Ireland could be a different country. Credit: STEPHEN WILSON/AFP via Getty Images
On the morning of 15 November 1985, a small group of Irish journalists was taken to Dublin Airport and from there, on a short flight, to Belfast City Airport. We did not know where our final destination was, but it turned out to be Hillsborough Castle in Co. Down, the residence of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
The weather was reasonable; we walked in the lovely gardens, to find there were Unionists outside the gate carrying placards denouncing what was about to occur. The Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army were protecting us from them. Among the protestors was Dowager Lady Brookeborough, the widow of Lord Brookeborough, who had been Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1943 to 1963.
In 1933, addressing an Orange rally, Lord Brookeborough had famously declared: “Many in this audience employ Catholics, but I have not one about my place. Catholics are out to destroy Ulster … If we in Ulster allow Roman Catholics to work on our farms we are traitors to Ulster … I would appeal to loyalists, therefore, wherever possible, to employ good Protestant lads and lassies.”
Now, the man’s widow was outside protesting. It struck me that maybe something serious was about to transpire. Soon, we learned that the Dublin government was to have an advisory role in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. It seemed like the first step in a longer process that would lead to the further integration of the two parts of the island. The Agreement was signed by Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald, the Irish prime minister.
After a first round of comments by the political leaders, the journalists were handed the agreement and given a short time to read it before Thatcher and FitzGerald would return. As Thatcher passed my row, she turned her fierce attention on me and the pressman beside me, a well-known radical. She looked at us as though she knew we were trouble. She was very, very intimidating.
Up to then, it was generally acknowledged that Ulster Unionists would resist to the death any move to let Southern Ireland be involved in their affairs. They had made this clear in April 1914 when the Ulster Volunteer Force had imported 25,000 rifles into Northern Ireland, thus to strengthen them against the possibility of Home Rule. After the First World War, they had emphasized that they would never accept the inclusion of Ulster in an independent Ireland. At first, they wanted only the four most Protestant counties included in a separate state, while others wanted all nine counties of Ulster, including their sizeable Catholic population. The state of six counties that became Northern Ireland was a compromise.
In 1973, the Unionists successfully opposed the Sunningdale Agreement to establish a power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland by calling a general strike, forcing the British to cave in and abandon the agreement. Thatcher, despite private misgivings, made clear that she intended to stand over the Anglo-Irish Agreement. There was a massive protest in Belfast; 400,000 Unionists signed a petition against the Agreement. James Molyneaux, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, spoke of “universal cold fury” towards it; Ian Paisley said that Thatcher was “Jezebel who sought to destroy Israel in a day.”
As Thatcher stood her ground, it occurred to me how different Ireland would have been had earlier prime ministers — Gladstone, Balfour, Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Harold Wilson — been as clear-eyed and determined.
In other words, what would Ireland be like if the British government had decided in 1921 and 1922, or indeed before, that Home Rule would be granted to all of the island of Ireland, and that the country would not be partitioned?
In the short term, this decision would have been disastrous. The sectarian attacks against Catholics that happened in Belfast in 1921 would likely have been more ferocious. The reaction of the British government to these attacks and to Unionist militarisation would have been crucial. Also crucial would have been the type of electoral system to be used in the new Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland multi-seat constituencies and proportional representation are used. In a five-seat constituency, for example, you vote for candidates in order of preference. This means that the fifth seat, or even the fourth, can often go to a small party or an independent candidate. Parliament can thus be made up of many shades of opinion.
On the presumption that, even though there would have been no civil war, two main parties would still have emerged in the South, then it is probable that the Unionists would have controlled the balance of power in Dublin. It is also probable that Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland would, on local issues, have joined forces in Dublin. And Unionist politicians would have had the chance to become government ministers in an independent Ireland.
What we need to imagine is Lord Brookeborough as Foreign Minister or Minister for Defence with Michael Collins, who was in fact assassinated in 1922 during the Irish Civil War, as Prime Minister, and Éamon de Valera, who was Prime Minister for most of the time between 1932 and 1959 and President thereafter until 1973, as Minister for Finance. This is strange, but not as strange as what eventually happened — Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness chuckling together as First Minister and Deputy First Minister.
The power of the Catholic church in southern Ireland would have been diminished by a united Ireland in some ways, but not in others. On certain sexual matters — such as homosexuality and abortion — the Unionists and the Southerners would have been equally conservative. But they would have divided on the right to divorce. They both would have wanted separate schools for Protestants and Catholics. But the Unionists would not have tolerated church involvement in government on a day-to-day basis. It would simply have been anathema to them.
Also, because Belfast was a more commercial and industrialised city than Dublin, it would provide a bigger and more diverse gene pool to sit on boards and work in semi-state companies. One of the problems the Republic of Ireland has had is the density of political space. People in the circles of power often know each other too well. It makes for coziness and laziness and lack of accountability.
But the Unionists would have brought something else to Dublin that Dublin needed. Their speech tends to be direct; they don’t prevaricate. They also are viscerally opposed to arbitrary authority and have a fundamental belief in parliament and in law and in the idea of an autonomous conscience.
It is likely, then, that they would have been appalled at the prospect of the Catholic church running orphanages and homes for unmarried mothers without any serious regulation.
