Since the Belfast Agreement was signed on Good Friday, I have experienced the phenomenon of political change as it comes to bear on the individual.
I had strong initial difficulties with the changes to Articles 2 and 3, and the vagueness surrounding some of the institutional structures to be initiated in return. My immediate feeling was that even if the quality of cross-Border institutions and other elements of the package could be guaranteed, this would still be a bad bargain for Irish nationalism.
The proposed change to Article 2, which would imply that the Irish nation is a mass of people of no fixed abode, rather than a spiritual relationship between the island of Ireland and the people who inhabit it, struck me as not simply the denial of an aspiration, but a repudiation of reality. My instinct was to vote No.
In a certain sense, I have not changed my views. I am not fooled by claims that the revised Articles 2 and 3 represent an improvement on the previous position. Neither have I been reassured by emerging details of the institutional structures. And the more I observe the unionist response, the more I am convinced that, for all the apparent division, there remains a considerable capacity of a realignment of unionist intransigence. It is a strange position to be in - an Irish republican living in the Republic of Ireland, removed from the conflict which has served as a constant reminder of the unfinished business of Irish independence.
I have no doubt that, if the six-county state had continued as it was pre-1969, albeit without the kind of overt violence we have since witnessed, the entire population of the Republic would now be republican.
The anger at the manifest injustices associated with unionist domination, but without the embarrassment of violent nationalist response, would have ensured that even the voices which today express virulent anti-nationalist prejudice would have been pouring forth rhetoric of the deepest green. But that is not the situation. Most of us in this State have become adept at maintaining belief in the normalised reality we have created. The main problem is the extent of our success in convincing ourselves that our independence has already been realised. The continuing difficulties "up there" have been externalised to such an extent that they have probably increased our desire to be satisfied with our own unfinished nationhood.
For "uninvolved" nationalists in the Republic, who continued to hold to nationalist beliefs and ideas but were uncomfortable with some of the Provisionals' methodology, Articles 2 and 3 have provided a safe form of expression for the national aspiration. They laid forth our desire for a notional form of unity without requiring us to consider the idea that this would involve confronting a very particular set of circumstances in a very concrete location, in six specific counties, north of a very clear line. I have often wondered why Northern nationalists would have any attachment to Article 3, which was really no more than a legal stratagem to enable the 26-county State to be governed without unseating the primary moral claims of the Irish nation. The past few weeks have shown that they don't care a fig for such contortionism.
They affected to do so in the past, because the pan-unionist onslaught on the Irish Constitution was correctly seen as an attempt to achieve the permanent symbolic separation of the nationalist peoples North and South. It was never the case that they felt a deep desire to rush into the arms of their Southern brethren; rather they needed some workable aspirational model in which to imagine themselves. Maybe this is just a complicated way of saying that partition created two different Irish nationalist moulds. On the surface, the aspiration is the same, but its meaning is quite different on either side of the Border.
"We" down here - those of us who care at all - want to fulfil some nagging project of restoring wholeness to ourselves; "they" want to rid themselves of the occupying presence which has imposed a different form of unity. We, the inhabitants of a Republic of sorts, casually await their arrival; they must wait for the permission of their present proprietors.
Their nationalism is a direct response to British occupation; ours is a mixture of received sentiment and over-exaggerated embarrassment, a sort of guilt of the already-liberated.
It may even be true to say that, as of now, these two forms of Irish nationalism are perhaps at least as incompatible with each other as is either of them with unionism. And it is clear that the reunification of the two forms will be impossible without breaking both moulds, a process which must precede any territorial reintegration.
This is why I have changed my mind and decided to vote Yes. It seems clear to me that, as things stand, we Southern republicans can cling to our core values until doomsday and still not move any closer towards unity. The reunification project must necessarily be approached in the initial stages on a piecemeal basis on either side of the Border.
It is clear also the primary impetus must come from the Northern side, since that is where the most fundamental obstacle exists. And since Sinn Fein is the only force which is both committed to the goal of Irish unity and in a position to move the situation forward in the North, it follows that Sinn Fein is best placed to decide how this might best be advanced in the occupied territory. The situation "down here", however, is quite different. Although Sinn Fein has a considerable presence here also, it does not have ownership of the concept of Irish unity viewed from this side.
For all that we have abandoned our Northern brethren, we Southern republicans have a right to redemption. However, we must accept two principles above all: (a) we do not have a moral right to sell out the national aspiration and (b) reunification cannot be achieved unless Northern republicans can succeed in realigning the Northern Ireland state in such a way as to line it up for unity. Seen in the light of Articles 2 and 3, these two principles appear to be in conflict. But, in the end, it comes down to the difference between idle idealism and practical progress, and ultimately the issue is that, while Sinn Fein has at least some chance of moving us all towards unity, the rest of nationalist Ireland, even with the most glittering set of ideals in the firmament, has not a hope in hell of achieving this on its own. None of this, by the way, means that I will stop believing that the national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and territorial seas.