Lest we forget: How extreme violence and division have been overcome in the past

I am not a historian but am full of admiration for those with that talent. One such is Daniel Murray, who has just written “When the Pseudo-Military Mind Meets Constitutional Respectability:” A history of the Irish General Election of August 1923. It reminded me of just how fraught the beginnings of the Irish Free State were.

By agreeing to the Treaty under threat of immediate and terrible war, the pro-Treaty side had divided the nation with family members, friends, colleagues, and former allies on opposing sides. There were shooting, executions, atrocities, and electoral candidates campaigning while imprisoned or under threat of being shot as they stood on the platform delivering a speech.

On one such occasion in Ennis De Valera was intoning to a large crowd when a Free State Army attachment advanced, fired a volley over the heads of the platform party, and arrested as many as they could, including Éamon de Valera . Had one member of the crowd fired back, there could have been a slaughter of unarmed civilians.

But a remarkable thing happened in the election itself. Many voters in the PR STV election gave their first preference to a leading figure in the civil war, and their second preference to one on the opposing side, much to the bemusement and mystification of the candidates themselves, some of whom put it down to the ignorance of a population unused to the nuances of proportional representation.

But in retrospect the significance becomes clear. The electorate admired the bravery and commitment of all the contestants and, rather than fighting among themselves, wanted them to work together by political means in the emerging new polity. The mechanics of the PR system also meant that the losing side weren’t demolished at the polls as they might have been in a FPTP system. They were encouraged to go down a political road even if, initially, they chose to do so on an abstentionist platform.

Less than 10 years later Éamon de Valera  was able to lead the losing side in the civil war to victory in the polls and into government. The Cosgrave government of the day graciously handing over power to their bitter adversaries despite fears over their own safety. It is on principled acts such as these that a stable polity is built. One not without huge differences of view, but with the character and systems capable of resolving those differences sufficiently to enable a government and opposition to function effectively.

Indeed, the differences between the Pro and anti-Treaty sides remained entrenched in our political system for generations afterwards, and it wasn’t until 2020 that their direct descendants, Fine Gael, and Fianna Fáil, were able to join together in a coalition government – much to the consternation of some of their respective supporters.

The ideological differences between these two parties had been vanishingly small for many years, but the reverberations of that ancient divide and the violence and grudges derived from it had been carried down through the generations and become embedded in the family loyalties and traditions on both sides. We should not be surprised if the Troubles leave a similarly enduring legacy.

There were many dark days leading up to the formation of the Free State, some very tragic indeed. My late wife’s grandmother was one of the children who were lined up to witness the execution of two young protestant men by an IRA squad they had earlier attacked and wounded in the infamous shootings at Coolacrease in 1921. The firing squad kept their aim low so that the bullets penetrated the lower bodies of the men rather than killing them instantly. It took them days to die in agony while no doctor would come to attend them.

But it didn’t stop my wife’s family engaging fully in the new state. Her mother, Olive Boothman, learned Irish and became a national schoolteacher and later one of the first female Minsters in the Church of Ireland after the latter allowed women to be ordained. Her uncle Jack Boothman, became the first and only protestant president of the GAA despite only having played rugby in his youth. She became a leading light in the Irish feminist movement and had an adult education centre she led opened by President Robinson, and, after her death, a drug treatment centre she led named in her honour by President McAleese.

In my own family, my grandparents and parents lived through the horrors of the first and second world wars. My paternal grandfather, who later became a music critic and journalist was one of the very few prisoners of war who escaped from prison in Siberia and made it back to Germany. As a child I recall one of his proudest possessions, a picture of him next to the first Chancellor of post-war Germany, Conrad Adenauer.

My maternal grandfather was in the German Navy in World War 1 and his ship went down at the battle of Jutland. He spent the rest of the war in a British prisoner of war camp where he learned English and, after his release, worked as a firefighter in his native Bremen after the war. A nicer, more mild mannered man you couldn’t hope to have as a grandfather.

My father was an engineer who survived the Second World War only because, as technical college graduate, he wasn’t made an officer on being drafted into the army. All his engineering colleagues who were drafted as officers were killed in the war.

Unlike his near contemporary, Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict, he managed to avoid joining the Nazi youth whom he regarded as no more than thugs,  and thereby avoid later induction into the Gestapo or SS or a more “political” or Nazi formation. He used to regale us with tales of cycling across the German countryside, dodging the occupying British forces, to barter goods in return for potatoes from farmers to feed his family and fellow refugees after the war.

