For Irish nationalists the tricolour is a symbol of national pride – but it could also be argued that it symbolises the tragic failure of the flag’s aspiration to form an Irish identity based on reconciling the green and orange traditions on the island of Ireland.
In recent years, increased support for Sinn Fein and the fallout from Brexit has seen the issue of a unitary Irish state being debated more frequently with the activist group Ireland’s Future organising large scale events to promote and discuss issues related to Irish unity. One of the legitimate criticisms levelled at these Ireland’s Future events and other similar initiatives is that they involve prominent nationalists from both jurisdictions talking to themselves about an agreed constitutional outcome. In almost all of these united Ireland debates, there’s little emphasis on how to convince over half the population of Northern Ireland who consistently state they wish to remain a part of the UK or indeed the large number of undecided voters on why they would be better off within a unitary Irish state. Not to mention the awkward fact that according to a recent Irish Times poll, along with various other polls in recent years, the pro-union demographic includes roughly twenty percent of Northern Irish Catholics who while they aren’t culturally orange view remaining part of the UK as personally beneficial to them. This is hardly surprising when you consider that there is a large Catholic middle class in Northern Ireland with a very many of them in well paid UK public sector jobs.
For many of this cohort, a vote for unity is a vote for an uncertain period of unemployment in a newly formed state trying to find its legs. I would imagine these pro-union Catholics feel similar to the Edinburgh taxi driver who told me during the Scottish independence referendum that in his heart he was an ardent Scottish patriot but that his pocket was staunchly pro-UK.
Whatever about pro union Catholics being asked to forego the economic benefits of remaining in the UK in favour of a united Ireland, convincing culturally unionist protestants will be an even greater task. It’s going to take a lot more than the odd Irish politician occasionally floating the idea of rejoining the commonwealth to entice unionists into a united Ireland and if we have learned anything from what triggered the Northern Irish troubles, it’s that you can’t have a very large disgruntled minority who feel alienated from the state in which they live and hope to maintain social cohesion. The late Ulster Unionist party leader David Trimble acknowledged that the early decades of the Northern Irish state were, as he put it, ‘a cold house for Catholics.’ For a truly united Ireland to have any chance of flourishing it would have to ensure that Ulster protestants didn’t feel it was their turn for a spell in the aforementioned ‘cold house.’ This is the challenge that almost no one in the united Ireland camp appears to ever seriously address.
Sadly, I see no sign of most nationalists, especially those in the Republic, currently willing to give ‘parity of esteem’ to the unionist tradition on an all-island basis. It’s ironic that most southern nationalists expected northern nationalists to compromise with unionism to reach an agreement within Northern Ireland while many of them would never consider making even the most cosmetic of constitutional changes to accommodate unionists within a united Ireland. Whenever any moderate southern nationalist politician contemplates rejoining the Commonwealth or adopting a more inclusive national anthem he or she is widely derided as a ‘West Brit’ and various opinion polls show a slight majority of southern voters are as intransigent as the most hardline of unionists when it comes to any form of constitutional compromise.
Before this island could ever be in a place to sit down and negotiate the contours and constitutional furnishings of a unitary state, feelings of kinship and mutual belonging would have to be fostered on an all-island basis. What good is a unitary jurisdiction if the people are bitterly divided? Nationalists will have to employ some lateral thinking strategies to get unionists to even consider the prospect of a united Ireland. One such strategy would be to emphasise that there is a British strand in Irish identity and an Irish strand in British identity and that the nations of these islands are not foreign to one another. For instance, there are millions of us across this archipelago who have ties of family and ancestry across both islands and who view both Ireland and Britain as home. There’s also the fact that much of Scotland’s Gaelic culture has its historic roots in Ulster. The Irish spoken in Ulster is more closely related to the Scots Gaelic still spoken in parts of northwestern Britain than it is to the Irish spoken in the rest of Ireland.
Even the emergence of Irish republicanism in the late 18th century had a distinctively British flavour as the United Irishmen were largely led by Presbyterian Ulster-Scots and Anglo-Irish Dubliners who were descendants of the Cromwellian plantation and therefore brought their suspicion of monarchy with them to Ireland.
Acknowledging these areas of overlapping culture and shared ancestry doesn’t mean that we have to deny historical injustices or the atrocities we inflicted on one another, but in the words of the late Queen Elizabeth II speaking in 2011 in Dublin:
“With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.”
And most importantly she urged us to:
“Bow to the past but not be bound by it.”
