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“The
important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity
has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but
be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity,
of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It
is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little
of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
- Albert Einstein
As accurately suggested in the title hereof, this
article follows The Blanket’s publication
of “Academics On Independence,
Part I” in examining how academia has responded
to the issue of possible Northern Ireland independence
(all emphases herein are from the original).
****
October
8, 2000
BY
E-MAIL AND AIRMAIL
Dr.
Dennis Kennedy
The Institute of European Studies
The Queen’s University of Belfast
Prof.
Brendan O’Leary
Political Science Department
London School of Economics
Re: Northern Ireland
Dear
Brendan and Dennis:
Again,
greetings. As you will have surmised, I hold out the
hope that you might kindly accept another letter from
me at this important juncture for Northern Ireland.
[Personal discussion redacted.]
Particularly
in light of the present condition of the Good Friday
Agreement-and, thus, the condition of Ulster’s
political society as currently constituted-I discuss
below one fairly recent opinion article on that topic
and several earlier minor writings, all in the hope
that each of you might well bring your scholarship
to bear on the question posed below. While you two
may not see eye-to-eye on every issue concerning Northern
Ireland, you share, obviously, a keen interest in
that region as well as an apparently rare intellectual
honesty in that regard.
My
main question here is: can you and will you now adequately
judge whether a “paradigm shift” ought to
be intensively considered regarding the Northern Ireland
question?
*****
The
above-referenced opinion article, by Conor Cruise
O’Brien, was published on 30 September 2000 in
the Irish Independent. As is typical of his
writings, Dr. O’Brien offered therein some rather
controversial views; however, the thrust of his view
on joint authority as a “Plan B” for London,
Dublin, Washington, and portions of Belfast seems
close to the mark:
It
is quite apparent that the pan-nationalist front
- SDLP, Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail - have now written
off Mr Trimble, and all shades of Unionists. It
seems that they would be quite happy for the two
Governments to govern Northern Ireland on their
own, in accord with the SDLP and Sinn Fein, and
with backing from the United States. Signs from
the United States are propitious for such a deal.
A
similar and continuing concern of mine remains that
joint authority will in fact turn out to be the British
and Irish governments’ all-too-reflexive reaction
to a Good Friday Agreement failure. Reports such as
Mr. Mandelson’s “warn[ing] Ulster Unionists
that they faced a regime of joint authority involving
the Irish government if devolution failed again and
there was another return to direct rule” (the
Guardian, 6 October 2000) have, of course,
not assuaged that concern.
Those
thoughts lead me to reiterate here a portion of an
August 1999 letter that I sent you, Brendan (with
emphasis from the original):
In
earlier correspondence with you, I argued that-when
the Good Friday Agreement is finally put out of
its misery-negotiated independence should be affirmatively
considered before an option like possible joint
sovereignty is further considered; in support for
that position, I suggested that the former could
be fully and finally vetted and voted upon within
the course of about a year whereas the latter “might
only engender and entail another decade or two or
more of mild misery for most and not-so-mild misery
for others.”
….
[Based on other considerations addressed in your
published writings], I would raise an additional
argument here for attempting independence before
joint authority: it must make great and good sense
to try an approach that would be founded, if at
all, upon the agreement of Northern Irelanders before
trying an approach that, for better or worse, would
be imposed upon them by London and/or Dublin.
On
the topic of independence more generally was the following
tail-end of a message that I sent you, Dennis, in
September 1999:
I
fully accept that the approach I suggest might fail,
at perhaps a dozen or more distinct points along
the way.
However, while I-and some who, unlike me, are eminent
in this area of study, such as Professor Rose, Dr.
Moore, Dr. Crimmins, and others-think the concept
of independence offers some chance of success (are
you, by the way, aware that, in 1988 and while still
at QUB, Mr. Trimble wrote of independence as an
“inevitability”?), you state that independence
does “not offer any conceivable hope of a settlement.”
