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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
A Treatise on Northern
Ireland
Volume 3: Consociation and Confederation
B R E N D A N O ’ LEARY
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
3
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
Preface
The passage of ten months since the typescript of this treatise was sent to the
publishers has obliged no revisions of its concluding arguments. Peace continues
in Northern Ireland according to any international or political science definition.
Though there are still shootings, bombings, paramilitary assaults, and arrests of
loyalists and republicans, all such indicators are in dramatically lower registers
than before the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The Police Service of Northern
Ireland released its annual statistics in October 2018 covering the period until
September 2018. Two people died in 2017–18 in killings attributed “to the security
situation,” the customary administrative euphemism; the number is just below the
annual average death rate since 2008–9 of 2.5 persons per annum. Peace therefore
continues, though it is not guaranteed.
Slow demographic change continues to extrude into local political geography,
shaping school openings and closures, residential housing markets and disputes
over access to public housing, and controversies over electoral districting. In these
extrusions may be traced the faded hegemony of Ulster unionists. Official ratifi-
cation that Ulster Protestants, however defined, have ceased to be a majority in
Northern Ireland awaits the 2021 census, though for now the region has three
political minorities, nationalists, unionists, and others. It seems less probable than
it once was that this configuration of inter-group sizes will stabilize into a new
equilibrium. Instead it seems increasingly probable that a reversal of status looms:
Ulster unionists will soon be less numerous than Northern nationalists, and,
strikingly, the recent policy positions of unionist parties may accelerate that
trend, because of the impact they will have on cultural Catholics who have so
far identified as “others.”
Since 2017 the DUP has overtly supported a minority Conservative government
in London, intent on exit from the EU. Theresa May’s cabinet’s negotiations with
the EU 27, thus far, have had spectacularly humiliating consequences. They have
resembled charges of very light brigades against the entrenched cannons of the
EU, and some have started to reason why. The Conservative–DUP parliamentary
alliance has magnified the disarray among the UK’s negotiators. The DUP’s
posture has not reflected the popular will in Northern Ireland, where a majority
voted to remain in the EU in 2016, a majority increasingly reinforced in size as
knowledge of the possible consequences of UKEXIT spreads. Ulster unionist
parties and their voters divided over the key question. Most backed leaving the
EU, but a very high proportion have had second thoughts about its repercussions,
a shift that has not been reflected in the postures of the current DUP leadership. If
there must be a UKEXIT, most unionists have signaled that they prefer a soft one;
that is, they want the entirety of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to stay within
the European customs union and the single market, and thereby avoid the
creation of fresh border infrastructure, either along the UK border in Ireland or
in the Irish Sea. This judgment is supported by a social scientific survey of the
Northern Ireland public and a deliberative forum co-organized by the author.
Principal investigator John Garry, Kevin McNicholl, James Pow, and I reported
the results in spring 2018, and presented them to British, Irish, and EU officials.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
viii Preface
The results are consistent with the arguments elaborated in the concluding
chapter of this volume. Two were headlined in the press. Those preferring North-
ern Ireland to remain within the EU had risen to nearly 70 percent, compared to
the 56 percent who voted that way in the June 2016 referendum. And, a hard exit
from the EU, defined as leaving the European customs union and the single
market, would almost double the probability that Northern Catholics will favor
Irish reunification. The data and analysis, sponsored by the UK’s Economic and
Social Research Council, were published in Northern Ireland and the UK’s Exit
from the EU: What Do People Think? Evidence from Two Investigations: A Survey
and a Deliberative Forum (Belfast: Queens University Belfast & The UK in a
Changing Europe, 2018). A parallel judgment flows from a YouGov online poll,
conducted for the BBC, and reported in June 2018. It showed Irish (58.6 percent),
Northern Irish (57.9 percent), and European (56.7 percent) identifiers outnum-
bering British identifiers (46.7 percent) in Northern Ireland, with over a quarter of
respondents affirming that the UK’s decision to leave has made them more likely to
vote for a united Ireland. Less than 50 percent identified as British, a result
unimaginable in 1968, and not the most probable of projections in 1998.
Northern nationalists, notably Sinn Féin and its supporters, may become the
key players in deciding whether the Northern Ireland Assembly is restored, and,
in due course, whether and when there will be a referendum on Irish reunification.
The later such a referendum is held, in the author’s view, the greater the prob-
ability that there will be a decisive vote for Irish reunification. Sinn Féin’s
enthusiasts will seek an early referendum, but they would be unwise to do so.
Waiting for the Referendum will, however, become the new canopy under which
Northern Ireland politics unfolds. A second Scottish independence referendum,
and a second referendum on the UK’s EU membership, may yet precede one on
Irish reunification. In the interim, the fate of the institutions of the Good Friday
Agreement will remain undecided. That the assembly will not be restored before
the UK’s scheduled exit from the EU in March 2019 looks certain. Key DUP
leaders re-advertise that they never supported the Good Friday Agreement—
though they accepted the St Andrews Agreement that amended it within the
rules of amendment of the Good Friday Agreement. So far Peter Robinson’s plain
post-retirement warnings to his party have been studiously ignored.
