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Having Their Say
Two weeks ago, during a debate at Feile an Phobail, George Galloway, a Glasgow MP and former member of the British Labour Party, criticised unionists for their intransigence, questioned their democratic credentials, and called for a referendum
to allow the 60 million British people to decide the future of the union between the North and Britain. He was, he said, confident that the British public would recommend a pull-out from the North.
It appeared a tantalising proposal.
Certainly, most opinion polls have shown that the British public neither understands or sympathises with unionists and would support the case for withdrawal. Of 18 surveys conducted between 1971 and 1993, 16 showed more than 50% of Britons supporting withdrawal. A ‘Guardian’/IMC opinion poll in 2001 found that only 26% of Britons believe that the North belongs to the United Kingdom.
So, imagine a referendum in which unionists had to explain their concept of ‘Britishness’ to the British people. Why they like to walk through areas where they are not wanted, celebrating 17th century battles; their justification for stoning five-year-old girls as they go to school. Even the references to their contributions to the British war effort in World Wars I and II would begin to wear pretty thin from this distance and smack of moral blackmail.
I was discussing this issue with an English friend who thought that the most opportune time for such a referendum would have been while the IRA was at war. The British public, he said, would have been more likely under those circumstances to vote for withdrawal. I am not convinced.
From the earliest days of our conflict successive British governments feared the potential of their domestic public opinion and Irish voters in Britain being organised around the issue of Ireland. That is why the public was never encouraged to debate the issue or ever given a choice. After Bloody Sunday, or after Britain was condemned by the European Commission for torturing internees, for example, British opinion generally was sick and/or ashamed of their country’s reputation being continually sullied.
The IRA campaign against the British army was aimed at fuelling that disgruntlement, was aimed at creating an anti-war sentiment similar to that in North America which forced the USA to withdraw from Vietnam. However, a mass ‘troops out movement’ never materialised, despite the Trojan work of a dedicated few. Why?
Firstly, the IRA’s infliction of a large enough number of military fatalities which would trigger an anti-war movement was continually thwarted by repression and counter-insurgency.
Secondly, British newspapers, when they did cover Ireland, played their jingoist part in loud support of the British army (whilst consigning reports about the deaths of British soldiers to a paragraph on an obscure page of their newspapers). Apart from, perhaps, the ‘Daily Mirror’ (which on the 15th August 1979 called for a British withdrawal, on the tenth anniversary of the deployment of the British army on our streets), the bulk of the media justified the British army in the North and never broke ranks. Liz Curtis, in her brilliant book, ‘Ireland – the Propaganda War’, explains the partisan role of the media and the disservice it did the British public.
Thirdly, around 1974/75, in order to limit British fatalities, the British government ‘Ulsterised’ the state forces and placed the then RUC and UDR increasingly in the front line, particularly in rural areas. The British government in its propaganda then portrayed (Protestant) RUC and UDR fatalities, alongside Catholic and IRA fatalities, as proof that in the main the conflict was a war between “two religious communities”, and that it was piggy in the middle.
Fourthly, and paradoxically, the deaths of British soldiers, as well as increasing anti-war sentiment was manipulated by the media, often in a racist way, which tended to galvanise British public opinion behind their governments’ war effort in Ireland.
The IRA never achieved the breakthrough it sought of creating massive troops out sentiment. But had it, one outcome might well have been a British government using a referendum to facilitate its withdrawal from Ireland.
Should we now support George Galloway’s call for a campaign within Britain for a referendum on the union?
During the conflict many politicians and newspapers would have argued that to vote to end the union, against the background of shootings and explosions, would be to give in to threats. However, in current circumstances the British public would be free to decide the issue on the basis of unionist obstruction to political progress, the economic millstone the union represents (billions of pounds in subventions for which the British public gets nothing but ingratitude in return), and on the basis of correcting a historic injustice.
While a campaign for a British referendum has certain attractions for republicans it also presents them with a major dilemma. Given the republican position that Britain has no right to be in Ireland and has no legitimate claims to sovereignty over the North, republicans could hardly support a call for the British public to be given a choice to vote on the union, even though it is more likely to vote for it to be ended. It would be a major setback for the cause of a united Ireland and a fillip for unionism if there were a British-wide vote in favour of the union.
But imagine the reaction of unionists to the proposal that the British people be given the democratic right to vote on the union! They would be appalled: the very fact of it being mooted at all explicitly queries their ‘Britishness’. Might it make them reflect that their ‘spiritual’ home is here in Ireland, alongside the rest of us?
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison