New Ireland Report: Concessions & Prods
Episcopal News Service. May 10, 1984 [84097]
DUBLIN (DPS, May 10) -- The New Ireland Forum -- a broad based and ambitious effort to secure peace and stability in Ireland -- has published a report containing some needed concessions and has thereby, in the words of one editorial writer, "put the problem of Northern Ireland squarely back on the political agenda" of Great Britain.
The Forum is a nearly year-old gathering of nationalist parties in Ireland representing almost 70 percent of the total population and nearly 90 percent of the nationalists in the island. In spite of the fact that four unionist parties in Northern Ireland refused to take part in the deliberations, the Forum sought -- through both testimony and more than 300 written submissions -- to elicit the opinions of all secular and religious groups in Ireland that reject the use of violence.
One such group was the Church of Ireland. Bishop Samuel Poyntz of Cork, Cloyne and Ross led a delegation representing laity and clergy from the Republic and Northern Ireland to testify to -- among other things -- the existence of two political traditions within the Church: "one finding expression in Unionism or attachment to the British Crown, the other expressed by Nationalism or Republicanism. These traditions," the delegation affirmed, "have co-existed to the mutual enrichment of the Church."
From that and many similar submissions, emerged what commentators have noted as one of the main strengths of the Forum Report: its' repeated, strong assertions that both strains in Irish thought need to be balanced politically, ethnically and economically in whatever structure -- if any -- is created.
Although the Forum proposed three such possible structures, Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald was quick to point out the report "is not a blueprint for the Island of the future. The representatives of one of the two traditions in this island cannot arrogate such a task to themselves alone. What we have together assembled is not a blueprint, but an agenda for possible action."
The action he wished? "The ideas we have put forward together show an openness to the other tradition in this island, and a sensitivity to the preoccupations of those who belong to that tradition, which have no precedent in Irish history. I believe that this openness will be recognized publicly by many, and possibly privately by many more among those who do not share our perspective.
"We in the New Ireland Forum are, I feel, entitled to hope that others, the British people and their leaders and those of the Unionist tradition, whose analysis of the background to the present situation may differ notably from our own, will show a similar openness in their approach to the resolution of the problems with which history has left us in this island."
The early portions of the Report are given to historical and current analysis, and it is in the latter that the concern for lifting up the parallel traditions is first spotlighted. The same section sounds a note of urgency based on based on the deteriorating economics and the increase of violence. "The net effect of the existing policy is to drive both sections of the community in Northern Ireland further apart.... It has thus contributed to the emergence in both sections of the community of elements prepared to resort to violence, on one side to preserve, and on the other to change the existing constitutional position." Both in its exclusion of advocates of violence and in the report itself, the Forum condemns any resort to violence.
The core of the Report is the fifth chapter entitled "Framework for a New Ireland: Present Realities and Future Requirements." While these are merely summaries of the points that emerged during the Forum's year of work (a number of separate reports detailing studies of the effects of violence, economics and governmental structures have already been issued) these 22 points are likely to form the agenda for the urgent debate that the Forum seeks to initiate.
It is upon such public debate that the Forum appears to be pinning its hopes. Among the points lifted up in the realities are the assertions that Irish unity should be pursued democratically and can "only come about through agreement... (which) "means that the political arrangements for a new and sovereign Ireland would have to be freely negotiated and agreed to by the people of the North and by the people of the South."
In releasing the Report, the prime minister called upon every organization within the Island to undertake that process of debate and education. Grappling as it does with the dual traditions within its own body, bridging the border the way few other institutions do and possessing -- through the Anglican Communion -- the means to carry the debate into North America and Great Britain, it seems likely that the Church of Ireland is well placed to take a leading role in that process.