Confidence in the robustness of the Good Friday Agreement has therefore
fallen; it had already been dented by the evidence presented in the latter part of
this volume. This judgment is obliged by current evidence, even though, quite
remarkably, the entirety of the EU, as well as the governments of the UK and
Ireland, are now pledged to the preservation of the Good Friday Agreement “in all
its parts.” This pledge, however, is impossible to maintain, if understood literally.
If and when the UK leaves the EU, there will have to be modifications to the Good
Friday Agreement and its UK and Irish legislative enactments, as is explained in
Chapter 3.7. It is true that the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference
(B–IIGC) has been revived, at Irish insistence, and, as foretold and prescribed in
this volume. But it has met just once, in July 2018, with overt reluctance and poor
grace displayed by UK Prime Minister May. The meeting was without major
output. Further pressure from Ireland to make the B–IIGC a more meaningful
policy forum can be expected if the assembly and executive are not restored.
We can also expect pushback from Conservatives on that front, especially as long
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
Preface ix
as they need DUP votes. Conversely, we can expect any future Labour government
in London to co-champion the revival of the B–IIGC.
That the passage of ten months has not obliged an author to revise or modify
arguments developed and refined over thirty-five years should be much less
surprising than the fact that no significant updating has been required by the
events of 2018. It is as if in this interval Northern Ireland has been hit by an ice
storm. When such a storm emerges, roads may become impassable, especially if
strong winds accompany the freezing rain. When the freezing rain accumulates on
surfaces and the ground, it creates a glaze of ice, and when a quarter inch or more
of such ice accumulates on tree branches, power lines, and power poles, they may
be unable to withstand the new burden that they are forced to carry. The entire
landscape freezes, while wise humans stay indoors. They await the sun, or the
eventual melt from higher temperatures, not yet knowing the scale of damage with
which they will have to cope. What they can see from safety, however, is entirely
familiar, and in sharper relief. But only a full thaw will reveal the cost of the storm,
possibly triggering sharp and abrupt changes, and collapses in familiar landmarks.
Northern Ireland was not prepared for the political ice storm that hit in the
summer of 2016. By early 2018, however, an effort to restore the assembly and the
executive emerged, only to fail as it surfaced. Specifically, the DUP got cold feet on
making concessions to Sinn Féin related to the Irish language. Arlene Foster
evidently had been seeking to return to the first minister’s position, but the
DUP withdrew from the heavily annotated textual agreement because its terms
did not survive reception by its Westminster parliamentary leadership, let alone
its grassroots. Foster looked isolated. The DUP’s Westminster MPs, led by Nigel
Dodds, were happier in a supply-and-confidence arrangement with the Conser-
vatives than in sanctioning re-entry into coalition government with Sinn Féin.
Political life in “the wee six” therefore remained suspenseful and stalemated. The
political chill was intermittently broken by prophesies of disaster while the parties
awaited the collateral damage from the UK’s projected secession from the
European Union. The Alliance, the Greens, the SDLP, and Sinn Féin remained
ardent Remainers and looked confident about European futures, while exasper-
ated at their inability to be met or taken seriously by the London government. By
contrast, the DUP’s pledge never to forsake the blue skies of Ulster for the grey
mists of an Irish Republic sounded like a battle cry from long ago, as well as being
poorly informed by meteorological science. The DUP now professed to see blue
skies ahead from UKEXIT, while it looked simultaneously petrified of another
prospective British betrayal. Legislation is being prepared at Westminster, as
I write, that will enable civil servants in Northern Ireland to make some quotidian
decisions in the absence of the Northern executive. This rule by local bureaucrats
will be based on a careful legislative effort to avoid breaking the UK’s treaty
obligations with Ireland, and to avoid violating the Good Friday Agreement—a
formal legislated suspension of the assembly and executive would certainly be
that, and cannot be contemplated as the UK seeks to leave the EU.
For over two years the repercussions of UKEXIT, real and imagined, have filled
the airwaves across the Isles, Europe, and the world. Meanwhile, within the
narrower confines of the North, the slow but steady public inquiry into the
Renewable Heating Initiative, widely known as “the cash for ash” scandal, has
cast an unflattering searchlight on Foster and other key DUP figures, both
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
x Preface
ministers and their special advisors. The scandal has been described by the
Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, Rory Carroll, as just like the “Game of
Thrones: the big budget TV drama filmed in Northern Ireland with a sprawling
plot involving power, pillage, and fire. There is a vacant throne, a beleaguered
female leader surrounded by backstabbers, a kingdom with a deep treasure chest
across the sea and the risk that everything will be reduced to ash.”¹ Efforts by the
DUP to shift the blame to civil servants for the imbroglio have not been persua-
sive, though the civil service has not emerged unscathed from the probe. Key
officials admit, for example, not to have taken minutes of key meetings, allegedly
at the behest of DUP and Sinn Féin ministers. The inquiry’s report is yet to be
delivered, but the public evidence-taking has closed. Those who have watched and
listened to the proceedings will be very surprised if the report’s authors do not
expose at least some members of the DUP as poor and corrupt governors of the
public purse. Whether Sinn Féin will emerge fully vindicated remains to be seen.
