Referendums and the problem of Irish identity in society
Advocates of a poll on Irish unity have yet to outline a coherent vision of the New Ireland they wish to create. Despite the frequently-alleged ‘inevitability’ of unification, the end-point of Irish history has not been well described by those convinced of its imminent arrival.
Where such advocates have been more forthcoming, however, is in stressing the failures of Stormont and the post-accord dispensation. If nationalists and republicans have been unclear about the form a New Ireland would take, a consistent premise of the pro-unity position is that Northern Ireland has failed as a political, social and economic entity, exemplified most visibly in the region’s chronically dysfunctional politics. Unification, it is claimed, is not just inevitable; it is the longed-for panacea which will transform Ireland’s historic divisions to create a new, more effective politics and settled society.
The idea that Northern Ireland’s politics is characterised by division and dysfunction is well founded: whilst recent election results have registered increasing dissatisfaction with the binary politics of Orange and Green, the electoral strategies of the province’s two largest parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP, have long relied upon the mobilisation of ethno-sectarian antagonism to secure political dominance. What is highly contentious, however, is the suggestion that pursuit of territorial unification via a border poll offers a means of transforming these dynamics. The point is not just that survey data suggests popular demand for such a poll is stagnant; it is that the legacy of the process of conducting a poll will be even deeper polarisation.
The contested outcomes of recent constitutional debates in less divided societies are here instructive. Advocates of a border poll routinely argue that Brexit has generated momentum for constitutional change in Ireland, but the episode has also laid bare the polarising effects of extended political and media campaigning on a binary constitutional question where the electorate is evenly divided. The long, tortuous and incoherent debate over leaving the EU mobilised longstanding tensions and inequalities within English society in the service of competing and antagonistic nationalisms. This debate mystified the complex causes of these divisions whilst channelling their subjective effects into popular support for visions of national redemption predicated on epochal constitutional change. The overall effect has been to enhance the status and agency of nationalism within English political life, resulting in the exacerbation of the societal anxieties constitutional change is supposed to alleviate.
These dynamics produced parallel momentums in the Irish context too. The prospect that Brexit would result in a hardening of the land border stimulated a toughening of attitudes not witnessed since the 1990s. Across social, broadcast and print media, old essentialisms were revived and redeployed with angry enthusiasm, mirroring the polarising effects of the constitutional debate in England. Hybridity, complexity and multiculture, as less oppositional ways of thinking the relationships between identities on the island of Ireland, quickly lost whatever purchase they had within Irish public discourse, revealing the enduring power of nationalist habits of mind to generate reductive and stereotypical forms of speculation. This was a feature, not only of unregulated social media content, but of the charged contributions of highly-paid and well-informed political journalists, senior academics and TV commentators.
What debates over Brexit in the Irish context demonstrate is the enduring significance of the border as a deeply contested lieu de memoire within contemporary Irish life, reflection upon which inexorably generates highly conflictual identity narratives and forms of political subjectivity. In a recent article in The Irish Times, Professor Brendan O’Leary has argued that Ireland, both North and South, needs to ‘prepare’ for any future referendum on unification in order to prevent the process resembling ‘the “Brexit/Ukexit” referendum of 2016’. By ensuring voters have ‘an informed and properly clarified choice, not a choice between the status quo and rivalrous descriptions of paradise’, it is suggested, the disillusionment, instability and divisiveness associated with Brexit can be avoided. As numerous analyses of English voters’ participation in the Brexit referendum demonstrate, however, voters’ reasoning, choices and ultimate sense of the legitimacy of the process was not determined by access to expert opinion, evidence-based arguments or degree of involvement in the debate. The debate, rather, was interpreted and actively produced as one about national identity and belonging. Facts, evidence and rational argumentation were selectively appropriated to fashion and substantiate conflictual identity narratives with deeper roots in British history, and targeted, through the deft use of social media, to resonate with the values, anxieties and aspirations of different sections of the population. Voters, in turn, filtered available information through the identity narratives in which they were emotionally and imaginatively invested, and viewed voting itself as an expression and consolidation of this identity. Overall, the event was less an exercise in rational and informed decision-making than the staging of a binary contest which incited and crystallised opposing identities.
Advance preparation for a referendum on Irish unification will not prevent these dynamics engulfing the process in acrimony. Irrespective of the volume of academic research commissioned and the number of public forums created, the shape, emotionality and social effects of the debate will be determined by the interaction between four elements, namely:
1) the binary format of the question and debate
2) the pre-existence of well-defined, oppositional and highly mobilisable identity narratives within Irish culture
3) the capacity of the media and modern forms of mass communication to produce and disseminate these narratives on a scale and with an accuracy unimaginable at any other point in Irish history
4) the unresolved and highly emotive legacies of the Troubles, which activists will mobilise to clarify ethno-sectarian fault lines and shore up the vote
If these dynamics combine as they did during the Brexit referendum and during the recent US presidential election, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a referendum on Irish unity will, contrary to the overarching ideals of the peace process, intensify societal division.
Proponents of a border poll thus need to acknowledge and address the likely impacts of a poll at the level of community life and identity. While it is perfectly legitimate to argue the case for a poll in terms of democratic rights and the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, it is not possible to argue that conducting such a poll, particularly under present conditions, serves the wider ideal of societal reconciliation or the promotion of multiculture within Irish society. On the contrary, a poll on unification will involve vast amounts of money being channelled into the mobilisation of pro-union and pro-unity constituencies around sharply oppositional conceptions of identity, belonging and communal interest. This will breathe new life into the politics of polarisation in the North, arresting the development of the non-sectarian centre ground which has begun to emerge in the last five years, and it will re-centre nationalism and national identity as major paradigms of public and political discourse in the south. As in other countries around the world, a referendum will enhance, rather than reduce, the influence of popular and divisive nationalisms.
Undoubtedly, particular parties and interests will benefit from polarisation, but the implications for Irish society more broadly, north and south, need to be factored into assessments of the likely outcomes of constitutional change. In this, it is vital to take account of the fact that Northern Ireland has undergone significant and empirically-evidenced transition at the level of social relations, everyday life and the negotiation of new and more complex forms identity. While many unionists and nationalists seek to represent NI society as comprising two ethno-national blocs with clear-cut positions on constitutional questions, research indicates increasing complexity in both the available conceptions of national and/or cultural belonging and the routes by which individuals link these with narratives about constitutional change and wider alignments of social and political values. In other words, identity and social relations are already on a journey in Northern Ireland: despite the best efforts of ethno-national entrepreneurs, the peace process has slowly created conditions under which a complex and multidirectional evolution in social and political identity has taken place, with outcomes which are increasingly visible at the level of civil society and electoral politics. Needless to say, a binary poll on unification and the debate generated around it would reduce this complexity to a dichotomy, compelling supplication to a monochrome rendering of Irish culture.
Such observations help clarify the nature of the choice which must be reckoned with. If policy-makers and politicians believe Irish society really is composed of bounded ethno-national groups and seek to reinforce essentialist precepts as the basis for thinking about identity on the island of Ireland, they should press ahead with a binary constitutional referendum. If, on the other hand, they seek to promote multiculture, hybridity and connectivity as guiding ideals for the negotiation of social relations they should focus on fostering human relationships. Not only does this delineate a more gradual, less traumatic trajectory of historical change; it more accurately reflects the complexity of identification processes, and it affords individuals much greater agency in defining the terms through which they relate to others and understand themselves. In this respect, a focus on relationships, rather than referenda, is more likely to advance John Hume’s concern with the unification of people.