Northern Ireland is no one's backstop

The treatment of Northern Ireland in the context of the negotiations between the EU and the UK has shown the inconsistency of the EU’s position with regard to nationalism.

The EU rightly condemned Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and reunification with Russia. This was not so much because the referendum that led to this secession was held under dubious circumstances. Crimean secession would have been condemned even if the vote had been completely free and fair. The reason is that Crimea is a part of a sovereign nation state called Ukraine and parts of sovereign nation states may not legally secede without permission.

This position was reiterated with regard to Catalonia. It simply did not matter whether a majority in Catalonia wanted independence or whether they didn’t. So long as Spain refuses to allow a legal referendum on independence and refuses to recognise the right of Catalonians to create a sovereign nation state, then Catalonia will remain legally a part of Spain.

There are similar examples all over the world. The right of a sovereign nation state to maintain its territorial integrity is insurmountable so long as it does not oppress or attack the people living in part of its territory. It was only because Serbia attacked the people in Kosovo that international opinion was willing to make an exception and grant the right of Kosovo to become independent.

International opinion has also favoured the right of colonies to become independent, but it is important to recognise what is and what is not a colony. Argentina was a Spanish colony. Catalonia is not a Spanish colony. If you really can’t see the difference, you might benefit from a pair of glasses. If Catalonia were to be described as a colony, then half of Europe would have a colonial relationship to the other half.  

The peculiar thing about Northern Ireland then is that the EU is unwilling to treat it in the same way as it treated Catalonia and Crimea. Northern Ireland is not a colony. Some Irish nationalists, thereby making the case for Ulster unionism, still speak of the people of Northern Ireland as settlers having been planted there. But if we treat everyone whose ancestors moved somewhere in the fifteenth century as illegitimate colonists then we are liable to end up thinking that virtually the whole population of the United States of America has no right to live where they do.

Northern Ireland is an integral part of the sovereign nation state called the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland has no more legitimate claim to a part of that nation state than Russia has a claim to Crimea. It simply does not matter that Crimea was once a part of Russia. Nor does it matter if the majority of the population of Crimea think of themselves as Russian, speak Russian and would like to secede from Ukraine. Crimean secession would be illegal even if all these things were true. It is for this reason that nearly the whole world continues to protest against Russia’s annexation of the territory of a neighbouring state.

But this argument obviously ought to apply equally to Northern Ireland. When the 26 counties chose to secede from the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland remained. It indeed has never left the United Kingdom. Secession doesn’t give you the right to claim someone else’s territory, otherwise the Confederacy if it had won would have had the right to claim New York. For this reason the Republic of Ireland has no more claim on the territory of the United Kingdom than does Russia with regard to the territory of Ukraine. Indeed it has less for Northern Ireland was never part of a sovereign nation state called the Republic of Ireland.

There are various treaties that exist between the UK and Ireland, which allow both the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Republic to hold votes regarding Northern Ireland’s status, but the UK as a sovereign nation state can choose to renounce or renegotiate any treaty that it pleases. Lots of historical treaties have become obsolete, have been broken, or simply no longer apply.  The UK therefore could decide that such treaties that currently exist between itself and Ireland were obtained by coercion as a result of terrorism and were therefore inconsistent with the British Government’s longstanding policy of not appeasing terrorists.

It could also argue that the Irish Government has used the existence of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement to hinder British foreign policy (Brexit) and that the Irish Government is using this agreement to further its policy of gradually annexing Northern Ireland.

The purpose of the Irish backstop is to put Northern Ireland into the Republic’s sphere of influence and to show that while the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland is seamless the border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain may become real. Checks may be required. British goods and citizens may in effect be moving from the non-EU to the EU when they travel from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

Could such a border exist between Catalonia and the rest of Spain? Obviously not. Spain would not accept it, because it would encourage Catalan secession. Would any other sovereign nation state in the EU accept such a regulatory border? No. This is the sort of thing that a sovereign nation state goes to war to prevent happening. If you don’t fight for your territorial integrity, what do you fight for?

No-one is going to impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The British are not going to do it, nor are the Irish, nor are the EU. But the Irish Republic has used this non-issue to further its irredentist and quite illegitimate claim to Northern Ireland and it has done so with the backing of the EU. This alone must be grounds for the UK Government reviewing the Belfast Agreement. It is quite intolerable that, backed by terrorist threats, the Irish Government seeks to move towards a position where it can call for a referendum on Irish unification. This is no better than Russia using military force to win a referendum in order to justify its claim to Crimea.

It is time for the UK, just like Spain and Ukraine and indeed the vast majority of states in the world, to assert that our territory is indivisible. Secession and annexation is no more legitimate a foreign policy goal in Ireland than it is Ukraine. The Republic of Ireland has no more claim to the territory of another sovereign nation state than does Haiti have a claim to the Dominican Republic.  The mere fact that you share an island does not allow you to steal another person’s home.

The EU’s hypocrisy on this issue is dangerous for stability in Europe. In attempting to punish Britain by furthering the aims of Irish nationalism it will encourage such nationalism elsewhere in Europe. Why shouldn’t Russia seek to reunify what was once “All the Russias” including parts of what is now the EU such as Poland and the Baltic States. If reunification is a morally worthy goal for Ireland, why not for Austria, Russia or dare I say it, Germany. No doubt Austrian, German and Russian nationalists would be delighted to go back to their 1914 borders.

With friends like these

I spent my childhood watching reports from Northern Ireland about bombings, punishment beating and prisoners on hunger strike. Most nights the BBC news would have something about some latest horror. The people living in Northern Ireland suffered more than anyone else. It didn’t matter who you were. There was the daily possibility of being killed or maimed by someone who wanted to solve a political issue using violence.

I remember that there was some fear that the conflict might spread to Scotland. After all quite a large number of people in various parts of Scotland sympathised with the aims of the IRA. But for the most part we observed from far away.

Every now and again we discovered that the IRA had spread to Guildford or Brighton or Manchester, but we never had the day to day fear that people must have felt in Belfast.

I remember in the end becoming rather immune to the whole thing. I took it for granted that these things would happen every now and again. I barely paid attention. A routine developed. Politicians would condemn using a set formula of words and then we all just waited for the next bombing. Even in Northern Ireland the chances of being killed or wounded were small. In other parts of the UK they were very small indeed. The IRA were like a disease that was hard to catch, but impossible to cure. There wasn’t any point worrying about them.