Pro-unionist media will probably focus on the fact that the inquiry’s chair has
already portrayed rival departments, headed by DUP and Sinn Féin ministers, as
opportunistic alley cats, engaged in fighting their opposite numbers rather than
prioritizing good government. But it seems probable that a strong whiff of petty
kleptocracy among the DUP’s ranks is scheduled for judicial and judicious
indictment. As the inquiry proceeded, the DUP’s difficulties were magnified
when Ian Paisley Jr was exposed in yet another expenses scandal, which led on
this occasion to his suspension from the House of Commons. He narrowly
avoided, under newly established procedures, becoming the first Westminster
MP to be recalled by his constituency and obliged to restand in a special election.
He was spared that embarrassment solely because of an indefensible administra-
tive decision that made it far more difficult for many of his constituents to sign the
relevant petition than it need have been.
Petty corruption within the ranks of one of its two premier parties of govern-
ment is unfortunately a regrettably normal phenomenon in contemporary
democracies. It does not explain why Northern Ireland has been restored to global
media attention. Its constitutional and political status has become globally visible
again because it is now the key obstacle to the ambitions of those who ardently
want the UK to leave the EU. To the so-called Brexiteers, the Good Friday
Agreement either does not, or should not, constrain the UK’s departure from
the EU. Some of them affect outrage at the idea that one part of the UK may end
up being treated differently from another, even though the Good Friday Agree-
ment is the standing example of differential constitutional treatment of one
component of the UK. With brutal frankness, some polling has demonstrated
that a large portion of the English and Conservative public who favor the UK’s
departure from the EU simply do not care if that process is at the expense of the
Good Friday Agreement. Others, however, think very differently. The govern-
ments of the EU 27, and those in Great Britain who favor remaining in the EU, are
firmly agreed that Northern Ireland is the subject of an international treaty, which
the UK government should be obliged to uphold—even if it is determined to leave
the EU. In this judgment, May’s feet, and that of her cabinet colleagues, must be
Preface xi
held to the fire: Britannia may not waive the rules to which it has signed up, nor
should it be allowed to resile from the negotiating concessions that it made in
December 2017.
Before that last moment is briefly elaborated, one minor update is required. The
past tense is now required to describe Boris Johnson as the UK Foreign Secretary.
Having resigned in protest against Prime Minister Theresa May’s compromise
proposals for leaving the EU—the so-called Chequers Plan was unveiled in July
2018—Johnson has struggled to avoid consignment to what Trotsky once called
the dust heap of history. That Johnson’s ambition exceeds his abilities, or his
willingness to do his homework, is not world-historical news, nor a partisan
judgment. Indeed, these traits may prove no impediments to his ultimate ascent
to his party’s leadership and the UK premiership. What matters, for our purposes,
is what he exhibits, both in his impatience and in his expressions of impatience.
For now, the “Irish backstop” is the target of his wrath, the object through which
he presses his claim to become the best guardian of the UK’s exit. The backstop is
the proposal, to which May’s government, with Johnson in her cabinet, agreed in
December 2017, in solemn undertakings with the EU’s negotiators, in order to
allow the withdrawal negotiations to proceed to the next stage. As explained in the
concluding chapter of this volume, the backstop, if given credible legal framing,
would prevent, forever, the erection of fresh physical infrastructure on the border
created by the partition of 1920. Short of a technological miracle, it would apply in
all circumstances—even if Great Britain were fully to leave the EU’s customs
union and the single market. Johnson is not alone in complaining that the
backstop prevents the UK from exiting the EU on his preferred terms, though
his terms are invariably vague, romantic, and articulated in the future perfect
tense. He persistently gestures toward technological solutions to customs inspec-
tions, collection regimes, and regulatory monitors that are not yet known to public
officials or journalists, but he is scarcely singular in this respect.
Critics cannot decide whether Johnson advocates “Canada Dry” or “Canada ++,”
shorthand expressions for different ways of taking the UK out of the European
single market and customs union, as well as all of its other institutions. With no
formal withdrawal agreement on the terms of its secession from the EU, the UK
would head toward “Canada Dry”—namely, a hard and cliff-edge exit, as the saying
goes. By contrast, with a formal withdrawal agreement and a promised future
“special relationship” with the single market, the UK may accomplish “Canada
++”—namely, a hard exit with a transition period before a trade agreement is
completed with the EU. As I write, efforts are being made by May to lengthen
and soften that transition, and to avoid the backstop being made permanent. The
latter will be stoutly resisted by Ireland, especially by its Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar,
and its Tánaiste, Simon Coveney, and, Ireland assumes, by the EU 26.
