To unite Ireland, we must first unite our divided Republic

As long as we Irish people remain divided and incapable of thinking of anyone but ourselves, why would anyone else want to join forces with us?

Ireland without her people is nothing to me, and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for ‘Ireland’, and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and the degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland, aye, wrought by Irishmen upon Irishmen and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements which he is pleased to call ‘Ireland’.

- James Connolly, The Coming Generation, 1900

The recent general election in Ireland was, as so many times before, a victory for mé féin over Sinn Féin – faced with unprecedented crises in health and housing and the possibility of real, meaningful change, the Irish electorate surveyed the political landscape and voted for more of the same.

A few short weeks later, many of them found themselves complaining as they had to drive the youngest to the airport, or to call their kids in Australia to wish them a happy Christmas, while never linking their votes to the fates of their children.

Irish elections are a peculiar thing – like most electorates, those of us who take an active interest in politics believe ourselves to be politically sophisticated and highly-attuned to the debates that occur and the information that is presented.

We squint at the tea-leaves and opine about how the move from a five-seater to a four seater might affect the balance of power, huffing and puffing before electing the same people from the same dynasties as we have always done, for the same reasons – because they will protect our interests.

And then, with an almost hilarious lack of self-awareness, we will look at a local or general election in the North and scoff at the voters for their small-mindedness as they vote for bible-thumpers and bombers, incapable of extricating themselves from old patterns, simply because it is in their DNA.

The great and most enduring – some would say the only – success of the Irish republic is in how it has essentially returned the same kind of centre-right Tory politics in every election since the foundation of the Free State.

There may no longer be an oath to the monarch, but with their dedication to the stealing of the land’s natural resources to give to the private markets and their placing of landlords above everyone else, it’s essentially like the Brits never left.

Add to that the blunt hammer of historical revisionism about our various wars – there was a “good” IRA, and their heirs now run the place, and there is a “bad” IRA, whose descendents cannot be allowed near the levers of power – that has been used to beat a semblance of sense into the electorate, and it’s easy to see why the forelock-tuggers win out, time and again.

This bastardised version of the Republic, so far from what Connolly and Pearse promised, has become the norm, and to question its momentous unfairness is to give succour to terrorists and gunmen.

This has led to a very narrow acceptable interpretation of Irishness, gelded of all its revolutionary fervour and repackaged to appeal to the tourists, European policy wonks and American multinationals who are our new paymasters, summed up in a new cultural mathematical formula:

Riverdance = good.

Kneecap = bad.

One only has to look at the phenomenal success of the Irish-language hip-hop act to see how uncomfortable genuine Irish culture makes those who believe power to be their birthright.

Everyone in Ireland sticking their head above the parapet gets abuse, but none more so than working-class people speaking their own language and refusing to be gaslit by the rugby dads and golf-club bores.

Officially, of course, such successful musicians and movie-makers will be lauded in that most diplomatic of ways - their right hands politely shaken while the left ushers them quietly out the door. Lip service must be paid to ideals espoused by Kneecap; to reject them and the idea of Irish unity would be political suicide, so the utterances of the êlites must maintain a patina of green, while their actions are so much darker.

This is how they maintain their power. Backed up by landlords and industrialists and aided by a media keen for the scraps from their tables, the Irish political class is allowed to perpetuate the myth that they are in fact in favour of Irish unification, all while pursuing the kind of politics that ensures that the republic remains as divided by inequality as any country on earth, and thus easier to rule.

While the fools on the far right inexplicably make common cause with English white supremacists, the Posh Boys closer to the so-called centre are more subtle – “Of course we want a united Ireland, but not now. We’re not mature enough yet, and besides – how would we pay for it?”, they intone, serving up a hot, salty political soup that voters in the republic are all too keen to lap up.

Their bellies full of this tasty broth, they sit in front of their televisions in their rugby jersies singing “Ireland’s Call” as they celebrate Schrödingers republic - a republic so great and imbued with meaning that it can never be allowed to exist.

Irish identity is a complex and often wonderful thing, but for many it has its limits. It’s great when it is a key that opens doors all over the world, but less appealing when it must be shared with others from up the road that many of us neither know, trust nor care about.

