The great fear in the 1970s was that the Troubles
would cross over at the narrowest part of the Irish sea. Scotland and Northern
Ireland are so close that they almost touch, but Glasgow was never turned into
Belfast.
The Scottish Central Belt and especially the part
around Glasgow is quite foreign to most Scots. While we in Aberdeenshire are
shy and reluctant to talk to strangers, Glaswegians are more like Italians. While
we are usually unaware of whether someone is Protestant, Catholic or nothing,
because we all went to the same schools, people from the Greater Glasgow
frequently define themselves by their religious origins even if they no longer
go to church. While to us the 12th of July is just one more forgotten date no
more known than the 14th of October (1066) and the Easter Rising took place in
a far away country of which we know nothing, to them these things happened here
and just now, rather like Faulkner’s southerners replaying Pickett’s charge at
Gettysburg.
There is little that unites most Scots with greater
Glasgow. They are either too friendly, or else too unfriendly. You may be their
best friend on five minutes acquaintance, but if you went to the wrong school
or follow the wrong football club, you may turn into a mortal enemy in five
minutes more. This is not Scottish. It is something quite unlike the Scotland
the rest of us live in.
My grandfather moved from near Dublin sometime before
the First World War, but I don’t think of myself as particularly Irish. I don’t
define myself by the religion that he followed, nor am I particularly obsessed
by Irish history. Yet I am far more Irish than most Americans who celebrate
Saint Patrick’s Day and more Irish too than many Glaswegians whose families
arrived here rather earlier. Why do they wave the flag of a foreign country?
Why do they sing rebel songs and sympathise at least in part with the aims of
the IRA? Why do they differ from me, when we have the same Irish origin?
I think it must be a question of numbers. Most people
in the UK who have Irish relatives live in places where no one cares at all
about Irish politics. There just aren’t enough people in rural Aberdeenshire
who want to march about things that happened in Ireland long ago. But in the
area around Glasgow there are enough. There are enough also to fill separate
schools and separate football grounds. Defining yourself as Irish and Catholic
will be met with bemusement and indifference in most of Britain, but not in
Glasgow.
But while some Glaswegians might in the past have
grown up with tales of one thousand years of British oppression, famine and
Oliver Cromwell, they no more wished to import the Troubles to Glasgow than
people in Dublin wanted to import it there. The traditions of Northern Ireland,
the sectarian marches and painted gable ends are as foreign to Dubliners as
they are to Aberdonians. So long as the bombing only happened Northern Ireland,
none of us paid much attention. The news of another bomb or riot in Londonderry
was of as much interest to me as a cyclone in Bangladesh. We went through the
motions in our condemnation. There were set phrases and we waited for the next
time.
Two things have changed the situation both in Ireland
and in the West of Scotland, Irish nationalism and Scottish nationalism.
The Irish state has always wanted unification. There
has always as well been a desire to right the wrongs of history and gain some
sort of revenge on the Brits. Britain was invaded by Romans, then by Anglo
Saxons and then by Normans. But we don’t bang on about two thousand years of
occupation nor complain to people living in France, Italy or Germany about how
they oppressed us.
Famines have happened all over the world owing to
natural causes, human stupidity and wickedness. Most of them have been
forgotten. A brief study of European history finds that each country is
responsible for some good and much evil, but none of us are guilty for the
things that are parents did. To
apologise for something, I didn’t do is decadent.
But while the Irish state claimed Northern Ireland it
knew that it could not achieve its goal militarily. This was the same
conclusion that Palestinians came to after the 1967 Six Day War. If the Arab
world could not defeat Israel with tanks and fighter jets it would instead have
to use hijacking, and nail bombs. Irish nationalists came to the same
conclusion at just about the same time.
The goals of Irish nationalism were tacitly supported
in the Republic of Ireland. Without this the IRA campaign could not have even
begun. If the Republic of Ireland had stated from the start that it respected
that Northern Ireland was an integral part of the UK and that it had no claim
on the territory of a neighbouring state, then there would have been nothing
for the IRA to fight for.
