new internationalist
issue 255 - May 1994
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The vexed question of Northern Ireland’s constitutional future
will soon be on the negotiating table again.
Here is a New Internationalist guide to the key options –
with a sideways glance at them by Irish cartoonist Martyn Turner.
INTEGRATION
Northern Ireland would become an ordinary region of the UK, without any special
provisions. Britain’s political parties would start organizing there.
Northern Ireland may be part of the UK but it is a place apart: governed in a different way (by a British Secretary of State); policed differently (its police have always carried guns); and with different social legislation (abortion is unavailable, for example).
Integration is the preferred goal of the Ulster Unionists, who recently won a small victory by gaining a Select Committee on Northern Ireland – part of the price for their quiescence over the Downing Street Declaration. Of Britain’s major parties only the Conservatives have organized in Northern Ireland: they gained 5.7 per cent in 1992’s general election but only 1.4 per cent in 1993’s local elections. The main obsession of voters remains the status of Northern Ireland and not whether they should be governed by left-wing, right-wing or centrist parties.
But integration offers nothing to the nationalist community and the IRA campaign would inevitably continue.
REPARTITION
Northern Ireland’s border would be altered to cede strongly nationalist
areas to the Republic.
This
is an idea whose time has long gone, though Margaret Thatcher confessed in her
memoirs that she gave the idea serious consideration as an alternative to the
Anglo-Irish Agreement. Repartition would secure Protestant domination of a new
Northern Ireland but that would be a bleak prospect for the Catholics and nationalists
who would still remain – not least in the staunchly republican areas of
West Belfast.
The ugly face of repartition was displayed recently by a loyalist group who proposed an ‘ethnically pure’ four-county Northern Ireland, hiving off large chunks to the Republic. Their solution for the problem of Catholic West Belfast came straight out of the philosophy manual of the Bosnian Serbs – ‘neutralization’ of hostile areas.
UNITED IRELAND
Northern Ireland would join with the Republic to create a new state.
A
united Ireland is the overt goal of both Sinn Fein, who support the IRA’s
military campaign to achieve it, and the SDLP, who want to achieve it by democratic
consent. It is also enshrined in Articles Two and Three of the Irish Constitution,
which the courts have interpreted as a ‘constitutional imperative’
to reunite the country. There are signs though that the Irish Government are
prepared to see this changed to an ‘aspiration’ to be achieved only
through peaceful means.
A united Ireland could not be achieved just by extending the Republic to embrace those counties left outside it at Partition. A new country would have to emerge which guaranteed the rights of the Protestant minority. The existing political parties in the Republic would all have to change to take account not only of a significant Protestant minority but also of an assertive Northern Irish Catholic community used to organizing to get what it wants.
There is not likely to be majority support in Northern Ireland for straight reunion within the next generation. The people of the Republic, too, once passionate about the cause, are now less enthusiastic about the prospect of a new country that would put them in bed with both the unionists and the IRA. Even the IRA seem to be prepared to settle for less. Recent hopes for peace burgeoned largely because there were hints that they might be prepared to accept something like a long interim period in which Britain and Ireland held joint authority.
POWER SHARING
Northern Ireland would have an elected Assembly but would be governed by
an executive coalition representing the constitutional parties of both Protestant
and Catholic communities.
The last experiment in power-sharing collapsed after just four months in 1974, brought down by a loyalist strike. Twenty years on the Protestant community is more prepared to accept an experiment in power-sharing – the Ulster Unionists have now proposed devolved government involving committees where power is shared between Catholic and Protestant. Opinion polls suggest Catholics are receptive to the idea of trying again, though nationalists would watch like hawks for signs of the bad old days of Stormont* when unionists abused their untrammelled power. The British Government will be keen to pursue this option in talks excluding Sinn Fein if the IRA does not call a ceasefire.
CONDOMINIUM
Britain would cede to Ireland joint authority over Northern Ireland, which
would be governed by a commission of representatives from Dublin, London and
the Northern communities (and possibly the European Union).
In a way Britain has already conceded the principle of joint authority: under the Anglo-Irish Agreement Irish ministers monitor any political, legal or security issues which concern the nationalist community in the North.
Unionists have pointed out that a joint-authority commission would be undemocratic, allowing the Northern Irish population no electoral control over up to half of its ruling body.
STATUS QUO
Northern Ireland would continue to be ruled directly from Westminster. British
troops would maintain their presence on the streets.
The
most unthinkable option of all is that things should remain the same, without
hope of British troops leaving or the paramilitary violence ending. The recent
Downing Street Declaration was a clear indication that the British Government
recognized the status quo as unsustainable – it states that Britain has
no long-term or short-term economic or political interest in Ireland other than
to fulfil the wishes of the majority in Northern Ireland. An important aspect
of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement – now an established part of the status
quo despite Unionist opposition – was its acceptance that Northern Ireland
was no longer just an internal British affair, about which no other government
or international body should concern itself.
INDEPENDENCE WITHIN
EUROPE
Northern Ireland would become an independent state supported by the European
Union (EU) rather than the British or Irish governments.
Not
long ago the only people advocating independence were extreme loyalists who
saw a Rhodesia-style unilateral declaration of independence as the only route
back to the untrammelled power Protestants once enjoyed. Ian Paisley’s
DUP have been moving in this direction as their feeling of betrayal by Britain
increases.
An independent Northern Ireland shorn of the British subsidy would be unable to survive economically in anything like the style to which it has become accustomed. But the new awareness of Europe makes this a more creative and plausible proposal: the EU would guarantee human rights and subsidize the new arrangement. Britain would continue to contribute substantially for the foreseeable future in order to be rid of the economic and security burden in the long term.
In theory unionists could feel they were independent of Dublin while nationalists would no longer have to suffer rule by London. But in practice unionists tend to be more keen on Brussels than they are on Dublin, while nationalists would fear majority rule by Protestants after independence more than the status quo.
