Irish Nationalism and European Integration

A Review Article by John Swift

Issue 391, vol.98, Autumn 2009

The best answers tend toward ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty. Samuel Beckett says the key word in his lexicon is ‘perhaps’.

What now seems most striking in the words of Eamon De Valera, the New York-born, Hispanic-Irish republican nationalist leader, when founding our main political party in May 1926, is the almost overwhelming sense of moral certainty: "We shall at all times be morally free to use any means that God gives us to win back that part of our Ulster province that has been taken away from us". The self-assurance implicit in the words ‘morally free’, as well as in his apparently confident use of personal and possessive pronouns, was not shared by his successors. It remains, however, a stylistic trait common to Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams. It is surprising how long the old rhetoric survived and proved serviceable, how insufferably slowly the respective discourses and ideologies of the main political traditions on the island changed, and the high price paid in human suffering for this tardiness.

The good news is that they, and we, have changed, and that the European Union may take some credit for the improvement.

Yes to Lisbon?
Those who read Katy Hayward's study before 2^nd October 2009 will be tempted to turn first to the ‘No to Nice’ section in her concluding chapter, and to the Afterword. Among her points are the following:

Irish people have relatively low levels of knowledge of the EU, but traditionally have indicated positive views on the benefits of membership. (Sinnott,1995; Eurobarometer, 2008). This may reflect governmental statements and speeches on European issues, which are strong on generalised rhetoric and emotional appeal and weak on reasoned argument and the provision of concrete information.

Irish Governments have (so far) been successful in using EU-inspired concepts as a basis for finding agreements with and within Northern Ireland, while expressing broadly nationalist ideals in Europe, and interpreting its European experience to the Irish people as supporting and legitimising such ideals.

According to Dr. Hayward, the first referendum on the Nice Treaty (2001) failed for three reasons: lack of clarity regarding the Irish Government's position on the future of Europe and Ireland's place within it; contradictory opinions among Ministers on the future of Ireland's independent voice in Europe and the quality of European democracy; a breakdown in trust between the citizens and the domestic political system.

Last year's negative vote on Lisbon was a bigger shock to the Irish political system than the First Nice referendum, because the turnout was substantially higher; the rise in the ‘No’ vote swamped a much smaller rise in the number of those voting ‘Yes’ (pages 233 and 240). But the reasons for the negative vote had not changed. In particular, the Irish voter still does not know what the Irish Government thinks the future of the EU should be or is likely to be, and the disconnect between the Irish voter and the Government has undoubtedly grown. Dr. Hayward asks if Irish political leaders have been a bridge or a barrier between Irish citizens and the European Union. I believe they have been both, and that next October will show which role has been stronger.

Purpose
Dr. Hayward's aim in this volume is to profile "Ireland" as it is portrayed in the texts and speeches of Irish political leaders, and, in doing so over an extended period, to describe the steps which led a strongly nationalist state to concede aspects of national sovereignty to Brussels and to reduce its constitutional claim to Northern Ireland. This purpose is quite limited; she is concerned not with the truth of what our political leaders say, nor with our reactions, but only with the content and coherence of the picture they present, and how that picture has changed over time.

Her account begins with pre-independence Ireland's major political movements - constitutional nationalism, republican nationalism and unionism - and she carries her detailed story through independence, building the nation-state, the Northern troubles, accession to the EEC, and the nearly 30 years which followed, to 2001. She organises her material around the basic traditional concepts of identity and nation, state features of borders and territory, and how EU concepts helped modify local thinking in the direction of interdependence, partnership and the benefits of unity in diversity.

The strongest impression left by her study is not only how slowly the ‘national discourse’ has changed, but how radical the changes have been over the past 20 years, and how much of that change has been for the better. This is a valuable conclusion to hold on to, when faced with the periodic bouts of erratic emotionalism that affect us during referendums on European issues.

Evaluation
I have two different reactions to this survey: I believe its purpose is worthwhile and valuable, and that the author accomplishes more than satisfactorily what she set out to do; but I also believe that her book is marred by flaws in presentation and by a serious problem of style and language.