Nearly one hundred years ago, as surveyed in Volume 2 of this treatise, Canada
was an ambiguous role model for the future Irish Free State in the negotiations
concluded under the auspices of Prime Minister David Lloyd George for Great
Britain, and of the Vice-President of Sinn Féin, Arthur Griffith. Today Canada is a
much more ambiguous role model. It is seen as a beacon for those would-be
British policymakers who disbelieve that it is usually more efficient to trade with
one’s immediate neighbors than with those who live and produce further afield.
The first British dominion, partly built by English and Scots settlers, has recently
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xii Preface
completed a trade agreement with the EU, known as CETA, the Comprehensive
Economic and Trade Agreement—it was signed in October 2016. Its parties are
the EU, its member states, and Canada. Over two decades in the making, the
CETA was concluded after seven years of negotiations. This negotiating history,
especially its length, is cheerfully ignored by advocates of following “the Canada
option” for UKEXIT. They point out that the UK conforms for now to EU laws
and regulations, and therefore, they reason, making a UKCETA should be much
easier and faster than the making of the CETA. But the self-styled Bexiteers
frequently though conveniently fail to observe that the reason they prefer the
Canada option is precisely because they want to diverge from EU laws and
regulations. This openly expressed ambition alone makes a fast UKCETA much
less probable. The EU has diplomatically pointed to the CETA as one logical model
for future relations between the EU 27 and the UK, especially if the EU is expected
to take the London government at its word—namely, that it wants to be able to
make its own free trade agreements with other countries. But, no EU official whom
I have met or interviewed in 2017–18 expects or promises that a UKCETA will be
quickly or easily negotiated. Given the time spent in negotiating the so-far uncon-
cluded withdrawal agreement, experience suggests that it is EU officials who are
making the sounder judgment about the speed of future negotiations.
In 1921 the Welshman Lloyd George and his English Liberal and Conservative
partners insisted that Ireland had to remain within the British Empire. If it
seceded from the UK to become a dominion with the same status as Canada,
then it would have to grant Northern Ireland the right of secession from the Irish
Free State (subject to a boundary commission). In 2018, the EU’s chief negotiator,
Michel Barnier, insists that, if there is to be a withdrawal agreement with the UK,
and an agreed political declaration over future relations between the UK and the
EU, then there has to be watertight and permanent legal provisions that prevent
fresh infrastructure across the UK land border in Ireland, in effect keeping
Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market and the customs union. In
2016–18, as was true in 1919–21, talk of Canada was in the air partly because of
the recognition, insistence, or denial that Northern Ireland should be treated
differently. For Barnier’s negotiating team, with the full authority of the EU 27,
short of technological transformations, the Irish backstop has to apply, especially
if Great Britain later insists on having a relationship with the EU modeled on its
former North American colony—that is, outside the said customs union and
single market. Lloyd George kept the Irish Free State in the British Empire on a
Canadian model and Northern Ireland within the UK; by contrast, Michel Barnier
may keep Northern Ireland within the single market and customs union of the EU
while freeing Great Britain to pursue its Canadian dream. If the DUP succeeds in
blocking this possible compromise, it may have to do so at the expense of
precipitating a hard and cliff-edge exit, from which Great Britain, Ireland, and
Northern Ireland will suffer, probably in that order of magnitude of pain. We shall
see whose bluff is called.
Johnson’s successor as UK Foreign Secretary, for now, is Jeremy Hunt. At the
Conservative Party Conference of October 2018 he compared the EU to the
USSR. The suggestion met with frank astonishment by ambassadors from East
European member states who had grown up behind the iron curtain. They were
not tempted to smile. Few of them, however, could have had higher diplomatic
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
Preface xiii
expectations of Hunt than his immediate predecessor. Hunt, after all, had recently
managed to describe his Chinese wife, Lucia Guo, as Japanese in the course of
exchanging pleasantries with his Chinese hosts. In short order, a UK foreign
secretary who displays bigoted impatience with the Irish, and who denigrates
other Europeans, has been replaced by one who nervously gets spectacularly
wrong both the ethnicity of his own wife and the ethnic histories of his principal
interlocutors. These presentational problems are not just the standard problem of
arrogant males who refuse to listen or learn, or who assume that others are not
competent to assess their own histories and interests. Rather, they are symptom-
atic of a crisis of professional gravitas among the current Conservative leadership.
The syndrome is equally evident among female politicians, and not just May
and Foster. The newest occupant of the role of Her Majesty’s Principal Private
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is Karen Bradley MP. No evidence had
emerged to evaluate her ministerial worth when this volume was drafted, so the
text that follows avoided premature judgment. We now know a little more,
however, about this latest incumbent of a little-sought-after role. Bradley has a
BA in Mathematics from Imperial College London and was a professional tax
accountant in a previous life. She is therefore highly numerate. Yet she plainly
took no opportunity to learn imperial history at her alma mater. In September
2018 she told House magazine, the weekly circular of the mother of parliaments, of
her ignorance of Northern Ireland before May had assigned her to her new role.
