Ireland’s old cosy consensus on Europe is now a thing of the past
Less than a week ago, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee was warning Irish voters that if we rejected Nice once again, we risked being transformed overnight from the most loveable nation on earth into the xenophobic pariah of Europe: "it might come as a shock to the Irish, " she noted, "to discover that overnight the rest of Europe finds them a lot less likeable.
"As the Celtic mists clear, instead of green romance, Europe might see another side of the coin a narrow-minded, nationalist and selfish country. The No campaign, led by Sinn Féin and the Greens, springs from the same British right-wing xenophobia that sets sovereignty above progressive international co-operation."
As it turned out, Europe's political masters got the result they wanted this time and we are again the darlings of Europe, we are again an inspiring example to other small states and applicant countries and our politicians talk of us now being in a position to take up a leadership role and demonstrate the way forward to the rest of Europe in terms of communicating with their electorates and selling the European project.
Nevertheless, it was an entirely positive development that the Irish electorate forced the political establishment to have to fight tooth and nail for 18 months to push Nice through. After years of being able to fob the electorate off with bribes in the form of CAP payments and structural funds, it came as a profound shock to the Government last year to discover that voters can no longer be treated as fodder when it comes to ratifying European treaties and that it might actually have to mount a convincing argument. If that makes us "less likeable" to some, then so be it. It might come as a shock to Polly Toynbee to discover that, as the debate surrounding the Saipan saga demonstrated, many Irish people are no longer content with winning international popularity contests. There are more important things, such as democratic accountability, for example, or winning World Cups.
Furthermore, despite the large majority on the Yes side last Saturday, together with the findings of the Euro Barometer Survey, it would be wrong to assume that Ireland has now reverted back to its previous cosy relationship with the European Union. For all the noble rhetoric about enlargement and the basking in reflected glory of the mainstream parties on Sunday, our attitude towards and relationship with the EU has undergone a substantial shift over the past few years. That relationship was once one of almost unquestioning acceptance. As long as the headage payments and subsidies kept flowing from Brussels, the majority of people were happy to acquiesce in the obsequious demonstrations of loyalty as "good Europeans." It was mostly a pragmatic arrangement.
For those whom Desmond Fennell once described as the "state class," however, the attractions of Europe went beyond the hand-outs there was also a political dimension to it. At a time when they were abandoning the old nationalist commitment towards pursuit of a united Ireland, the European project offered some sort of alternative vision, an alternative means whereby Ireland could assert its independent status and identity on the international stage. We famously punched above our weight within the EU, and events such as the six-month holding of the EU presidency bestowed international prestige and gravitas upon our political leaders. Europe was presented as a means of achieving a new modern identity, of overcoming our over-dependence on Britain and shaking off our inferiority complex.
The fact that the British, and in particular Margaret Thatcher, had such a dislike of the EU only reinforced enthusiasm for it in Ireland.
The substitution of the EU as an alternative political vision to the traditional nationalism of old was spelled out most clearly on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1991. By now deeply embarrassed by the Rising's association with nationalist violence, some of our leading commentators formulated and popularised a torturous new argument that sought to at least partly justify the Rising retrospectively in terms of how it helped pave the way to our eventual membership of the EU. Former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald suggested that the Rising hastened considerably the timing of full independence, and that this was of vital importance in subsequent Irish history. Had it been delayed significantly, he argued, the people might have been reluctant to dilute their newly won sovereignty by joining the EEC. Fintan O'Toole argued in the Irish Times that "They may not have known it but what the men and women of 1916 fought for was an Irish seat at the European table. The Rising began with a conflict and may well end, at long last, with a European integration."
In 1990, then Taoiseach Charles Haughey declared that the EEC was "the greatest force for good that the world has ever known."
Somehow, one suspects that had they known what they were fighting for was the right for representatives of a partitioned state to attend private meetings of the Council of Ministers in a deeply undemocratic EU, Pearse, Connolly and the other leaders of 1916 might not have bothered in the first place. What is interesting, however, is how quaint this sort of Euro-idealism now sounds, and how little of it one hears in Ireland today compared to a decade ago.
It is no coincidence that the stars of the Yes campaign this time were people like Garret Fitzgerald, John Bruton and Professor Brigid Laffan, for they are all genuine, passionate enthusiasts for the European project who still champion some of the federalist ideals that once inspired the EU. But in this they are now out of synch with most of Europe and are also part of a dwindling band in Ireland.
In the celebratory atmosphere of the referendum result on Sunday, the Taoiseach talked about Ireland being back in the heart of Europe and rebuilding "our original enthusiasm for the great European project." But Tánaiste Mary Harney was more in tune with the new mood in Ireland in emphasising her reluctance to countenance further European integration and stating her preference for a looser arrangement between the member states.
Its worth bearing in mind that a mere 31% of the total electorate actually voted in favour of Nice. That the Taoiseach could describe a turnout of less than half the electorate as "excellent" is extraordinary.
The legacy of the two Nice campaigns in this country is that the old cosy consensus on Europe is now a thing of the past, and enthusiasm can only ebb further as we become net contributors to the EU over the next decade.
With the Convention on Europe due to present a draft new constitution for Europe in 2004, the Irish Government will be more wary than most of any grand federalist schemes or ambitions, particularly as it won't be able to play the moral card of enlargement in any future referendum.
We may have averted becoming part of the EU's so-called "awkward squad," but we are no longer amongst the genuine enthusiasts either.
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