Republican faction shares Thatcher’s view of EU

ONE would need a sense of humour fully to appreciate Republican Sinn Féin’s critique of the EU Reform Treaty as expressed by its vice-president Des Dalton (Letters, January 22).

He claims the entire EU is “fundamentally undemocratic”.

How would he describe Republican Sinn Féin (RSF) which hasn’t accepted the validity of a general election since May 1921, and which still claims there is a right to wage war despite the express will of the Irish people in 1998?

RSF president Ruairi Ó Brádaigh has spoken famously about the “poison of constitutionalism”.

The EU, Mr Dalton says, erodes the rights of states, but at least the it recognises this State. Does RSF?

The EU “places the power of decision-making in the hands of unelected and unaccountable officials”, he claims. Even if that were true, most people might prefer it to the notion in the ‘Green Book of the Government of the Irish Republic’ lying in the hands of an unelected, anonymous and unaccountable military junta otherwise known as the (Continuity) IRA Army Council.

Even Stalin let people know who was on the politburo. RSF complaints about alleged EU militarisation might be more impressive if it was not an unregistered micro-party with a paramilitary wing that could choose to put away its weapons.

The final irony is the heavy reliance of RSF (and of all hard-left critics of the EU treaty) on the Thatcherite mantra that is the hallmark of Eurosceptics everywhere about the alleged threat of a ‘European superstate’.

To put the origin of that phrase in context, Mrs Thatcher said in her speech at the College of Europe, Bruges, on September 20, 1988: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels”. The notion of a European superstate with a budget of 1% of GDP is of course ludicrous, but there are no proposals to increase it.

At least, Libertas, the new stablemate in the No camp, is overtly Thathcherite, even boasting it has secured the advice of Michael McDowell SC, fresh out of the traps of collective responsibility.

According to Dr Paddy Hillery, a senior Brussels official, Emil Noel, once described Ireland’s EEC accession as “a second declaration of Irish independence”. Like Fianna Fáil, the Scottish nationalists well understand the connection between national independence and a united Europe. Others who claim to be Irish republicans might think about it too as an alternative to what is basically the Thatcherite analysis.

Dr Martin Mansergh TD

Leinster House

Kildare Street

Dublin 2