In 1948 he was invited by Todd Andrews, the prominent republican, who had been made head of a nascent Bord na Móna, to come to Ireland because of a patent he had filed for the design of a more efficient turf cutting machine. He later worked for Bord na Móna at their research station in Newbridge and then set up his own turf cutting and machine manufacturing business in Edenderry on the edge of the bog of Allen.

The Shamrock machine turf company and Shane Engineering would go on to export machines all over Ireland, Canada, Siberia, and Burundi but it struggled to survive in a rural Irish environment unused to almost any medium scale industrial enterprise. The business more or less died after the death of my oldest brother, Horst, who had inherited the business, but by then that industry was declining in any case for very good ecological as well as business reasons.

My own working career revolved around major change management programmes in Guinness, later Diageo, which, when I joined in 1979, was virtually an outpost of the British empire and needed to be brought into the twentieth century in order to survive.  Managing change in a complex multi-union environment with many social and class divisions and competing interests is difficult, but not impossible. In the end there were far more wide-ranging changes than hardly anyone could have conceived, never mind deemed feasible, and all achieved by consensual means.

I am reminded of all these events for a number of reasons, but the immediate cause is a comment by Finley on my Is Slugger Biased? OP some days ago.

For a family having lived through two world wars, the emergence of the EU has been an absolute godsend. It has ended centuries of bitter wars, millions of casualties and huge tragedy, trauma, and dislocation. In contrast to the Treaty of Versailles which humiliated Germany and sowed the seeds for World War II, the post World War II settlement was pragmatic, wasn’t about humiliating the general population, and was followed by efforts of amazing generosity to build a new peace and prosperity based on mutual respect and economic interdependence which led, ultimately, to the EU.

Although often seen in the UK as purely a “Common Market” the opening declaration of the 1957 Treaty of Rome spoke of the Treaty committing its signatories to building an “ever closer union between the peoples of Europe”. It was, above all, a peace treaty, not just a trading bloc, and in that respect an extraordinarily successful one. Having ended the historic enmity and rivalry between France, Germany, Italy, and, to a lesser extent Britain, the EU went on to consolidate democracy in the formerly fascist ruled Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

Later still, the incorporation of former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe helped to provide them with new opportunities and consolidated a new peace after the cold war. That enlargement may still be a work in progress, particularly with a respect to Hungary, but I see no reason why their membership cannot ultimately be as successful as Ireland’s. It may just take a generation or so. The EU plays a very long game.

So, in answer to Finley’s question: Why would Northern Ireland be better off in a United Ireland and as part of the EU? I don’t see any immediate transformation. In fact, many could be disappointed that not a huge amount may change for quite a few years. There are however a number of factors which make me optimistic for the long term:

1. The differences between the Catholic/Nationalist/Republican and Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist communities are no greater than those in many other conflicts around the world now contained within a single democratic polity in countries such as Spain, Canada, Belgium, South Africa, the USA, and increasingly, within Britain itself. The NI conflict is nowhere near as intractable as the Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine conflicts, nor historically, as deep as the conflicts between Germany and France.
2. Northern Ireland and Britain have drifted apart politically, economically, and socially over the years which means that Northern Ireland’s lack of representation in Westminster and in UK governments is increasingly leading to a divergence from Britain and the under development of Northern Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland are not really seen as “British” by the people of Britain itself. The clue is in the name: The UK  is a Union of Britain and Northern Ireland (formerly Ireland), not a purely British union.
3. In contrast to some other writers on Slugger, I believe there is an increasing political, economic, and social convergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the island of Ireland as evidenced by increased business, tourism, educational, and sporting links.
4. Northern Ireland would have far greater representation, proportionally, in the Dáil as opposed to Westminster, and the opportunity to have a major influence on government, thus ensuring that future government policy will be far more influenced by Northern Ireland interests than is currently the case.
5. Even now, Irish government policy on EU membership, agriculture, corporate taxation, and FDI attraction would be far more in Northern Ireland’s interest than UK government policies currently are, and this is before Northern Ireland has any direct influence on those policies. For example, the Irish government and EU policy towards agriculture is far more sympathetic to farmers than is the case in the UK, where the farming lobby has virtually no influence and where the British farming industry has been sacrificed to New Zealand, Australian, Canadian, Brazilian, and other third country imports.
6. Many aspects of government policy, e.g., Roads, railways, tourism, education, healthcare, animal and human disease control, agriculture, climate change, electricity and gas infrastructure, policing, defence, corporate investment promotion and taxation make far more sense on an all-island basis than having two separate administrations with different policies.
7. A great deal of duplication, fraud, and inefficiency could be avoided in public service provision by having one administrative framework covering the whole island – without prejudice to increased devolution on a carefully planned and agreed basis.
8. The divisiveness of partition has prevented the development of a much deeper and friendlier relationship between Britain and Ireland.

