1916 Societies – One Ireland One Vote

Posted by Jim on January 9, 2016

One Ireland One Vote Historical Background

 

If you asked the people of Ireland what plan they would accept, by an emphatic majority, they would say ‘We want independence and an Irish Republic.’  There is absolutely no doubt about that.  The elected representatives of Ireland, now by a clear majority, have  declared in favor of independence.

 

British Prime Minister Lloyd George, March 1920.

 

 

On January 21, 1919 Dail Eireann, the National Parliament of Ireland, had approved the Declaration of Irish Independence. The Dail had been established after the General Election of December 1918, the first held under the post World War expanded franchise, gave supporters of Irish Independence an overwhelming victory at the polls.  The British Government responded to this exercise in Irish democracy and self determination by “banning” the democratic government of the Irish Republic.  This  was followed by the unleashing of British state violence against the Irish people.  The Black and Tans and the Auxillaries wrecked havoc, destroying lives and property, Irish elected officials were jailed or murdered, citizens were threatened, Marshal Law was declared, censorship was imposed and the basic civil liberties were curtailed by a British Government without legal or moral authority to rule Ireland.  The British also responded to the exercise by the Irish people of national self determination by passing the Government of Ireland Act in Parliament in December 1920.  This Act passed without any votes of Irish members, nationalist or unionists.

 

The British of course, had no compunction about using force and violence as a way of imposing its will on the Irish people. As  historian, Donnacha O Beachain, summarized what occurred:. “[o]n 23 December 1920 an international boundary was constructed in Ireland by the arbitrary movement of the British imperial pen.  “To satisfy the demands of a small regional majority, and to preserve British hegemony, a new state was established , obstensibly to protect a 20 per cent minority while simultaneously creating a new minority that made up 34 per cent of the population.  In not one of the six counties was the unionist majority greater than the nationalist majority in Ireland as a whole.”  As historian Professor Joseph Lee has pointed out , Unionist saw no incongruity in denying nationalist the right to govern “Unionist Ulster” on the basis of a 3:1 nationalist majority in Ireland as a whole, while simultaneously insisting on a Unionist right to rule Ulster based on a much smaller unionist majority in four out of the nine counties of Ulster. When the County Council of Fermanagh, one of the counties in Northern Ireland with a nationalist majority, tried to opt out of British rule by affiliating with Dublin rather than Belfast, the British responded by dissolving the Council.  The “principle of consent” so often spoken of now, did not apply to the nationalist counties within Northern Ireland.

 

If the partition of Ireland can not be explained under any understood democratic principles, what can explain it?  Revisionist historians posit the “two nations” theory of Irish history.  Principled Republicans, of course, have historically rejected this two nations theory or any other attempt to divide the Irish people on ethnic or religious grounds. Many of the leading lights of Irish Republicanism, Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmett, Thomas Davis, Bulmer Hobson, et al. were in fact Protestants and non sectarianism has always been a guiding principle of the movement.  In any event the “two nations” theory fails to explain why the spectre of partition only came about once the possibility of Irish self government came into view.  Partition, moreover, did not prevent unionist/nationalist conflict, it exacerbated it by putting a political minority, Unionist, in control of nationalist population, a population for whom the British and Unionist ruling class had shown only antipathy.  The two nations theory can not explain why nationalist in the six counties had to live under British backed unionist rule.  For that you have to look at the underlying attitudes of the British and Unionist towards the Irish.  :

 

“Can a people still in the nursery, mentally and morally be allowed to govern itself, either in much or in little? “

 

The Irish Times March 20, 1920

 

It was this attitude, that the Irish were intrinsically inferior and could not govern themselves, let alone British indentified unionist, that made it seem “natural” that Irish self rule would not be allowed to extend to the six counties. Certainly it hasn’t been based on any track record of non sectarianism or good government on the part of Unionist governments over the decades.  On the contrary, the worst fears of those who opposed partition from the beginning were fully realized.  As Joseph Lee has written, the British do bear a responsibility for imposing a border justifiable only on the basis of racial supremacy and a “solution” that contained within it the seeds of fresh struggle. For some time the British have been quite effective in pushing a discussion of the undemocratic foundations of Northern Ireland out of mainstream discourse.  This history, however, must be brought to the forefront because the legacy of that history remains.

 

Contrary to popular understanding, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement did not address the fundamental problems related to British involvement in Ireland.  British control over full Irish self-determination remains in place.  Any proposed ‘Border Poll’ as contemplated by the Agreement would be confined to the Six Counties that Britain divided from the rest of Ireland, thereby excluding the majority of Ireland’s people from a vote on Ireland’s future. Britain, moreover, would control the timing of any Border Pole as well as its wording.  The British, therefore, have a “Triple –Lock” in place  to prevent Irish national self determination.

 

As a consequence, we remain with a situation where a political minority backed by a powerful foreign power, has control over Ireland’s destiny.  Nationalists throughout the Six Counties, therefore, must pay taxes to support the very British Military, Police , and Intelligence forces that are working against their interests.  Irish citizens in the Six Counties remain subject to harsh and repressive “security” laws and practices, young nationalists are constantly subjected to searches and harassment from the British security forces.

 

The One Ireland, One Vote campaign is premised on the idea that the current status quo does not have to remain.   One Ireland One Vote looks for a democratic, non sectarian Ireland based on the principles of the United Irishman, with guarantees, as the Proclamation of 1916 declared, of equal rights and liberties for all its men and women, regardless of background.    We must also remind the Irish people that they, not the British government and its allies, get the last word on the future of the Irish nation.  One Ireland, One Vote is a practical way to make sure this finally happens.