At a Time Like This...

There are certain truths that have a particularly hard time making themselves heard; they are so troublesome that by mutual agreement we avoid facing up to them as long as possible. However, the Spirit of Truth keeps pushing, till eventually the only way forward is to acknowledge them. One such truth is that the Irish border is a gerrymander and an offence to both geography and natural justice. It is a dangerous truth that cannot be left to violent men, just because those of us committed to non-violence are too timid to speak it out.

     Curiously enough, it was by looking at the matter through the eyes of an Anglo-Irish landlord from West Donegal that I first began to see the matter this way. His name was Jimmy Hamilton, he was a good sailing friend of my father's, and we used to have great chats in our wee boats, back from France in Rye Harbour  with their cargoes of duty-free booze in the 1960s.* His father had had one of the first cars in West Donegal, and they had to go to Derry, their 'big town', to get petrol for it.

     The father's brother was murdered while having his hair cut in Ardara, home in his British army uniform during the Troubles. After that things were never the same again, and the father took to drink. The son carried his golden memories of growing up in that lovely land to his grave, but never went back. His sister, however, did, in the 1970s, when after many years working in London as a nurse, she finally married the sweetheart of her youth, a Catholic who had been in the IRA, and they settled down together at last on his farm near Portnoo. By such people was peace eventually reestablished, with the help of that wonderful political arrangement known as the Good Friday Agreement, made possible by the E.U..

     One hopes that the world is finally catching up with the fact that the more layers to an identity, the richer it becomes. What is an identity? A way of looking at life, I say - a language to interpret it. To be catholic is to be constantly striving to see things through other people's eyes. The more diverse the languages one can understand, the more tools one has to orientate oneself, and the better one's 'fix', just as a sailor takes his bearings from as many and as widely spread points of reference as he can; but he has to be very sure that, in the fog, he is not mistaking one tower for another!

     From time to time, I find myself trying to persuade Europeans that the English are indeed capable of looking at things with European eyes; that they are not, as General de Gaulle used to argue, simply incapable of being anything but a drag on the European project. I'm not sure how committed he was himself, anyway, with his 'Europe des Patries'. Granted that one does have, first of all, to stand one's own ground, and that otherwise one will hardly be capable of comprehending and respecting other people's,  then one must go on to realise that one's own ground is actually but 'a part of the Maine', to use John Donne's phrase. 

     Nigel Farrage has on occasion, when being praised as the 'father of Brexit', humbly deferred to King Henry VIII as the real one. Just why it should have happened that falling out with the Catholic Church and claiming some kind of 'higher authority' for the Bible should have led the British, and then the Americans, to appropriate the Hebrew mantle of a 'chosen race', who are entitled to occupy the lands of other peoples, is a bit of a mystery. Such a tendency has of course surfaced in many other guises, but it happens that Ulster constituted an outstanding example - so the natives were chased and the rich land was 'planted'. 

     When the remnant in the wild and rocky parts became too troublesome, a border was concocted simply on the basis of holding onto as much of the planted territory as possible. It is not 'Ulster', for three counties are excluded. It is a misnomer to call it 'the North', since the northern point of Ireland is in Donegal. Of course, borders are always fractures in human solidarity, but if there were to be a border in Ireland that made any sense, it would simply cut across from Carlingford Lough to Donegal Bay, instead of making a big loop round Co Monaghan, and then when it does nearly reach the West coast, trailing back up to Derry. If one seeks to build some kind of self-governing province in northern Ireland, as least it should be on the basis of a nine county Ulster - a fairly impractical idea, unless it be perhaps possible in the context of a strongly developed federal Europe.

     Anyone who wants to see it, anyone who has no stake in denying it, can see it. It is too late to undo the past, but it is not too late to stop digging the hole; if actual integration is too difficult, at least we can persist in the project of coexisting in peace; then, who knows what Time will accomplish? Meanwhile, let us all learn how to enjoy the rich multi-layered identities that actually correspond to the reality of what we are - citizens of the Universe, the World, Europe, Great Britain, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Ulster, Germany, France. Spain,  Ballymagosh and all the rest!

*You can read more about it all by delving into dispatches. especially those From the Fractal Frontier in this blog.