In a recent trip to Dublin to support the all-Ireland rugby team Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Emma Little Pengelly remarked:
“Took the opportunity in Dublin to talk about our incredibly rich heritage – proud Anglo-Irish and Ulster-Scots – and our role in the very fabric of our Isle, we are the people of JB Yeats, Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Iris Murdoch, Lavery, of Jameson’s and Guinness and much more! I am determined to create better understanding of the incredible role of the British, Anglo-Irish and Ulster Scots in this place we call home.”
You’d probably have to go back to the days of pre-partition Ireland to find a prominent unionist politician speaking about belonging to the whole island of Ireland. Such conciliatory language would have been unimaginable during the darkest days of the troubles. A prudent nationalist response would be to reciprocate such inclusive sentiment by emphasising the common ties between all the peoples of both Ireland and Britain and that if a united Ireland were ever to emerge it would be inclusive of the island’s British heritage and traditions.
If nationalists ever want to see a functioning cohesive unitary state at peace with itself, then unionists will have to feel that their Britishness can be at home in Ireland. After all, that’s what the tricolour purports to represent. In reality, any long term constitutional compromise on an all island basis would have to involve a lot more than unionists being granted a few cultural trinkets. All that said, with time even the most hardened of mindsets can be softened. Afterall, whoever thought we’d see the day that the once bitter foes Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness would have jointly governed Northern Ireland while affectionately being referred to as the ‘chuckle brothers.’ Any united Ireland worth living in would have to be founded on the same principles of parity of esteem, mutual respect and willingness to compromise that made peace in Northern Ireland possible.
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strengthen the council of the Isles. Given proper respect to each of the five jurisdictions could be a non confrontational way to go forward. Let’s face it the dynamic has changed so much with population movements all over Europe. We need to pull together in these Islands because these changes are taking place very rapidly. History teaches us that we share so much common heritage good and bad.At this junctior we can choose the good and build on the good going forward.So many Irish are of Scottish English and Welsh decent and visa versa.No political change is required but recognition of the heritage we share and respecting all views and aspirations of each cultural group going forward.
Well said.
For a Nation to be truly Independent and Sovereign it must satisfy 3 criteria.
1,) It must control its Borders against invaders.
2) It must have its own Independent Sovereign Currency to control and invest in its Economy.
3) it must have its own Independent Legislation and Judicial System..
Ireland does not have control of its Borders and is subject to EU and UN directives.
Ireland does not have an Independent Sovereign Currency since we adopted the Euro and lost our Economic automony to the ECB, as we learned in 2008 from the Troika.
Ireland is subject to Laws and directives created in Brussels, of which 70% are enacted without scrutiny by our Dail or Judicial System.
Ireland is a colony of the EU, which is in turn a vassal of the US, as we have seen with the US/NATO war in Ukraine, which Ireland has supported by funding ,materials and hidden military training.
Union with Nortern Ireland brings no benefits,economic or political as long as we are subjected to EU control.
It is but a Hopium distraction for Nationalists ,trotted out when the Regime is in trouble.
Agree! There are no surveys, except one fixed one, paid for by the EU, that shows that the Irish want to leave the EU. Currently, this is not even allowed to be questioned in Ireland. The official info is that 88% want to stay. This sounds more like the result of a Chinese election, than truth!