And then it ended. Who won?

I’d like to think Northern Ireland won. The situation isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than it was. Northern Ireland rarely appears on the BBC news anymore and if it does, the story, for the most part, is the same sort of story that might be told in any other part of the UK. One or other of the Northern Irish political parties is arguing about something. There has been some particularly bad weather or there has been some sort of accident. Sometimes there is even good news.  

We made peace. It’s not perfect, but it has more or less lasted since 1997. The thing with peace that is always tricky is that you have to make it with your enemy. There is no point trying to make it with anyone else. But this, of course, meant that British politicians didn’t quite mean what they said when they stated so often that they would never negotiate with terrorists. We did negotiate with them, then we set them free and then we allowed them to become elected politicians. We also had to make concessions. The IRA gave up their campaign of violence. The British in return gave them the Belfast Agreement (1998) commonly known as the Good Friday Agreement. It was right that we did so, but let’s not pretend. It was the reward that the IRA got for their decades of bombing. The British signed the agreement so that this bombing would stop for ever.

There is therefore something very dubious about using this agreement years later to try to gain a political advantage. But suddenly ever since the UK’s vote to leave the EU in 2016 I kept hearing various people going on about the Good Friday Agreement. The phrase had almost dropped from my memory. What on earth had that to do with Brexit?

Over time it became clear. The EU and the Irish Government wanted to use the Belfast Agreement as a way to put pressure on the British Government. This immediately struck me as quite outrageous. How dare they use a peace treaty that we signed so that the UK could avoid terrorist attacks to gain an advantage in the Brexit negotiations? Were these to be the fruits of the long IRA bombing campaign? Did the Republic of Ireland really want to inch closer to a united Ireland because Britain naturally didn’t want any more of our people to be killed by Irish terrorists? I thought this stank morally. But then far too many of those who wanted a united Ireland were always willing to sympathise with the aims of the IRA even if they sometime tut tutted at their methods.

I kept hearing from Remain supporters in the UK and from people in the Republic of Ireland that the Belfast Agreement forbade there being a hard border in Ireland and that it meant that it limited the UK’s room for manoeuvre in leaving the EU. This kept being repeated so often that it became a sort of orthodoxy. It’s also complete and utter nonsense.

I have never read so much interpretation about a document that demonstrates so ably that the interpreters have never in fact read it.

The Belfast Agreement is quite an easy read, though it is rather dull. It can be found here.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agreement

What is it about?

Firstly it states that both the UK and the Republic of Ireland accept that the status of Northern Ireland must be determined democratically. The people who will determine that future are those living in Northern Ireland. So if Northern Ireland were ever to unite with the Republic this could only happen after a vote.

There is next a section on setting up an assembly in Northern Ireland, then a section on setting up a North/South Ministerial Council and also a section on setting up a British Irish Council. There is quite a lot about human rights, cross border cooperation, reconciliation, decommissioning and prisoners but not once is there any mention about border controls. The actual border between Northern Ireland and the Republic or its status in fact is not mentioned at all.

Even in the section dealing with “Economic, social and cultural issues” there is not a thing about trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic. There is no mention of customs, or duties. In fact none of the things that have been debated endlessly about the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland are anywhere mentioned in the Belfast Agreement.

The only limit to the UK’s sovereignty with regard to Northern Ireland is that we have promised to allow the Northern Irish people to decide if they wish to stay in the UK or join the Republic. Until that point we would be free to build a wall and dig a moat. The Republic of Ireland has no more right to demand that the border be kept open than any other nation state has that right.

The UK knows that most people in Northern Ireland want an open border. It is convenient and it is far better than neighbouring countries have friendly relations and open borders. For this reason we have promised to keep the border open.

But the Belfast Agreement in no way limits Brexit. It in no way changes the fact that the border in Ireland is an international border. If as a consequence of its EU membership the Republic of Ireland finds it impossible to remain in the Common Travel Area or if it finds itself forced to collect tariffs and regulate the movement of people, then that is a problem for the Republic not for us.  It could be resolved by deciding to leave the EU also.  But that is an issue for the Republic. It is not the UK’s business.

There is nothing in the Belfast Agreement to prevent friendly relations between the UK and the Republic of Ireland continuing after Brexit. The various councils and cross border cooperation would continue even if the border were manned. After all prior to Schengen almost everywhere in the EU had a manned borders. Owing to the crisis over migration there are quite a few manned borders springing up again in the EU. But these countries still cooperate and are friendly and trade freely with each other.

It becomes ever more obvious that the EU and the Irish Republic are attempting to use Brexit to bring about a united Ireland. This is why they continually wish to treat Northern Ireland differently from the other parts of the UK and why they want a border to run through the Irish Sea. So what the IRA couldn’t achieve by bombs the EU and the Irish Republic wish to achieve by means of issues they pretend are contained in the Belfast Agreement. Meanwhile the Remainers cheer them on. With friends like these who needs terrorists?

Binning the Vichy water

It is perfectly possible to imagine a mutually beneficial deal emerging from the UK’s negotiations with the EU over Brexit. We already trade freely with EU countries and meet whatever standards are required to do this. It should pretty much be a matter of saying let’s continue more or less as we have been doing. If the EU cannot negotiate a free trade deal with Brexit Britain, with whom everything is already in alignment, how does it expect to be able to negotiate one with the USA or China? But of course, obstacles can be overcome when there is a mutual desire to overcome them. After all Canada has a free trade deal with the EU. It is neither part of the EU’s Single Market, nor is it part of the Customs Union. It doesn’t pay the EU billions for the privilege of trading with them and there is no free movement agreement between Canada and the EU. But what is possible for Canada is apparently impossible for the UK.

We all know that divorces can become nasty. This is because human beings are involved. The EU is struggling again. Italy is rebelling as are the Visegrád Group of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia with perhaps Austria re-joining its former Empire in setting up a rival to rule from Berlin. The Brexit negotiations very ably demonstrate what would happen if Scotland voted to leave the UK. There would be zero goodwill, just mutual recriminations with endless debates about who gets custody of the CD collection.

