Madam, – While I respect the view – which I shared – that equates a free Ireland with a united Ireland, recent developments as a result of the peace process, which give us new freedom to achieve freedom in Ireland as a whole, suggest that we have now taken a broader and more pragmatic view.
Being an ideal, in any situation freedom as experienced is never likely to be entirely perfect or complete.
As of now, Ireland is, in many essential respects, free; in principle, free of violence, free of coercion of any community, and free to determine its own future, in accordance with the Belfast Agreement, overwhelmingly endorsed by the people of Ireland, North and South, in 1998, as amplified since. This has also delivered shared and inclusive democratic participation in devolved self-government, complemented by North-South institutions. Self-determination, as the term suggests, and as international law prescribes, permits the free choice of more than one outcome.
Ireland free, to this degree, is also at peace, the dissident exception proving the rule (Des Dalton, vice-president of Republican Sinn Féin’s letter of May 31st).
The 2016 Commemoration, as planned by the Taoiseach Brian Cowen, will be about building on the progress that has been achieved, particularly in the Republic and more recently in Ireland as a whole, in the past 100 years, in order to face new challenges, including extending our freedom in many different ways beyond what was achievable in the past. While some promise has gone unfulfilled, other hopes have been exceeded. The memory and lessons of past struggles will always remain important and relevant, but conflict can be transcended. That there has been a huge improvement in, and a wide-ranging normalisation of, contemporary relations between Ireland and Britain should also be acknowledged and welcomed.
There is no democratic, historical or ideological justification, or any basis in international law, unless one is a unionist, for not embracing a constitutional republicanism, now that we have at long last succeeded in creating a foundation for future active cooperation between Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter and other more recent traditions. The original peaceful constitutional ideals of William Drennan in 1791, when the United Irishmen were founded in Belfast, have something that everyone, even unionists, can in part identify with. – Yours, etc,