Ireland failed to meet the ideals and promise of what the flag represents because ireland never actually attained freedom at all or independence. You see independence is not just about the writing on a piece of paper or the buzz word on the stree, its about freedom from all forms of control and tyranny and ireland was only ever taking freedom from the british as independence through indoctrination and propaganda. The death of collins in my view was the death of any chance of freedom we could possibly have because to become a truely free and independent nation, we need to be free to say waht we think without impunity as well as having the freedom to exploit our talent and natural resources to be self sufficient without the input of external nefarious resources. In my view after the civil war we fell into the dev capal whose only loyalty was to the jesuits and rcc who were the real people controlling ireland with dev as the head puppet and symbol and evidence of this is still evident everywhere and if we micro analyze things, amnesty international which is one of the paid ngos was setup by a well known member of the dev cabal. Its all linked and the same chain of events from that time to today can be traced clearly and concisely. The reality is that the dependents of this cabal have carried on their own ancestors business of keeping ireland enslaved while giving the appearance that we were free when we were not, democracy being an illusion which pushed us into the wef eec cabal in the 1970’s. This all happened because like today, the people running the show were not remotely qualified to run the country and had little interest in developing and exploiting the countries national resources to the peoples benefit for the people. The only thing good that came out of this period in fact was our constitution because luckily for us the dev cabal did not have the foresight to see how it would hinder the gloal takeover and is franly a pain in the hole for the kakistocracy which is why they are trying to get rid of it just like the first amendment in the united states. Now the real kick in the balls for the people was the formation of the central bank which allowed the sabatian frankists to take control of the money system before they moved on to the eradication of the indignous people through the kalergi eec which was originally to be named the pan european states. This is a very abbreviated form of what happened but enough to have the most basic understanding of the mess we are today and Iirsh unification will never happen in the form that we would think of because what their actal plan is to remove all national borders and therefore they can sell the crap that they united ireland. Nothing of what they say is true and what their intentions are are completely different. An example of this was the good friday agreement pushed for the benefit of the people but when you come to the knowledge that klaus schwab was involved for the alterior motives with now discredited betie aherne, bill clinton and tony blair to remove borders and remove the peoples ability to arm and defend themselves, the motivations become very clear that nothing they do is for the benefit of the people, thats why they fail up because they achieve a globalist totalitarian goal, the peoples goals dont matter. Now we are in a state now where they nearly succeeded but the problem now is that we are awake and we actually have a real chance of real freedom here by voting in our own grass routes representatives who do care about the people and they dont control them. That is why they are rushing to shove as much dystopia in as possible and even after they get kicked out the their globalist bosses will cause so much strife for us financially based because they control our money that it would make out grass roots politicians seem incompetent. Thats why we need to get out of the eu, replace the money with gold back money and close the central bank while burning the bond holders and invest the riches in our indigenous industries of farming, oil, gas and reopen our fertilizer, flour and sugar industries. That is the key to all this and will make us a driving force in the world and a shining light. It will take balls though but I think we can do it. As for irish unification in the form we expect, it will happen by natural attrition if we follow this path because the people in the north will want our freedom and inginuity if we follow this path as the uk is currently enslaved like us right now.
Please put these to those seeking united Ireland, Will a border poll give voters the option’s of:
Giving what Europe has done and many countries question there place within the EU, people should be afforded the opportunity for a true united Ireland, as those in the north see the damage EU politics is having on the south and many other nations, I for one would not agree to be governed by the current group of collective non thinkers and EU puppets.
I hear you Declan, most of us no longer want to be ruled by administrations because what most of our countries dont have at the moment is a government. Its sad but true and that is the reason for all their psychological warfare because they dont want people to see their countries true potential as that would mean a collapse of the cabal that are destroying our countries. The north in my view will probably never see the vote as it would create too much tension so they are going to achieve it by other means which is the eradication of national borders. They are now intentionally finding ways to circumvent constitutions and the will of the people. Take military neutrality which we currently enjoy, their big plan is to come up with an eu army and then the government will get rid of triple lock so they can transfer troops to the eu army to genocide them in any way they can. War was always about lining their pockets and genocide people. Western peoples were always the target for this and they use inversion to say that white people caused it when in fact it was always the people in power that caused it and they used propaganda and hegelian dialects to string the people along. This map proves the point very nicely. https://battles.nodegoat.net/viewer.p/23/385/scenario/1/geo/fullscreen
Part of the issue is that Northern Ireland is still a deeply divided society. The two groups that live there (Irish and British) have completely distinct identites, ethnic origins, and beliefs that clash with one another. They’re still not very fond of one another. You can’t boil it down to simply religion.
You put it so well. A lot of internal strife that is never broadcast. They’re always ‘at it’. In Belfast anyway. They would be lost outside that small world.
It isn’t just Belfast. The Irish and British stay away from each other and live in parallel societies throughout the North. They prefer to stick with each other. It feels like you’re simultaneously living in two places there. Half of Northern Ireland feels just like the rest of Ireland (Tyrone, Fermanagh, most of Armagh, half of Derry, and south Down) and the other half feels like you’re in a very UKIP supporting right wing area of Britain (Antrim, Northeast Derry, Portadown area, and North Down). It’s sad considering that there are so many wonderful people on both sides but they’re just so uncomfortable around each other.
Thanks, I could only speak for Belfast, nationalist Belfast, that’s my experience. And I’m a nationalist. But I’ve met people from Tyrone and Fermanagh all my life, very different from Belfast.
If a United Ireland ever happens it will have to be some kind of a federal arrangement with both the Northern and Southern States having certain levels of autonomy in certain matters.
Although I’m happy with Northern Ireland within the UK, I’d also be content with a united Ireland within an Irish-British confederation.
