West Tyrone Sinn Fein Sinn Féin -- Building an Ireland of Equals

It's time for a national debate on Ireland after 2010, says PAT DOHERTY MP - 16/06/09

Published: 17 June, 2009

Last weekend Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams was in the United States, hosting the first of two major conferences on the issue of Irish re-unification.

Alongside the party's Joint First Minister Martin McGuinness, he recently announced details of the party's 'United Ireland Task Force' initiative, which aims to open up a broad discussion, both in Ireland, and on a wider international level.

Progressing this discussion in Britain, and the involvement of the Irish community here, could not be more important.

The announcement of this Irish unity initiative last week takes place in the context of the recent European and local election results in Britain and Ireland, and under the impact of the economic crisis.

The lessons of the elections in Ireland, both north and south, could not be more clear, and indeed underline why a debate on the future of Ireland, and the relationship between these two islands, is of such fundamental importance.

Sinn Fein's vote across the north of Ireland saw Bairbre de Brun re-elected as an MEP, making a bit of history along the way as the first occasion on which Irish republicans have topped the poll in the Six Counties.

It was a clear endorsement of the work we have been doing in the peace process - at local, national and international level - to build a society in which the politics of partnership, equality and accommodation has primacy.

The result in the north, along with the support the party received across the rest of the island, was an endorsement of the vision of an Ireland of equals which is at the core of our philosophy.

In the south, the election results could not have delivered a more decisive message of the need for fundamental political change.

With some 400,000 people now unemployed, many thousands of workers hit by pay cuts, and many millions more hit by savage cuts to public services in health and education - it is no wonder that the government in Dublin has lost political authority and faces growing demands to go.

The global recession has hit Ireland more severely due to disastrous policies pursued by Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats in government for over a decade - and made worse by the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition over the past year.

In response, we have repeatedly called for a shift in policy, and for co-operation on the formation of a progressive left alliance, as an alternative to those who failed the people and opted instead to protect wealthy friends and who have wasted billions of euros of public money bailing out the banks with almost no strings attached.

At our Ard Fheis earlier this year Gerry Adams called for a new realignment in Irish politics, based on progressive change.

Underpinning all of this is growing support for the argument that partition holds back the Irish nation from winning its full potential. Sinn Féin strongly believes that, contrary to what some would have us believe, one of the best ways out of our present economic difficulties is through planning on a co-ordinated, all-Ireland basis.

We continue to press and encourage the Irish Government for a strategy on the necessary measures to deliver that objective, and furthermore to promote as government policy the benefits to all the people of Ireland of the next logical step - a sovereign, independent, unitary state.

We are also keen to develop this discussion more widely - in particular in Britain. Indeed, if we are to succeed, we have to put this on everyone's agenda.

Of course Sinn Fein's aim is for a united, independent Ireland. But we are not alone in this. Fianna Fáil, the 'Republican Party,' has the same aim and Fine Gael also asserts itself as the 'United Ireland Party'. The SDLP says that it supports a united Ireland and the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern declared not long ago that unification is 'an imperative not an empty aspiration.'

Moreover, people may be unaware that the mechanism allowing for unity (or should I say, re-unification) is embodied in the Good Friday Agreement. The legitimacy of the aim of unity (a legitimacy which republican and nationalists never doubted) and its inclusion in the agreement was paramount throughout the peace process.

In fact, this international agreement, between the Irish and British governments, for the first time contains an acknowledgement by the British government that the Irish people - and the Irish people alone - have the right to determine the future of Ireland.

In the agreement it makes clear that an end to partition, a 'sovereign united Ireland', is as desirable and politically legitimate as the status quo. Indeed it even spells out how this could happen -- by a majority vote in referenda north and south.

Pat Doherty is Sinn Fein MP for West Tyrone. He will be speaking at a public lecture at Hammersmith Irish Centre, Weds 17th June. 7.30pm as part of a series of lectures, Ireland and Britain after 2010.