Sinn Féin has got off lightly for its creation of an economic obstacle to its professed goal, writes GARRET FITZGERALD
THERE HAVE been two striking reactions in Northern Ireland to the murder of two soldiers and a policeman by dissident republicans. The first of these has been the unambiguous denunciation of these murders by Martin McGuinness, including his statement that, if he had information on the perpetrators, he would pass it to the police. The second has been the widespread relief in both communities at McGuinness’s statement.
The scale of the second reaction tells us that people in Northern Ireland have been less confident of the stability of the peace settlement than has, perhaps, been the case in this part of the island.
This struck me forcibly when I talked recently in Belfast to several people from a unionist background. Given Sinn Féin’s past involvement with the IRA’s campaign of violence, I raised with my interlocutors the absence of public questioning of the consistency with that past record of Sinn Féin’s present stance in support of the Northern Ireland polity. But it rapidly became clear that public criticism of Sinn Féin along these lines was seen as unhelpful – because of the danger that it might destabilise the settlement by increasing the vulnerability of Sinn Féin to pressure from “dissidents”.
It was all very well, I was told, for someone like myself in the Republic to point out the damage done to the Northern Ireland economy by the IRA’s campaign. But people in Northern Ireland, whether nationalist or unionist, could not risk the stability of the settlement by challenging Sinn Féin in that way.
Even in this State, where, rightly or wrongly, there have been fewer worries about de-stabilising the Northern settlement, Sinn Féin has got off very lightly for the way in which, by effectively halting investment in the North for 30 years, it has created a huge new obstacle to the possibility of Irish unity.
This is because the IRA campaign led to output per head in the North falling behind that of our State for the first time, and to its living standards thus becoming much more dependent than previously upon massive British subsidies – which our State could not afford to replace – and the disappearance of which, by impoverishing nationalists as well as unionists, would certainly undermine support in Northern Ireland for Irish unity.
There are, I think, two reasons why Sinn Féin has not been criticised for thus creating a fresh economic obstacle in the way of Irish political unity.
The first reason is the persistent exclusion of economic factors from the approaches both of political historians and of contemporary political commentators on Northern Ireland matters.
This has also been the case with respect to the still hotly debated historical issue of the relative merits of a gradual peaceful movement towards Home Rule vis-a-vis the violence-marred struggle for independence. It seems to me that the case for the former, rather than the latter, has come to be too readily accepted by many – in part as a consequence of revulsion against Provisional IRA violence, which is seen by some as having been traceable back to the events of 1919-1921.
But at least equally important, in my view, has been the persistent reluctance of some modern retrospective supporters of the Home Rule approach to address the key economic question of whether, with the eventual emergence of the welfare state (which would have involved huge social transfers from England to a Home Rule Ireland), the people of this State would ever have been willing to pay the huge short-time financial price that would have been involved in a subsequent move from Home Rule to full political independence.
And without the power that independence gave us create our own taxation and industrial promotion systems and to prioritise education, there would have been no Celtic Tiger – and no catch-up with Britain and the rest of Europe. Because economic issues have consistently been excluded from our politics-dominated history, there is no public awareness of either of these key factors relating to the independence of our State or to the possibility of Irish unity.
The second reason why the damage done by the IRA to the possibility of Irish unity has not featured in public debate is, of course, that the 30 years of violence that they precipitated has led to most people in this state preferring not to think any more about this issue. Here again Sinn Féin/IRA have damaged the cause they claim to espouse.
Another key aspect of Northern Ireland that is widely ignored – most determinedly, of course, by Sinn Féin – is the fact that polls there have consistently shown support for Northern Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom, not just by Protestants but also by an important minority of Catholics – shown by polls currently to be about 30 per cent. With 44 per cent of the population Catholic, and with virtually no Protestant interest in joining a united Ireland, this suggests that when today’s children become voters around the year 2025, support for a united Ireland could still be below one-third – and even if a Catholic majority of voters were to emerge in or after 2045, there could still be a large majority preferring to remaining in the UK.
Could the damage done to Northern Ireland by IRA violence ever be retrieved? Perhaps at some time in the future it might be – but until now there has been no sign of this happening. Of course, over a period of many decades all this could change. All we can say now is that the IRA campaign has pushed Irish unity much further into the future.
And, as someone who has always believed the political division of the island to have been a mistake, because it fostered sectarianism in both parts of the island, I deeply resent the damage that the IRA, and its political arm, Sinn Féin, have done to the possibility of eventual Irish unity.