What, though, if you are simply wrong about this?
Along the lines of what I wrote to Mr. Wilson, why
not put this idea to a formal test?
Would it really be that difficult for you to say,
in some public manner, “I’m personally
against independence, I think it wouldn’t be
feasible, and I believe it couldn’t prove acceptable
to the Ulster people; but, nonetheless, the fact
is it has never been formally examined, yet it might
be so examined in rather short order and with little
or no incremental risk”?
As a teacher at QUB, you are, by definition, among
the most intelligent and learned people in your
community, and your community could certainly now
use the skills of intelligent and learned people
in this respect. I hope very much that you’ll
consider the last paragraph’s question and
come to an answer which will serve as justifiable
grounds for both praise and pride.
Although
I received from you, respectively, no direct comment
upon these two messages, I did receive substantive
responses-stimulated by a letter to the still-quiescent
Irish Times-from you, Brendan, included in
part in my below-quoted reply:
From:
Paul Fitzsimmons
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 9:03 AM
To: ‘O’Leary,B’
Cc: ‘dc.kennedy’; ‘mrmoore’;
‘M.Fitzduff’; []; ‘ddebreadun’
Subject: RE: Northern Ireland
Dear
Brendan:
Thanks for the follow-up.
As in earlier correspondence with you, I’ve
interlaced my responses with your questions below.
And, as I’ve said before, I appreciate very
much your attacking this issue in an intellectually
honest way.
Sincerely,
Paul
-----Original
Message-----
From: O’Leary,B
Sent: 08 February 2000 7:27 AM
To: ‘Paul Fitzsimmons’; O’Leary,B;
‘dc.kennedy’;
‘mrmoore@'; ‘M.Fitzduff’; []; ‘ddebreadun’
Subject: RE: Northern Ireland
Dear
Paul
1. Decommissioning and demilitarisation will be major
obstacles to any
resolution --- including independence.
***********Response:
I
may have already mentioned to you that Professor
Rose made related comments in a May 1999 letter
to me; here’s how I responded to him:
Although you are, of course, quite correct in observing
that the IRA has not taken up guns to obtain an
independent Northern Ireland, you go on to write:
“While Protestants might accept an independent
Northern Ireland, the Republican movement would
settle for ‘Brits out’ plus a 32-county
Ireland - whose unity would be far from complete.”
(Emphasis in original.) Were such the case, it would
seem to present an a fortiori case for the
failure of the Good Friday Agreement, as Republicans
would thereunder obtain neither “Brits out”
nor a 32-county Ireland. However, and as reflected
at pages 197-204, I have long felt that, if truly
“fair and workable,” the new context of
Northern independence would present a situation
wherein the Republican movement would not be able
to sustain its “armed struggle,” basically
for two reasons. First, whom would Republicans bomb
and to what end? Second, and perhaps more to the
point, if indeed a plebiscite were ever developed
such that a polling date was imminent, the public
would vociferously ask whether that scheme would
suffice; unless the “P. O’Neill”
response was unequivocally affirmative, indicating
too that decommissioning would timeously follow,
it seems rather likely that Republicans could and
would thereby indirectly “veto” independence
by scaring away Unionists who might otherwise be
inclined to vote in favor; yet, in this light and
as suggested in the introduction to my enclosed
letter ... to Dr. FitzGerald (with whom I corresponded
substantively during the second half of 1997), I
would urge[ the basketball philosophy]: “Never
up, never in.”
*******************
2.
Mandatory partnership government is not something
that can be avoided
except through direct rule or joint sovereignty without
devolution. Why
would nationalists accept majority rule, or some variation
thereon, within
an independent NI?
***********Response:
This
question forms the basis of my small work’s
Chapter Nine: “Independence: A Constitutional
Framework.”