The first real division between Unionist and Nationalist would have occurred in 1939. The Unionists would have wanted to join Britain in the war. Seventeen years of sharing power in Dublin would not have lessened their passionate connection to the Crown and the Empire. While more than 40,000 citizens of a neutral Éire actually enlisted in the British Army, there would still have been serious opposition to declaring war. But while Éire was officially neutral, it tended to be neutral on the side of the Allies. If a British airman came down over Southern Ireland, for example, he was immediately repatriated, by being sent over the border. If a German airman came down, on the other hand, he was interned for the duration of the war.
It is not impossible that Ireland might have actually joined the Allies, especially after the Americans became involved. In that case, Dublin would have been bombed, and the limited infrastructure of the country badly undermined. In the aftermath of the war, had Ireland been involved, the country would have been reconstructed with Marshall Plan money.
After the war, almost everything that happened in Ireland North and South would have been different in a United Ireland. For example, in 1948, the Irish Free State was declared to be the Republic of Ireland. With Unionists in Dublin, it is unlikely that this could have been so easily done, and more probable that Ireland would have remained within the Commonwealth.
Another example is education. Northern Ireland benefitted from the Education Act of 1944 which gave students free secondary education. This did not happen in the Republic of Ireland until 1967. In a United Ireland, with much of the energy of the Labour Movement in the North subsumed into sectarian differences, it is hard to imagine any great urge to create a free and modern health service or equality in education. It is also unlikely that an NHS would have been set up in a United Ireland until much later than in Britain.
Just as the late Sixties saw a new crop of politicians on the nationalist side in the North — figures such as John Hume, Eamonn McCann, Bernadette Devlin, Austin Currie — it is possible that the lure of high office would have attracted a similar set of politicians on the Unionist side. That does not mean Ian Paisley and his supporters would not have been powerful. But their voices in the Irish parliament would merely have been among many from Northern Ireland.
The big question as we imagine a United Ireland over the past 50 years is what would have happened to the men and women who, in the real world, became IRA volunteers or Sinn Fein leaders. I like to think that they would have directed their energy and sense of grievance not against Britain — since Britain had deftly stepped aside — but against inequality in Ireland. I like to imagine that they would have joined forces with the Labour Party and the trade union movement in Dublin.
This would have meant that the campaign of murder and terror against Protestants by the IRA, especially in the border region, during the Troubles, would not have happened. Also, the British Army would have had no business in Ireland. And there would have been an all-Ireland police force.
In the meantime, the establishment parties would have become good Europeans. Ireland would still have joined the Common Market in 1973. Its leaders would have become skilled at applying for grants. Dublin and Belfast by now would be connected with a fast train system and a good motorway. This corridor between the two cities, taking in Drogheda, Dundalk, Newry and Portadown, would have become a powerhouse of innovation. South Armagh would be a sought-after site for new industry. The area would have attracted intense foreign investment in the very years when, in the sad real world, the northern side was tearing itself apart. Ireland would be a different country.
Dreaming about this is just a game or a futile exercise. Trying to imagine an Ireland that was at peace with itself after 100 years of slow political integration allows us to see that partition itself was probably a great mistake. But looking at the problem through the lens of the Troubles allows us also to realise that attempting to dismantle partition after 100 years would not be simple and would come with considerable risks. In 100 years’ time, our descendants will know what we should have done.
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Subscribe‘One of the problems the Republic of Ireland has had is the density of political space. People in the circles of power often know each other too well. It makes for coziness and laziness and lack of accountability.’
Scotland and Wales take note.
‘ ‘People in the circles of power often know each other too well. It makes for coziness and laziness and lack of accountability.’ Scotland and Wales take note.’
Because, of course, the government of Westminster is entirely free of coziness, laziness, lack of accountability, preferential access to PPE contracts for their friends, preferential access for rich associates of Vladimir Putin, sly lunches with their mates to help them evade tax, secretive phone calls to Tory cabinet members from a Tory ex-Prime Minister who is now furtively lobbying on behalf of a murky and failing company……..
Oh yes, indeed, let’s say it’s Scotland & Wales that have a potential problem with nepotism and corruption.
Weapons of mass distraction, anybody?
Yes there’s no cosier place than Westminster.
Haven’t been to DC, have you?
No but I daresay it’s the same.
Counter-factual history is generally pointless whilst possibly amusing but the author gets some of the real history wrong and omits inconvenient facts. For example he highlights anti-Catholic discrimination in NI while ignoring anti-Protestant discrimination in the Republic. After partition the proportion of the population in the RoI declined whilst the proportion of Catholics in NI decreased.
“The sectarian attacks against Catholics that happened in Belfast in 1921 would likely have been more ferocious.” Don’t the sectarian attacks against Protestants count then?
“They both would have wanted separate schools for Protestants and Catholics.” Not based on what happened in NI, the NI government tried to create a non-sectarian sytem but the Catholic church insisted on control of their own schools. To this day there are few Protestant schools in NI, there are state schools and Catholic schools. Most Catholics go to the latter because of the power of the Church, diminished but still extant, the maintenance of which was the whole point of course.
