Can the IRA Leave its Myths Behind?

The Republic of Ireland is one of the world’s great success stories. Over the last few years, its economic performance has been on a par with the East Asian tigers. By some measures, Irish income per head is now above that of Britain. As foreign firms have increasingly found that Ireland is home to an industrious, educated work force, old patterns of emigration have changed. Irish university graduates can now find good jobs at home--they don’t have to jump on a plane to Boston or London. Membership in the European Union, to which Ireland has belonged since 1973, has transformed the nation’s sense of itself. No longer forced to define its identity solely by reference to Britain, Ireland is playing a central role in the process of European integration.

The economic success has spilled into other areas. Ireland has been able to face its past unflinchingly. This month, a tribunal in Dublin fearlessly uncovered the dubious financial dealings of Charles Haughey, former prime minister and still one of the most popular men in the country. Books such as Frank McCourt’s superb “Angela’s Ashes” have laid bare just how miserable was the priest and whiskey-ridden condition of the Irish poor before World War II. Laws that reflected the influence of the church--like the ban on divorce--have been repealed.

Ireland, some commentators like to say, is “post-everything”: post-Catholic, post-rural and--crucially--post-nationalist. It is a country that has left its myths behind and got on with the job of making its way in the modern world.

There is one fly in the ointment, and it is called the Irish Republican Army. For nearly 30 years (in its current manifestation), the IRA has been waging a guerrilla war to reunite Ireland--to force the six counties of Northern Ireland (often called Ulster), which remain under British jurisdiction, into union with the Republic. For the second time in three years, the IRA called a cease-fire in its operations last week, and peace talks are likely to soon resume. But as long as the IRA’s aim remains a united Ireland, its rhetoric and operations run the risk of poisoning the Republic’s new spring.

History compels that conclusion. The problem of Northern Ireland is widely thought to be intractable, its roots lost in the mists of time. Well, up to a point.

The essentials are quite easy to set out: Since the early 17th century, Ireland has been home to two traditions and two religions. In the northeast of the island, Scottish settlers, who were Protestant, developed cottage industries and, later, shipyards and the large-scale manufacturing of linen. In the south, overwhelmingly Catholic--though not, in the 18th and 19th centuries, as homogeneously Catholic as it is now--agriculture never gave way to industry. Catholics were discriminated against by the British rulers, who handled crises of overpopulation and penury, like the Great Famine of the 1840s, with (at best) heartless inefficiency. In the south, and in the Irish diaspora, a nationalist movement took root, and won independence in 1921.

So far, so clear. But by the end of the 19th century, it was plain that the Protestants of the North would never accept minority status in a majority Catholic state. Religion is only a part of the equation; more important is identity. Most Northern Irish Protestants simply don’t see themselves as Irish--they are British, proud of it, and passionately unwilling to be part of a state that is not British. So in the Treaty signed between the representatives of Irish nationalism and Britain in 1921, Ulster remained under British rule.

That would have been fine if only British Protestants, or Unionists, lived in the north. In fact, the treaty stranded a large and appalled minority of Irish Catholics there.

It is often said that Northern Ireland is artificial, an aberration. Not really. Northern Ireland has remained within its current boundaries for longer than most states of the United Nations, including many European ones. The border between the North and the Republic is no less “artificial” than, say, the border between the United States and Mexico--and was drawn in a rather less objectionable way. The Treaty of 1921, which confirmed partition (already, by then, a “fact on the ground”) was a solemn undertaking between the British government and Irish Republicans, led by Michael Collins.

The presence of Irish Catholics within Britain’s borders has imposed certain obligations on the British: to treat the Catholic minority with scrupulous fairness (which has often not been done); and to grant the Republic a role in the governance of Ulster (accepted by British governments since the 1980s).

What Britain cannot do is alter the status of Northern Ireland without the consent of those who live there. To do so would be analogous to Washington declaring that the Treaty of Guadulupe Hidalgo was a terrible mistake, and that those who live, say, in Arizona, had to think of themselves as Mexican. Collins--for my money, one of the century’s great Europeans--understood this truth. In his magisterial history, “Modern Ireland” (compulsory for anyone interested in Irish affairs), R.M. Foster quotes Collins: “There can be no question of forcing Ulster into union with the 26 counties. I am absolutely against coercion of this kind. If Ulster is going to join us, it must be voluntary. Union is our final goal.”

The question now is whether Collins’ view is that of the modern IRA. The IRA’s announcement of the cease-fire last week made plain that it remained committed to a united Ireland. But it isn’t going to get a united Ireland from the peace talks, because the Unionists are still in a majority in the north. So: Will the IRA accept that the talks are about something less than unity, or will they walk out and return to the armed struggle when it becomes plain that unity is not on the table? There has been much said in the last few weeks; but one still waits for the IRA to renounce, for all time, the use of violence to promote unity, and for it to accept unequivocally that unity can only come about through Unionist consent.

A moment’s thought should make plain why this is so important. History has landed northern Catholics on the “wrong” side of an international border. That is a tragedy for them, and because a tiny minority of them have reacted to that reality with violence, it has been a tragedy for Britain, too.

But this dual tragedy is manageable. Britain is a nation of nearly 60 million people, for it to have within its borders around 600,000, many of whom would rather not be there, does not undermine its existence. The situation in Ireland is far different. The Republic’s population is less than 4 million--with roughly 800,000 northern Protestants. They aren’t going anywhere, nor should they--their ancestors arrived in Ireland long before those of almost any white Americans arrived here. To force Unionists, by threat of violence, into the Republic would guarantee that Ireland would soon become Bosnia, West. For Britain to acquiesce in such a policy would be shameful--merely shoving its own Irish problem onto a country far less able to handle it.

The IRA must know this. Its members must know that, one day in the next century, Catholics will be in a majority in the north, and if they then wish to join the Republic, no British government could stop them. The armed men must know, also, that it is likely that long before the demographics change, continued political integration of the European Union will make all intra-European borders meaningless. There are many who believe the IRA’s leadership does know all this--but because it remains obsessed with the rhetoric and symbols of nationalism, cannot bring itself to say so. The Republic has become a model nation by leaving such rhetoric and symbols behind. All who wish Ireland well should pray that the IRA soon does so, too.