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Who Wants a United Ireland?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

W. Harvey Cox
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Extract

THE PROVISIONAL IRA'S ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE BRITISH Prime Minister and Cabinet at Brighton on 12 October 1984, represents the most dramatic move to date in a reputedly 20-year strategy of inducing the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland and leave Ireland to the Irish. Where nonviolent Irish nationalists have aimed, most notably through the New Ireland Forum Report published in May 1984, to persuade the British that the 1920 constitutional settlement dividing Ireland is inherently unstable and must be dismantled, the Provisional IRA has no faith in this course of action. The British, they calculate, will be persuaded not by the force of argument but by the argument of force. In this they can claim, with some justification, to be the true heirs of the Easter Rising of 1916. At that time the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which was to become the basic document of Irish republicanism, declared ‘… the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible’. Since the 1916 Proclamation was ratified by the first subsequent meeting of elected representatives of the Irish people, the first Dáil Eireann, in 1919, representing virtually all but the Ulster unionist minority, and since the right and the aspiration to Irish unity have been reaffirmed by all non-unionist Irish parties ever since, it must be a truth universally acknowledged that the division of Ireland is unjust and undemocratic and that the reunification of the country is the rightful aspiration of the great majority of its people.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1985 , pp. 29 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1985

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References

1 See, e.g., the speech of Jeremy Corbyn MP, Hansard, 2 July 1984, col. 95, and the speeches by Ken Livingstone reported in The Guardian, 7 March 1983 and The Irish Times, 13 December 1983.

2 The Guardian, 28 July 1983.

3 The Guardian, 19 December 1983.

4 See articles by P. Compton referred to in footnotes 5 and 6.

5 The Times, 2 March 1983; see also Fortnight, No. 192, March 1983, and a letter in The Irish Times, 17 October 1983.

6 The Irish Times, 16 March 1984.

7 Davis, E. E. and Sinnott, R., Attitudes in the Republic of Ireland relevant to the Northern Ireland Problem, vol. 1, Dublin, The Economic Social Research Institute, 1979 Google Scholar.

8 Moxon‐Browne, E., Nation, Class and Creed in Northern Ireland, Farnborough, Gower Publishing Co., 1983 Google Scholar.

9 Davis and Sinnott, op. cit., p. 62.

10 The Irish Times, 25 May 1982.

11 Compton, P., ‘The Demographic Background’, in Watt, D. C., The Constitution of Northern Ireland, London, Heinemann, 1981, p. 91 Google Scholar.

12 Davis and Sinnott, op. cit., p. 53.

13 The Irish Times, 27 June 1983.

14 The Irish Times, 22 May 1984.

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16 MacGriel, M., Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland, Dublin, College of Industrial Relations, 1977 Google Scholar.

17 The Irish Times, 29 November 1982.

18 See e.g. Peillon, M., Contemporary Irish Society; an Introduction, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1982, pp. 2 and 189 Google Scholar; and O’Malley, P., The Uncivil Wars, Belfast, Black‐staff Press, 1983, ch. 2Google Scholar.

19 N. J. Haagerup, Report on the Situation in Northern Ireland, European Parliament, Doc. 1–1526/83, p. 70.

20 The Irish Times, 10 February 1984.

21 The Irish Times, 10 February 1984.

22 The Sunday Times, 11 September 1983.

23 New Ireland Forum, Report, para. 4.13.

24 The Irish Times. 9 March 1984.

25 P. O’Malley, op. cit., p. 357.