beware the ides of may
Only two short years since he led the Tories to a decisive parliamentary victory, Boris Johnson appears a palpably weakened figure and his problems show no sign of disappearing any time soon. Following this week’s continued garden-party revelations, and perhaps with an eye to the upcoming local elections, there’s even talk of metaphorical regicide where the party turfs its veritable King of the World out on his ear. More the Ides of May as opposed to March, me-thinks. Et tu, Gove?
Most noticeably, as the rows over the Northern Ireland Protocol and impending EU customs checks continue unabated, Brexit remains far from done. Furthermore, the resignation of his Brexit minister chum, Lord Frost, supposedly over ideological grounds but undoubtedly to limit his own reputational damage, is only going to muddy the Irish Sea even more. For me, this raises the query of when and why did the ‘Irish Question’ arise and what exactly is involved in the Good Friday Agreement? Here’s a massively simplified answer to those thorny issues.
As it transpires, a hundred years ago the United Kingdom made the far-reaching decision to divide, to partition, Ireland into two territories and it remains one of the most relevant yet divisive pieces of legislation ever passed into our collective national history. On 3rd May 1921, the Government of Ireland Act created Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland: two separate, self-governing territories with their own home-rule parliaments. However, with the vicious bloody War of Independence still raging in both countries, Southern Ireland ultimately morphed, via the Irish Free State, into the Republic of Ireland in 1949. Northern Ireland, formed of the six largest nationalist counties of the historic province of Ulster and heavily colonised by Protestant Scottish and English settlers, would endure.
In reality, partition produced two starkly opposed states. In the South, the Protestant population fell from 10% to just 4% and the new Northern Ireland contained 1.2 million people, but only one third were Catholic, leaving the union supremacy unthreatened. Today, this legacy is painfully apparent.
Fast forward to the mid-nineties and hastily-convened peace talks arose out of frustrated stalemate: the British accepted that they would not be able to defeat the Irish Republican Army, and the IRA reached the conclusion it would not be able to create a united Ireland by force. Consequently, Downing Street offered peace talks to any group that renounced violence, signed-up to a ceasefire and committed itself to the decommissioning of arms. The subsequent agreement, signed on the morning of that year’s Good Friday, was a powerful endorsement of reality. All parties jointly accepted that Northern Ireland was part and parcel of the UK, and would remain so until a majority chose otherwise. The Republic of Ireland dramatically relinquished its constitutionally-held claim to those six Ulster counties and Britain accepted that if Northern Ireland chose to join the Republic (and now, by implication, the EU) it had a binding obligation to implement that choice. These decisions, in totality, were ground-breaking.
The agreement made Northern Ireland somewhat ‘bi-national’ in that its citizens could opt for either British or Irish nationality, or both! Its power-sharing devolved government mandated that the first minister had to be from either the nationalist or unionist side, the deputy from the other, and all other senior positions shared equally between the two. When it was put to the electorates of both Northern Island and the Republic, it was approved to the tune of 71% and 94% respectively. Notwithstanding abhorrent violence later meted out by the Real IRA, the agreement marked a decisive end to the Irish Troubles.
However pragmatic this power-sharing assembly appeared to be, it has also proved to be highly dysfunctional. It has been suspended four times since 1998 and its decision-making ability has collapsed on numerous occasions. The Good Friday Agreement brought peace but not stable government. Accelerated by the mainland’s recent woes, polls are now trending towards reunification. A generation ago there was a clear unionist majority, but polls today mostly find support for remaining within the United Kingdom and for a united Ireland are converging at roughly, an equal 45%. Not a million miles away from our very own Brexit outcome. Boris is understandably concerned about the more visible Scottish annexation but it could easily be argued that Northern Island have a far more realistic and compelling argument in taking that particular decision.
