A little over a century ago, in 1921, at the end of a war of independence that led London to give in to Irish nationalists, Ireland was divided in two. Ireland gained independence, in the form of the Free State, which would culminate in the proclamation of the Republic in 1948, recognized by London in 1949.
But at the time of independence, the north, partly populated by British settlers, chose partition.
On the scale of history, this should not really be surprising. The English who had settled in the north of the country, like a conquering colonial minority, did not intend to become a minority in the new state. This is what we might call British imperial logic. They therefore bet, as we said again, on the score.
Partition
The fracture of Ireland was part of the post-revolutionary political order, and would lead to a real tragedy in the 20th century – what has been called the period of “the Troubles”.
But a century has passed, demographics have evolved, and as we learned in 2022, Catholics, in other words the Irish, are now more numerous than Protestants in Northern Ireland – Protestants, in other words, the English, including are now in the minority.
Certainly, current vocabulary dictates that we use religious terms rather than national terms to speak of these populations, but this consists of making a concession to the British, who thus neutralized the meaning of the Irish term, as if it applied independently to all the inhabitants of the island, independently of the historical Irish people, who were thus reduced to their faith.
This is the same logic, by the way, that allowed Canada to transform Quebecers into simple “francophones” – but I will return to this question another time.
And I come back to the essential: the Irish managed to elect, for the first time, a nationalist prime minister, a member of Sinn Fein, at the end of a two-year political crisis, linked to the terms of Brexit. This is Michelle O’Neill. Elected in 2022, she finally takes up her position. Certainly, she is playing the “moderation” card, but she has still announced her intention to hold, within ten years, a referendum to ensure the reunification of Ireland, which would be the natural vocation of the island. Naturally, the northern English are already opposed to it, and London officially refuses to hear about it.
Demography
But demography makes history and could lead, in the medium and long term, to the only natural outlet in the history of the country. If Ireland manages to reunite within 10 to 20 years, we can say that Irish independence will have been completed – as if the revolt that began at Easter 1916 had taken more than a century to achieve the full liberation of the country.
We will learn a simple lesson from this: history lasts a long time and that of peoples is crossed by many twists and turns. The struggle for independence, then for the reconquest of its entire territory, can last several decades, even more than a century, but it can succeed as long as the nationalists do not give in, as long as they do not capitulate.