February 5, 2001

Minorities – The Irish Case Study

AN OLD SUBJECT

It is some time since I have written on the subject of Northern Ireland. This is partly because although a lot is happening there, little is changing – the peace process stumbles along with a permanent solution as elusive as ever. (Although the resignation of the British Northern Ireland secretary for petty corruption has added a touch of spice.) This is also because of the changing nature of my audience. When I started it was predominantly American and so I was reporting on the British scene, and so some reporting on the American meddling in Northern Ireland was proper. Now my audience is far more British and so my columns have been on British foreign policy rather than American British policy. Issues like Africa and son of star wars assume more importance than Tony Blair or Ulster. But I will get back to the issue of Northern Ireland, after all the guys at noraid@onelist.com haven’t accused me of being a mass murdering, imperialist, swastika wearing football hooligan for too long.

NO SELFISH OR STRATEGIC INTEREST

Peter Brooke, the former Northern Ireland secretary once uttered the very telling phrase that Britain had no "selfish or strategic interest" in Northern Ireland. This was seen by many of the Unionists to be akin to betrayal, especially as he was a Conservative minister, what they didn’t say was that this statement was almost true. Economically Northern Ireland is a drain, as much as Scotland or Wales. Strategically the old British need for a presence on Ireland – to forestall a European build up of forces to invade the West Coast of England – has been superseded by the advent of long range bombing. Ireland does not share a land border with England and so the issue of small-scale infiltration (as in Scotland or Wales) is moot.

THE ISSUE OF HONOUR

One would assume, having read my piece on the colonial holdings that I would therefore say that Northern Ireland should therefore be submerged into the Republic of Ireland, without regard to what the majority population think. One would be wrong. The fact is that a group, the IRA wants to throw the British out of Ireland and they want to do it through force. When you are publicly threatened with force there is only one time when you should give in – when you have to. Britain does not have to give in, and therefore it will be worse for Britain to get a reputation as a country that finds it easier to be persuaded by force than by the democratic process. British interests must guide British actions – and not the interests of Ireland or Ulster. If we are to disengage from Ulster, we must do so in a way that protects the interests of the majority population.

COMPARATIVE MINORITIES

There are two minorities in Ireland, Catholics in the North and Protestants and Jews in the South. The Catholic minority in the North has grown slowly since the withdrawal of the British from the south, where they were less than a third they are now over 40%. In the south of the island, the Protestants have gone from being roughly 10% of the population at independence to roughly 3% now. No one should deny, or excuse, the discrimination towards the Catholics in the north of Ireland. On the other hand, plenty of people are prepared to explain away the dwindling Protestant population in the Republic. The idea that their homes were burned, their children bullied, their businesses boycotted and their culture denigrated should point to the reason why one minority dwindled to the point of extinction. If for no other reason than the raw numbers it should indicate which side of the border was better for a minority to live, and it was not the South.

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Emmanuel Goldstein is the pseudonym of a political drifter on the fringes of English classical liberal and Euro-sceptic activity. He is a former member of the Labour Party, who knows Blair and some of his closest buddies better than they realise, yet. He has a challenging job in the real world, working for a profit-making private company and not sponging off the taxpayer in politics, journalism or the civil service. "Airstrip One," appears Mondays at Antiwar.com.