The EU wants to discourage other countries from leaving and it wants to do this in two ways, firstly by punishing Britain and secondly by doing all it can to hinder us from making Brexit a success. If ten years from now the UK is trading freely not only with the EU but also with the rest of the world and doing just fine other EU members might wonder what the point of the EU was. Is it really just a prison held together with fear? A successful Brexit destroys the fear. 

The point, of course, is what it always has been. Since the Franco Prussian War France can no longer compete on its own with a unified Germany. The solution to the problem of Sedan (1871), Verdun (1916) and Sedan again (1940) is for Germany to be united with France. But Germany wins too. The 1914 Septemberprogramm German war aim of a united Europe dominated by Germany has been more than fulfilled and it can justly be said therefore that in fact Germany won the First World War. It just took them rather more than four years to do so.

So it becomes clear what we are up against. What if anything can be done?

The aim of the EU is for the UK to have all of the costs of EU membership with none of the benefits. They want us to have to continue following all of the EU’s rules and they want us to continue to have to pay pretty much the same for the privilege of doing so. In divorce terms it means that the husband has to pay the mortgage of a house where he no longer lives, he has to pay his wife’s living costs, but he no longer gets to sleep with her.

This is what the Remainer rearguard wants too. It wants to leave Britain in more or less the same situation as we are now. We would still pretty much be in the EU’s Single Market, still in the Custom’s Union, but we’d be without any representation in the EU whatsoever. We’d be told what to do by the EU and wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. There is a word for this. Vichy.

It is for this reason that I likened the Remain rearguard to Lord Halifax’s view that we should negotiate with Germany in 1940. But in fact Lord Halifax had a point. Our prospects looked grim in 1940. It took something like a miracle for us to survive that year. It wasn’t irrational to seek terms. It wasn’t even unpatriotic. But still it was wrong. It would have left Britain just like Vichy. We would have become a vassal state taking orders from Germany.

We are not in that position today. Britain’s prospects are very good indeed. We just have to have the guts to stand up for our own interest and we have to be willing to say No when someone is trying to treat us like a vassal.

It’s always worth remembering that between 1940 and 1945 we had next to no trade with continental Europe. We survived. We weren’t fully prepared for the difficulties that those years brought us, but we managed. We bounced bombs while the French collaborated. British ingenuity, self-reliance and self-confidence meant that we found solutions rather than dwelt endlessly on problems. In far, far easier circumstances we must manage now.

If there is no deal with the EU we would trade with them on WTO (World Trade Organisation) terms. This would not be ideal. But it would be no worse than the terms by which we trade at present with USA, Japan and New Zealand. Better by far to trade freely with all of them, but we could manage for a while.

If we had no deal with the EU we would of course keep the vast majority of the £38 Billion we have promised to give them. We could then go to court to determine what if anything we actually owed them and conversely what if anything they owed us. After all we paid into the marriage for decades. Why don’t we get something in return?

We should immediately begin to make whatever preparations are necessary for “No deal”. It’s far too late of course, better by far if we had begun two years ago, but again we will manage. What’s more even if leaving in this way were tough, it would be worth it. We have never fought for a better cause than our own democracy and freedom from foreign domination.

Better by far that we come to an arrangement with the EU, but we should be clear with them that the whole UK EU relationship is on the line. At present the EU doesn’t want the UK to be involved in Galileo after Brexit. Apparently it doesn’t trust us with sensitive information. Likewise M. Barnier has said that we won’t be involved in EUROPOL or the European Arrest Warrant or have access to various EU databases. Of course, they don’t have to share any of these things if they don’t want to. But they are happy enough to share with non-EU members like Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. But it seems we are no longer to be friends with the EU. Fair enough. But then don’t expect any friendship back.

Why should we pay 2% of GDP on defence when much of it is used to potentially fight wars on the continent or in other parts of the world? Britain could offset many of the costs of a “No Deal” Brexit by moving towards neutrality. We would then spend whatever is enough to defend our island against attack from without and within, but no more. We would retain our nuclear weapons, but explain that they would only be used if Britain or British interests were attacked. We didn’t have to fight either of the World Wars, nor did we have to get involved in wars in the Middle East. Why spend our money and lose our lives defending those who hate us?

We have a large network of spies and the best security service in Europe, but why should we share any of the information we gather with those who do not trust us. When we get information that Russia intends to attack across the Suwalki Gap, why should we tell the EU?  Why indeed should we be part of NATO at all? Many EU countries don’t like to spend too much on defence, well perhaps they ought to begin. We should be safe enough on our island. After all, the Russians would have to go right the way through the EU to reach us.

There has been much debate on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The problem here is caused by the EU. After Irish independence we came to an arrangement called the Common Travel Area that for the most part allowed free movement across the British Isles. Irish citizens could continue to live and work in the UK and they can still vote in our elections.

Relations between the UK and the Republic were fairly poor for decades after Irish independence, but in recent years there had been some grounds for hope that they might be improving. These hopes are now in danger.

It is obvious that with a tiny bit of good will on the part of the EU and the Irish Republic that we could keep the border open. But whatever solution we try it is immediately rejected.

The UK should make a final offer. We should promise not to physically hinder anyone crossing into Northern Ireland. Whether we use cameras or anything else is our business. Cameras hinder no-one and all of us spend our lives being filmed in every major city.

If that isn’t enough then we should leave anyway, still promising not to hinder anyone physically from crossing unless there are security reasons for doing so. What the Irish Republic does on its side of the border is its business not ours.

If the Republic wants to unite Ireland then it only has to say clearly that this is indeed what it wants. If it were to win a poll then, it would pay the cost of maintaining the present levels of public spending in Northern Ireland and it would deal with whatever trouble results from reunification. Personally I’d be delighted to see some hundreds of thousands of Northern Irish Unionists fulfilling Nicola Sturgeon’s desire to increase Scotland’s population.

The UK faces a crucial moment in our history. If we end up a non-voting client state of the EU it will be a national humiliation. It would be far worse than Suez (1955). In fact you have to go back as far as Yorktown (1781) to find a worse humiliation. It would take Britain decades to recover from failure to completely leave the EU. The national mood would be one of acceptance of decline and sombre realisation that when tested we didn’t even have the courage to say “Non M. Barnier”. This is the sort of thing that a country doesn’t really recover from. Ask the French. It’s not even something that you can put a price on.

