9 April 1998 Edition
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''.
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''.