Why, in the discussion of Britishness and the nationalist threat to the integrity of the UK, does no one mention Northern Ireland, asks Dennis Kennedy
In pondering British identity and the problems of Scotland, of assimilating reluctant minorities, no one refers to the most serious assault by far in recent times on that integrity - a terrorist campaign that led to 3,500 deaths, and which has absorbed vast amounts of British government time and diplomacy in reaching the accommodation we have today.
Tony Blair ignored Northern Ireland in his Runnymede Trust speech of December 2006, as did Gordon Brown in his Fabian Society speech of January 2006, likewise Jack Straw in his article in The World Today (May 2007). July's key discussion document The Governance of Britain, presented by Brown as the new prime minister, takes scant notice of Northern Ireland, as its title suggests.
All this may reflect an Old Labour view that the "Troubles" are an unfortunate hangover from 1921, and that Northern Ireland should be off-loaded into a united Ireland as soon as decently possible, but that does not mean there are no lessons to be learned. It was the failure of the UK to accommodate and integrate a majority of the Irish into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland after the 1800 Act of Union that ended in the failure of that union. It was the inability of the UK to reconcile the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland to life within the United Kingdom that led to the IRA terrorist campaign.
Is there nothing to learn from this? Why did the 1801 United Kingdom fail? A factor was the refusal, mainly at the behest of George III, to grant Catholic emancipation immediately. Irish Catholics were expected to identify with a new state which denied them full political rights. Even after emancipation, they found themselves in a state which was avowedly Protestant, where the monarch was head of the Anglican church, and where that was the established church in both England and Ireland. The Governance of Britain, a potted history of the constitutional evolution of the UK, makes no mention of Catholic emancipation.
There were, and are, other strands to Irish nationalism, but few as all pervading as Catholicism. The lesson was not learned after partition in 1921; the new, reduced, UK still had almost half a million Irish Catholics fiercely resentful of their inclusion in that state. By that time republicanism was another factor in Irish nationalism, yet Catholics/Nationalists in Northern Ireland were asked to give their allegiance to a state which was not just a monarchy, but where the trappings of a Protestant monarchy coloured much of the institutional and social life of the country.
It has taken 70 years for some of those lessons to be learned. While Brown urges everyone in the UK to fly the Union flag, its flying in Northern Ireland is restricted because it is seen as divisive.
But what happens in Northern Ireland is apparently irrelevant. The Governance of Britain says symbols help embody a national culture and citizenship, with the Union flag one of the most recognisable, and it wants current rules of flying it on government buildings relaxed. But not in Northern Ireland. There, it says, there are particular sensitivities.
As for identity, the document insists that it is important to be clearer about what it means to be British, and insists that while there is room for multiple identities, none of these should take precedence over "the core values that define what it means to be British". But not in Northern Ireland, where the Belfast Agreement specifically recognises the right of anyone to identify himself as not British.
Behind the radical changes implemented in Northern Ireland might seem to lie a realisation that the United Kingdom is not a nation state, and there is no national identity that can be labelled British. The UK should be seen, rather, as partly a historical accident, and partly a convenient political arrangement within which people of varying identities can live together and organise their affairs in a manner that is beneficial to all. People live in it because they were born in it, because political or economic pressures forced them to migrate to it, or just because it suits them. It is pointless to agonise over Britishness - it is sufficient that those who live in the state recognise its legitimacy, respect its laws and join in the political processes of its governance. Or were the changes in Northern Ireland just part of the appeasement of terrorism, and further evidence of London's distancing itself?
The British should learn from the EU. Like the UK, it is an accident of history, the outcome of appalling wars, but it is also a convenient political and economic arrangement for an ever increasing number of Europeans. Its leaders have been foolish in trying to foster a European identity by decreeing a European constitution, anthem, flag and, now, a president - all trappings of the nation state. The EU is not and was never intended to be a nation state, or anything like it. Nor will a European identity ever replace national identities, however contrived.
That does not mean it cannot be an ever closer and sui generis form of union. Its flourishing will depend on its efficiency in satisfying the political, economic, social and security needs of those who live within it, not on everyone waving a blue flag and singing Ode to Joy.
Similarly, the future of the UK will depend more on efficient governance for all, than on banging on about Britishness.
Dennis Kennedy is a member of the Cadogan Group, a Belfast-based group promoting discussion and analysis of the political situation in Northern Ireland