We could all do with some Korean unity

We are fortunate indeed that yesterday there wasn’t a meeting between North Japan and South Japan, declaring peace and looking forward perhaps to eventual reunification. There is one reason and one reason alone why this didn’t happen. The planned invasion of Japan “Operation Downfall” which was to have taken place in November 1945 was cancelled.

 The Soviet Union also had a plan. They declared war on Japan on August 9th 1945 and in a short time occupied Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, Manchuria and Korea up to the 38th Parallel. The Soviets intended then to invade the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

If the war had continued there would have been a similar race to that which occurred in Germany. The Soviets careless of casualties would have sought to make as much of Japan communist as possible. The Americans wishing to save as many G.I. lives as possible would have been slow. The result would have been to split Honshu down the middle with a divided Tokyo and eventually a wall round it.

In this case socialist North Japan like everywhere which experiments with trying to achieve equality of outcome would be poor, while South Japan would be one of the richest countries in the world. North Japan would have attempted to achieve unification by force sometime in the 1950s and if the West had been fortunate enough to prevent this, the two Japans would have remained technically at war with each other from then until now.

It would, of course, have been tragic if Japan had been divided. But Japan was not always as united as it appears to be today. The Ryukyuan languages, which are not mutually intelligible with Japanese, although they are part of the same language family, are still spoken by some people in the southern Japanese islands. The Ainu language, unrelated to Japanese, was spoken by the indigenous people of Hokkaido, but is now endangered. This was in part because Hokkaido was gradually incorporated into a united Japan by a process that was completed only in 1858.

Like nearly every country in the world, Japan was once made up of different peoples who owed allegiance to various feudal warlords. They fought wars to gain control over territory. Eventually these wars led to unification. The same can be said about Korea.

The Korean peninsula is now divided. But it has been divided before. It had a North-South States period lasting from 698–926 AD. It also had a period when it was divided in three 57 BC – 668 AD. It has at various times been invaded by Japan and by China and incorporated into the Japanese Empire from 1910 to 1945.

The process of human history the world over is one of conquest, division and unification. There are any number of “countries” that once existed in Japan, which now no longer exist. Korea was once three kingdoms, then two, then one, then two again. There are likewise any number of languages that have died out, sometimes because the people who spoke them have died out or been absorbed into those who conquered them.

Uriah the Hittite would have spoken an ancient Indo-European language native to Anatolia. There are no native Hittite people now and the language is dead. The reason for this is that the Turkic people’s, who don’t speak an Indo-European language, migrated to present day Turkey, at various points between the 6th and 11th centuries. This was no doubt tragic for Uriah’s descendants if indeed he had any prior to being sent into the front line, but there is no more point regretting the loss of the Hittite language than regretting the loss of Pictish or indeed Anglo-Saxon.

In the British Isles nearly all of us speak varieties of English. Prior the Roman conquest nearly all of us spoke various forms of Celtic. We speak English, because like everyone else in the world we have been engaged in various forms of conquest and migration since history began.

The Iceni would have spoken a language similar to Welsh when Boadicea fought the Romans. It is therefore peculiar for people who think of themselves as British to mock those who speak Welsh. It is the child of the ancient language of our island. But it is also peculiar to blame the English for somehow persecuting those who spoke Celtic languages in the British Isles and driving those languages to destruction. It was the migration of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Normans which pushed the Celtic languages westwards. But it isn’t as if Celts didn’t do any pushing or any migrating. The Celts after all did not originate in the British Isles.

The Celts migrated from Central Europe and spread to France, Spain, Britain and elsewhere. They too, no doubt, supplanted the people and languages of those who lived where they settled.

There is no point regretting the history that made us what we are. It is this that makes the hatred that is sometimes met in the British Isles all rather silly. The Celtic people of England were conquered by Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Normans. Migrations went back and forth between mainland Europe and the British Isles. Ancient Britons colonised Brittany and some of them still speak Breton. Next door Normans repaid the compliment. The reason we all speak English is that our ancestors are a mixture of all the people who migrated to our islands. To regret this is to regret who we are.

Ireland apparently suffered centuries of oppression and colonisation by the wicked Brits. But then Britain suffered centuries of oppression and colonisation by the wicked Romans, then the wicked Angles and then the wicked Normans. Perhaps we should all have a chip on our shoulder about William the Conqueror the Vikings. Perhaps we should complain to the Danes that they oppressed us, raped and pillaged us. We could maintain that Britain has suffered two thousand years of being colonised by the Romans and everyone else who persecuted the poor Iceni and their children, but we are both the children of the Iceni and the children of everyone who migrated since the Romans.

Whether they like it or not the Irish are the descendants of those who settled in Ireland due to migration. The Irish are no more pure Celts than anyone else in the British Isles. We are all just a mixture of everyone who came here.

Everywhere in the British Isles, just like Japan and Korea went through a process of conquest and migration. These processes led to the nation states that we have today. They are the reason we are as we are. If Angles and Saxons had not migrated to Ireland they would no doubt all speak Irish, but to regret this migration is like regretting that in Britain we don’t speak the language of the Iceni, or that in Turkey they don’t speak Hittite.

To be Scottish today is almost certainly not to be someone who speaks Gaelic. To regret this is to regret the process of migration that led to the mix of peoples who make up Scotland. It is to regret who we are and who are parents and grandparents were.

Scottish nationalism picks one period of Scottish history, the period when Scotland was a kingdom and prioritises it over every other period. But Scotland was divided when the Romans first called us Caledonia. We were separate tribes. We had migrations from Ireland, we then gradually unified the various peoples in Scotland and then gradually mixed with the Anglo-Saxon peoples who had migrated here from the continent. This didn’t begin in 1707. It didn’t even begin in 1066. People have been speaking a variety of Anglo-Saxon in Scotland originally called Ynglis or Inglis for well over a thousand years.

We speak English because the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants came to dominate the British Isles. I have no idea why these people should have been more successful than the Celts, but they were. The story of the British Isles is how a Celtic speaking people became an English speaking people. Our mothers taught us English and their mothers taught them. To regret the language that you speak and to hate it is to regret who was your mother. It is to regret and hate your own self.