“I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern
Ireland, people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa. So
the parties fight for the election within their own communities . . . That is a very
different world from the world I came from.” Indeed, Secretary of State. What,
however, was the more reprehensible in Bradley’s admission? Not knowing these
elementary political facts about Northern Ireland before her appointment, or being
entirely unembarrassed about subsequently revealing her ignorance on this matter
in a public interview that would be read by her peers?
Johnson, Hunt, May, and Bradley are among the latest in a line of English
politicians largely oblivious of Britain’s history in Ireland, and insensitive to the
potential pitfalls that their ignorance may trigger. At this moment in British–Irish
relations it may seem apt that figures from a Punch and Judy show are flitting
across the frozen stage. After all, negotiating UKEXIT, so far, resembles farce. But
tiresome and repetitive farce is not laugh inducing, and this farce cannot last
forever. The last rites may soon be performed on English imperial delusions, at the
hands of a Frenchman from central casting. The May government may surrender
to the EU, to be followed in turn by the Conservative party at Westminster, and
they may have enough Labour MPs to join them in steamrolling the DUP’s
resistance to the UK’s surrender to Brussels and the EU 27. If May does not
surrender, however, then the UK is programmed for a hard and cliff-edge exit that
she does not want, and for which her government and country are ill-prepared.
Unable to move in either direction, May could prove to be what George Osborne
has infamously described her as, “a dead woman walking.” She may yet be downed
in an internal Conservative heave. But there may also be no parliamentary
majority for any of the options facing the UK—a hard and cliff-edge exit with
no backstop (the Boris bluff); a soft exit that locks the UK permanently into the
customs union and the single market, making the backstop redundant (the
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xiv Preface
Preface xv
xvi Preface
comparisons, adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity. In 2017, however, the World
Bank’s staff estimated Ireland’s GNI PPP at $61,910, just higher than that of the
USA, and significantly ahead of the UK’s $42,560.
There are at least two reasons why these updated economic data matter for the
future of the subjects considered in this volume. They suggest, first, that the Irish
economy can withstand the negative repercussions that may flow from a hard and
cliff-edge UKEXIT, and that it has sufficient resources and robustness to make the
structural, logistical, and transportation adjustments that any UKEXIT may make
necessary. Ireland can expect some solidarity from its EU partners if this scenario
comes to pass, but it need not rely upon it. Secondly, it suggests that, whether the
future brings forth a cliff-edge UKEXIT, or one with a feather-bed landing, or
indeed a reversal of UKEXIT, sovereign Ireland will be able to afford Irish
reunification, and that both the North and South will stand to gain materially
from doing so. Whether Ireland’s voters will support reunification in any refer-
endum subsequent to one held in the North is another matter. The author would
expect the Dublin region to have the highest number of voters who would tick
‘No’ to reunification, but also expects the rest of Ireland to vote strongly to
overturn the repercussions of centuries of conquest. Yet, if Irish reunification is
to happen, ’twere best if it were done with preparation.
A new ministry for Irish national reunification and reconciliation would not be
premature. Its first planning agenda should include a long constitutional conven-
tion to address the new institutional configurations, territorial order, and protec-
tions of minority rights that would be required to make a success of reunification,
and how Northerners could participate in the remaking of the island. This vista, of
course, will revive language from down the centuries, and tracked throughout
these volumes. Warnings of a loyalist backlash or forelash will rent the air. Yet, if
and when a referendum is won by advocates of Irish reunification, it is most
unlikely that British regiments will be deployed in de facto alliance with loyalist
militias—as occurred in 1920, and again after 1970. An Ireland, moreover, that
has prepared its constitution and its institutions with proper, prudent, and
consultative foresight may be able to reunify with its lost counties with minimal
threat to any human life. Though other malign vistas cannot be excluded—including
those that start with premises based on Albion’s record of treaty-breaking—the one
just briefly sketched seems far likelier than at any previous time in this author’s life.
As I close the composition of this Preface, it has been officially announced that
Ireland’s Constitution has been amended once more. Its blasphemy laws, under
which no one was ever convicted, have been removed with popular assent, and
President Michael D. Higgins, a democratic socialist and a political scientist, has been
elected to a second term in office. Ireland’s politics currently continue to move to a
different and warmer rhythm than in many other democracies, where bleak intim-
ations of fascism are palpable. For Northern Ireland, voluntarily, to join in Ireland’s
positive transformations, with significant support from among its Protestant popu-
lation, would certainly entitle others to complain of the luck of the Irish.
