The problem with referendums is how they throw people (even the best of us) back upon too easily formulated binaries that take no account of outcomes. The most depressing thing about the Brexit referendum is not just how it has split the host country but its international repercussions.
I voted remain and I’d do so again. Not because I can’t see what irritates Leavers (just see how getting rid of daylight saving time is being dealt with by simple majority in the Euro Parliament), but unpicking 41 years of international treaties is asking for unwarranted trouble.
But its effect on Ireland is what I find most troubling. Disturbingly much of the anti English/anti Northern Protestant invective now emerging in Dublin comes from not from the political class but from within the Republic’s mainstream public intellectual life.
The effects will have to be dealt with sooner or later. But, of course, it is not without cause, as Una Mullally observes in the Guardian:
Being hostile to our neighbours was briefly taboo among Irish liberals. But the Irish capacity to grit our teeth has turned into a daily grind.
In another piece for the same paper, Mullally notes the re-popularising/trivialising of the most desperate aspects of Ireland’s tragic past:
In 2019, “Up the RA” is layered and esoteric.
For some, it’s mindlessly chanted without any context, bar a sense of misplaced patriotism and ignorance. For others, it’s subversive and transgressive; playing with a taboo with the safe benefit of distance.
For yet others it is the trivialising of the slogan to the point of undermining the perceived power of the IRA itself – its authority is so depleted that it’s now a joke, and only the slogan remains as punctuation.
Or, it’s just a dumb meme.
She concludes with a question:
…is saying “Up the RA” mindless? Dangerous? Irresponsibly frivolous? Offensive? Yes, and no. In conversation it’s about context, and in art it’s about subtext. But for many people, it’s too soon, too dark, and too unsettling.
This is the dissociating effect of social media, which has increased the effectiveness of the loud and opinionated in getting a voices in our established forums not just for public debate but for thinking about who we are and where we might be going.
I get the anger with Perfidious Albion. But perhaps the glib, pop psychology profiling of the imperialist English is missing the point? Our externalisation of the problem of voter alienation ignores the fact that NI’s failed democracy is a joint Irish/British issue.
A ComRes poll this month found 81% of the public think “Most politicians don’t listen to ordinary people”. It may be that the Republic has had this crisis or is still working slowly through it with a PR system of voting that keeps most TDs tied to plain people of the parish.
But there is a wider feeling that politicians scan opinions but no longer understand lived and felt experience. With or without Brexit, there’s been a failure to create compelling explanations for practical initiatives that can make a difference to ordinary people’s lives.
In Northern Ireland, our democratic failure has been marked by stalemate and increasing political clumsiness. Politics of the practical and discursive type is being replaced by a reductive blame game.
Meanwhile the real underlying danger of resurgent sectarian prejudice threatens to undermine and reverse the post-Belfast Agreement era’s drift towards non-violence and democratic engagement.
What we are slowly learning is that easy to wreck what you have in favour of some far off ideal than build for the future.
‘Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation’
-From Civic Elegies, by Dennis Leigh
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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