“If a British airman came down over Southern Ireland, for example, he was immediately repatriated, by being sent over the border. If a German airman came down, on the other hand, he was interned for the duration of the war. ” Simply untrue, check the facts.
The idea that the Unionist/Protestant population of NI would have been better off and their freedoms protected in a united Ireland seems highly unlikely to me. I guess it’s just the author’s wishful thinking
Viscount Cranborne Report Feb 1945 on Irish cooperation during the war
“They continue to intern all German fighting personnel reaching Southern Ireland. On the other hand, though after protracted negotiations, Allied service personnel are now allowed to depart freely and full assistance is given in recovering damaged aircraft.
Recently, in connection with the establishment of prisoner of war camps in Northern Ireland, they have agreed to return or at least intern any German prisoners who may escape from Northern Ireland across the border to Southern Ireland.
They have throughout offered no objection to the departure from Southern Ireland of persons wishing to serve in the United Kingdom Forces nor to the journey on leave of such persons to and from Southern Ireland (in plain clothes).”
Not quite “simply untrue”!!
That report is dated barely three months before VE day. “Are now”, “recently”, etc. What happened previously?
I’m sure there are examples of Irish reluctance to cooperate especially in the earlier stages of the war before they realised Germany was losing, but Derek M made the claim that it was “simply untrue”, which is untrue!
Alright then. Largely untrue. Mostly untrue. Misleadingly untrue. Deliberately untrue. Inadequately true. Only slightly true.
“If a British airman came down over Southern Ireland, for example, he was immediately repatriated, by being sent over the border. If a German airman came down, on the other hand, he was interned for the duration of the war. ” I say again, this is untrue and the facts show that, British and other allied airmen were imprisoned in the Curragh, That is a fact, they were not immediately repatriated which is what the author saidso therefore my statement that it is untrue is in fact correct
As I understand it prisoners were allowed out of the interment camps on their own parole during the day provided they gave their word not to attempt to escape. I believe that one American airman who took advantage and escaped to the UK and was promptly returned to Ireland by the British authorities.
And what was their attitude in February 1940, when the Germans did not look like imminently losing?
They were Pro-German,the IRA bombed London in 1940 in support of Adolf..
Eamon De Valera Was Always Pro-German during WW2 as was SNP under Arthur Davidson,; De Valera let U-boats refuel in irish Ports,sent Hitler A bouquet on his death,Not Good,but the Author shows his blinkered view..
That’s completely untrue although the IRA were willing to collaborate with the Germans at no point was he pro-German
“U-boats refuel in Irish ports..” Evidence please!!
Unimportant. If Rof I had allowed British planes and ships to be stationed it would have reduced losses in the Battle of the Atlantic, especially in 1941 to 1942. The Battle of the Atlantic was the important of WW2.
The lights of R of I helped German bombers navigate to N Ireland shipyards.
By Feb 1945 (or even after June 1944) how much German activity happened over Ireland? Or allied activity for that matter. By then most activity was over Germany!
Only people who want a united Ireland is EU,Globalists &dopey English Politicians,it Would make more sense to offer Ireland ,to become Part of Commonwealth, like before 1949, The border Was set in December 1922…
Handley Page Halifax EB134, Crashed Ryehill, Tuam, Co. Galway, 7th November 1943.
All seven crew killed.
8th November, RAF lorries from the North retrieve the bodies and much of the aircraft.
A clear breach of the Neutrality Rules as they were in 1943, by the Free Sate Authorities in favour of Great Britain.
I doubt it is is naïve as wishful thinking. Following partition protestants were ethnically cleansed from the South. There were infamous episodes such as the Bandon pogrom tin April 1922
I imaging it it is quite likely that the protestant population of NI will will face similar challenges in the event of reunification
My mother grew up in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, the nearest town to the internment camps for captured military. She has described attending dances in both the British and German officers’ messes. Officers were occasionally permitted to leave camp “on parole”, (i.e. a promise that they would return) to visit Newbridge for shopping, etc. The Germans had very little option but to return, British officers only had to get away from the Curragh undetected, quickly to Dublin and on a train to Belfast. It required considerable planning but, as I was told, it happened surprisingly often, even in the early years of the war.
“what would have happened to the men and women who, in the real world, became IRA volunteers or Sinn Fein leaders. I like to think that they would have directed their energy and sense of grievance not against Britain — since Britain had deftly stepped aside — but against inequality in Ireland.”
Utterly, utterly deluded. People who brutally kill and terrorise being ‘sensitive’ enough to care about ‘inequality’? It’s a joke. Any campaign against inequality is always part of a terrorist movement. It handily ‘moralises’ murder as self-defence.
Ah but Arnold your comments are with hindsight, what if the struggle had not become so desperate?
The killing has been happening on and off for centuries.
“Its leaders would have become skilled at applying for grants.” Oh such noble ambition.
And I wonder who would have been funding the grants.
Die Ubermensch.
Not sure why a ‘united’ Ireland wouldn’t have ended up like Israel/Palestine, a permanent festering conflict.
i.e. no change
Many of the big names in the NI paramilitaries were acknowledged, but useful psychopaths by their peers and organizations, so where this notion that in a parallel universe they might have put their murderous talents to good practical and peaceful use is a somewhat tenuous prospect to say the least.