Some Irish, Welsh and Scottish people can’t even bear to think that speaking English as a native speaker provides them with an advantage. All they can think of is that the wicked Brits have repressed them, conquered them and persecuted them for centuries. But this bitterness is peculiarly self-defeating. The language used to express the supposed oppression is the language of the supposed oppressor. It’s the only language most people in Scotland and Ireland know. Instead of embracing who they are, the English speaking people of the British Isles, they hate who they are and delight in blaming someone else for it.

The Korean speaking people of the Korean peninsula and the Japanese people of the Japanese islands either have unity or long for it. It would be the most wonderful historical development if Korea could be united. But while we look on and cheer potential reconciliation in Korea, we find ways to hate each other here. Our history is no different from the history of Japan and Korea. We too are the result of conquests and migrations. We share a common language because of this. But instead of finding unity we continually seek division and blame each other because of the wrongs that were done by our ancestors. But I’m sorry we all have the same ancestors. We are all the descendants of the perpetrators and the persecuted. Each of us was a conqueror and each of us was conquered. We used to speak various Celtic languages, now we are all Anglo-Saxons. To deny this is to mutely try to speak the language of the Iceni, the Picts, or the Scoti. To regret the migrations that led to the people that we are now, is like a Turk regretting that he is not a Hittite. We have just as much unity as the Japanese or the Koreans. Wouldn’t it be as tragic and equally absurd to divide an English speaking island as to divide a Korean speaking peninsular?

The EU wants our coat too

I have been finding contemporary politics dull and uninspiring. It is above all for this reason that I’ve been struggling to write about recent events. We know that at some point there will be another election struggle between a rather daft, but reinvigorated Labour Party and a worn out Tory Party in desperate need of new ideas and a new leader, but it won’t be yet and may not be for years.  The SNP have the most support in Scotland, but that support is not enough for the one thing that they want. While a year or so ago Nicola Sturgeon didn’t go a day without threatening this or that, she appears to have calmed down, or perhaps it is merely that in Edinburgh there

sits our sulky, sullen dame,

Gathering her brows like gathering storm,

Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

But whatever she is doing, it is probably not worth provoking her or her “running dogs of Scottish nationalism”. It can be good fun to remind the Nats that it looks awfully as if there moment has passed, but why remind when they already know. Better by far just to ignore them as much as possible. Let them sleep, let them lie. What was that about Brexit guaranteeing Scottish independence? Whether that was a pie or a sleeping dog it wasn’t the greatest prediction in the history of Scottish politics.

 Who would have thought that the process of leaving the EU would take longer and appear more difficult that winning the First World War? But then at least we were more or less united between 1914 and 1918 and few indeed were the Brits who thought it was a good idea to hope that we lost and our opponent won. We nearly did lose in the days following March 21st 1918, but strangely while we have “remembrance” we have no memory at all and no knowledge whatsoever of the most important events that challenge the clichés of mud, trenches and static warfare.

Like some other impatient Brexiteers I would have simply announced to the EU in 2016 that we had already left. I would have unilaterally lowered all tariffs to zero and invited everyone around the world to treat our goods in the same way. I would then have lowered business taxes so that they were the lowest in Europe and repealed each and every bit of EU bureaucracy that hindered business. I would have told the EU that we would not be paying one penny more in order to trade with them “freely”, on the grounds that paying for free trade is a contradiction because it’s precisely thereby not free.  I would have used the billions saved to compensate, in a roundabout way if necessary, our businesses for any losses incurred by leaving the EU and whatever was left over I would have spent on a fleet of destroyers to patrol our territorial waters. I would have reminded our European friends that they would remain friends if and only if they treated us in a friendly fashion. Otherwise they need not expect us to share any intelligence nor if they were invaded from the East need they expect any help. We fought two World Wars when we didn’t have to, as in neither instance were we directly threatened. We spent a vast amount of money and lives liberating continental Europe and got precious little in return, not even thanks.

If we had done this we would at least have avoided the deadly dull and rather humiliating spectacle of these tortuous negotiations just so that we can continue to trade more or less freely with people who at times appear to want to punish us. We may have fallen far since 1918, but surely we haven’t fallen quite that far.

But Theresa May didn’t have the numbers for my swashbuckling Brexiteer fantasy in 2016. Her party was divided, not merely between Leavers and Remainers, but more importantly far too few of her MPs were even really free marketeers who believe in cutting public spending, lowering taxes and living within our means. There just aren’t enough Conservatives in the Conservative Party to force through the radical sort of change that might have happened if we had had the guts to do it.

The election of 2017 made the UK safe from Scottish nationalism. The dangerous moment was if the SNP could have achieved independence before the UK left the EU. If the EU had cooperated and bent their own rules, an independent Scotland could have joined the EU in the transition period from leaving the UK. But thankfully this moment has now passed. Once the UK has left the EU, then SNP Remainers have to become Rejoiners. This would mean giving up whatever powers the Scottish Parliament gains from Brexit, it would mean giving up control over our territorial waters and it would mean joining Schengen and the Euro. The EU membership fee would also be rather higher given that we would no longer get back Mrs Thatcher’s rebate. None of this looks terribly attractive, not least because if Scotland were in Schengen while England was not it’s very hard to see how a hard border could be avoided. The Republic of Ireland is not in Schengen. Moreover if the UK is out of the EU while Scotland was in it, the nightmare scenario of being in a different trading bloc to your greatest trading partner becomes very real. The UK’s internal single market is much more important to Scotland than the EU’s single market. You can’t after all be part of an internal market if the relationship between England and Scotland becomes a relationship between independent nation states rather than parts of a single nation state. The clue is in the word “internal”.

Brexit clarified minds in Scotland and those who could think through the issues rapidly came to the conclusion that Scottish independence was no longer attractive or even tenable. Scots are not stupid and for this reason support for the SNP fell and will continue to fall.

So the election in 2017 was worth it.  We will look in time on the years 2016 and 2017 as the years that saw Scottish nationalism reach its peak and then go into decline. But the price we paid for this was that Theresa May lost her majority. This meant that Brexiteers had to take a long view.

Theresa May’s weakness and the fact that Parliament and her own party are divided has been exploited relentlessly and ruthlessly by our opponents in the EU. Their task has been to give Britain the worst possible deal. The consequences of this are that Brexit will cost us a lot more than it needed to and we will have to make more concessions to the EU than was necessary. All of these things will be damaging to the UK’s national interest. The money we give to the EU in the coming years might have been spent on defence or the health service or in cutting the deficit. Instead we will continue to spend billions in order to trade “freely” with the EU. This is the consequence of the Remain rear-guard. Instead of being united we were divided and the EU exploited this to give us worst deal they could. It’s thanks to Tony Blair, John Major and everyone who ever banged on about a second referendum that our fishermen won’t yet get control of our waters.

