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On an alternative historical partition of Ireland
For fear of being too meticulous about the events leading to partition and the suggestions of repartition since the Government of Ireland Act 1920, I will defer speaking on these events in great detail in lieu of the following short summary.
Partition in Ireland, rightly or wrongly, was the outcome of the Irish War of Independence/Tan War with Britain. This partition was designed to enshrine a permanent Protestant majority in the North of Ireland which would maintain a Unionist hegemony and allow British imperialism to continue as normal in Ireland. Due to the legacy of the plantation of Ulster, sections of the North of the island can be identified as majority Catholic or Protestant and were carved up to draw the partitioning line in Ireland.
It is important to bear in mind some of the considerations made by Unionists in their territorial claims in the North – namely economic viability (in the liberal, free market sense, of course) and religious persuasion (assuming Catholics are likely to be Nationalist and Protestants likely to be Unionist). We should also bear in mind that these desires sometimes contradicted for example in Newry, formerly a commercial hub with a catholic majority, was kept within the Northern state so as to enhance its economic power.
Having grown up in a border area coveted by Unionists in the North and a majority catholic town, I sometimes wonder how my life might be different had the partition line been just a few miles further in one direction, bringing my place of birth into the so-called Free State. One fundamental difference this would make is I would have an Irish birth certificate, rather than a “Northern Irish” one and I would have had Irish language education as it would be made compulsory by the state and I would even be free from criticism by those who deny Irish people in the 6 counties their Irishness.
Perhaps a different lived experience may soften my radical stance on partition somewhat, or perhaps my proximity to the “border” would still lead me to the beliefs I hold today, that Ireland is one nation still under the stranglehold of British imperialism and the only way Irish people, Catholic, Protestant and dissenter, to quote the father of Irish revolutionary republicanism Theobald Wolfe Tone, will know true liberation is through a socialist republic.
I don’t believe if I had been born just inside the “border” of the Free State that my views would be much different. I speak to people now who grew up in that situation from places like Dundalk or Lifford and they share my disgust at the invisible boundary which has divided up people for the benefit of wealthy land owners, factory owners and imperialists in the 1920s. They cross between jurisdictions for work, to visit family, to buy groceries or take their children to school and recognise the absurdity of it all. Meanwhile, the enlightened “progressives” from leafy suburbs like Dublin’s Ballsbridge or Belfast’s Malone Road seek to pacify the unruly and irrational drunkards from the border, “We don’t need to change anything, I’m doing just fine in my lovely big house! I hate to see the run down border towns when I’m driving to my holiday home in Donegal every year. No wonder the big American insurance company I work for won’t open an office there!” Clearly this individual also appreciates the freedom to choose which institution they sell their body to in the name of super profits and tax breaks under the guise of “Foreign Direct Investment”!
Ireland has a deprivation problem. The border regions are a poignant reminder that partition didn’t create two utopias for different peoples but split one people apart and created a 500km long “border” of which governments in the Northern and Free State could intentionally neglect. An example of this is Derry & Strabane council, an area coined with the unfortunately impressive title of “the most impoverished council area”, in “the most impoverished region of the UK” which is “the most economically unequal country in Europe.”
To conclude, it doesn’t really matter all that much if I had been issued an Irish birth certificate or if the town I was raised in had Irish languages signs – partition would still be encroaching on the material conditions of my life so much so that the symbolism of an Irish birth certification would make no conceivable difference. End the crime of partition now!
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My thoughts after the dust settled on a recent LucidTalk poll
Seven in 10 nationalists agree with Michelle O’Neill that there was ‘no alternative’ to IRA’s campaign of violence, new poll reveals
Breen, Suzanne. “Seven in 10 nationalists agree with Michelle O’Neill that there was ‘no alternative’ to IRA’s campaign of violence, new poll reveals“, Belfast Telegraph. August 19th 202221st century Unionism is challenged by the fact that a majority of nationalists in the North believed that there was no alternative to IRA/INLA violence. But why? Why don’t even liberal unionists have sympathy with the Irish national liberation struggle?
It isn’t because Unionism is an ideology of pacifism. If it were, there wouldn’t be so much pride in British army achievements, an annual militaristic marching season and celebrations of military victories or even celebration of loyalist paramilitaries in some quarters. To recognise that there was no alternative is to believe that Irish people in the North were disenfranchised, oppressed and living essentially under a unionist dictatorship, “a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State”, as it were. 21st century Unionism, even the so called liberal UUP cannot sympathise with this idea since it is totally foreign to them because they don’t believe this to be true. Again, it’s not because they are pacifists or abhor violence, the state has used violence as a means of putting down protests and resistance without issue, and many UUP reps including their illustrious leader joined the British army, of course using violence to achieve their aims. Their belief is simply that oppression of nationalists was a lie, gerrymandering was exaggerated, sectarian violence went both ways and therefore not systemic and that the complete domination of Irish people in the North is little more than a conspiracy theory.
So called liberal unionists will use Ghandi as the exemplary idea of the type of campaign nationalists should engage with. This is ludicrous and disingenuous, not least because Ghandi did in fact use violence to achieve this aims, directly and indirectly. Indirectly, he benefitted strategically from the pressure put on the Colonial regime by other groups who did engage in violence, and directly he used the violence that the British empire would impose on his movement to create martyrs, not unlike 1916 or the 1980s hunger strikes. By using Ghandi as an example, so called liberals or pacifists are asking Irish people to martyr themselves, to be willing to die by the British sword, and to do it quietly, so that some day eventually they will grant us concessions “peacefully”.
The Irish struggle is anti-imperialism in action. There should be no deviation from anti-imperialism and to argue against that is to support colonial conquest and to uphold empire, genocide and partition in Ireland. There should be no pandering to imperialists to make them feel warm and fuzzy, no concessions to people who deny the nationhood of Irish people for the perpetuation of a settler colonial state. That’s why, when so called liberal unionists, including those in the free state who apparently aspire to a united Ireland “some day”, pontificate about pacifism, rather than trying to argue about the methods of resistance, we should educate about the truths of imperialism
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