Essentially, that argument states that a presidential-style
democracy (advocated also by the late John McMichael
and the late Dr. Stanley Worrell), as opposed to
the parliamentary style traditional in the British
Isles, would diffuse governmental power such that,
for example, Northern Catholics would for the first
time have a direct and important say in who constituted
Northern Ireland’s “Executive Branch.”
Further discussed therein is, for example, how a
temporary check (within that government’s Senate)
against possible sectarian majoritarianism could
be effected.
Very clear in this overall regard is that, even
with an optimal proposal on offer, making this case
adequately to Northern Catholics would be a quite
difficult task. Even more clear, though, is that
that effort could not possibly succeed if it were
never attempted.
As with your first question, the bottom line would
be that, if this constitutional proposal were unacceptable
to Northern Catholics, that proposal would be “vetoed”
by them at the polls. Thereafter, the situation
would be pretty close to what will be a week from
today.
***********
Brendan
***********
Thanks
again.
Paul
*****
As
to a potential “paradigm shift” towards
possible negotiated independence, there yet remain
two most fundamental questions.
First,
could a fair and workable plan for independence be
formulated and presented? If the answer thereto were
definitively established to be “no”-which,
assuredly, no one has yet done-that “long shot”
endeavor would thereafter be viewed as just one more
minor failure in addressing the Ulster question. Yet,
if such a failure were “achieved” through
sincere effort and after obtaining actual empirical
evidence, it would-laudably and importantly-obviate
the possibility of a merely defeatist failure resulting
directly from perhaps incorrect speculation and conjecture
about this political terra incognito.
Were,
though, the answer to that first question established
to be “yes, a fair and workable independence
plan could be formulated and presented,” the
second fundamental question would come into play:
would that plan be accepted at the polls? My thoughts
in this regard-perhaps not unlike your own-tend towards
the negative, including as follows:
·
More likely than not, the bulk of the Northern Ireland
electorate would not put in the substantial effort
it would take to understand the new proposed governmental
system … but they might decide to do so (and
they might even successfully encourage their political
leaders to do the same);
· More likely than not, the bulk of
Northern Ireland’s Protestant community would
not vote to end their beloved though “Troublesome”
union with Britain … but they might make that
huge political sacrifice in a situation which
did not also call for their political surrender;
· More likely than not, the bulk of
the Province’s Catholic community would be
unconvinced that their numbers in an independent
Northern Ireland would adequately protect them politically
… but they might instead come to understand,
accurately, that “40 percent” in a proposed
presidential system would be vastly different from
“40 percent” in a traditional parliamentary
system; and
· More likely than not, the bulk of
the Ulster people, at the end of the day, would
be too apprehensive to approve such a radical change
… but they might apply the needed courage if
a well-constructed “ready-to-wear” independence
plan were in fact offered to them.
Admittedly,
I think it more likely than not that, after a Good
Friday Agreement failure, Northern Ireland will wind
up, ultimately, with some decades-long form of London/Dublin
rule. Getting to that result, however, without first
attempting a governmentally-sponsored independence
investigation/initiative would be another Ulster tragedy.
As
Samuel Beckett wisely wrote: “Try again. Fail
again. Fail better.” Under the current circumstances,
trying albeit unsuccessfully to implement a democratic
initiative of negotiated independence would but constitute
a noble failure.
Contrariwise, for the British and Irish Governments
to move directly, by their own diktat, from a Good
Friday Agreement failure to any variety of by-definition
undemocratic direct rule would be ignoble,
and perhaps even feckless and lazy or worse.
In
light of the considerable intellectual weight each
of you is able to bring to bear on the important and
complex subject of Northern Ireland, I respectfully
ask that you reexamine this issue and, à
la Burke, lend in this regard a much-needed hand
within the marketplace of ideas. “[N]ovelty emerges
only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against
a background provided by expectation.” Thomas
S. Kuhn.
Thank
you once more.
Best
regards,
/s/
Paul
A. Fitzsimmons
PAF:ms
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