New Ireland (unfortunately, old story)

The leader of the SDLP, Colm Eastwood, has spoken recently of his desire to build a ‘New Ireland’ with ‘our Unionist neighbours’. If this sounds familiar that’s because it is.

The central relationship to be resolved is that of ‘Unionists and the rest of this island’ and only then the relationship between Ireland and Britain. The problem is the ‘relationship between the Unionist people and the rest of the people on this island.’ And the question Unionists need to address is how they can work out with ‘the rest of the people on this island how we share this island.’

But this isn’t Eastwood speaking. It is John Hume speaking to Frank Millar in an Irish Times interview in January 1989. Of course Hume’s rhetoric, as Edna Longley wrote in 1990, tries to yank the Unionists out of the UK, pull them across the border, while the same time urging them to stand on their own feet. It was a skilful ‘political word and map game’ she called it. Back then Longley recognised that it was unpersuasive because ‘this island’ nationalism excluded ‘these islands’ Britishness.

It still does. Eastwood’s ‘New Ireland’ sounds like a return to pre-Belfast/Good Friday Agreement language, though the main difference in Eastwood’s position is his firm belief that the Union is coming to an end, a belief which he assumes now makes the old invitation sound ‘new’. It is the proclamation of a never-ending story which is always a new story – in short, the future belongs to us. The invitation is to become part of us in this New Ireland. Not an ignoble invitation or vision but still as unpersuasive in 2021 as it was in 1989.

The ‘narrative’ involves an imagined state in which all stubborn facts are moveable (newly transformed by the benign outworking of Irish unity), all obstacles are capable of being overcome (unionists will be persuaded of the value of a New Ireland) and all present limitations can be transcended (a word that was once a staple of traditional Humespeak). In short, it is another example of the idealism of the imagination. The idealism can only see facts or evidence as a limitation on imagination and as a denial of the ultimate value (Ireland renewed).  As an idealism of the imagination it can avoid having to address the problems of reality. That is the burden on ‘Unionist neighbours’ fixed with a shop-soiled political facts.

The fact of the Union begins, of course, with an immediate drawback. It means being bound up with all the real difficulties and real deficiencies of the United Kingdom. That makes it easy to tar the argument with whatever the fashionable boo words of the day are – Tory government, Brexit, Covid, horrible English nationalism (not the nice Irish – or Scottish -kind of course) and so on. It is possible to hold up each and every instance as an intimation of collapse, an example of the decadence of public institutions, of the failings of the state, of the decline of the economy and so on in an endless trail of pessimism. This sort of  ‘endism’ (predictions that the death of the Union is only a matter of time) is usually tied up with a ‘declinist’ view of the United Kingdom, as constitutionally weakened, bereft of former self-confidence and purpose, if ‘nostalgic’ for Empire.

This endism isn’t as new as Eastwood thinks it is either. For the last half century (at least), nationalist critics of the Union have presumed that both history and the future is on their side, and that their logic will be proved by the passage of time. Yet, while the imminent ‘break-up of Britain’ is now an ageing prophecy (Tom Nairn wrote of it in 1976), anti-Union narratives have proved to be poor predictors of the future. If the Union was as fragile, inauthentic, anachronistic, or contradictory as it has been alleged so many times in the past, then its survival has been nothing if not remarkable. Why cannot it survive post-Brexit?

Who can possibly tell? And that’s the point. Eastwood can’t tell either. And if he wants to create a New Ireland why not show, not tell. And how can you show Unionist neighbours – and everyone else – that you are sincere about a New Ireland? How about trying to make Northern Ireland work within the terms of the B/GFA to which his party is committed? Why not – as Hume used to say – ‘spill sweat’ together in that task? Why reduce that Agreement to the single (and majoritarian) value of uniting Ireland? Telling about a New Ireland is like telling people about Sugar Candy Ireland. It just sounds an inauthentic offer, a diversion of effort from real problems.