Brendan O’Leary
Philadelphia
October 2018
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
Contents: Volume 3
Notes 365
Acknowledgments 391
Bibliography 397
Index of Names 429
General Index 439
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/3/2019, SPi
VOLUME 1: COLONIALISM
THE SHACKLES OF THE STATE AND
HEREDITARY ANIMOSITIES
List of Figures xi
List of Maps xiii
List of Tables xv
List of Boxes xvii
Abbreviations and Glossary xix
Terminology xxix
Introduction 1
1.1. An Audit of Violence after 1966 27
1.2. Conceptual Conspectus: Colonialism 106
1.3. Wild and Bitter Fruits and Royal Pains: Colonial
Triangles and Trilemmas, 1603–1800 146
1.4. Overlooked by the Tall Kingdom before Dying of Political
Economy: Ireland under the Union, 1801–1857 217
1.5. Crying Aloud for Vengeance and the Power of a Colonial Caste:
Toward Union’s End, 1858–1914 263
1.6. “’Twas better to die ’neath an Irish sky, than at Suvla, or
Sud-El-Bar”: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1914–1922 311
1.7. Scratches across the Heart: Comparing Ireland’s Partition 370
Acknowledgments 397
Notes 403
Bibliography 435
Index 483
VOLUME 2: CONTROL
THE SECOND PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY
AND THE IRISH STATE
Acknowledgments 197
Notes 203
Bibliography 219
Index of Names 239
General Index 246
Notes 365
Acknowledgments 391
Bibliography 397
Index of Names 429
General Index 439
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List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
List of Boxes
CnP Clann na Poblachta, party formed by Sean McBride in the belief that
FF had ceased to be a proper republican party
cess originally any local tax, but in Ireland also the levying of soldiers and
provisions, or the billeting of soldiers
CLRNI Campaign for Labour Representation in Northern Ireland.
condominium political entity over which two or more states share sovereignty
confederation states unified by treaty for certain public functions, but that retain their
sovereignty, international identity, and usually rights of secession and
veto
consociation political system used to share governmental power proportionally
between divided peoples—in the executive, the legislature, and public
employment, including security forces; each community enjoys
cultural autonomy, and public expenditure may be allocated on a
proportional basis; in strong consociations the organized communities
enjoy veto rights over major legislation
Continuity IRA breakaway organization from the IRA
covenanters Scottish Presbyterians who wanted the Scottish system of church
government applied throughout Scotland, England, and Ireland; in
1643 a treaty with the English parliament appeared to give them what
they wanted (The Solemn League and Covenant)
CRC Community Relations Council
CRF Catholic Reaction Force—see INLA
CSJ Campaign for Social Justice, founded in 1960s; became part of NICRA
Cumann (Irish) Irish women’s republican organization
na mBan
Cumann na (Irish) pro-treaty party formed from Sinn Féin, which led governments
nGaedhael of the Irish Free State from 1922 until 1932; later dissolved into Fine
Gael; sometimes spelled Cumman na nGaedheal
DAAD Direct Action Against Drugs (IRA front)
Dáil Éireann (Irish) “trans. Assembly of Ireland,” the official name for the lower
house of the Irish parliament (Oireachtas)
devolution act of creating a subcentral government with executive and legislative
powers inside a state; the institutions are constituted by a delegated
(and revocable) act of the political center
DEA Department of External Affairs of the IFS, later the DFA of Ireland
DFA Department of Foreign Affairs (Ireland), today the Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade
DFM Deputy First Minister
DL Democratic Left, a party formed in 1992 from a split in the Workers’
Party, now absorbed by the Irish Labour Party–some say it was a
takeover
dominions originally the partly self-governing (white) settlement colonies of the
British Empire; evolved in the 1920s into sovereign states of the British
Commonwealth of Nations
DPPB District Policing Partnership Boards
DRs Dissident Republicans, expression and abbreviation used by the PSNI
and MI5 to refer to post-IRA republican organizations that remain
actively engaged in what they define as armed struggle
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IRB Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians, also known
as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood
IRG (proposed) Implementation and Reconciliation Group, suggested in
the Haass–O’Sullivan proposals
IRSP Irish Republican Socialist Party, political wing of the INLA
ITGWU Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union
IUA Irish Union Association
IV Irish Volunteers
Jacobins the most militant republicans in the French Revolution
Jacobites those who continued to recognize the House of Stuart as the legitimate
dynasty in England, Scotland, and Wales after 1688
joint authority the sharing of sovereign governmental authority over a territory by two
or more states (also known as a condominium)
JRRT Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust
KKK Ku Klux Klan
LAW Loyalist Association of Workers
LRDG Loyalist Retaliation and Defence Groups (name used by the UDA)
LVF Loyalist Volunteer Force, breakaway from the UVF, founded in 1996
majority rule simple “majority,” “plurality rule,” or “winner-takes all” is a decision-
making norm used in many democracies, especially in electoral,
constitutional, government-formation, and policymaking systems. It
usually means rule by those with the most votes, rather than absolute
majority rule. It is less pleasantly described as the norm of the
“minimum winning coalition” or as the “tyranny of the majority.”
