We’re a post-imperial rounding error.

At the recent Back to Our Past I ran into two American friends who bring over research groups every year, dividing the trip between Belfast and Dublin. This year both of them were agog at what seems to be about to happen to the UK. They wondered if they’d be visiting the smoking, post-Brexit ruins of Belfast’s Titanic Quarter next year.

Boris’ exit is delayed.

Brexit is weighing pretty heavily on minds in Dublin too. What we’re seeing across the Irish Sea is not English rabbits hypnotised by the lights of the oncoming truck. It’s English rabbits squabbling with each other about their negotiating strategy with the oncoming truck. While singing “Rule Britannia”.

One large reason for what’s shaping up to be a historic catastrophe is England’s deeply dysfunctional relationship with English history. Many of them believe they won both World Wars single-handed and only lost their Empire because of the natives’ ingratitude. Once out of the EU, they plan to go back to an imaginary past.

But Ireland is going to take a huge amount of collateral damage and English ignorance of Irish history is a large reason why. Take Northern Ireland.

As the map shows, history has left the two tribes intermingled and separate, cheek by jowl and apart, in virtually every part of the province. Only the agreement in 1998 that territory would no longer be contested made it possible to put our low-level civil war (a.k.a “the Troubles”) into suspended animation. Brexit (‘take back control of our borders’) is all about territory. Even with the best possible outcome, borders will return, and not just between Northern Ireland and the Republic. All those little islands of green and orange will have their own miniature borders, with Irish-passport-holding EU citizens on one side and British citizens on the other. If ever there was a recipe for deepening and re-igniting communal conflict, this is it.

Ireland, north or south, did not figure at all in the fantasies peddled during the UK referendum. By the sound of it, a large number of senior Tory party grandees have still not fully accepted that Ireland is a separate country. We’re a post-imperial rounding error. And it’s on these people’s grasp of our history that Ireland’s future, north and south, depends.

14 thoughts on “We’re a post-imperial rounding error.”

  1. With this concern of Tory party grandees not having a grasp of the realities of the Irish border concerns, Ancestor Network Ltd, a Dublin-based Irish genealogy research, advisory and publishing company, took the step in 2017 to establish a Northern Ireland Branch, Ancestor Network (Northern Ireland Branch) Limited. Based in Belfast.

  2. It should come as no surprise that the welfare of their neighbor, the island of Ireland, never figures into the English governments mind unless it’s to commit genocide.

  3. Thank you John for your thoughtful analysis of the consequences of a
    ‘Hard Border’ between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
    I hope and pray that it does NOT happen!
    Rob

  4. I am astonished that the Referendum has not been declared invalid. It was not far off 50/50 – equivalent to “Er, um, well perhaps”. Most reasonably sensible people, I would guess (and hope) had voted “Remain”. It is sad that no-one of any stature has stood up and given a tongue-lashing against those who forced the referendum, those who told serious lies about what would happen if the UK got out of Europe, and those who stand to profit from this shameful Exodus. And what do all those Politicians look like now? Headless chickens??

  5. Being of half Irish and half English from parents and having considered the situation before the referendum I believe we have walked into Brexit with a complete ignorance of the consequences due to false promises by politicians before the referendum.

    After all Ireland had two referendums and came out with the most sensible result.
    Ken

  6. Both of my maternal g.g.grandmas came from Ireland late 1700s; one from Limerick, Catholic, one from Down, Protestant. They both married French -(Canadian) men in Simcoe Co. Ontario. The issues carried through to my childhood between the families. I wasn’t even told that I had 1C2R in the same village! The hope for me is in the future, my grandchildren, widely travelled, interracial marriages,
    diverse beliefs.

