Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution.
The British claim is an undemocratic residue of
colonialism, while the Irish claim is an expression of
the democratic wishes of the majority of the Irish
people to the reunification of the national territory.
From the onset of the talks process, the British and
the unionists have consistently focused on an outcome
which would remove the Irish territorial claim and in
their estimation, copperfasten partition. This was
Trimble's only reason for involvement in the talks. The
unionists had been encouraged in their pursuit of
removing Articles 2 and 3 by the conciliatory noises
emanating from the ``performing poodles'' in Fine Gael
and Democratic Left.
The Andersonstown News in 1991 commented that during
the Leinster House debate on Articles 2 and 3, no
mention was made of the British claim or its
anti-democratic regime in force in the north over 50
years.
During the debate, John Bruton sat signing his
Christmas cards, while Garret Fitzgerald read a book.
But then Fitzgerald and Bruton had always subscribed to
the notion that the unionists in the north, constituted
a seperate nation. In fact, Fitzgerald believed that
the Irish people had never really wanted independence,
that all they wanted was a greater say in the domestic
bliss of English colonial rule. No doubt the
revisionist pro-unionist stance of these southern
politicians, have contributed to the unionist claims,
that sectarianism, loyalist pogroms, the denial of
civil rights, have all been a result of Articles 2
and3.
Yet it should be noted, that during the lifetime of the
Stormont Parliament even at the time of the
ratification of the 1937 constitution, Articles 2 and 3
were never an issue for unionism.
Their current ``popularity'' in the unionist consent
principle, may have more to do with distracting
attention away from unionist intransigence, embodied by
the notion that they are what Blair terms ``the
majority''. But Blair must surely recognise that ``the
majority'' are only a majority in two of the six
counties which define the British territorial claim.
It was Martin Luther King Jr., who said we are now
faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. There is
such a thing as being too late and the history of
British involvement in the north is littered with ``too
little, too late''.
Blair must act now. The unionist veto must be clearly
recognised for what it is, an impediment to democracy
and real peace between these islands. The Dublin
government must equally consider if they have the right
to deny northern nationalists their birthright to be
part of the nation. To deny us this is to deny us our
history and our role in the future.
Northern nationalists have paid a high price for
whatever freedom exists in the 26 counties. Is their
future to be sold off in the interests of a settlement
which will give the British the right to assert their
claim, but to do so by armed force? It could be argued
that Articles 2 and 3 may be removed by the British
threatening ``immediate and terrible war'', but selling
them as part of an agreement for ``an immediate and
terrible peace''.
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