Adams is wrong to think we’re closer to his idea of a united Ireland

REUNIFICATION or redundancy? That seems to be the dilemma facing Gerry Adams and the leadership of Sinn Féin. They seem to be on the verge of becoming about as important to the political process down here as, well, the PDs.

That’s an exaggeration, of course. The PDs will almost certainly go out of existence entirely in the near future. My guess is that before the next election, the next leader of Fianna Fáil, assuming it is Brian Cowen, will quietly reabsorb the last two PD deputies into his party. And that will be the end of that.

Sinn Féin, on the other hand, will be around for a long time. But it’s not that long ago since most political pundits assumed Sinn Féin would be making their way into the government of the Republic in pretty short order, and would achieve their great strategic ambition of being the only party on the island to hold power in both jurisdictions at the same time.

But I don’t see too many experts predicting that now. In terms of their own expectations, Sinn Féin took a hammering at the last Dáil general election. Since then, their performance as a functioning part of the Dáil opposition has been virtually invisible.

Right now, there is no sign whatever that the party is positioned to make any kind of a breakthrough towards government.

In fact, they may well have reached the glass ceiling that other small parties (in the context of the politics of the Republic) always seem to hit.

One possible reason for this may be that we have always seen Northern Ireland as a different place. It’s up there, foreign, different. People may be driving up there nowadays to visit IKEA, but it’s not out of any great desire to see how much the city of Belfast has come on. As someone who is fond of Northern Ireland as a place, and wants to know it better, I’ve always thought that a pity.

But it’s a fact, I think, that we consider Northern Ireland, and Northerners, as fundamentally different to us.

Throughout all the years of the troubles there, governments in the Republic had one unwritten political priority above all others.

They would talk about peace and the unity of the island in all their speeches. But their actions were always designed to ensure that violence was contained in Northern Ireland. Whatever happened, it must not be allowed to spill over down here. At different times, of course, emotions flared on this side of the border, too. In the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, and during the H Block protests and hunger strikes, there seemed to be moments when we were at one with the nationalist people of the North, moments when we were all willing to be led by republican sentiment.

But when the emotions died down, most people down here wanted to get on with their lives and to do whatever could be done to let “them up there” get on with theirs.

So when Gerry Adams referred in his árd fheis speech to the “ingrained partitionism within the Irish establishment“, he was probably right. But it’s a partitionism that reflects the opinions of the vast majority of the people, I think, even those who mightn’t be prepared to admit it.

Most of us, I reckon, want to see Ireland reunified. It’s a sort of vague aspiration, though, not a burning desire. And Sinn Féin might well feel we’re all partitionists, but who made us that way?

Thirty years of atrocities, of mindless and cruel murders, of acts of terrorism that took hundreds of innocent lives — all of that contributed to the death of any overwhelming desire for unity. And it copperfastened for most of us, I believe, the thought that if they could finally make a go of it up there, well, good on them.

That’s essentially why I think the Sinn Féin president is wrong when he says, as he said last weekend, “we are closer to bringing about Irish reunification than at any time in our past ... there is growing support for Irish unity and there is a growing awareness of the importance of the all-Ireland economy to this nation’s future … but none of this will happen by chance … We need to set out how we reach this historic goal, how we create the conditions for a united Ireland…”

Actually, the best possibility of arriving at Irish unity is if we let it happen by chance. The central dynamic of the peace process was to arrive at a point where those who were at the heart of the problem were transplanted, eventually, into becoming the heart of the solution.

The sight of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness working together, unlikely as it may seem, was always a probable outcome for those people who were the main architects of the process.

But not necessarily a transitional outcome. Working devolved government in Northern Ireland is more than enough. I don’t believe any realist sees the present situation as a sort of staging post on the road to inevitable unity.

Some of the other conditions that Adams referred to in his speech could, of course, give rise to a moment when unity is seen as no big deal by people on either side of the border. Adams is probably right when he says a lot of unionist people aren’t particularly fond of the British government. And they are noticing, too, that there may be real benefits and a real dynamic to an all-Ireland economy. Much more cross-border cooperation is already leading to increased trade and to more investment. But it is also giving rise to real possibilities in the delivery of more efficient public services with less duplication.

IN THE years ahead, a stable and prosperous Northern Ireland could be electing governments with a very clear mandate to work well with the government of the dynamic economy down here. We could well find that both governments, for example, are taking positions in Europe that are at odds with the positions adopted by Westminster. And little by little, the things that unite us could start coming into focus, while the things that divide us fade into distant memory.

But just suppose unity across the island was to come about that way. Do you know what it would be called? It would be called unity by consent — an agreement to run our affairs together in the best interests of all of us.

The political parties of this part of the island signed up to that principle an awful long time ago and Sinn Féin eventually, in their signing of various agreements and their taking of office in the Northern Ireland Executive, signed up to it, too. A bit late, but then, as they say, better late than never.

I’ve no idea whether unity by consent will happen in my lifetime (and like most people, I suspect, I’m not too bothered). But I do know that it’s the only kind of unity that will ever work. A new campaign for reunification might sound great at an árd fheis, but there’s a different game in town. I wonder do Sinn Féin get it?