By an accident of history Ireland was partitioned, but
this is no more unjust than any other international boundary in Europe. Germany
has no claim on parts of Poland, because they used to be German. Neither does
Russia have a legitimate claim on Crimea because it used to be Russian. It doesn’t matter if the majority of people in
parts of the Donbass want to rejoin Russia. Ukrainian sovereignty trumps pro-Russian
votes.
Claiming the territory of a neighbouring state is
inherently hostile. The only reason people living in Wrocław don’t wish to be
in Breslau again is that all the Germans living in Breslau were either killed
or driven out at the point of a bayonet. German nationalism is no longer a problem in Poland
because there are no more Germans living there.
But even though Irish nationalism had no legitimate
claim on Northern Ireland, thirty years of terrorism brought the Republic of
Ireland’s chief foreign policy goal within reach. They no longer had to win a
war in order to reunite Ireland, they just had to win a vote.
It is this I think that is responsible for the rise of
Irish nationalism in Scotland. Irish nationalists in Scotland in the 1970s
could do nothing practical to help the cause or Irish unity. They didn’t
usually sympathise with Scottish nationalism. The SNP was small and while it
might win a few seats claiming that North Sea oil was Scotland’s, these seats
were mainly won in rural parts of Scotland. Irish nationalists did not see the
connection with Scottish nationalism. This all changed with the Scottish
independence referendum.
It isn’t accidental that the only parts of Scotland to
vote for independence were those with historically high concentrations of Irish
immigration. Both Dundee and Glasgow have Protestant and Catholic football
teams. Aberdeen doesn’t, nor does most of Scotland.
Irish nationalists in Scotland saw their chance with
the Scottish independence referendum to achieve both their goals. They could
inflict an historical defeat on the UK by breaking it up and at the same time
make Northern Ireland’s position as part of the UK untenable. Once the bonds of
the UK had been broken by Scotland’s departure, English nationalists would see
little reason to keep Northern Ireland. Why keep paying for Northern Ireland
when the UK was no more?
The combination of Irish nationalism and Scottish
nationalism gave Irish nationalists the chance they had been waiting for to
bash the Brits twice over. They could partition Britain and unite Ireland with
one vote for Scottish independence. It is this above all that explains the
recent growth in expressions of Irish nationalism in Greater Glasgow.
The Irish Republic could, as it always could,
undermine Irish nationalism, by making it clear that it had no interest in
uniting Ireland any time soon. But instead, they have a Taoiseach who perhaps
hates Britain because of both his parents rather than only one.
The UK is a sovereign nation state. We have a perfect
right to leave the EU. It is simply not the business of the Irish Republic even
if Brexit has the unfortunate consequence of damaging Irish trade with the UK.
Varadkar has damaged UK Irish relations, which once
more has blown oxygen on the embers of for Irish nationalism both in Northern
Ireland and in Scotland. Brexit has nothing whatsoever to do with Irish
nationalism. It should be possible for Britain to leave the EU without changing
the border situation in Ireland. But people in Ireland must accept that there
is an international border on their island. It’s there because Ireland choice
to leave the UK. Brexit will turn it into a border between the EU and the
non-EU, but it need be no more a problem than the boundary between friendly
countries like Sweden and Norway.
But this is the problem, Irish nationalists are not
friendly. They wish to do harm to the UK, but they always do just as much harm
to themselves. This is the folly. Irish nationalism gave Ireland civil war,
partition, mass emigration, poverty and thirty years of terrorism. It gives
rocket fuel to West of Scotland sectarianism, by giving it the Scottish
nationalist stick with which it can bash the Brits heads in. But the
combination of Scottish and Irish nationalism is unlikely to end well either
for Glasgow or Belfast.
British people on the whole love Ireland, especially
the Republic. Most countries where Irish people have settled, are loved in
return by the people who remained in Ireland. The exception is the UK. It
is this that has poisoned our relations. They will remain poisoned until Irish
people cease hating the Brits for perceived wrongs from long ago. The French no
longer hate Germans, nor do the Poles. Why in Ireland alone is it just fine to
hate someone because of where he is from?