What do you call someone who acts so as to damage the UK national interest? Do you call them a friend? It’s not a game. The lives of British citizens, e.g. fishermen, will be worse, because the deal we are getting at least in the short term is not as good as it could be. The people responsible for this, whether in the EU or in the UK, have not been treating the UK in a friendly fashion. Many of them want our position after Brexit to be financially as bad as possible. Some of them want to advance their own long term aims at the expense of ours. The whole way in which certain EU countries have negotiated has been hostile. France wants to take UK jobs. Spain wants to make life difficult for Gibraltar in order it hopes to force Gibraltar to become a part of Spain. The Republic of Ireland wants to use Brexit to weaken the bonds between the UK and Northern Ireland, because it too hopes that UK territory will eventually become part of its own territory.

We have been remarkably patient in the face of this hostility and irredentism. The impatient, like me, would have walked away long ago, but that no doubt would have been a mistake. Let us focus instead on the prize ahead.

With luck we are going to achieve what we set out to achieve. We are going to be able to trade more or less freely with the EU and eventually we are not going to have to pay the price, whether that price was in terms of money or in terms of political union. What people thought was impossible, we will achieve, i.e. truly free trade, with no subscription fee. We will get to this stage moreover without going through the shock of radically changing economic direction. Let us achieve the free-marketeer, low tax, low regulation dream gradually. We will in time get control of our waters. Moreover despite provocation from those who hate us, we have stayed friendly. This in the end has proved worth it. Surprisingly enough the EU is beginning to value the UK’s contribution to security and intelligence. We have achieved a more united response to Mr Putin than he probably thought we would. It looks like Mrs May’s Brexit strategy has been worth it.

So it is better by far if we just ignore the latest manifestation of Irish nationalism. It attempted to damage our national interest in the years between 1939 and 1945 even if that meant the sinking of ships which in part were bringing the food necessary to fill Irish stomachs. It tried to bomb us into submitting to its will, while its diplomats who had the same aim pretended that the bombing had nothing whatsoever to do with their aim. Now it wants to use our desire to maintain an open border between our two independent sovereign nation states to bring its goal that little bit closer. I’m sorry, but no matter what it costs us we will always defend the people of Northern Ireland and their choice to be British.

But as always the cloak of British security extends over Ireland and will continue to do so. I doubt Mr Putin is much interested in neutrality. We protect the rights of small nations like Belgium and extent the hand of friendship even when they bite it. For some people after all a cloak isn’t enough. They want your coat too. Well we will even give them that.

Let us promise then that we will keep the international border between Northern Ireland and the Republic open. We will make no checks whatsoever either on people or on goods. The whole of the UK including Northern Ireland will neither be in the EU Customs Union nor the Single Market. We are united and we will let no-one try to divide us. But if this leads to any sort of tariff or charge, we will choose not to collect it. Let Irish trade be free, it will benefit all of us. But if the Republic of Ireland is forced by its membership of the EU to charge tariffs or to regulate the movement of people, let them erect a hard border on their side of the line, not ours. But in that case don’t blame us. We are independent sovereign nation states. We must respect our equal right to act independently. The trouble with nationalists whether Irish or Scottish is that they never wish to face up to the consequences of independence.

British citizenship confounds both Irish & Scottish nationalism

One of the main benefits of travel and meeting people from different places is to discover that ideas that are almost universally shared in one place are unknown in another. There is a tendency in the West to suppose that what we think everyone thinks. Left/Liberal values are held to be universal even if some of them have only developed recently even here. Take the concept of nationality. In Britain we almost all accept that nationality is fundamentally a matter of citizenship. All British citizens are equally British. It doesn’t matter where they were born or where their parents came from. When Mo Farrar runs or Moeen Ali bats and bowls they are cheered by British supporters and treated as Brits in just the same as if they could trace their ancestry back to the Roman Conquest.  We think that this is how everyone in the world is treated. But it isn’t.

Someone born in Belarus whose parents speak Polish may well be a citizen of Belarus, but is most likely to think of himself as Polish. Someone from a Russian speaking part of Estonia is likely to think of himself as Russian rather than Estonian. Many citizens of the Russian Federation, e.g. people from Chechnya would not be thought of by other citizens as Russians. They would be Chechens or from one of the other groups that make up that country. Nationality in much of Eastern Europe is defined primarily by language and ancestry. What this means is that when the Soviet Union broke up and Russian speaking people of Russian ancestry were left in all of the former Soviet Republics these people remained Russians. They did not become Armenian, Kazakh or Lithuanian.

These two concepts of nationality matter, because they have an effect on our thinking in the real world. If nationality is a matter of citizenship it is open to all. If it is a matter of ancestry, it is not something that can be changed. More importantly viewing nationality as a matter of ancestry implies that one country has a claim on the citizens of another.

The fundamental justification for Russian actions in Crimea is that it was protecting Russian nationals. These people were not, on the whole, Russian citizens, but their ancestors were Russians and they spoke Russian, so from the Russian point of view they were fellow nationals.

Russian irredentism depends not only on the idea of reclaiming land that was lost, i.e. land that used to be part of the Soviet Union or Russian Empire, but more importantly people who were lost, i.e. Russians.

There is no question that Crimea used to be part of the Russian Empire. It was conquered by Catherine the Great. It was then part of the Russian  SSSR [Soviet Socialist Republic] until 1954 when it was transferred to the Ukrainian SSSR. It has a mixed population today, but there is no question that the vast majority of these people speak Russian, think of themselves as Russian and have Russian ancestry.

Russia held an illegal vote on whether these Crimeans wanted to reunify with Russia. The vast majority said they did. No doubt there was pressure on them to vote in this way, but this does not really change things. There is little doubt that in a free vote, observed by Western observers and conforming to all democratic norms, they still would have voted to be Russian. This follows from the fact that most Crimeans think of themselves as Russian, for the simple reason that from their point of view they are Russian. Their language and ancestry trumps their citizenship.

