Michael Collins was right to be cautious about Irish unity

Brexit has created new momentum towards a united Ireland, but a cause is not the same as a plan

On January 7 1922 Ireland’s parliament backed the treaty that created the Irish Free State. The vote in the Dáil, won by a narrow margin, legitimised partition. For the treaty’s supporters these arrangements were an unwelcome, but unavoidable stepping stone. Dominion status within the Commonwealth, they imagined, would be a pathway to full statehood, and the six counties of Ulster still under British rule would eventually be reclaimed. The treaty, in the words of Republican commander Michael Collins, conferred the freedom to achieve “the ultimate freedom”.

Sure enough, in 1949 the Free State cut the bonds to the former colonial power and declared itself a fully-independent Republic. It has taken rather longer, though, for politics on either side of the Irish sea to make a united Ireland seem a plausible project. Now, the future of the border - that century-old hum in the background of Anglo-Irish relations - is once again at the forefront of Ireland’s politics. Unity is suddenly more than a far distant aspiration.

The author of this change in the political weather is Boris Johnson. Johnson, an English nationalist, insisted on the hardest of Brexits in the wake of the 2016 referendum in favour of the UK’s exit from the EU. His departure deal with the EU 27 necessarily left Northern Ireland inside the EU single market and created a customs border in the Irish Sea. To have done otherwise would have been to tear up the 1998 Belfast peace agreement by hardening the Irish border. The province’s economic future has instead been more closely bound to the Republic.

Johnson now wants to renege on the EU deal, but his indifference to Ulster is obvious. He may lead the Conservative and Unionist Party, but he holds no emotional attachment to the UK union. His mindset is English not British. Officials have heard him scorn Ulster as a “sink into which we English are obliged to pour our cash”. His affection for Scotland is not much greater.  He is kicking up a fuss about the border arrangements only to appease his party’s Brexit ultras.

For voters in the Republic, reunification remains the national cause. A recent Ipsos/MRBI opinion poll published in the Irish Times suggested that some 62 per cent would vote in a referendum to scrap the border against 16 per cent opposed. Not so long ago Sinn Fein was routinely chastised North and South as the political front for the IRA’s violent Republicanism. Now the party is on a trajectory that could well see it break the monopoly of power in the Dáil long exercised by Fiánna Fail and Fine Gael.

And yet. The same opinion poll points to an age-old ambiguity. Much as they want unification, respondents in the survey were distinctly lukewarm about making the big political compromises - constitutional adjustments, changes to the flag or national anthem, higher taxes - that would be needed to make it work. And more than half indicated that it  was not at the top of the list of priorities.

In truth, there has always been a gulf between the idea of unity and the unavoidable costs and risks of unification. Ever since the treaty, Irish nationalism has had what you might call an Augustinian flavour: “Lord make us one nation again, but not quite yet”.  Early on, the great irony was that partition gave Collins’s sworn adversary Éamon De Valera the political space to pursue his deeply flawed quest to turn the Free State into a Catholic agrarian society shut off from Europe. 

A century later, there are as many fears as hopes among Dublin policymakers about unity.  These politicians are justly proud of the embrace of economic and social modernity that has seen the Republic emerge during the past several decades as a prosperous and liberal European democracy. They see Ulster trapped in the statist, sectarian and reactionary traditions that not so long ago described life in the 26 counties. Then of course there would be the cost. Johnson’s “sink” remark was a reference to the £10bn annual bill that Ulster presents to the UK Exchequer.

The practicalities of unification are a blur. What would a united Ireland look like? It’s fanciful to imagine that the six counties could simply be absorbed into the Republic’s present constitutional arrangements. How would a new settlement recognise the British identity of something approaching a million protestant unionists? Would Belfast be granted devolution in a new federal entity? Or would those who retained their allegiance to the British crown be guaranteed a significant voice in the Dáil? These are not small matters.

In the six counties, demography as well as economics is moving in favour of unity. At the time of partition, the protestant, mainly unionist community accounted for two-thirds of the population. Last year’s census, due to be published in 2022, is likely to show the province more or less evenly divided between Protestants and, predominantly nationalist, Catholics. This year’s elections to Stormont may well see Sinn Fein emerge as the largest party in the assembly.

Polls suggest that a border referendum now might well see the province vote to remain in the UK. But the margin would be tight, and the direction of travel is clear. Economics and identity are pulling in the same direction. 

Sensible Irish nationalists should know not to try to force the pace. Even if they could win an early vote, a majority of a few percentage points in a snapshot referendum would not bestow legitimacy on Irish unity. There could be nothing more dangerous for the future of a 32-country Ireland than an outcome which lacked the consent of the overwhelming majority of unionists.

The creation of the Free State cost Collins his life in the civil war that followed opposition to the treaty by De Valera’s Republican rejectionists. The arguments between the two side ranged well beyond partition. But Collins was right about the six counties. “There can be no question of forcing Ulster into Union with the 26 counties”, he declared. “If Ulster is going to join us it must be voluntary. Union is our final goal. That is all”. 

These were wise words. And so it was then, so it is now. Ireland will one day flourish as a single state - and likely sooner than most imagined before Brexit. But a cause is not the same as a plan. Nationalists need to work out how to make a united Ireland comfortable for unionists.