Making Sense of a United Ireland: Should it happen? How might it happen?

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Unionism as a whole is going to have to change the way it does things and become more centrist in many, many ways,” said Mr Beattie, who admitted that he does not know how long he will remain UUP leader after two disappointing election results. Sinn Féin’s success frightens Unionists

Six into 26 won’t go!” I saw that painted on a Belfast gable wall when I was a boy. Being a competitive little lad, I thought the graffiti author didn’t understand fractions. After all, six goes into 26 “four and a third times.” Of course, the statement was not about division, where it may have been correct according to certain schoolteachers, but about partition. There have, however, been several unionist surrenders – as well as British betrayals. Ulster unionists parted with their Southern counterparts, who wanted all of Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, or in the British Empire, or in the British Commonwealth. Southern unionists would have settled for ‘dominion status’ for the entire island in 1917–18 – so that they would have been part of a larger minority, rather than the small one they became. Not everyone who votes Sinn Féin or SDLP will vote for Irish reunification, if and when the Northern referendum happens. Like everyone with a vote, they will want to know what is on offer, and what the benefits and costs are – both for themselves and their families and for their peoples. But cultural Catholics will have a choice, and their votes will matter – with increasingly decisive importance over the rest of this decade. By 2030, the decision will be theirs to make. Privately, officials in Dublin say the Irish government will not push for a vote if there are any signs of a resurgent loyalist paramilitarism in the North or South.

Since the last quarter of the 19th century such Catholics have mostly voted for nationalist parties with platforms that favor an autonomous or independent and united Ireland. Today the largest of these parties are Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Not everyone who votes Sinn Féin or SDLP will vote for Irish reunification if and when the Northern referendum happens. Like everyone with a vote they will want to know what is on offer and what the benefits and costs are, both for themselves and their families and for their peoples. But cultural Catholics will have a choice, and their votes will matter—with increasingly decisive importance over the rest of this decade. By 2030, as I shall try to show, the decision will be theirs to make. Conor Burns: The Tory minister from a nationalist family on rebuilding relationships between Britain and Ireland ]

Another gesture to unionists that O’Leary calls for is to have a united Ireland rejoin the Commonwealth, to provide a “British dimension” to Irish unification. This is another step that will cause Irish nationalists to choke on their proverbial cornflakes, but his arguments seem sound to me. He points out that the Commonwealth is no longer formally the “British Commonwealth,” that it has far more republics than monarchies and, interestingly, that there is no formal requirement that the British monarch after Charles III will be its “head.” Of course, the Commonwealth also has no legislative, executive or judicial authority over any of its members. Northern Ireland would follow hundreds of EU rules but gain unique and lucrative dual access to both the UK and European markets. The German case seems more promising as a model, although Making Sense cites the work of Gerhard Albert Ritter, who has argued that unification in 1990 encouraged a neoliberal turn across Germany as a whole in his book The Price of German Unity. O’Leary sounds a warning about following such a path in Ireland “when the average Southerner may well be turning away from an overdose of neo-liberalism.” At no point, however, does he discuss the practicalities of how we might iron out the worst tendencies of Irish neoliberalism through reunification. One concession O’Leary is not prepared to make to unionist opinion is the demand that Irish unity should require more than a simple majority (50 per cent plus one) in Northern Ireland, or even that it should require a majority of both nationalists and unionists. This issue should be of interest to Canadians, as the unionist position against a simple majority is in line with our constitutional law, which requires a clear majority for any province to secede.

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He accused Fine Gael and Fianna Fail of not doing enough to prepare the groundwork for reunification. What a united Ireland could look like The book details what other rights, protections, and securities British people in Ireland and cultural Protestants may want – and should have – in a reunified Ireland. What deliberative process would result in the best elucidation of these protections in preparation for two referendums? In 1983/84, the New Ireland Forum, which was boycotted by unionists, succeeded through a process of a year’s intensive public and private debates in creating a new nationalist consensus that recognized the equal rights and identity of nationalists and unionists in a new Ireland. Now, some similar exercise is required by nationalists to examine and debate how to retain the best of the North and South in a united Ireland, free of the old shibboleths. I am just an occasional visitor to Ireland for holidays and academic conferences, but I try to be sensitive and informed as I travel and encounter scenes in the landscape that relate to the historical struggle to stay alive in a land which offered little comfort. Sadly, holiday travel has been brought to an end for us by cessation of the pet passport scheme with the EU. Unionists have lived a large part of their lives fearing constitutional change, by virtue of the fact that we had very brutal terrorist campaigns towards that end,” he said in his office in Ballymena, approximately a 40-minute drive from Belfast. The motivation behind this book by one of Ireland’s most distinguished intellectuals is his belief that Irish reunification is probable during the next decade or so. A referendum on Irish unity – or rather two referendums, one in Northern Ireland, the other in the Republic of Ireland – is provided for under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, as soon as it appears there is sufficient support. O’Leary believes that the dual referendums will be held within this decade and that all interested parties should start preparing now.