But does one nation state have the right to take a part of another nation state in this way? Can Russia hold votes asking anywhere it pleases to secede from its present nation state and join Russia? The answer to this of course is no. Whatever the history, whoever lives there, Crimea is part of the sovereign nation state called Ukraine. Only with the consent of the Ukrainian Government can part of Ukraine leave Ukraine. Whatever their own view of their nationality, the majority of the people in Crimea were Ukrainian citizens. Even if 100% of the people of Crimea wanted to leave Ukraine and join Russia, it would still have required the consent of Ukraine.

It is important that nation states do not settle territorial disputes in the way that Russia did by annexing Crimea. The reason is that there are just too many such potential or actual disputes. The boundaries between nation states are often arbitrary and arose out of the accidents of history. People who identify with one nation state can be found living in another. Linguistic boundaries are not always neat. But this is not just a problem of faraway places. The issues involved in the different senses of nationality are right here, right now.

The majority of the people living in Northern Ireland are British citizens. Not only are they almost universally English speaking, the majority think of themselves as British. There are, of course, two main islands in the group that most geographers call the British Isles. One is called Great Britain and the other is called Ireland. But when people from Northern Ireland say they are British they are not confusing the island on which they live. Rather they are referring to their nationality. People from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are called British. We don’t use the words “United Kingdomer”. Likewise someone from the Falkland Islands or Gibraltar may say they are British without thinking that they are living on the island called Great Britain. For this reason although, Belfast is a city on the island of Ireland, it is a British city. It is this for the simple reason that it is part of the United Kingdom.

There is however some confusion about these issues. The Republic of Ireland, for instance, frequently wishes to conflate geography with nationality. They think that Northern Ireland is Irish and therefore hope in the fullness of time to unite the island of Ireland. But this is to conflate geography and nationality. The geographical status of Northern Ireland is irrelevant to its national status. Owing to this conflation the Republic of Ireland gives each person born on the island the right to be citizens of the Republic. But geography does not give you the right to claim a part of someone else’s nation state or its citizens. The fact that Haiti and the Dominican Republic share Hispaniola gives neither the right to hand out passports to the citizens of the other as a way of annexing by stealth. The Portuguese would think it very dubious if Spain said Lisbon was really Spanish because both were part of Iberia. Iberian or Hispaniolan nationalism would be no better than the Russian nationalism that annexed Crimea. But likewise they are also no better than the manoeuvres by which the Republic of Ireland has sought to reunify itself with a part of the UK.

It doesn’t matter whether Northern Ireland came into existence in a fair way or an unfair way. Let history debate this. It doesn’t matter if parts of Northern Ireland would like to be part of the Republic of Ireland. They are not. It doesn’t even matter if all of the citizens of Northern Ireland wanted to be part of the Republic. It would still in the end be a matter for UK sovereignty. Crimea was arbitrarily handed to Ukraine. Most Crimeans, without doubt, want to be part of Russia. It doesn’t matter that Crimea used to be part of Russia, or that all the people there speak Russian and think of themselves as Russian. None of these things matter. Russia cannot reunify itself with the territory of another nation state without the permission of that state.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union there have been many territorial disputes, but in each case the right of the sovereign nation state has been upheld. Transnistria fought a war of secession against Moldova, but its independence is not recognised by hardly anyone else. Abkhazia and South Ossetia seceded from Georgia with Russian help, but nearly everyone else thinks they still belong to Georgia. There is a very good reason why next to no-one recognises such secession movements. If we did they would escalate. All over Eastern Europe there are local majorities who would prefer to be in a different nation state. In parts of Eastern Estonia there are Russian speaking majorities. Does Russia really have the right to hold a referendum asking if they want to leave?

Fundamentally the Republic of Ireland has no more right to reunify Ireland than Russia has the right to reunify Russia or Germany the right to reunify all the lands that once were German but are now in Poland. The UK may have decided to allow the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in Northern Irish affairs as a means of making peace, but this is a matter of diplomacy and calculation between two sovereign nation states.  It does not mean that the Republic of Ireland’s aims for reunification are just. The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic has as much validity as any other international border in Europe. Northern Ireland is as much a part of the UK as England, Wales or Scotland. We govern by consent and no doubt will always take into account the wishes of our citizens, but it is the UK that decides in the end just as it is Ukraine, Moldova or Georgia that decides in the end. The sovereignty of the nation state matters or else there is "mere anarchy loosed upon the world." 

What is most dubious about the Republic of Ireland’s attitude to Northern Ireland is that they are claiming the citizens of another nation state. The Republic think that all of the citizens of Northern Irish are Irish and that this gives them the right to a say over how they live. But this is no different from Russia claiming that that the people living in the Crimea or the Donbass are really Russians and therefore they have the right to protect them. It is likewise the grounds for Germany claiming Danzig or the Sudetenland or for Serbia arguing that where there are Serbians there is Serbia. It is essentially irredentist and destabilising. 

The reason that the IRA could continue their long fight to overrule the wishes of the British people in Northern Ireland is fundamentally because they knew they had the tacit backing of Dublin. If you succeed in your armed struggle we’ll back you up with the diplomacy. The whole conflict would have collapsed if the Republic of Ireland had not conflated geography with nationality. There would have been no conflict at all if the Republic of Ireland had never claimed Northern Ireland in the first place. Without diplomatic support for their aims the IRA's armed struggle would have been seen by the IRA itself as hopeless, just as the hope of the irregular militias in the Donbass is sustained by Russian diplomacy and sympathy with their aims. The fundamental reason for past and potential conflict in Northern Ireland is that the Republic of Ireland has never accepted that the people in Northern Ireland are not its citizens. The Republic has no legitimate right to claim either them or where they live.

Imagine if the British Government had never accepted the independence of the Irish Republic but sought "peacefully" to achieve reunification of the British Isles. Imagine if terrorists bombed Dublin and other cities in the Republic for decades in order to bring about this aim. Imagine if the Republic tired of this bombing decided to make peace by granting the British Government the right to pursue its aim of reuniting the British Isles by means of consent. But what sort of consent is it that furthers its aims by means of bombs? Sorry folks if the British Government had the aim of uniting the British Isles and did so on the basis of the possibility of a renewed terrorist campaign the Republic of Ireland would consider the British Government to be a hostile power illegitimately claiming its territory. The whole world would then condemn the British Prime Minister in the same way that they condemned Putin. But the Irish Taoiseach can aim to take a piece of UK territory and can use the implicit threat of armed struggle to further his aims. Moreover, he has the support of lots of his fellow Irish citizens who appear unable to see the connection between the aim of reunifying greater Russia, greater Serbia, or dare we say Großdeutschland, with the aim of establishing a greater, i.e., united,  Ireland.