I’ve made this point elsewhere, but it bears making again in light of this granted extremely well-written, but almost entirely counterfactual assertion piece above that of the more than 3,500 people killed in the conflict – never a declared war, you’ll notice – 52% of whom were civilians, 32% were members of the British security forces and only 16% were members of these supposedly brave paramilitary groups.
Republican paramilitaries were responsible for some 60% of the deaths, loyalists 30% and security forces 10%, so the idea of plucky, idealistic, otherwise well-intentioned freedom fighters isn’t just a stretch, the actual facts of ‘the conflict’ show it to be a gross distortion of the truth.
Not something I’m advocating, but if it had been a war and fully prosecuted as such by the British state it would have been over in a matter of weeks.
Your last paragraph very much mirrors the ‘military’ opinion at the time. Had Wilford continued on into the Bogside and taken Roseville flats etc it might well have all been over, “bar the shouting”, as they say.
When he returned to Belfast, it is said that the Brigade Commander of 39 Brigade admonished him for not doing so.
Unfortunately for history, the UK Prime Minister at the time was that ‘excuse for a worm’, Edward (Grocer) Heath.
Counter insurgency campaigns are rarely improved by military escalation, unless you’re willing to depopulate the entire city Mongol style. Flattening Belfast would have made the situation far, far worse.
Unlike conventional war, tactical success against insurgents doesn’t automatically aid strategic victory. If not prosecuted correctly and with civilians in mind, it can have the opposite effect.
Ultimately, the military can only provide breathing space and leverage for politicians to come to a suitable conclusion.
A good many of the terrorists on both sides of the sectarian divide, certainly during the so-called Troubles and certainly as they progressed, were known specifically by name to the British authorities and so were a good many’s specific whereabouts within NI itself.
The British state elected throughout to treat the conflict almost as a low level insurgency that it sought and presumably always thought it could contain at a politically and socially manageable level, albeit with ‘acceptable’ collateral damage.
The problem with this ‘normal life goes on at best it can’ approach was that a good many innocent civilians needlessly lost their lives as these paramilitary murderers, for that’s what they were and are, largely continued to operate with impunity always knowing that the UK ‘civilian’ law constantly protected them to some degree as UK citizens, despite their own twisted, fondly imagined ‘military’ pretensions.
And that’s nevermind that Northern Irish security forces and their families and the British Army were effectively being asked to put their lives on the line every single day in order to perpetuate this grotesque charade of normality as many of these cowards walked free to go about their shameful business.
There’s truth here I suspect. The British willingness to allow a questionable clemency allows some the best of both worlds. I wonder what might happen if Eire were ever attacked by a hostile power – to whom would it look for cover??
Dublin was suppressed with relative ease in 1916.
The Free State had more trouble in 1922, despite the help of the Royal Artillery. Some of Dublin’s finest buildings were wrecked in the process, but the ‘war’ was soon over, yet again.
I do wonder whether we will care about any of this in even 20 years, probably but not in a good way.
If China becomes the pre-eminent power in the world with India not far behind and the Islamic world and Africa modernising. None of these cultures care much for liberal democracy (yes India is a “democracy” but also a rigid caste system).
The likelihood is that a minority west will increasingly not care about Liberal Democracy either (the people having long been sold out by the globalist elite). So Irish tensions which lets face it have long been used by Britain’s fr/enemies (it is absolutely the fault of the British ruling class for not resolving these tensions) to gain advantage and leverage may still be used by these new global authoritarian powers. The idea that “free” Irishmen and “free” Ulstermen will be at each others throats at the behest of our new “colonial” masters in a divide and conquer strategy is I think not at all fanciful.
It seems that the Southern Irish put a great deal of effort into winning friends and allies in the USA and Brussels but nothing towards winning over the NI Protestants and Unionists. Do they just want the territory without the people?
“And when the war is over, and dear old Ireland is free
I’ll take her to the church to wed and a rebel’s wife she’ll be
Well some men fight for silver and some men fight for gold
But the I.R.A. are fighting for the land that the Saxons stole”*
(* The Merry Ploughboy)
It was nt the saxons but the normans like England like Scotland like wales. And unlike the orther
3 countries they didnt steal they were invited in .
It would be simpler and more accurate to say French.. By the time the descendants of Rollo hit the beach at Pevensey or wherever in 1066, they that been guzzling French wine, hoovering up French-Frankish culture and copulating wth French women on an industrial scale, for 150 years, 6/7 generations.
By the time they were, as you correctly say, ‘invited’ into Ireland in 1169, another 5 generations had passed and with it whatever ‘Viking’ DNA & culture they had started with in Rollo’s day.
By now they were entirely French in thought, culture, language and religion, and they looked to the Capetian Court in Paris as the apex of civilisation.
Incidentally they were also ‘invited’ into Scotland by David I (1084-1153).
However just to confuse things, the famous Gaelic word Sassenach means Saxon, not lowlander, and both the Irish & Scotch soon identified the thugs who they carelessly ‘invited’ as Saxons not French.Probably because although the ‘Officers’ spoke French, the Grunts spoke English.
But the Irish for rat is “francach”, only differentiated by Irish for Frenchman by the lower case initial letter. The reason why was the coincidence of the arrival of rats in Ireland with the Normans.