Like Pavlov’s dogs, southern Irish people have been conditioned to distance themselves from our northern brethren, quick to loudly condemn the “bad” IRA while saying nothing about the atrocities the British government visited upon our own flesh and blood.

It’s a two-faced attitude to Irishness that doesn’t go unnoticed, and it makes it all the easier for northern nationalists to treat their southern counterparts with more than a modicum of suspicion.

Then there are the practical aspects – because of its foundations in mé féinism, the Free State is a deeply dysfunctional place. Simple things like public transport, housing, healthcare and a myriad of other services that other European nations provide as standard without any drama are de facto impossibilities in the south.

In part it was due to the poverty into which the state was born, but not once were the booms of a century harnessed to protect against the inevitable busts, let alone used to advance the cause of the most vulnerable, with a few limited exceptions.

Even the most ardent nationalists in the North look at our housing and health services and have to question if the juice of a 32-county Irish republic is going to be worth the squeeze.

Demographics would say that a united Ireland is possible within the lifetime of my generation, but is it probable? Not if the current political hegemony continues.

Though the votes of the two main parties in the Republic, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are on the slide, they are still in power simply because they do just enough for just enough people to remain there – divide and rule, rinse and repeat.

That the Irish left (most of whom are one degree to the left of centre, if even that) has so far let them away with it is truly mind-boggling – having accepted the framing that they will never be allowed to govern Ireland, they throw themselves like lemmings at junior ministerial positions as minority coalition partners, inevitably betraying their core voters and then having the gall to blame them when they get hammered at the next election – divide and rule, rinse and repeat.

This is not uniquely Irish – all over Europe, what used to be left-wing parties have quietly stopped talking about solidarity and compassion and instead pontificate about puberty blockers and tighter border controls, easily fooled into playing every game on their opponents’ turf. Sometimes they fight to a draw, but most of the time they lose, because they simply cannot win against people even more callous and cynical than themselves.

The only feasible route to a united Ireland is to create an Ireland that people from both traditions, unionist and nationalist, might actually want to be a part of.

This means engaging in grown-up politics and realising that everything is up for grabs, from our flags and symbols and anthems to our health, housing and education services.

It means providing a social security net through which no-one can fall, and in which the dignity of every citizen is protected and promoted, from the cradle to the grave.

It means having busses and trains that run on time, and schools that offer education and support to every child, regardless of their abilities.

The last two decades or so have seen a slow, dawning realisation for unionists that their love for Britain is very much a one-way thing – few on the mainland know anything about them, much less do they care about their fate.

What if a united Ireland could offer them respect for their traditions and their culture, as well as the kind of bright future they once enjoyed when they ruled the roost?

At our core, all any one of us wants is the freedom to give our children and the next generation a better future than we ourselves had; as things stand politically in the world at the moment, we are one of the first generations that won’t be able to do that.

To have any chance of attracting recalcitrant unionists to our cause – let alone nationalists rightly wary of us because of our previous record of repeatedly betraying them – we must first start with ourselves.

We must begin by blowing away the last of the cobwebs of colonial thinking and by accepting that every man, woman and child is a creature deserving of dignity and care. For once and for all, we must do away with the notion that there are those who are more deserving than others – a notion that only serves to preserve the hierarchies on which colonies and monarchies are based.

We must reject all efforts to divide and rule, rinse and repeat, by returning to the principles espoused by John Adams, the second president of the United States of America, who said that the "science of politics is the science of social happiness".

The next Irish government will be finally and formally formed at the end of January, but the next election campaign has already begun. There is no point in trying to come up with policies are we are putting up posters three weeks ahead of polling day; instead, the groundwork needs to start now.

And if we are ever to achieve that dream of a united Ireland as espoused by Connolly and Pearse, then we must first start by uniting the people of the existing, but still very flawed, state that their efforts helped to achieve.

Only then can we say to others “Come, this is what we have built – join us, and together we will make it better for all of us.”

That is what a real Republic of Ireland should look like - only time will tell if we have it in us to put others first for long enough to make it a reality.