While this work is limited in scope, it is detailed, disciplined and convincing. It is packed with factual material, satisfying in its use of apt and unexpected quotation, generally balanced and fair to all political sides, and courageous in dealing with the background and evolution of topical controversies. In applauding what Dr. Hayward has accomplished, it is right to add that that on some subjects her reach exceeds her grasp and that this reviewer disagrees with a number of her conclusions.

Among the most interesting trends noted and points made are:

The Irish Government's elaboration in the late 1990s of a fresh and inclusive interpretation of national self-determination. "Whatever country or region one is talking about, provided they are freely chosen, independence, union or devolution are all equally valid expressions of the national right to self-determination" (Bertie Ahern, April, 1998).The point, following the concurrent referendums, was to remove "any false vestige of democratic self-justification for further acts of violence". The new position was firmly based on De Valera's 1926 view that the overriding principle was the natural right of the Irish people to rule themselves; in 1998, this remained fully safeguarded in the untouched Article 1 of the Irish Constitution.

The Irish doctrine of neutrality, as it has evolved, is primarily a nationalist rather than an internationally principled or even strategic stance, connected with (older) Irish ideas on sovereignty, the role of small nations, their ability to conduct an independent foreign policy, etc. The different views of Charles Haughey on this subject are illustrated. A visitor from Mars might ask why a freely-chosen non-neutrality could not be an equally valid expression of sovereignty and independence.

Dr. Hayward rightly reminds us that EU-type language (on, for example, pluralities of identity, on prioritising peace and reconciliation above institutional forms or imposed unity) was employed by Irish governments before 1973. Jack Lynch's words of January, 1970 on amity, not enmity, persuasion, not persecution, integration, not imposition, are just one example. What Irish membership of the EU did was to provide moral weight, concrete analogies and a favourable context for this kind of rhetoric, and thereby strengthen it and increase the likelihood of its being employed and acted upon. "If France and Germany can have a relationship now that no one could have foreseen 40 years ago, why should Ireland, North and South, not transcend part of its history?" (Garret Fitzgerald, 1985).

Full weight is given to Bertie Ahern's key role in the peace process; according to our author, Ahern's pragmatic flexibility made him, in important respects, closer to Fitzgerald and Bruton than to his Fianna Fail predecessors, in relation to the North. It is also salutary to be reminded by quotation that the Ahern demotic could be crisp and concise: "The EU is not them; it is us", "Nobody can pull the curtains and tell the world to go away", etc., and that it can compare well with Lynch-speak or with Fitzgerald's more formal way of speaking.

There are also weaknesses and some important omissions in Hayward’s text, relating to a number of disparate points, mostly subsidiary to the main arguments:

The treatment of the naming of the State in the Constitution (page 98) is inaccurate and confused. To see in Article 4, in either Irish or English, the implication that the Six Counties were not part of Ireland is most doubtful. The Sunningdale Declaration of December, 1973, is referred to a number of times in the text, but the most important point about it (that in it the Irish Government for the first time formally accepted that there could be no change in the status of Northern Ireland until a majority of the people of Northern Ireland desired a change in that status) is nowhere mentioned. Similarly, I found the treatment of the Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1935 and the Republic of Ireland Act, 1948 unsatisfactory. And the degree of difficulty Dr. Hayward has with Garret Fitzgerald's logic and language (pages 133, 137,139, etc.), seems strained and excessive.

A more structured defect is the view that an over-reliance on the standard official rhetoric, as it had evolved, plus an inflexibility in adjusting it to the conditions it helped fashion, contributed significantly to the failure of the "Yes" vote in the first Nice and Lisbon referenda. This opinion is intermittently referred to rather than fully argued, but it may receive unwarranted attention because it is highlighted on the book's back cover and because it is highly topical. These two conditions may have played a role but they are exaggerated, especially as regards Lisbon I, by comparison with critical factors which are not mentioned at all: political complacency, lack of effort and the priority given to what was immediate and urgent (the timing of Mr. Ahern's departure) over what was fundamental. This points to a failure of research method; what was not included in government speeches and statements is not taken into account; by definition, sins of omission are not to be found in the official discourse.

Language and style
Style is important, but dogmatism about style is a mistake, since judgements on style are highly subjective. Nonetheless, because, in this case, a valuable book may lose readers, it is necessary to say something regarding major deficiencies of style and presentation which make reading this volume much more difficult than it needs to be.