Been there, done that and millions of Irish died.
What I’d like to see is automatic right to Irish citizenship and passports removed from the people in NI.
That should focus a few minds.
Been there, done that and millions of Irish died.
The comment of the night, Teresa. You knocked him flat in one line. This fella is straight out of the imperial war museum.
As George Bernard Shaw said ‘put an Irishman on a spit, you’ll always find another Irishman to turn it’. The author of this piece is the man turning the spit.
There’s a good few about.
Well said.
I know there’s a good few about.
Good on you for having the courage to disagree.
Not enough of your type about.
Currently in the US, the left are trying to demonise “Christian Nationalists”, as being some type of extreme-right group. I think we should embrace this expression and use it to describe us. Although, I am not a Catholic from my belief, I come from a Catholic family and Identify with the Irish Christian way of life, like most of us! The tri-colour is a huge symbol for me of my culture and I am drawn to it, and always will be!
We are on our knees here, overcome by mass immigration, preparing to get nationalist candidates in at the next election to address and reverse it. A frightening demographic change. I’m following the unionists on a united Ireland. When they’re in, I’m in and not until then. Gript is riding roughshod over us, their only meaning of identity as shallow as the colours on a flag. We know the meaning of the colours since we were little, we know our country. Gript is in SF’s hip pocket roaring for a united Ireland, although they belong to FG, the descendents of those loyal to the British state in Ireland. Like the imperial masters, they do not recognise our language, its literature or culture, not a word on that, no intrinsic values, only external flag colours. Our language was extinguished by ignoring its existence under colonial rule. You find the native Irish around the city, Baile na mBocht, for historical reasons. ..’the incredible role of the British…’ Nobody thinks that but the British themselves and lackeys. The empire pretended it was benign and was here as a beneficiary for the Irish people, to civilise them!
…’atrocities inflicted on one another…..’ The Empire said the Irish were ungrateful for the benefits they brought and were fighting blackguards, who had to be kept down with military might. They refused to acknowledge the Irish were fighting against cruel injustices. It was forbidden for them to own a gun, their only weapon was a stolen gun, old and little good, or a self made pike, in later years smuggled guns. They were fighting from rackrented cabins that they never owned, against the might of the British army that ruled the world. Think of the inequality of that, with the Irish slaughtered every time, but Gript gives the imperial version. The Irish language poets from back over the centuries, give contemporary piercing accounts of the people’s pain. Dire. The Irish never had prisoner of war status after battle, regarded as subversive brutes to be treated accordingly with bayonet or noose or any way at all. Their final blow to the Irish language was the national schools that were founded to anglicise Ireland, to complete the conquest, Irish banned in them, the sound and sight of it forbidden. That’s why we are not bi-lingual. Conradh na Gaeilge fought hard to get recognition for Irish at the turn of the century, got it taught in the Gaeltacht schools, but after a 70 year ban, hard to get teachers with literacy in the galltacht. It only got full rights after independence, but by then very weakened. Great money spent on bogus immigrants but not even an Irish language café in Dublin city, where Irish should be heard as a working live language, amid the gaggle of the world’s languages. The government will not spend a few bob on renting a building to give equivalence to our minority language, a fierce injustice to its speakers. That’s what bothers me, not a united Ireland on Gript’s terms, to be imposed on top of the worst chaos and shambles I have ever seen our country in.
The author’s claim that Ulster Irish is closer to Scots Gaelic than it is to other forms of Irish is bunk.
And a reminder of the obvious. Irish is nowhere spoken as a native community language anywhere in the 6 Counties, tho I know individual families are trying to raise children thru irish.
So what was the author’s point?
Scots Gaelic is not a language in it’s own right, its a dialect of Irish Gaelic. Any Gaelic speaker from either Ireland or Scotland can understand each other very well.
Scots Gaelic is a language, Teresa. No, we cannot understand each other with precision. But we kinda get the gist. I heard a presenter on RnaG talking to a Scots gaelic speaker, each in their own language and it was a delight to hear. But they obviously had studied each other’s language. Ulster Irish is the same as our Irish, just a different dialect and my favourite one. The Rinn and Mayo dialects are neglected on RnaG, especially Rinn. I don’t know why.
No, I’ve witnessed it first hand on the train from Paris to London. My friend, a fluent Irish speaker chatting non-stop to a Scottish lady from the Isles who was fluent in Scots Gaelic. They understood each other perfectly.
No different fron Belfast English to Birmingham English.
