The silly season is clearly drawing to a close. The Taoiseach’s advisor to Senator Martin Mansergh kicks the autumn season of politics off with his (and presumable the Republic’s government’s view of the Belfast Agreement’s historical position in Ireland’s troubled history.
He begins by looking at the challenge facing the militaristic aspects of former revolutionary movements intent on moving towards the mainstream.
Yet the problem for militant groups, and not just for them, is that dissidence may not simply be a matter of political and intellectual debate over the correct ideological course – as most labour and socialist parties regularly encounter. It can be the prelude to serious outbreaks of violence, whether directed outside or within.
He goes on to chart what he beleives was a unique confluence of circumstances that lead to the settlement of 1922:
The one relatively, if incompletely successful, revolution in Ireland came about post-1916. It was facilitated by an extraordinary confluence of revolutionary avant-garde, subsequent comprehensive democratic endorsement and new emerging norms both within the British Commonwealth and for the creation of nation states from the rubble of old empires. That confluence, which was a necessary condition of success, is not repeatable, however often the attempt is made.
He goes on to argue that the aquisition of statehood was the primary achievement of Republicanism in Ireland – but that by dint of the logic of Monopoly of Force it could not side with any further armed struggle in North, no matter how much its ruling parties subscribed to the northern republican movement’s analysis of the social and democratic ills of Northern Ireland.
He then gives the Republic’s government’s justification for legitimising what is in the short term at least, a partitionist solution to Ireland’s long term political troubles:
Legitimacy in the widest sense stood behind complete reform of the northern state and relations between the two principal communities in it and also the transformation of relations on this island and between these islands. The same degree of legitimacy could not be mustered for imposing by all-Ireland majority rule a united Ireland, whether by force or by government.
He finishes with five points, all of which underpin the legitimacy of Belfast Agreement, from the Republic’s point of view:
* Whenever elements of Irish republicanism take on Irish democracy (they should be one and the same), democracy will win
* The security forces, Irish, British and American, able to concentrate on a reduced threat, have the capacity to frustrate and disrupt much of the planned activity and a ready justification for maintaining that capacity
* Regardless of “ethically reprehensible” operations that might be successful, no government will be under the slightest public pressure to treat with the organisation responsible on its political agenda
* As was shown post-1926 in the Irish Free State, republican politics is far more popular than republican violence and the mainstream will not be tempted back down a road that forfeits most of the gains made and leads nowhere. As Huguenot-born French king Henri IV observed, “Paris is worth a mass”.The only laurels to be won today by republicans will come from politics
* A unionism that acts constitutionally, like republicanism acting similarly, cannot, will not and should not be coerced, either directly (by armed action) or indirectly (by government)
* The people of the Republic have a huge investment in peace, stability and prosperity in the island as a whole but, failing that, in their own state. They will not be willing to put it at risk for any project of unity that has not been legitimately and constitutionally brought about.
Ma Bear at the Belfast based Broom of Anger blog believes Mansergh’s remarks should be read in tandem with Mitchell McLaughlin’s at the Parnell Summer School.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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