DENIS DONOGHUE
371
na Poblachta, in time to contest the general election in January
1948.
In
1957,
when de Valera took up his last administration, the Northern Ireland
Parliament and the singlemindedness of Unionist zeal for the union of the
United Kingdom seemed
to
be scripted in stone. Governments in Dublin
could yearn and make diminished noise on the appropriate public occa–
sions, but they soon gave up even imagining a united Ireland. Until the
Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association started protesting in the North
in
1968,
with violent consequences up to the present moment, every Irish
government increasingly regarded the question of Northern Ireland as
beyond the reach of politics: it was, in practice, Britain's business. As a
resul t, no government seriously tried to imagine how republican senti–
ments and desires, either in the North or the South, might be
acknowledged, or what provision should be made for them. I wish I could
believe that this situation has been changed by the Sunningdale Agreement
of December
1973,
the Anglo-Irish Agreement of November
15, 1985,
the Downing Street Declaration, or the more recent Framework Docu–
ment, none of which has even committed itself to saying what "a majority
of the people of Northern Ireland" means. Does it mean
51
percent? I
doubt it. I appreciate that these documents are repugnant to Unionists, but
they should also be repugnant to Nationalists, because they give Unionists
a veto on every proposal that might lead, in however distant a future, to a
united Ireland. As a further consequence of this neglect, over a period of
forty years, the IRA is in a position to claim-with some justification–
that they, rather than the government in Dublin, are the authentic
guardians of the republican, separatist tradi tion. I wish to be as clear as pos–
sible about my own convictions. I remain a Nationalist, but I think it is
most unlikely that Unionists in the North will ever be persuaded to make
conm10n cause with the South. David Trimble and his ancestors have been
in the North for three hundred and seventy years; they still think of them–
selves as British rather than as Irish. Perhaps de Valera and his associates
could have done more to persuade the Trimbles to sink their differences
with us in a united Ireland. Some political commentators have argued that
unity, according to some definition of unity, is logically inescapable. I
hope so. In the meantime I do not condone a single act of bloodshed, nor
do I think that the social conditions in Northern Ireland, wounding to
Catholics as they have been, have ever justified the taking up of arms. At
the same time, the desires embodied in the republican tradition can't be
merely suppressed, any more justly or effectively than loyalist desires which
have a strong historical right to persist.
I have referred to bad fai th on the part of Irish governments and espe–
cially of de Valera's administration. But I do not share the common view,
represented fairly accurately by Neil Jordan's film
Michael Collins,
that de
