The United States and a United Ireland

I have just returned from Washington, where Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald met with congressional members and Irish American and Trade Union leaders. In Congress, we met a cross-section of representatives from all shades of the Republican and Democratic parties.

Ireland, our peace process, and Irish Unity are probably among the few policy areas of consensus among all our parties. In Ireland, we know how US foreign policy can be used for good. The administration of US President Clinton played a crucial role in delivering the Good Friday Agreement. Since 1998, the US has acted to guarantee the Agreement and, during Brexit, to help ensure that no hard border was imposed across our island. The US has a continuing role to ensure that the right to self-determination is implemented. Irish America, labour leaders and political representatives have a role to play in securing Irish Unity referendums with the British and Irish Governments.

We can and do have the hard conversations on American foreign policy in relation to Israel, Palestine and Cuba, amongst others. We bring our unique experience to the table regarding peacebuilding and self-determination for all nations. It should be remembered that the US is not monolithic about these issues and public opinion is ahead of political institutions, particularly concerning the Palestinian cause. We use our influence where and when we can.

Our history, and our relationships between Ireland and the US, are deep and enduring. They are of family, of shared history and outlast any Administration or era. They stretch back to before the American Revolution.

• US Declaration of Independence

This weekend marks the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence from Britain. The anniversary is in the hands of the American people and does not belong to any one President or group. It also demonstrates the depth of links between Ireland and the US.

In advance of the drafting of the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin visited Ireland. He witnessed first hand the cost of British colonialism. The wealth of Ireland was exported for the good of Britain, and the vast majority of the people were impoverished, subjugated and oppressed. In Ireland, Britain’s oldest colony, Franklin saw America’s future. He continued to press the British, but his view hardened that Independence was the only way forward.

• Benjamin Franklin

In the States, the same lesson was being relayed by Irish Catholic and Scots-Irish Presbyterians who in Ireland had their religions suppressed by England in favour of the established Anglican faith. They were barred from any meaningful role in political and economic life. They fled to America in the hope that the new world would offer a new life. These groups would provide the intellectual basis of the Declaration and would take up arms to break the link with Britain. They promoted the historic Republican ideas of equal citizenship, democracy and opposition to monarchy, declaring:

 “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

• George Washington

Events in Ireland shaped events in the newly declared United States of America. George Washington was well-read on Irish affairs and regarded his Irish troops and generals as among his best. He marked St. Patrick’s Day by granting his soldiers a break from the war. In June 1776, he raised his glass to toast, “Let the generous Sons of Saint Patrick expel all the venomous reptiles of Britain.”

Likewise, the revolutionary republican movement in the United States and France shaped a new generation of Irish Patriots. Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen drew on the Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution to shape a modern Irish Republicanism that sought to unite Protestants, Catholics and Dissenters under the common banner of Irish men and women and to break the link with Britain.

It was to the newly independent United States that Wolfe Tone entered exile in Philadelphia. It was there that he made contact with the French and sailed to Paris. The rest, as they say, is history as generations of Irish Republicans sought the support of Irish America and US Administrations in the cause of Irish Independence.

• Wolfe Tone

It is proper to celebrate the Declaration of Independence, but to also reflect on progress. The concept of “all men are created equal” was taken literally to exclude women, nor did it extend to native Americans. And the existence of the slave system that held African-Americans in bondage was the cancer at the heart of the new Republic, the central contradiction of the American Revolution.

The failure to translate revolutionary ideals into state action is neither new nor uniquely American. In Ireland, the ideals of the 1916 Proclamation have yet to be realised, and the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil gathers dust. Eleven years after the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution was adopted with the prologue, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union.”

The process of building a more perfect union would continue; it was not until 1865 that slavery was formally abolished. This was over 30 years after Britain, which had brought slavery to America, had abolished it in its empire. Of course Britain only did so after it had profited hugely from slavery and had built its global empire on the backs of slaves.

• Dr Martin Luther King

Nation states evolve, and it’s not always in a progressive straight line. It was Dr Martin Luther King who reminded us that, “Change does not roll on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle.” We are living in a time of flux. The US is a vast country of immeasurable wealth. It fought against an empire and won its right to national self-determination. Yet today, we see the same right denied to other nations, including the Palestinians.

We have further to travel to realise the vision of revolutionary founders, be that the US Declaration of Independence or the Proclamation of 1916. The campaign to secure equal rights for all people continues to this day. Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, equality and self-determination remain constant values yet to be realised.

• Ciarán Quinn is Sinn Féin North America Representative

Mary Lou in Washington 

• Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald  with Richie Neale, Co-Chair of the Congressional Friends of Ireland

Speaking in Washington at a joint event with the New 32 Irish Unity Campaign Group, the Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald said: 

“It’s inspiring to hear young Irish people and our diaspora speak about the historic opportunity that Irish Unity represents for their generation. Sinn Féin’s Irish Unity Bill will be debated in the Dáil on the 7th of July. It is an unprecedented opportunity to begin planning for Irish Unity, and one we must seize. Together, we are writing the next chapter of Ireland’s story.”