The astute reader will have noticed that the above points, all arguable to some degree, make no mention of nationalism, demographics, or the victory of one tribe over the other. It’s about what is required to make economic progress that is best for all the people on this island, and that is all. No part of the EU and its treaties is dedicated to the eradication or diminishment of the rights of minorities or regional groupings subsumed into a larger whole. Even Catalan or Basque separatists do not envisage leaving the EU.

But is the UK not also a cooperation of nations or peoples rather than rivalry or war?

The UK, by way of contrast, is basically England with a few appendages, the least of which is Northern Ireland. Even within England the north and midlands are subservient to the interests of “the Home Counties” around London. The City basically rules, and nothing else much matters, and it is divisions within the City between traditional and disaster/venture capitalists which have dominated political discourse since before Brexit. Everyone else has been played for a patsy. Labour has been careful not to upset this applecart, even if it tends to side more with traditional capitalists. The former imperial relationship between Britain and Ireland and the later partition of Ireland was never consensual, and ultimately did great damage to the people of Ireland, both north and south. It took the south over 50 years to come even close to becoming a modern, progressive, prosperous state and the north is still re-living some of those traumas.

Why is the GFA agreement not sufficient to do the above and a United Ireland is necessary/better?

The Good Friday Agreement succeeded in ensuring an enduring ceasefire in Northern Ireland, but it has made little progress in securing a genuine peace based on reconciliation and enhanced prosperity. Strand 1 has been in abeyance almost as much as it has been in operation, and even then, it is more about individual ministers pursuing their agendas in isolation from other parties and ministries. This is the worst form of “stovepipe” management where the left hand does not know, and sometimes care, what the right hand is doing.

The requirement for parties to designate as unionist, nationalist or other, and the exclusion of “others” from the first and second Ministerships has prevented effective cooperation across party lines or the blurring of sectarian divisions over time. The polarising effect of parties seeking to rile up and animate their base at the expense of any reconciliation process means there has been little reconciliation. The PSNI estimates there are still 12,500 active loyalist Paramilitaries just waiting to take up arms at the first sign of a threat to the status quo. By contrast, a few hundred dissident republicans hardly amount to a major threat to the democratic process as enshrined in the GFA.

Strands 2 and 3 of the GFA have also been honoured more in the breach with the UK government showing little interest and unionist parties boycotting north south bodies more often than not. Funds promised by the Shared All Island fund remain unspent, sometimes for many years after they were first proffered. Other than some small and limited cross border projects, little of substance has been achieved. Brexit has exacerbated these problems and the “Safeguarding the Union” Command paper produced by the previous Tory government actively proposed to undermine the “outdated” and “divisive” concept of the All Ireland economy.

How would a united Ireland need to be ordered to satisfy the above in ways the UK could not?

If you are a global corporation or a venture capitalist trying to choose between Ireland north or south to locate a major business requiring access to the Single Market, why would you not choose the south where there is

1. Lower corporation tax
2. A highly skilled and educated workforce including many with senior management or specialist experience in leading edge companies
3. Guaranteed unfettered access to the Single Market not subject to the whims of the government of the day
4. Long term policy consistency
5. Unrivalled political stability even when the parties in government change
6. A socially cohesive and attractive environment for your executives to live in
7. A sovereign government with considerable influence to promote Irish and Irish corporate interests within the EU

There is no reason Northern Ireland couldn’t have all of the above in a United Ireland, but after 26 years, the GFA has not delivered any of the above for Northern Ireland.

Conclusion

So, my apologies to Finley for this rather long and rather discursive answer. But we are all shaped by our family histories and my attitudes and beliefs have been shaped by the European and Irish experiences of war and my family experiences of trying to build up and sustain successful societies, states and businesses. It is not about support for nationalism and indeed very much opposed to some of the more extreme nationalisms of the past.

A lot of past achievements such as the formation of the EU are now taken very much for granted but that does not make them any less amazing in the context of their times. Re-uniting Ireland may seem like a daunting prospect right now, but it is less difficult than what some of our forebears faced in the past, and my sense is that future generations will take it very much for granted and be wondering what took us so long? Far from threatening A very Rude Awakening, I believe a United Ireland would constitute a wake up call we all desperately need on this island. It is time we allowed some very ancient grudges to be healed and looked forward to the possibilities of a very much better future.

Frank Schnittger is the author of Sovereignty 2040, a future history of how Irish re-unification might work out. He has worked in business in Dublin and London and, on a voluntary basis, for charities in community development, education, restorative justice and addiction services.