Interestingly, Hiberno-French was still spoken in Ireland long after French died out in England, as late as the 18th century. The two south-easterly baronies in Ireland, Forth and Bargy in Co Wexford are ethnically as Norman as the Channel Islands and their folklore and traditions relate to this Norman origin.
How interesting, and not far from where Raymond Le Gross (what a wonderful name!) and his thugs landed in 1169!
Also a bit like parts of East Anglia today.
Everything would have been different if everything had been different. I agree.
Still, what is happening now that wasn’t happening then? A decline in the power of the Church. With a bit of luck this is a one way decline, since what has been all too apparent is the corruptibility of people who are given too much authority over others. This is not a Church, Protestant or Catholic, that deserves to rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of public disillusion. If the Church is to have any meaning for future generations it is going to have to understand the concept of service, and never waiver from that path (which was, in any case, laid out for it in the beginning). There should be no power of coercion or any form of rule available to any member of any church, up to and including its highest authorities.
Were that change to be formally consolidated, it would leave the political sphere uncontaminated by religious difference. The politician then simply gets on with making life better for the citizen. There is no longer any ‘us and them’, there is simply live and let thrive.
Would that lead to a united Ireland? Why not? Of course, entirely up to the people of Ireland to decide, but from where I stand it looks like one country to me.
To some extent Irish situation is a little like Germany and their unification hasn’t been an unqualified success
HO I think you’re in lalaland there. If it’s not religion (which was merely a pseudonym for nationalist/unionist ) it would be something else, most likely ethnic divides (Scottish/ Irish)
Dublin was bombed more than once by the Luftwaffe – aerial navigation was a hit and miss business in 1940/41.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dublin_in_World_War_II
But it is doubtful if the overstretched Luftwaffe could have inflicted any serious damage on Ireland, especially if a united Ireland had joined the war after Pearl Harbor.
Colm does not address the wdespread dscrmnaton in hs homeland aganst Southern Protestants. See my book Bured Lves: The Protestants of Southern Ireland whch took 10 years of research. From 1921-26 there was an exodus of some 48,000 Southern Protestants brought on by intmadaton and polte ethnc cleansng. From 1926-76 there was a decrease in their numbers of 41%. In 1911, natve Southern Protestants numbered 10%. To-day they number 3%. A Catholc natonalist Southern Ireland courted the Vatican for years. Irsh historans have shied away form this, includng Roy Foster and Michael Laffan. Colm I suggest is right on partition. As the historan Lam Kennedy has wrtten, the 3rd Home Rule Bll guaranteed protection of northern unonists rghts in a united Ireland but Carson and Crag foolishly forced through partition which led to 2 non-inclusive politcal and cultural opposong entities. And note to-day in the ROI the state broadcaster RTE relays the exclusive prayer of the Catholic church, the Angelus, twice a day, the only state broadcaster in the world to do this. Yet no ROI political party opposes this and thee is no lobby nor media pressure to remove this.
,
He never will because it will destroy the “myth”. We were southern Protestants (Roscommon) forced out by the exact bigotry which the North was accused of. But you never hear this side of the story.
A clear case of “Religious Cleaning “ as we now say.
If there was a vote for unification tomorrow there are many in the south who would not be keen to see the border go. Running the North is proving very costly in subsidies from the English Government. That cost would now have to be undertaken by the South and I doubt that many would be keen to take it on.
Also the South does not have a “free at the point of use” NHS. There are access charges of up to €100 and it has a large insurance based element to it’s system, which NI does not have. The south could not afford to take on the NHS liabilities in there current form and most NI citizens don’t have insurance. That will be one of the biggest arguments in any border poll!
If Asquith hadn’t been such a spineless pervert you would have had your United Ireland in 1914.
Guns-ho Churchill was all for the Navy shelling Belfast into submission, while the rest of the British Army, unlike the ‘Curragh mutineers’ were perfectly capable of subduing the rest of the place.. Belligerent as Ulster Unionists were they were not Boer Commandos.
It’s also a pity that Clement Attlee never got involved. In 1930 he was on the Simon Commission to India, where he deduced that it was time for us to go.Seventeen years later he did just that.
This sounds like the green shoots of hope. Green, and Orange, and White for the peace between them.
Counterfactual history is fun and occasionally enlightening. I am afraid this is not and example of the enlightening examples.
Mr. Toibin glosses over the subject of civil war. Yet if Asquith had persisted in trying to force the unionists in Ulster to accept Home Rule, that is exactly what would have happened. So when Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914, the British Expeditionary Force would have been fully occupied in Ireland. Would Germany have won? The different world that suggests, easily dwarfs Mr. Toibin’s very insular canter through the last century.
It suggests an important question: is it moral, let alone practical, to force a large minority to accept a new political settlement they very, very strongly do not want?
You are not suggesting that the BEF scuppered the (revised) Schlieffen Plan are you?
Did the BEF tip the balance? We can certainly say it bought valuable time at Mons, and played an active part in the Marne battle. What’s more, it stopped the Germans from capturing the Channel ports. But the point is moot.
On the wider scale, would the French army, on its own, have been able withstand the post-Brest Litovsk onslaught by the Germans, and then defeat the German army? It seems improbable.