  7. Northern Ireland is not a separate country. It is ridiculous that any British subject, which every citizen of NI still is, should have an Irish passport even within the EU but if that was the agreement so be it. Equally ridiculous is the Unionist idea that the Catholic Church is running the Republic and would do likewise in their parts if given the chance. The votes in 2015 and 2018 clearly show the Catholic faith is dead in the Republic. Many of the diaspora no longer look east and see something special. Secular humanism is not awe inspiring nor capable of leaving one with a prideful joy inside.

    1. I am an American citizen living on the Northern boarder and entitled to citizenship in Canada. Coming from a 193 year line of Irish forced to emigrate, it would be a very cold day in hell indeed before I would sear allegiance to the English Crown [or any other crown as they are all cousins/recall the 3 cousin squabble that was WW1]. I suggest that having the Crown forced down your throat by circumstances of birth, i.e., being forced to carry a UK passport, would heighten passions better left un-stirred? I see nothing ridiculous about this compromise. As for the Catholic Church, it cannot even run itself, let alone an entire nation. Prideful joy goeth before the fall?

  8. As your map shows, it’s not Brexit or post-imperialism that is the problem, it’s religion just as it ever was. Such a shame religion doesn’t fade away and most of the woes of the world with it.

    1. Religion is just a method of identifying people in Northern Ireland that is the least controversial, in general you join the faith of your parents shortly after birth and if you practice or not it is an indicator of your parents ancestry and political leanings. Not all Catholics were Nationalist or all Protestants Loyalist or Unionist; it would be trickier to use these identifiers in a census. Most importantly, conflict in the North was not about religion; no one was murdered for not believing in the doctrine of transsubstantiation; it was ultimately about power. Even if every church closed in Northern Ireland the memories of invasion, injustice and abuse are deep and normality is a very fragile veneer.

  9. I studied history in English schools for about 6 years and I can’t recollect the word “Ireland” ever being mentioned.
    It’s hardly surprising that Boris, Jacob and Nigel and their idiot co-brexiteers haven’t got a clue of the damage they’re doing.

  10. When we were in Ireland two years ago one of the most pleasant surprises was the seamless border. A change of speed signs and a message from our telco advising us of phone rates in a new currency was all we could tell that we passed through a border.

  11. I think you are being a little unfair on the Imperialists – it is the Yanks who believe that they won the wars single-handed, not the Brits, who generally admit to necessary support. Also, it is not only a poor understanding of history, it is an ill-informed population often resulting from a narrow education system, where just three subjects are the norm at A Level.
    The principal reasons for the ‘leave’ vote were deceit and arrogance: downright deceit from the likes of Johnson and Farage who fuelled the fears of the ignorant. The arrogance came from Eurocrats and Tories – the former who failed to recognise that not everyone supports an EU expansionist strategy and centralisation of control and the latter (Tory) arrogance that the electorate would toe the line. It is mind-boggling that the endless list of issues – from social, legal, food & medication approval, industry standards, aviation, etc., that needed to be resolved on leaving the EU were not highlighted during the referendum Campaign. As for Northern Ireland, Patrick Kielty’s open letter to Boris Johnson last month says it all – look it up, it is worth a read.
    Never was so much needed by so many and unheeded by the few!

  12. There is no `English’ monoculture. Millions upon millions of English people have Irish ancestry, for whom the story of Britain and Ireland is not a question of ‘us’ and ‘them’, but rather different parts of their own history. The fact that my father grew up in deepest Catholic south Armagh doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy Rule Britannia, or prevent me (and him) from supporting Brexit.

    Better to see England’s relation to continental Europe as analogous in many ways as Ireland’s relationship to England; the tension of a smaller country neighbouring a larger one and in its political and economic orbit. The idea that the laws of London should be made in Brussels is a similar tension to the idea that the laws of Dublin should be made in London, and has a similar innate emotional pushback.

    And, of course, there is no English monopoly on imaginary pasts – Ireland has its own mythological pure history, in which some outside elements are taken as part of the national story (St Patrick, the evangelisation of Ireland, the Normans) while others are intrinsically `foreign’ (the English language, Protestantism, Cromwell).

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