majoritarianism the conviction that a simple majority (50 percent plus one) should
prevail in democratic decision-making, and a belief that rejects co-
decision-making rights for minorities or qualified majority decision-
making
marches territories near boundaries or frontiers, often disputed, especially
around the English Pale
MI5 the UK’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency
MLA Member of the Legislative Assembly (of Northern Ireland)
MNC multinational corporation
MPA multiparty agreement
nationalizing a state that seeks to homogenize its citizens into one national identity;
state an expression owed to Rogers Brubaker (1996), it amounts to “coercive
assimilation”
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCU National Council for Unity
NDP National Democratic Party
NI21 Twenty-first-century Northern Ireland, brief-lived political party
NICRA Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, formed to protest against
discrimination by the Northern Ireland government and parliament
NIHRC Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
NILP Northern Ireland Labour Party
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PR proportional representation
PRONI Public Records Office Northern Ireland
PSF Provisional Sinn Féin
PSI Policy Studies Institute (London)
PSNI Police Service of Northern Ireland
PTA Prevention of Terrorism Act
PUP Progressive Unionist Party, political wing of the UVF
QUB Queen’s University Belfast
R&D research and development
Republican an advocate of a unified Ireland in a republic free of the British Crown;
an advocate of the thesis that there should be one Irish nation—
composed of its diverse multiple components—in which all share a
common citizenship
Republican see OIRA
Clubs
RHC Red Hand Commandos, name used by the UVF
RHD Red Hand Defenders, name used by the LVF and the UDA after 1998
RHI Renewable Heating Initiative
RIC Royal Irish Constabulary
RIR Royal Irish Regiment (regiment of the British Army created from the
merger of the UDR with the Royal Irish Rangers)
R-IRA Real IRA, breakaway from the IRA in 1997, which does not recognize
either Ireland’s or Northern Ireland’s legitimacy
RLP Republican Labour Party
RSF Republican Sinn Féin, breakaway from Sinn Féin in 1986, which does
not recognize either Ireland’s or Northern Ireland’s legitimacy
RTÉ Raidió Teilifís Éireann (Ireland’s public broadcaster, of both radio and
television)
RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary
SE Saor Éire, left-wing republican grouping of the 1930s, revived briefly in
1969–71
Saorstát Éireann (Irish) Irish Free State, name of dominion status for Ireland agreed in
the Anglo-Irish Treaty and named as such in the first Constitution of
Ireland established under that Treaty
SAA Saint Andrews Agreement, reached in Scotland in October 2006
between the Governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland, and tacitly agreed by Northern Ireland’s
major political parties. Key elements included a change in the method
of electing the First and Deputy First Ministers, the full acceptance of
the Police Service of Northern Ireland by Sinn Féin, the restoration of
the Northern Ireland Assembly and a promise to abolish its Suspension
Act by the British government, and a commitment by the DUP to
power-sharing with republicans and nationalists in the Northern
Ireland Executive. The plan envisaged the devolution of policing and
justice powers within two years of the restoration of the executive
SACHR Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights
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SDLP Social Democratic and Labour Party of Northern Ireland, party formed
in 1970 from the merger of civil-rights activists, labor activists, and
former members of the Nationalist Party and the National Democratic
Party
SF Sinn Féin (Irish; lit. “Ourselves”). Irish Republican political party,
though originally formed in 1905 by Arthur Griffith and others to
advocate a common monarchy presiding over independent British and
Irish parliaments (modeled on the dual monarchy of Austro-
Hungary). Radicalized as a republican (anti-monarchical) party in
1917, and after. It split during the making of the 1921 Treaty and the
Irish civil war; and later after the formation of Fianna Fáil; it split again
into Provisional and Official Sinn Féin in 1969–70; later, Provisional
Sinn Féin’s claim to the title Sinn Féin was uncontested. The party is
organized in Northern Ireland and Ireland
sheriff royal official within a shire (or county)
SHA Stormont House Agreement (2014)
Stormont the site of the Northern Ireland Parliament in a suburb of Belfast from
1932 to 1972, of the Northern Ireland Assembly of 1973–4 and 1982–6,
and of the Northern Ireland Assembly since 1998
STV single transferable vote, a preferential and proportional candidate-
based voting system, in which more than one candidate is elected in a
district, and in which the winners normally have to achieve a quota
Tánaiste (Irish) literally successor to the chief, whence the title of Ireland’s
Deputy Prime Minister
Taoiseach (Irish) Chief, whence the title of the prime minister in Ireland’s
constitution of 1937
TCD Trinity College, Dublin University
TD Teachta Dála (Irish), deputy elected to Dáil Éireann, equivalent to MP
in the UK or Member of Congress in the USA
TRNC Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (so-called)
TUV Traditional Unionist Voice, a party formed by James Allister that
broke from the DUP after the DUP formed a government with
Sinn Féin 2007
UCC University College Cork
UCD University College Dublin
UCG University College Galway
UDF Ulster Defence Force
UFF Ulster Freedom Fighters
Ulster Clubs Loyalist organization formed in response to the AIA of 1985
UCDC Ulster Constitution Defence Committee (see also UPV)
UDA Ulster Defence Association, largest loyalist paramilitary organization
UDI unilateral declaration of independence
UDP Ulster Democratic Party, political party of the UDA
UDR Ulster Defence Regiment, formed in 1970, dissolved into the RIR in
1992
UFF Ulster Freedom Fighters, killing component of the UDA
UIL United Irish League
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Terminology
² See, e.g., Conor Cruise O’Brien (1974); Bew et al. (1996: 21 ff.); David Fitzpatrick (1998). These
authors obtained Ph.Ds in history, but this matter is not disciplinary; it is simply mistaken usage.