I pass by questions of looseness of wording masking banality of thought or leading to incomprehensibility (examples - first five sentences under heading ‘Community’, pages 28 and 29; or language like this, on page 117: "The delineation of the nation is a political activity occurring within the territorial boundaries of the jurisdiction of the state" ). Far too much space is devoted to organizational concepts and methodological tools. Among other defects, this results in unnecessary repetition.

Dr. Hayward is a sociology scholar and her approach is based on the language and concepts of Durkheim, Althusser, and Foucault and the postmodernist and constructivist schools. I follow James and Wheen in finding their jargon heavy, pretentious, often impenetrable; and their insights and theories less original and more trite than they think. I can live with ‘core signifiers’, ‘descriptors’, ‘national narratives’, etc., but I strongly dislike ‘reification’, ‘ideational’, ‘diasporic’, and ‘redemption’ (as in ‘redemption of a symbiotic relationship’). This is not simply a matter of personal taste. Take the term ‘the governmental elite’. It, and close synonyms (‘a governmental elite’, ‘national governmental elites’, ‘a political elite’, even ‘national government elite members’) occur 35 times in the 23 pages of Chapter 2, and almost as often elsewhere through the book, to the extent of becoming a verbal tic. The phrase is nowhere defined. It is sometimes a synonym for government leaders or important government ministers; sometimes it clearly indicates a much broader cohort. Outside academia, the phrase is not neutral; see, for example PANA's website references to French and German political elites; Declan Ganley's references to ‘the Brussels elite’, etc.. Finally, while there are ‘political elites’ in Ireland, ‘the political, or the governmental, elite’ does not exist, because all elites are temporary, with overlapping membership, diverse interests and differing political views. In sum, the phrase is almost meaningless, and has no place in a scholarly study.

Conclusion
The years 2008-2009 may well be remembered as the time when Irish public life was forced to admit its loss of innocence: political, economic, religious and social. In our present mood of self-questioning, perhaps it is now timely to look again at some of the more self-indulgent of Ireland's national creation myths, implicit as well as explicit, especially those connected with our perennial and exaggerated sense of victimhood.

Our political leaders are now getting a bad press. But we, the Irish people, freely elected and re-elected both Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern. The Celtic Tiger phenomenon was an immense boon to Ireland, but the fact that it was shallowly-based and that it turned so sour so quickly was due primarily to our developers and our banks. That advantage was not taken of our temporary prosperity and flush government coffers to begin building a more just and caring society is more directly the responsibility of us, the Irish electorate, who did not demand such action, or at least, did not demand it loudly or persistently enough.

The reputation of the Irish Church, its bishops and religious orders, has sunk lower than one would have believed possible. But if the lessons of the Ryan Report are to be fully learned, we must start by acknowledging once again that "it is not them, it is us". Political circles, local authorities, civil servants, the medical and educational professions, society in general wanted what were then considered difficult social problems taken care of; almost without exception, we, the Irish people, specifically made it our business not to enquire too closely into matters which might cause scandal, disturb our comfort, or cost money.

More than 200 years ago, Goethe wrote that enlightenment is our emergence from our self-imposed immaturity. World history since then suggests that the emergence is not yet complete. In very different terms, Chesterton held that original sin is the only traditional Christian doctrine that is empirically provable. We Irish people are not short of company in our present predicaments, including our moral predicaments. While loss of innocence is to be lamented, in human terms it can be a badge of maturity, a felix culpa, because it may be a step on the road to enlightenment.

Ireland joined the EEC in 1973 for a balanced mixture of material and idealistic reasons. That rationale is still valid, but there is now, in retrospect, a further possible argument why Ireland should remain fully committed to the European Union: on balance, the EU stands for a rational and adult patriotism; it is for grown-up peoples and states, for nations which can ask questions of themselves as well as of others; for human beings who do not think of themselves only as innocent victims. EU standards and practices help us, along with our political leaders, to act responsibly. Do we really wish to return to the childish simplifications of the 1950s, with its self-absorption and self-pity, larger than life heroes and villains, its view of history as melodrama rather than tragedy? If not, situating Irish nationalism within the context of European integration is the option of choice. Dr. Hayward's volume is a good starting-point for reflection.

John Swift