With hindsight, clear difficulties have emerged with the 'constitutional engineering' of the Belfast Agreement, writes Robin Wilson.
In a dolorous editorial last Monday on the eighth anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, this paper declared that "it is a standing affront, surely, to all democrats that Irish and British citizens live on a part of this island in a near-apartheid state of separate track development".
In his piece the next day on 1916, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell concluded: "I believe that recent events have more than ever set us the challenge of reconciling green and orange - a challenge which has never been taken up successfully by Irish republicans since the 1790s. That aspiration of the 1916 Proclamation remains unfinished business. And the 90th anniversary celebration of Easter 1916 should not blind us - even momentarily - to our challenging republican vocation of reconciliation."
So why, over the two centuries of modern Irish politics from 1798 to 1998, has the task of reconciliation proved so elusive? The immediate answer is that, with the benefit of hindsight, difficulties have emerged with the "constitutional engineering" of the Belfast Agreement.
My colleague Prof Rick Wilford, of Queen's University, and myself have for seven years been leading a research team on the outworking of the agreement. And, in a report* published on the eighth anniversary - part of an all-Ireland project to subject both jurisdictions to objective assessment, run jointly by the two Irish think-tanks, Tasc and Democratic Dialogue - we demonstrate that aspects of the agreement have, unwittingly, reinforced rather than softened sectarian stereotypes.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance defines democracy as having two aspects: "popular control", or accountability of government to the people, and "political equality", or a recognition that there can be no second-class citizens. In Northern Ireland, political Protestants, euphemistically called "unionists", have focused only on the first ("majority rule"), while political Catholics, or "nationalists", have stressed only the second ("minority rights").
So unionists have recently demanded a "shadow" assembly to make British direct rule accountable, which nationalists have rejected as enhancing Protestant power. Nationalists, meanwhile, have called for implementation of the agreement over the heads of the Protestant community, through British-Irish co-operation or an appointed executive of civil-society figures at Stormont, which unionists have set their faces against.
Both sides talk the language of "democracy" and cannot understand why the other does not agree. The initiative by the two premiers to "implement the agreement in full" by November 24th does not look propitious.
For both sides, too, can draw succour from the agreement. Its key constitutional section enshrines the "consent principle" that the status of the North cannot change without a majority in a Border poll (which political Protestants like), while simultaneously insisting that there is "parity of esteem" for unionist and nationalist identities (which, from the minority position, political Catholics favour).
This has led to insoluble arguments over flags, for example: does the Union flag fly, or must it be accompanied by the Tricolour if it does? This, and other features of the agreement - notably the system of communal designation of assembly members as "unionist" or "nationalist" (or "other") - have entrenched the communal antagonism that supporters of reconciliation hoped would wither away after 1998.
On the longer view, the republican philosophy which emerged in 1798 and which was to find its apogee in 1916, and to define the character of the independent Irish state, has never managed to achieve its cherished goal of "the unity of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter in the common name of Irishman".
The Proclamation is a classic civic-republican document. The enduring popular appeal of 1916 lies in its ringing affirmation of liberty and equality, with the republic so declared promising "religious and civil liberty, equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens".
But this is where the limits of civic republicanism become apparent. As in France and the US, the citizen is perceived as an abstract political man, whose duties to the state can trump his rights. This contains two dangers.
The first, as Tom Garvin has said of republicanism in his account of the foundation of the State, is "a certain exclusiveness". The active political men may take the view that the inactive mass have to be led - by the nose, if need-be, and opponents even faced down. This can shade into the authoritarianism of a self-appointed revolutionary elite, as 1916 and the Civil War demonstrated, never mind the more recent Northern Troubles.
The second danger is a commitment to assimilation intolerant of diversity. It was, of course, convenient to claim that sectarian division in Ireland had been "carefully fostered" by the British, but far too simplistic to be adequate. In any event, the ethnic diversity of today's Republic poses a greater challenge.
The risk in celebrating 1916 - rather than commemorating it reflectively - is that it suggests, as Mr McDowell implies, that republicanism has it within itself to resolve the challenges of reconciliation on this island. It does not. But nor does it, nor 1916, have to be airbrushed from history.
As a result of the growing division in the North, officials in the administration there prepared a policy framework published last year called A Shared Future. This declares its aim as a "normal" civic society in Northern Ireland, by implication beyond sectarian antagonism. It was drafted to encapsulate the three elements, of what the modern philosopher David Held has defined as "cosmopolitanism":
- egalitarian individualism, recognising that each individual is equally worthy of respect;
- reciprocal recognition, in which everyone acknowledges this equal worth; and
- impartial treatment by public authorities of the claims made by individuals and associations upon them.
Cosmopolitanism is increasingly seen as offering a route to integration - rather than assimilation or ghettoisation - in diverse societies. It preserves the freedom and equality at the heart of civic republicanism, but recognises that citizens are diverse and must resolve their differences through dialogue, under a state umbrella where ostensibly civic authorities are not in practice imbricated with a particular dominant ethos. It recognises that integration is a two-way street.
If this philosophy had been applied by those in power in Northern Ireland at any time since partition, its problems would have been solved, and, over time, it points to a more positive future - a shared future - than the troubled vista of last Monday's editorial.
On that basis, at last, we might find a unity of purpose across the island, and realise the long-delayed task of reconciliation. And, in that context, 1916 is best seen as a sepia image, which will fade naturally with time - rather than ever again returning to haunt us.
Robin Wilson is the director of Democratic Dialogue.
* The Trouble with Northern Ireland: The Belfast Agreement and Democratic Governance, Tasc at New Island (see www.tascnet.ie)