Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006

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Taken from the plough vol 5 no1

(a slightly different version of this originally appeared in HISTORY IRELAND November/December 2007))
The Politics of Enmity

Paul Bew
Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006
Oxford University Press, 2007 (613pp)

This volume is an addition to the Oxford History of Modern Europe series. “The book is about the conflict between the Protestant British -both on the British ‘mainland’ and in Ireland itself- and the Catholic Irish” states the preface. More specifically, it is a detailed history of the management of that enmity from the 1800 Act of Union to the 2006 St Andrews Agreement. All the various political frameworks created by the British state to solve its ‘Irish problem’ - Home Rule, partition, etc- are discussed in detail. With great skill, Bew recreates the political world of the ruling classes in London, Dublin and Belfast throughout two centuries through an extensive use of archives and papers available, and also attempts to convey the mood of popular politics through a particular emphasis on the press. The book is meticulously researched, thoroughly argued, often original in its insights; and most of its conclusions will be subject to controversy.

The author writes from a perspective sympathetic to liberal unionism and what he calls ‘conciliatory nationalism’. Parnell’s May 1891 speech, which insisted that “conciliation” was the only possible nationalist response to the “reasonable or unreasonable” sentiments of the Unionist community expresses one of the central arguments advanced by this book. While Bew defends ‘conciliatory nationalism’, he is critical of republicanism for failing to either convince or conciliate Unionism. However, it is not that Republicanism disregards the issue of Unionist consent to political arrangements, where it differs from other political forces like constitutional nationalism is that it refuses Unionist consent to be a prerequisite for constitutional change. While arguing that it is undesirable to coerce a ‘minority,’ republicanism contends that to give a guarantee to a ‘minority’ in advance against all coercion is to put a premium on unreasonableness and to make a settlement impossible. It will have no incentives to consider other political options so long as the British government gives it unconditional guarantees. The consent of a minority becomes transformed into a veto over the majority - unity by consent of a minority, partition by coercion of the majority. Bew’s stress on the importance of conciliation is partially based on a reading of history which concludes that it is impossible to coerce Ulster.

However, the fact that Ian Paisley could admit in a recent interview regarding why he came to endorse the St Andrews Agreement -“The British government threatened me. I was frightened. I was frightened for my country”- suggests that in specific historical conjunctures this can be possible. (1)

The emphasis upon the issues of conciliation and coercion is one of the strongest points of the book. But the author’s defence of conciliatory nationalism against a republicanism which exacerbates enmity with Unionism is sometimes problematical. Pearse for example was a constitutional home ruler who became a revolutionary after the Tory and Unionist subversion of the democratic request for Home Rule. Bonar Law’s “there are things stronger than parliamentary majorities”, the Curragh mutiny, the Larne gun running -events dismissed by Bew as “an extreme form of the politics of theatre” and as threats “more apparent than real”- convinced some conciliatory nationalists that the constitutional process was not allowed to be effective and that the threat of force was.

In his reading of the 1916 Rising, reduced to the more than questionable notion of a “blood sacrifice”, Bew underestimates the degree to which the actions of the Tories and the Unionists had a central role in driving figures of proven constitutional instincts such as Pease away from the constitutional path towards insurrection. The author also underestimates the extent to which the development of Unionism and partition were due to British policy rather than factors internal to Ireland. Edward Carson himself later admitted: “What a fool I was!” he exclaimed, “I was only a puppet and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power.” (2) Bew believes that there was nothing 'artificial' about the creation of Northern Ireland and that partition was inevitable.

However, it was the British government which chose the way in which Ireland was divided and imposed this by force. The plan to partition Ireland was made long before any boundary areas were decided and long before the overall population of what is now the six and twenty six counties had any say in the matter. Moreover, in 1916 there were 17 Home Rule MPs in Ulster as opposed to 16 Unionists. It is inconceivable that face-to-face negotiations between Republicans, Nationalists and Unionists would have produced the same settlement. Unfortunately Unionists refused to attend the first meeting of the All-Ireland parliament set up in January 1919 and work out a political arrangement. They instead supported a continued attempt by Westminster to rule Ireland against the democratic mandate of the people for their own national parliament. The book lacks an in-depth discussion of the significance of the 1918 elections and of the consequences of the British government’s refusal to accept its results. The Unionist support for the British military campaign to crush the democratic wish of the people through the ‘fascist dictation’ of the RIC to use the very words of Crozier, the first commanding officer of the Auxilairies, puts them again into the camp of coercion rather than conciliation, something not emphasized by Bew despite his frequent criticisms of the negative aspects unionism.

The book contains some fine analyses on how strategic considerations shaped the nature of British state policy towards Ireland; for example with the Act of Union or during the Second World War. Bew agrees with Peter Brooke’s statement that the British state has no selfish strategic interest in Ireland today and even evokes “unselfish strategic interests”.

However, one can hint from an interview Brooke gave to Spanish academic Rogelio Alonso that this sentence was essentially intended to strengthen the hand of those within the Provos who were pushing for a ceasefire and embrace the peace process rather than as a statement of fact. Has the end of the Cold War made the British state's strategic interests in Ireland redundant? In his book The Geopolitics of Anglo-Irish Relations in the Twentieth Century (London: Leicester University Press, 1997) G.R. Sloan, Deputy Head of Strategic Studies at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Darmouth argued that the end of the Cold War had not diminished Ireland's strategic importance; compelling the British state to pursue a strategic policy of 'geopolitical dualism': on one hand ensuring that part of Ireland remains within NATO, and on the other claim 'no selfish strategic interests' to further the peace process. This is not of course to argue that strategic interests are the prime factor in shaping British state policy towards Ireland; but to emphasise that Bew is wrong to take as axiomatic that the British state has no longer any strategic interests in Ireland today.

The book finishes with a question mark as to whether the Provos acceptance of the principle of consent marks the end of over two centuries of enmity. As long as the British state remains in Ireland, there will always be those who will attempt to strike a blow against ‘normalization’ and ‘amnesia’ to use Bew’s good description of the intent of Robert Emmet’s 1803 insurrection. This book is not the “definitive history of Ireland” but rather a sophisticated polemical reading of the history of Ireland since the French revolution. It can be difficult and heavy going in some places if one is not familiar with some of the issues discussed. The book will be especially of interest for people interested in ideas and arguments.

Liam O RUAIRC

(1) Dan Keenan, Paisley chose power-sharing over 'destruction of Union', The Irish Times, 6 April 2007
(2) ATQ Stewart, Edward Carson, Dublin: Gill&MacMillan, 1981, p.125