Diplomatic Relations Between Ireland and the United Kingdom 1916-2016

Diplomatic relations between Ireland and the United Kingdom 1916-2016 Speech of Professor Mary McAleese, St Mary's University, Twickenham Churchill Room, Portcullis House, Westminster Wednesday February 24 2016 February 24 1916 The story of diplomatic relations between Ireland and Great Britain over the course of the past century, at its simplest is a story that moves from darkness to light, from enmity to friendship, from conflict to peace, from obsession with the past to focus on the future. Queen Elizabeth with deft diplomacy sketched the turbulent history of these two neighbouring but often not so neighbourly islands in her memorable speech in Dublin Castle in May 2011. «Of course, the relationship has not always been straightforward; nor has the record over the centuries been entirely benign. It is a sad and regrettable reality that through history our islands have experienced more than their fair share of heartache, turbulence and loss. [...]With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all». Reflecting on those difficult centuries I had remarked at the same event that: "Inevitably where there are the colonisers and the colonised the past is a repository of bitter division. The harsh facts cannot be altered [...] but with time and generosity [...] perspectives can soften and open up space for new accommodations». A measure of the consequences of those harsh unalterable facts is the fact that until the Queen's historic visit no British Monarch had set foot in Dublin for one hundred years. In July 1911 the Queen's grandfather George V had visited Ireland on his accession tour as King of the United Kingdom, the British Dominions and Emperor of India. His first cousin Wilhelm II was at the time King of Prussia and German Kaiser. He would be the last German Kaiser. His other first cousin Nicholas was Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland and King of Poland. He would be the last Russian Tsar. I mention these names because without much help they conjure up an important part of the geopolitical maelstrom which was the backdrop to Anglo-Irish relations in the early twentieth century. The day of Empires was shortly coming to a close. Ireland was then part of the British Empire. In 1916 the Empire was at war. 200000 Irish men fought and over 30,000 died for the Empire in that deadliest of wars. Posters on street corners in 1916 exhorted Irish men to do their bit for Ireland, meaning the Empire, to be a hero, to do the honourable thing and take up weapons to kill the Hun. The presumption was that every Irish man owed allegiance and loyalty to the British empire. But there was another tide in Ireland and it was not new. It was the idea of a self-governing Ireland where loyalty was to the Irish people and their right to self-determination. It was synthesised in a famous lecture by the man who was to become Ireland's first President, the Protestant nationalist scholar, Douglas Hyde. On November 25 1892 in a lecture entitled "the necessity of De-Anglicising Ireland", delivered to the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, he had appealed to everyone: "to do his best to help the Irish race develop in future upon Irish lines even at the risk of encouraging national aspirations because upon Irish lines alone can the Irish race once more become what it was of yore- one of the most original, artistic, literary and charming peoples of Europe". The notion of Home Rule for Ireland had long been in the ether – since in fact the beginning of the 19th century when the Act of Union abolished the Irish parliament and moved political control of Ireland to London. Parnell following the tradition of O'Connellite constitutional politics had built the Irish Parliamentary Party into a highly influential political force at Westminster. As historian A.J.P. Taylor says: "More than any other man he gave Ireland the sense of being an independent nation". His day was long over in 1916 but his political legacy was still evident as the push for Home Rule proved. But Home Rule was to both provoke and highlight the fractures in Irish society; the Protestant-Catholic divide, the North - South divide, the nationalist- Unionist divide, the Irish-British divide, the imperial/republican divide, the planter/native divide; all conducing to a clash of loyalties and identities and a strong resistance to the legitimacy of the views of the other. The British government's promise of Home Rule died on the vine of Unionist opposition which had threatened civil war before the Great War began. In response Irish republicans made their bid for Irish freedom on Easter Monday 1916, choosing a time when the war was in the doldrums and its popularity waning. For better or for worse the die was cast. The Rising would end in the cathartic executions of the leaders of the Rising, the demolition of Redmond's political base by the rising tide of Sinn Fein and a war of Independence in which Maurice Walsh says the newly formed IRA crafted: «the first successful revolt anywhere against the British Empire. Far from being anti-democratic it was part of the post Great War turmoil which saw the collapse of empires [...] and the growth of democracy». Ronan Fanning argues in Fatal Path that without the Rising and Britain's fateful response to it Ireland would not have achieved the independence it enjoys today. But as former Irish Ambassador Sean O' h'Uiginn has said the British/unionist insistence on partitioning the island «pushed into a corner called Northern Ireland» problems which derived «essentially from unfinished business between the two islands». In making peace with the idea of Irish independence the Empire also had to make peace with the larger harsh reality that the sun was going down on the British Empire. It was hard to accept, coming so soon after the its heyday at the turn of the century. Attitudes hardened. Irish nationalist resentment of British imperialism and British unionist resentment of Irish independence and what it considered Irish disloyalty to the Empire, conspired to lose track, among other things, of the significant Irish contributions made by Irish citizens of all religions and politics to both World Wars. Irish neutrality during the Second World War was the remembered headline while the visit in 1946 of Lord Mountbatten on behalf of the British Government was written out of even the footnotes. He presented the Irish President with a beautiful copper beech in gratitude for the help given to the Allies during the War. Despite that spontaneous acknowledgment the decades which followed were characterised by frostiness rather than friendliness. Meanwhile Northern Ireland failed to resolve its sectarian and political problems. The British Government took a hands off approach to Northern Ireland and a view that what happened there was an internal matter for the United Kingdom, so excluding the Irish government from a say in affairs North of the Border. I and others on all sides whose lives were damaged by the Troubles are entitled to ask what might have happened if the British Government had listened more attentively to my predecessor Patrick Hillery when on August 1st 1969 as Ireland's Foreign minister he came to this city to plead with his UK counterpart Michael Stewart that Derry city was "a powder keg" that needed very sensitive handling. He was told that: it was a matter for the Northern Ireland Government" and ‘there is a limit to the extent to which we can discuss with outsiders – even our nearest neighbours – this internal matter.’1 and again a few weeks later as the conflict escalated, back here again to try and help avoid the looming disaster, he was told by Lord Chalfont "This is not a situation in which the citizens of Ireland are involved".2 1 Per Noel Dorr. Quotation taken from the Irish side’s note of the meeting in National Archives of Ireland file 2000/6/557. Noel Dorr has written about these events in much greater detail elsewhere. See ed. Michael Kennedy and Deirdre McMahon Obligations and Responsibilities: Ireland and the United Nations 1955-2005 (Institute of Public Administration, Dublin, 2005) 253-280 and Noel Dorr Ireland at the United Nations: Memories of the Early Years (IPA, Dublin, 2010) chapters 10 and 11. 2 Per Noel Dorr. This quotations is taken from the confidential report by the Irish side on the meeting. National Archives of Ireland 2000/6/558. Copy also in the possession of Noel Dorr. The records show regrettably that Hillery's comprehension, analysis and judgment of events and realities on both sides, over that tragic period were considerably more astute, realistic and prophetic than those he encountered here in London. Ireland and Britain subsequently joined the European Union on the same day in 1973, two sovereign nations, equals and partners in the single most exciting advanced political and economic consensus based initiative in world history. British and Irish politicians, diplomats and civil servants met more frequently and talked together over a greater range of issues. The massification of second and third level education on both islands brought new streams of thinking and new actors into civic life and the body politic. The grip of old elites loosened. The grip of old shibboleths too. Distinguished former Irish Ambassador Sean o'hUiginn has observed that there was in fact close cooperation between the British and Irish governments on many practical issues but Northern Ireland was as he describes it "a potentially limiting fault line".

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