I beg to disagree. Despite the spectacular success of the Kaiser’s army against the British 5th Army under Gough from the 21st March, I doubt they would have overwhelmed the French. Particularly as the French would have been fighting defensively.
Gough’s army broke and fled but by the time the Kaiser’s reached the outskirts of Amiens it was exhausted. The new ‘Storm Troop’ tactics whilst incredibly successful were also very ‘expensive’, (sadly, always the lot of the attacking force!).
Additionally having made the fabled ‘ breakthrough’ where were the Kaiser’s cavalry to exploit it ?
Back in Poland & the Ukraine under Max Hoffman to secure the enormous gains of Brest Litovsk.(BL)
Ludendorff should have made peace on the Western Front and secured the gains of BL on the Eastern, as recommended by Hoffman.
An 18th century Compromise Peace where almost (not the wretched Bolsheviks) everybody could claim they had won!
Your question is well-posed, David, and the answer should be: No, it is not. So this counterfactual history is not, in a sense, productive. You could also maybe create a counterfactual history where the 20th century would have been much rosier for the world if the British had just ethnic cleansed Ireland into submission, but it would have been cruel and odious to do so. The creation of two entities in 1921 was, in broad brush terms, the best thing to do. There were, of course, a lot of things that could have been done better within that framework.
I’m Canadian and don’t know the details of Irish or British history as well as the author or most of the commenters. As Derek M said, Colm is engaged in counterfactual history; no-one can say for sure if the future would have been better if the Irish Free State had been created ignoring the wishes of the Ulster Unionists over the next century. However, it is obvious, to my mind at least, that it would have been undemocratic to do so, and it was the right thing to create two states, not one. Canadian Conservative MP Scott Reid wrote a brilliant 1995 book, Canada Remapped, about how countries should dissolve themselves. He found fault, not with the creation of the two states, but with the way it left so many people in Ulster who would rather be part of the Irish Free State in the Northern Ireland entity. Reid believed in such cases every effort should be made to satisfy the people’s wishes, ideally creating borders not at the provincial level but at the level of the individual poll. It might be a good idea to have a redo now, to redefine Northern Ireland’s borders. Better late than never.
The discussion in Reid’s book of ethnic enclaves geographically surrounded by another state, but part of another one with which they share the same ethnicity, is interesting. Reid proposed that the residents of such an enclave be bound by the customs rules of the state that contains otherwise, but in all other respects they would be like regular citizens of the state they belonged to. This is, in a sense, what has happened to Northern Ireland since Brexit, although it is hardly a satisfactory arrangement, and I don’t believe Reid ever saw it as applying to such a large population, and an exclave rather than an enclave.
Now, of course, the ideas contained in Reid’s book, more than a quarter of a century old, seem rather quaint. We are used to NATO’s might-makes-right thuggery, where de facto borders are the only ones that matter, but NATO will adopt borders of countries (Ukraine), republics (Croatia) or provinces (Kosovo) as sacrosanct, whichever suits its expansionist purpose. Minority rights are best dealt with by ethnic cleansing, as they were in Croatia and Kosovo, and now by Turkey aiding Azerbaijan in Nagorno Karabakh. It’s a horrible way for what is supposed to be a democratic alliance to behave. If the Western democracies come to their senses, we will look back in shame at all of these episodes. Scott Reid’s vision is perhaps a tad idealistic. He himself recognized that if the majority of Quebeckers voted for independence Quebec’s borders might have to be redrawn to recognize the national security issues of rump Canada, creating a corridor to connect Ontario with West Montreal. But the NATO view is cynical, cruel and inhumane. It would have aroused more opposition if it were not for the demonization of its victims, or at least of the Serbs of the Krajina and Kosovo.
Given your example regarding the redrawing of borders in relation to a vote for independence by the Quebecois in order to accommodate for the security and practical requirements of the remaining major rump state, it seems to be an idea alluded to early on in Tobin’s piece,
‘At first, they wanted only the four most Protestant counties included in a separate state, while others wanted all nine counties of Ulster, including their sizeable Catholic population. The state of six counties that became Northern Ireland was a compromise.’
And surely a doomed to fail, vicious one at that, thanks to that fateful decision?
Everyone has 20/20 hindsight of course,, and I genuinely have no idea as to the historical veracity of this claim and happily bow to Tobin’s vastly superior knowledge, but this certainly looks like a case of being careful what you wish for where had the apparently sensible ‘they’ prevailed over the overreaching, illogical demands of ‘the others’, then much of this ‘horrible history’ could have been avoided a century ago.
Thank you for your interest. Reid’s point about the security corridor was really quite different from the debate over the borders of Northern Ireland. It was widely assumed that predominantly English-speaking West Montreal would vote strongly against sovereignty and this was what happened in the 1995 referendum. In fact a narrow majority of Francophone Quebeckers voted for sovereignty, and it was the very strong support for Canada by Anglophone Quebeckers that made the difference. Reid’s point was that at least a narrow corridor around the Trans-Canada Highway between the Ontario border and West Montreal would have to be kept as part of Canada, not part of an independent Quebec, even if it went against the wishes of the people involved (as it probably would have been, since they are mostly French-speaking). His argument was that such a large English-speaking enclave stuck inside an independent Quebec would be at the mercy of an irredentist nationalist government, which could choose to choke them economically via blockades at any time. Their security depended on a land corridor to the rest of Canada. So it was a quite different argument than the argument over how many counties in a Northern Ireland entity were needed to resist a pro-Dublin majority emerging through demographic change. Continuing majority support for Canada in West Montreal was never in much doubt, and if it had been, the situation wouldn’t have been improved by adding Francophone towns like Vaudreuil and Rigaud to the mix.