Northern Ireland has never been a state according to any standard definition;, see, e.g., the work of
Nicholas Mansergh (1936: 16, 108, 149), who emphasized that Northern Ireland was not sovereign, had
no constituent power, was a devolved rather than a federative entity, and was (when he wrote) wholly
subject to having its status altered by the Westminster parliament. The Stormont regime had attributes
fairly described as those of a “quasi-state,” but a quasi-state, no matter how quasi, is not a state. In this
respect I agree with Brendan Clifford (2011).
³ See Stepan et al. (2011); see also Vol. 3, Ch. 5, pp. 202-04.
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xlii Terminology
⁴ Brittany had been “Little Britain,” in contrast with “Great Britain,” before the latter became the
name of the unified kingdoms of Scotland and England (Hay 1955–6: 55–66).
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Terminology xliii
administration before 1920 or to the government and territory of the Irish Free
State, Éire, and the Republic of Ireland, the latter three of which have so far been
coextensive. Sometimes sovereign Ireland is used for clarity to describe the state.
Terminological exactitude imposes further norms. “The Isles” here refers to
Great Britain and Ireland, and their respective territorial waters and islands. “The
British Isles” is a tendentious expression.⁵ Ireland is an island behind an island,
but it is not part of the much smaller isles that surround Great Britain (or Britain).
The Romans knew better, and distinguished Hibernia from Britannia, but, alas,
love of Latin has melted like the snows of yesteryear. The expression the “British
archipelago” is avoided, because not all the archipelago is British, and the adjective
“archipelagic,” a term encouraged by a bright historian of ideas from New
Zealand, would occasion pain for readers.⁶ For the same reason I avoid “Atlantic
archipelago.” Try saying “archipelagic” with any variety of an Ulster accent;
“consociational” is much easier.
Capital-letter designations reference formal political membership of an organiza-
tion; lower-case designations refer to political disposition or doctrine. Thus
“Nationalist” refers to the Nationalist party, whereas “nationalist” refers to an Irish
nationalist who may not have been a member of the Nationalist party. Most
unionists are British nationalists, but to avoid confusion and unnecessary debate
they are called unionists, and labeled Irish, Ulster, or British unionists, as required.
Irish unionists wanted all of Ireland to remain within the Union with Great Britain;
Ulster unionists focused on keeping Ulster within the Union, and settled for
Northern Ireland, which they renamed as Ulster without the consent of their
opponents; while British unionists once wanted to keep Ireland or Ulster in
Union, and now simply want to keep Northern Ireland in the Union—and Scotland,
Wales, and England. “Unionist” with a capital U refers to one of the parties that bears
this name, whereas a “unionist” refers to those who wish to preserve the Union.
“Republicans” are Irish nationalists who advocate a secular, united, and inde-
pendent island of Ireland, free of the Crown and Government and Parliament of
Great Britain. Not all Irish republicans are pacifists; but only some have been
militarist, and none are monarchists. There are patriots of the state of Ireland who
have no wish to see Irish reunification who also describe themselves as repub-
licans, but others rarely describe them as such.
“Loyalists” are loyal to the British Crown. Typically, they are “ultras”—that is,
more loyal to the loyalist community than toward the relevant Majesty’s Govern-
ment. There were Irish and there are Ulster loyalists—they often call Northern
Ireland Ulster.
Catholic and Protestant are not synonyms for nationalist and unionist, though
there has been and there remains a very significant correlation between religion of
origin and political belief.
Lengthy “stroking” expressions are avoided: Catholic/nationalist/republican or
Protestant/unionist/loyalist are inelegant mouthfuls, and will not be met again in
this book.
⁵ This is to follow Norman Davies (1999), whose excellent book has a few mistakes, not surprisingly
given its ambitious scope—e.g., it implies that the pro-treaty party was defeated in the Irish civil war
(p. 905).
⁶ See, e.g., J. G. A. Pocock (2005).
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xliv Terminology
A nyári éj.