IRELAND—Two Views (II) TWO COMMUNITIES IN A CONFLICT OF NATIONALISM

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32849, 24 February 1972, Page 12

IRELAND—Two Views (II) TWO COMMUNITIES IN A CONFLICT OF NATIONALISM

(Reprinted from the "Economist." (February 12) by arrangement j

A lot of things are being said these days in the name of Irish nationalism; they include Mr John Hume’s assertion that the issue now is either the unity of Ireland or nothing. Is there an answer to that sort of assertion which can offer any hope that Ireland may yet slop short of a civil war, or even of an Anglo-Irish war? The last hundred years have been, as much as anything else, the century of nationalism, and the world should have learned something by now about how people who feel and act as a community are liable to produce the same phenomenon among their neighbours. There is a lesson that needs to be learned, and still has not been, about the limits of nationalism.

Nation States are not only a relatively new thing in human history; they are also, in part, the product of external forces. Ireland became a nation after centuries of clobbering by the British. Italy became one when the peoples of its numerous petty States had had enough of being fought over by French, Spanish and Austrian armies. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have successively emerged as sovereign States, each in reaction to domination or the threat of domination by others. Admittedly, the achievement of independent nationhood often follows the lifting of a particular external threat. A classic example is that of the United States, whose inhabitants chose to assert their American identity only after their British rulers had imprudently relieved them of the fear of the French power that formerly hung over them from Canada. But examples of this kind do not impair the general rule. Nationalism is a reaction to pressures from outside a group, pressures intense enough to lead the group’s members to lay aside their more private quarrels and unite against the outsiders.

Rule of thumb

The basic rule of thumb may be that a sense of nationhood evoked by an external pressure produces a nation state when that pressure is no longer strong enough to prevent a national upsurge but is not relaxed in such a way as to mollify nationalist feeling. There is, for instance, no question now of Quebec being forcibly kept within the Canadian confederation. The question is whether the Quebecois will choose separation now that they are free to do so, or whether, like the great majority of Scotland’s people, they will decide that they no longer feel a sense of grievance strong enough to justify such a choice.

There were moments in Irish history when the British seemed to have a chance of relinquishing the role of conquerors for that of partners in a manner that would reconcile most Irishmen to the idea of remaining within the United Kingdom. Those chances were lost. Like Pakistan’s rulers in their dealings with east Ben-

gal, Britain’s failed in the end either to appease the Irish nationalists or to suppress them. So a new State appeared on the world’s maps—and with it a new border.

Makeshift border

That border was ill-drawn. An admitted makeshift, it simply followed county lines; the revision provided for was never carried out; the line runs through villages, through farms and even houses; pigs, butter and even bread have ' always crossed it illegally, as arms and gelignite do today. But its drawing separated the Unionist north-east from the bulk of Ireland that wanted to get out of the United Kingdom, leaving only half a million anti-Unionists north of the line and about as many Unionists south of it. The grievances of the Catholic minority in the north have been made known to the world. The Protestant minority in the south has been much diminished by emigration, but the Catholic Republic has had a Protestant President and today has a Protestant deputy Prime Minister; It is easy to show either that the southern Protestants have been stifled or that they have been pampered, according to your taste. What cannot be denied, however, is that if the Irish Sea had been made the only dividing line between the residual United Kingdom and the new Irish State, that State would have been endowed with a larger and more indigestible minority than the 1921 border left on either side.

Opposing opinions

Ireland will always be able to astonish the world, so perhaps one should not now be taken aback to find Mr William Craig advocating the cession of Catholic-peopled border areas to the Republic, while Miss Bernadette Devlin tells readers of the “New York Times” that she sees no point in that kind of thing. But then in the next breath Miss Devlin admits that “if the British take the army away, we’ll still be on our side of the barricades for, exactly the same reason, to ; defend our areas”—meaning, as she makes clear, to defend the North’s Catholic ghettoes

against its Pretestant majority. Miss Devlin, who says she wants the whole working class to unite at the barricades against its rulers, finds the antagonisri between the two sorts of Irishmen heartbreaking, but she does face the fact of its present existence.

The danger in the new wave of emotion tha; has swept the Republic, and seems almost unchecked in much of its news media, is precisely that people there seem to have stopped talking about the need to coax the northerners gradually towards reconciliation, and now see Irish reunification as a job for the bulldozer. Yet no sane man can at this moment imagine that, if the British troops left Northern Ireland, it could be quietly absorbed by the Republic.

Similar patterns

There is nothing peculiarly Irish in the present Irish situation. In many parts of the world lhere are overlapping patterns of human loyalty that may successively or even simultaneously appear as forms of nationalism. French Canadian nationalism has long existed within a wder Canadian nationalism that is primarily a reaction against the power of the Unted States.

Today’s Bangladeshis unquestionably cpted for Pakistan, as against India, in 1947. The founder of Nigerian nationalism, Er Azikiwe, and many of his early followers were Ibos—members of the tribe that was later to make the tragic attempt to establish a separate Biafra. The strong pull of Arab nationalism has not prevented the emergence of a series of sovereign Arab states that repeatedly quarrel, make it up and then quarrel again. Nowadays Belgium—the focal point of community Europe—tends to look more Irish than Ireland, tom as it is between French-speaking and Flemishspeaking factions who do not in fact wish to unite with either France or Holland.

The one-island fallacy But Ireland's history has left many Irithmen (in the diaspora as well as in the old country) disposed to see the northern Protestants not as an undeniable entity but as a smear of British red still marring the green of the island. And geography compounds the eflect of history. Ireland is an island. There is a doctrine that has been called the “salt-water fallacy,” the ides that overland conquests are more excusable than overseas ones; the Russians and Chinese use it to claim that the territories they seized in central Asia in the nineteenth century are different from the former colonies of countries like Britain and France. It is one rorm of this fsllacy to regard an island ns manifestly destined for unity. Churches, tanks, sporting and other organisations are agreed in treating Ireland as one. But these patterns date from the day; when Ireland was united in subjection, as a part of whet may still be described as the British Isles. The fact has also to be faced that Belfast not only is, but in many respects feel that it is, closer to Glasgow than to Limerick or Cork. The Ulsterman may go south for the horse racing or the fishing, but for the trade that is his live ihood he looks across the narrow stretch of water that jeparates him from Britain. That dividing line m Ireland may not >e in the right place, althougi agreeing on changes to it 'vould be a far harder business than the people who see re-partition as an easy wty out of the Irish crisis pribably realise. But it does represent an important truth about Ireland: that there are two different communities there, with different ideas about some very fundamental tilings. Delaying; the day The assertion of Irish nationalism, which is valid within much 3f Ireland, is not going to dissolve the beliefs and loyalties and emotions which define that other community in the north. It is true that another generation of Irish nationalists, another generation of I.R.A. men, are being trained with every day that passes in Ireland, north and south. That is lamentable enough. What the Irish Republic is m great danger of forgetting is that, by the very expression of this sort of hatred for all things British, it is steadily adding to the yeara winch will have to pass before a British-orientated re a k> nt J'“} the north of Ireland will willingly consider with—let alone in—the Republic.

Property auction.—The 45,000 sq. ft pnjperty of Bnscoes (N.Z.). Ltd, Wellington, was sold to an undisclosed buyer at public auction yesterday for $505,000. The price was $95,000 aoove Government valuation. The property includes a warehouse, showroom and offices.—<P-A.)