By gum she was good. I believe you. The only person I heard was the fella on the radio, exactly like your encounter on the train. But take a written exam paper in Gaelic. It’s very different from written Irish. Even the accent over the vowels is different in Gaelic, it is written like the accent grave in French. My degree is from UCD, we interacted with and used all the Irish dialects in Ireland but never touched on Gaelic. Studied the historical origins of the Celtic languages in first year, but the only Celtic language we learned was Irish. Irish was written on my timetable, not Gaelic. If you had given me a language paper in Gaelic in an exam I’d have failed, as that’s not what they taught. The same for literature. We did not study any Gaelic literature and I do not know anything about it. We studied Irish literature, including modern and over the centuries. That was not unique to UCD as we had external examiners at the orals from other universities, giving a common standard. I also studied Irish teaching methodology in post grad teacher education. Nor did we study Manx, also closely related to Irish. Irish is what we teach on the curriculum up to LC in secondary school. It is a compulsory subject and not Gaelic. If you gave them a Gaelic language paper, they’d fail. They don’t speak Gaelic on RnaG either, maybe some more encounters like the one I once heard, if I was lucky to hear more. Irish orthography has changed since independence, would have changed twice before 1959, then An Caighdeán Oifigiúil and the change again to the modern spelling around 1970. Changes over the centuries too. The English language spoken in Belfast and Bermingham is written the same. Irish and Gaelic are different.
How many native speakers of the Rinn dialect are there?
Mayo and Cork are almost gone too, Cork definitely.
And the rest of them are on the same track!
Ar Sli na Firinne!…
I don’t know. I was never in Rinn and would have to look it up on the map to find it. I had a teacher from there on a short evening course one time. I’m curious about Rinn too. Irish is endangered. I feel it’s better to give all we have got to Irish, rather than starting Gaelic, except for those who want that. Money spent on Gaelic would be taking it from Irish, maybe. We need to preserve the Gaeltacht at all costs. Our native speakers are gold. Terrible if we were not to hear the natives on RnaG again. Unimaginable. A capital city but no Irish language coffee shop. The govt has a duty to fill that void. A coffee shop would turn Irish on. Many want to speak it but have no chance. Sad to hear about Cork being ‘gone’. I thought Cork was strong. Seems the studios are in Dingle, Galway and Donegal. Wonder if Rinn and Cork and maybe Mayo, had studios, would it make the language live. Teanga bheo. I think it would.
Nope.
I am a good Irish speaker, mostly taught by Munster Irish speakers.
I can only catch sporadic words and phrases when hearing Scots Gaelic.
And of course I can’t say a simple original sentence in Scots.
I suspect native speakers of Donegal Irish would do better, but not that much better.
I do believe there should be more effort to foster mutual intelligibility between the two languages.
A common language course in the US is “Portuguese for Spanish Speakers”. (I think I’ve also seen “Dutch for German speakers”) Such courses build on the high degree of congruence between the two languages and can enable learners to make very fast progress. Something similar “Scots Gaelic for Irish Speakers” or vice versa would be interesting.
I would say the author meant to illustrate the fact that the we are all interconnected on the British isles & essentially one people . I’ve read before that hundreds of years ago many people in Ulster migrated to western Scotland. Then a couple of hundred years later they returned to Ulster as Presbyterians. However they were in fact originally descendant from that migration out of Ulster a few hundred years earlier. It’s sad really to think of all the oppression , sectarianism , violence & bickering when essentially the people in Northern Ireland are one people who have much more in common than differences .
Most of those planted in NI came from the lowlands and North of England and are not descendants of the earlier Irish migration. Well into the 18th century, the descendants of Scots Gaels referred to these lowlanders as the Sasanach and the lowlanders referred to the Scots Gales as Irish. Neither were particularly fond of each other.
The plantation of Antrim was mostly a private adventure and some Scots Gaels were planted there and spoke Gaelic. Today they are found in the North East of Antrim and are still Catholic and nationalists.
I remember eight years ago I met a group of holiday makers from Fermanagh in County Offaly. They were speaking fluent Gaelic to each other. I asked them about the possible consequences of Brexit in their province given you couldn’t listen to TV or radio here without the word backstop being mentioned within the first minute or two.
A lot of the descendents of Long Kesh prisoners would be fluent Irish speakers. Do you speak Irish yourself, James? If you do, you’d know if it was fluent. Gaelic is Scottish. I presume you were listening to Irish. It is called Gaeilge in the Irish language, that is probably where the confusion comes.