What matters then is nationality defined by citizenship. Northern Ireland is full of British citizens and the territory is British. The same goes for Crimea being Ukrainian. It doesn’t matter what identity or language the people in these places have or speak. Nationality is not a matter of geography or history. It matters not at all that Crimea was once a part of Russia or even if some geographers define it as still being part of Russia.

The mistake on the part of the Russians is to think that it matters that people in Crimea have a Russian identity, i.e. an identity that differs from their citizenship.  But the people in Crimea are living on Ukrainian territory. They are Ukrainian whether they like it or not.

To suppose otherwise is to suppose that what matters is not citizenship but rather identity. The Russian Government thinks that the people in the Donbass and Crimea are really Russians because they speak Russian, are ethnically Russian and can trace their ancestry back to Russian people who settled in these lands. But this method of determining nationality is quite different from the one that decent people commonly use in the UK and the West in general.

But this has some quite interesting consequences. If people in Crimea are Ukrainians no matter what they think, then so too are British citizens British no matter what they think. Ukrainians in Crimea cannot justify their secession on the grounds that they don’t feel themselves to be Ukrainians. But then neither can British citizens living in Northern Ireland use their feeling of being Irish to justify reunification with the Republic of Ireland. It doesn’t matter that you feel Irish just as it doesn’t matter that a Crimean feels Russian.

For the same reason British citizens in Scotland cannot use their feeling of being Scottish to justify secession from the United Kingdom. It is completely immaterial. These British citizens too are British no matter what they think. To argue that such people are not British but really Scottish is to depend on an identity sense of nationality rather than one based on citizenship. Civic nationalism depends on citizenship, but it collapses as soon as someone asserts their identity as being more important than their citizenship. Civic nationalism therefore is self-defeating.

If what matters is citizenship, and this has to be what matters if we are to base nationality on something that is open to all, then it turns out that there are no grounds whatsoever for dividing what is the same. After all, in England there are British citizens, but so too in Scotland there are British citizens. We are all British citizens equally.

It matters not at all where you live. Geography does not come into it. What matters is citizenship that is shared by people with multiple origins and from everywhere. If you say that my identity trumps my citizenship, then you obviously go down the same route as the Russian concept of nationality that is based on language, ancestry and ethnicity. What’s more because your identity is not grounded in your citizenship you’ll find that it either has no ground at all or else it is grounded in your ancestry. But if this is the way that we are going to calculate nationality, then Mo Farrar will have to base his nationality on ancestry too. Unfortunately this will mean that he is not British, but rather Somalian. 

From this it follows that because Scots have no basis for their claim for secession or Irish for reunification on anything other than an identity that is derived from ancestry, these claims can be ignored by anyone recognising the multi-ethnic, multi linguistic natures of our modern nation states. Neither the Republic of Ireland nor Scotland have any more right to change international boundaries than do the people of Crimea. The UK might grant such a right, but the UK can also withhold it in the exactly the same way that Ukraine has done.

In a modern state where we are all mixed, identity grounded in an ancestry dependent on ancient symbols and flags that are not everyone’s should not be the grounds for political decisions about how we are ruled. Identity is not a reason for secession. Once we realise that we are all citizens equally the reason for dividing us dissolves. Why should it matter that I live in Aberdeen, but you live in Belfast? Why should it matter that my ancestors came from this village and spoke this language, while yours came from another village and spoke differently. It doesn’t matter where we were born or where are parents came from. This is the real difference between those who believe that nationalism is the solution and those who think that nationalism is the problem.

There are no Scottish citizens. The reason for this is that there is no sovereign nation state called Scotland and therefore no Scottish passport. The grounds for asserting Scottish identity as more important than citizenship are the same grounds by which Crimeans think their Russian identity trumps their citizenship. But if we go down that route, then we are in trouble, both in terms of our attitude to other people in other nation states and the people in our own nation state. If identity is what matters, then Russia was right to protect its fellow Russians in Crimea and moreover Russia is right to say that people in Russia who lack Russian ancestry are not really Russians. This is where nationalism leads.

I do not want nationality to amount to who my parents were or where I was born. But this is the grounds for Scottish claims to independence (I descend from a place that once was independent and it should be so again) or Irish claims to reunification (those people living in Northern Ireland are Irish, descending from a place that once was independent, so their territory should be mine). But none of these things matter. What matters is a shared nationality which depends only on a shared citizenship.

There are two forms of nationalism. One is based on secession (Scottish, Catalonian, Crimean etc.), the other is based on unification or reunification (EU, Russian, Irish). Each seeks to destroy a nation state as it is. European nationalism is the process by which EU nationalists hope to remove national borders and create a new nation state called the European Union. Wishing to maintain your nation state within its current borders is, of course, neither to wish to unify nor to secede. It is therefore not in any meaningful sense of the word "nationalism". To claim that this is nationalism is to claim that all the nation states of the world are nationalistic. This is to make the word “nationalist” trivial as it would then fail to distinguish between the nationalist and the non-nationalist. Obviously the desire to unify separate nation state into one should naturally not be described as internationalist. Internationalism is the cooperation of sovereign nation states. It is not the process by which they cease to exist in a new unity. This means, self-evidently that Brexit is the opposite of nationalism. It is no more nationalistic for the UK to maintain its existence as a nation state than it for the United States to do so. 

Conflict arises when the unifying or seceding forms of nationalism come up against a sovereign nation state that wishes to maintain its own borders. It is nationalism that is the source of the conflict, whether it is Russian nationalism seeking to annex Ukrainian territory with irregular forces or Irish nationalism seeking to annex British territory with irregular forces. The way to ease conflict and tension is for nationalists to cease focussing on identity, language and historical wrongs and instead to focus on the citizenship of sovereign nation states. It is this citizenship that gives us equal rights wherever we were born and wherever are parents came from. When we focus on citizenship rather than origin nation states can cooperate and nationalism ceases to have any foundation intellectual or otherwise.