A united Ireland can be a home to Arlene Foster

Posted by Jim on April 14, 2018

The principles of the Good Friday Agreement are now central to our
future, argues Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald
The hand of history on Tony Blair’s shoulder, Bertie Ahern returning to
talks having buried his mother. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in
deep conversation, pacing the car park, John Hume, David Trimble, Monica
McWilliams, Mo Mowlam, John Alderdice – all putting in the long hours
and making the hard calls.

Hope and history rhymed.

Senator George Mitchell wisely counselled that the hard work starts now.
How right he was.

The partition of Ireland in 1922 created two conservative states, rife
with inequality and intolerance. In the south, Home Rule became Rome
Rule, just as so many unionist and Protestant people had feared and
predicted. It was a cold house for Protestants, women, children and our
invisible LGBT community.

It has taken generations to confront this cold, hard state but it has
been confronted, challenged and transformed.

The peace and stability brought by the Good Friday Agreement has been
accompanied by momentous social advancement over the last 20 years.

Dublin is a modern European capital city. While we face big challenges
to build a national health service, to eradicate inequality, to
safeguard rights and to ensure fairness, we are on our way, on the right
path.

The northern state, a cold house for Catholics since partition, likewise
has changed. The institutionalised repression and discrimination of the
past is gone.

The violence which marked every decade since partition up to the signing
of the Good Friday Agreement is gone.

We now have peace.

While we still have big challenges – community segregation, a denial of
rights to sections of our people, the unacceptable destructive potential
of Brexit – we are on our way, on the right path.

The unionist veto is gone. The notion of a perpetual unionist majority
is gone, lost in the last two elections.

I write these things not to be triumphant or provocative, but because
they are signposts of change.

Nothing stands still. Change is coming. It can be disorganised and
chaotic, or it can be planned and organised. I believe we need to plan
for change together. That is why the Good Friday Agreement, twenty years
on, is central to our future. It provides a set of rules, principles and
values that govern what we do today and how we shape the future.

The Agreement at its essence is about managing change; About the primacy
of politics, the equal rights of citizens and a peaceful and democratic
pathway to constitutional change.

I have been involved in the many negotiations following the signing of
the Agreement.

Twenty years on from the signing of the Agreement, I lead Sinn Fein, a
party to the Agreement. As such, I carry the responsibility, not only of
protecting it, but more importantly to fully realising its potential.

There are some in the leadership of political unionism that have never
supported the Agreement, who walked out of the process and who have
never embraced genuine power-sharing, equality and respect.

Privately many unionists acknowledge that change is coming, that there
can be no return to unionist majority rule; who understand that the
Union is conditional and dependent on the consent of the people and that
modernity beckons; change is upon us.

Our society is more than green and orange, we have a whole rainbow of
colours and diversity of identities that make up Ireland.

The largest political parades in the North have been Pride, An Dream
Dearg and the Right to Truth. Our LGBT community are not going to go
away, Irish language speakers are not going to go away and victims of
the conflict are not going away. These issues need to be resolved and I
believe we will all be better for that.

I am an Irish Republican, a United Irelander. The united Ireland I seek
is not simply adding the north on to the south. It is about a new and
agreed Ireland.

An Ireland in which you can comfortably be Irish or British, or both or
neither.

The united Ireland I want to build has to be home for my family and for
Arlene Foster and her family.

We will not repeat the mistakes of the past. We cannot countenance the
exclusion or discrimination of any section of our people in a new
Ireland.

The Good Friday Agreement is relevant today for its basis of respect,
equality and power-sharing.

These are the pillars of our new, united Ireland; it commits us to:
“rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of
their identities and traditions and shall be founded on the principles
of full respect for, and equality of, civil, political, social and
cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of
parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity,
ethos, and aspirations of both communities.”

These principles must underpin governance in the north, in a
newly-formed Executive, and in the political, social and economic life
across Ireland.

These principles will underpin our new and united Ireland.

Honouring and delivering on these principles is the only way to get the
power-sharing Executive up and running. Twenty years on, let’s honour
the Good Friday Agreement by being true to it and by implementing it in
full.