Towards Irish Unity
By Nadine Finch
NOVEMBER 12, 2024
The Republic of Ireland goes to the polls in a general election on 29th November 2024. The two parties who form the present coalition government, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, have been, collectively or individually, in power there since 1927. Fine Gael’s new leader, Simon Harris, has been enjoying a surge of popularity but, over the last few days, he has courted controversy after Michael O’Leary, group CEO of Ryanair, criticised the ability of teachers at a Fine Gael event and his party advocated for charter flights to remove asylum seekers.
Sinn Féin, who will be speaking at the Labour for Irish Unity meeting on 18th November, have been the official opposition for the last few years and are the only other party in contention to form a future government. But the political landscape is complicated by the large number of smaller parties and independents, who will also attract voters who are unhappy with the performance of the coalition government but for very diverse reasons.
The Irish government was vocal in its support for Palestine, but its social and economic policies are clearly on the right of the political spectrum. In contrast, Sinn Féin are running on a progressive platform especially in relation to housing, a nationalised health service and the need for an all-Ireland economy. It also has the most coherent and immediate plan to pave the way to Irish unity.
Elsewhere on the island of Ireland, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill is the First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly and civil and human rights once again engage a powerful narrative. The latter development is because the Labour Government has chosen to retain key parts of the Tory Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 instead of immediately and completely restoring a court-based system of inquests, ombudsmen and public enquiries. At the same time, the discussions, led by the civil society organisation, Ireland’s Future, are attracting interest from all but the most obdurate Loyalist voices.
It is in this context that Labour for Irish Unity’s meeting on 18th November at Portcullis House serves to offer an opportunity to both educate and open up a dialogue for those in the Irish diaspora and their British supporters. The need for this dialogue and education has never been more pressing since the dark days of the 1970s and 80s and the early 1990s.
This is for a number of inter-related reasons. The Labour government’s continuing role in providing arms and intelligence to the Israeli government, and the Foreign Secretary’s ahistorical and legally flawed definition of genocide, indicate its failure to acknowledge the international right to self-determination and Britain’s legacy of settler colonialism, both in Palestine and Ireland. The latter is a very early example of this legacy and Northern Ireland remains a continuing price to be paid by the Irish.
The Labour government’s increasing support for the criminalisation of protest and its implicit support for English exceptionalism reminds many individuals of the recent past when being Irish rendered them part of a ‘suspect community’. The same is true for the current use of the Terrorism Act to stifle debate on the situation in Palestine by detaining journalists and political activists and seizing their data and working tools.
Furthermore, the manner in which the arrival of asylum seekers is now widely characterised by government sources as an ‘invasion’, threatening the economic prosperity of the indigenous population reminds all migrant communities, including the Irish, of the fragility of their welcome in some parts of Britain.
On another, albeit just emerging and more subtle level, the creation of a Council of the Nations and Regions would appear to treat the three other nations in the UK as the equivalent of an English city or region and remind them that the existence of their assemblies or parliaments depend on the English government continuing to devolve some powers to them.
The Labour for Irish Unity meeting on 18th November will be the first of a series of meetings exploring these issues and seeking to bring together members of the Irish diaspora, including a number of prominent voices in the trade union and emerging social movements, to offer an analysis of how to build an alternative to the growing power of the populist right in Britain.
Nadine Finch is Vice-Chair of Labour for Irish Unity.
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