The will of the people in border districts should be the main concern in drawing boundaries when a new country is formed but it shouldn’t be the only concern. Besides national security, national heritage sites should be allowed to have some influence on borders. The cathedral at Peć is as important to Serbs as Canterbury Cathedral is to the English, and it was sheer wickedness on the part of the NATO alliance to allow it to become part of independent Kosovo rather than remaining part of Serbia.
Thanks for the reply, but you’re really making my point for me.
What is this about Roosevelt putting pressure on Canada in 1939/40 not to enter the war and let the UK sink?*
(* mentioned by David Foot below).
I’m sorry but this article is fantasy, has historical inaccuracies and just ignores the reality of the situation. Here are a few of my thoughts:
This article is a rose coloured view of what the author would have liked to happen. It is very unlikely it would have happened in this way and more likely that the outcome for Ireland in general and Northern Ireland Protestants in particular would have been a lot worse!
All this sounds very nice wishful thinking so many “what ifs” regarding the “nice republicans” taking part in WWII etc etc.
Lest we forget, the only nation sorry about the death of Hitler and who gave condolences to Germany were these “nice” republicans who would have taken part in WWII against Hitler! Those condolences came from De Valera himself.
Eamon de Valera, who was Taoiseach during the war, and later president of Ireland. Mr de Valera said that not to have expressed condolences on the death of Hitler would have been ‘an act of unpardonable discourtesy’ to the German nation
On May 2 1945 Eamon de Valera as Irish prime minister and minister for external affairs, accompanied by Joseph Walshe, the secretary of the Department of External Affairs, visited Dr Eduard Hempel, the German representative in Dublin, to sign a book of condolences opened on account of the death of Adolf Hitler.*
Incidentally neutral Switzerland and Sweden did nothing, whilst Portugal flew its flags at half- mast.
(* source: News Letter).
Thank you for being so precise. I didn’t fancy going in to this in any depth, I only wanted to point out the tip of the iceberg which the author “can’t see” or “doesn’t want to see”. This is so depressing.
But as we are here, let us state a few other facts: In addition to what I said, the Republic was not kind at all to its own people from Ireland who did join the fight against Germany. No medals for them I am afraid. I sincerely can’t see that State entering the war alongside us or even USA for that matter as the author suggests.
I would also venture a thought that by 1945 many Germans were not sad at all in the end to hear of the death of Hitler, so to say anything in these special conditions (forced suicide) was more like delving in to internal German affairs than an expression of a purely international protocol.
USA didn’t join the war to “help us”. In the same way as Russia it was pushed in to the war and on to the side of the Empire by the total insaneness of our enemies. So USA until then the only charge it had made was of the interests of our loan which we had to pay (up to 2009?), it wasn’t passed on to Germany for example as it should have been. I sense a terrible betrayal in this area of the economy too.
What shocks me is that the USA American kids died alongside their British allies’ kids and if there is a war USA will look to the UK as a main ally never to the Irish Republic which will do nothing as in WWII when it did less than nothing, and yet a lot of USA dollars poured in to blow up UK cities in the name of the “Irish cause”, a real insult to the USA American soldiers who died fighting together with our soldiers.
This is so sad and so insane to me that I didn’t want to get in to this because it is so depressing, even to know that “Democrat USA of Roosevelt” tried to stop Canada from entering the war and to let England fall, this is a territory which I can’t understand and which I do not like.
In the end Truman threw his Chinese allies and as much as he could the British Empire under a bus ( a serial betrayal: and all the allied European Empires, that is how USA got Vietnam after all).
So how are we today: And now we have another “Democrat” who didn’t want to answer the BBC question saying “I am Irish” .. another insane “hostile special relationship” what is going to come out of this “Irishman” and this “so special relationship” from this “Irishman” who will look first to the UK for support when he needs it never to his “beloved Ireland” but hates the UK any way .. so confusing to the point of being nonsensical ..The author of the article is on another planet, to write about all this we really need a psychiatrist.
I say: “Let sleeping dogs lie” would have been a better policy, if this article is all what this guy could come up with, better not to have it, better say nothing.
All depressingly true. Friends like that etc
A ‘special relationship’ indeed.
Still, on a positive note, that’s the way the world works and the same fate will ultimately become the USA as it has done every other empire in history, including the British.
History isn’t a morality play, I’m afraid. Good and bad in all.
We did get the largest single tranche of Marshall Aid, which was some consolation. Sadly we squandered it, but that is another story, as they say.
I haven’t heard of the Roosevelt- Canada business. Do you have any more details?
As I recall earlier in 1922 at the time of the Washington Disarmament Conference, Canada, at the covert request of the US, put pressure on the UK to revoke the 1904 Anglo-Japanese Naval Treaty, and thus abandon Japan. Hence the countdown to Pearl Harbour and the ultimately abortive’Scramble for China’.
Just read your source piece there.
Incredible.
Made all the more incredible by that fact that the full horror of Hitler’s war crimes was already becoming widely known at the time and many Irish had voluntarily given their lives fighting for the allies and yet De Valera’s actions as Irish PM clearly didn’t prevent him from going on to be Irish President, and go barely remarked upon nowadays.
Where are the committed statue topplers when you really need ’em, eh?
Of course Ireland should be united. Then it could decide whether it wants to remain part of the failing EU or form a loose alliance with the increasingly successful UK.
We could be happy and productive neighbours rather than the rather unwilling bedfellows we now are.
“The sectarian attacks against Catholics that happened in Belfast in 1921 would likely have been more ferocious.” But the Catholics destroyed numerous Protestant estates in southern Ireland during the civil war of the 1920s. So the idea that unity would have resulted in peace seems far fetched.
Many of the fabled burnings of Ascendancy Houses were in fact carried out by their owners in order to collect the Insurance! All they required was a note from the RIC*confirming the place had been burnt (torched for US readers), because the ‘Insurers’ we understandably reluctant to visit a ‘combat zone’.
In a number of cases the buildings were in reality only slightly scorched, and thus easily restored and remain as a ornament for Ireland to this day.
(* Royal Irish Constabulary).
PIRA weren’t a socialist organisation you fool obviously you aren’t aware of the IRA split
The increasing Catholic majority in Northern Ireland combined with Brexit makes unification a distinct possibility.
This is, indeed, a futile exercise. 100 years of partition has left NI utterly dependent on subvention from London. It is incapable of independent existence. 100 years ago Belfast and its environs were far wealthier and more productive than Dublin. Today its a shadow of its former self. Of course, the “Troubles” inhibited investment and development, but years of “Ulster says NO!” politics contributed as well. Reunification will, probably, happen. But it will take many more years than some nationalists imagine. Religion, generally, is having less and less impact now but generations of mutual suspicion and fear – particularly in working class areas – will make a united Ireland a very uncomfortable place. For all of us!
When colonial empires left behind states with several ethnicities living together (e.g., most of Africa), we hear that this was a bad idea, a cause of subsequent instability, etc.
When colonial empires partitioned states (e.g., India, Ireland), we hear that this was a bad idea, a cause of subsequent instability, etc.
I think the real lesson is that there’s no perfect solution to these kinds of situations, and that anybody who says “If only the country had/hadn’t been partitioned, everything would be much better!” is probably deluding himself.
It occurs to me that Ireland would have been better off as part of the UK rather than being independent & partitioned. In fact it probably still would.
Two historical inaccuracies and a major error in the counterfactual.
(1) Unionists never asked for or accepted a partition scheme of four Ulster counties. They were first offered four counties in March 1914, before the 3rd Home Rule Bill became law, as part of a temporary (6 year) partition scheme involving individual county plebiscites. They rejected the package and demanded a bloc exclusion of six counties from Home Rule, as a permanent arrangement. That is the arrangement they finally got when, under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, they were given the power to opt in or out of the newly formed Irish Free State, and of course chose the second option.
(2) The unionist rejection of the Sunningdale deal in 1974 was more than a response to the power-sharing arrangement negotiated the previous year. Part of the package was the inclusion of a Council of Ireland which seemed to many unionists to be a stalking horse for a move to a united Ireland. We’ll never know whether a power-sharing deal minus the Council would have survived, but it would certainly have attracted more unionist support than it did. We should also remember that the IRA declared the year 1974 its ‘Year of Victory’ and did its utmost to wreck support for the power-sharing government, which lasted 147 days amid a province-wide bombing campaign against Protestant businesses as well as the murders of 51 people.
(3) Toibin discusses the counterfactual of Britain refusing to implement partition in 1921 without exploring any of the immediate difficulties, gliding on to discuss electoral systems. He blithely ignores the certainty that a united Ireland could have been established only at the point of the gun against fierce unionist resistance, that the southern state did not have the military resources to enforce such an outcome on unionists and that only the British Government could have done so. Irish nationalists, who had only just ceased shooting British soldiers and Irish policemen to force Ireland out of the UK, would then have been calling (as some actually did) on the British Government to shoot down Ulster folk, whose only crime was their wish to remain as citizens of the UK, in order to force them out of the UK. How long British public opinion would have tolerated such a situation does not require much consideration. Neither is it hard to imagine the condition of the island as a whole after such a bout of violence. Talk of unionists calmly taking their place in Dublin politics in the ’20s and ’30s is the most deluded of fantasies.
Colm this is a fascinating piece, thank you. Though not the stuff of dreams I think your piece explored some realistic outcomes had unification took place. For me I wonder if the hub of the matter is actually an issue of identity politics? If issues on that front could have been explored, celebrated and shared more deliberately I wonder what the outcome might have been? The current struggle for Scottish independence and the historical roots of settlers in the North of Ireland reflect meaningfully on each other. A mature and respectful appreciation of the identity of the cultures living side by side could be enriching rather than threatening?