“The Complex History and Current State of Ireland: From Colonization to Political Change”

Ireland was colonized by the British for much of its history. It was a colony in the full sense of the word: a territory dominated by a foreign government and a group of people who, coming from that foreign country, settle in the alien territory. The government of the occupying country promotes the arrival of settlers in order to become a majority and keep the occupied territory. However, the fact that the non-native population is the majority does not mean that it ceases to be a colony, it still is, as is the case with Western Sahara in its relationship with Morocco on the African continent, where Moroccans are already the majority, if we do not count the population of Tindouf camps. It could also be said of Northern Ireland in Europe, stronghold of the English presence in Ireland, an occupation that lasted centuries and that populated that area with Anglican Englishmen, to the detriment of the original Irish who were expelled from their lands.

In the latter case it can be argued that Michael Collins signed the treaty that, in 1922, ended the War of Independencepaved the way for Republic of Ireland and he segregated the six northern counties of the island, so that they could decide their path. A path that was already traced. The Parliament of Northern Ireland at the time opted to belong to the United Kingdom of Great Britain since, by then, the majority of the population was unionist. A clear example of how metropolises make demography a weapon of massive expansion. However, today the republicans, or supporters of the accession to Ireland, can be a majority in the territory and the Sinn Fein is the party with the most votes in the last elections, what’s more, After Brexit, a border should be established between Ireland and Northern Ireland, but the recent “Windsor Protocol” signed between Great Britain and the European Union to address the status of Ulster, rather establishes it between the United Kingdom and Northern Irelandthrough restrictions and controls on products that enter the historically troubled territory from the neighboring island.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) is a country with little vertebrate, like Spain. Having been the main world power in the 19th century and a good part of the 20th century hid the cries where it was established as a nation-state that in recent times has recovered its real dimensions. Scotland, with a deep nationalist feeling, already held an independence referendum that the sovereignists lost by 10 points, but it became clear that the break could occur when the situation favors a new consultation. Scotland itself has a stronger emotional bond with Ireland than with England, which it has historically endured as one endures a neighbor who never stops causing nuisance. Rejected in Northern Ireland and Scotland, Brexit, fostered by right-wing populism appealing to a primitive jingoism and nostalgia for the depleted times of the Empire, only benefits the City of London while precipitating the country into a decadent present eaten away by decades of neoliberal policies that have scrapped public services and privatized most of the public companies, true jewels in the crown, from British Airways to Rolls Royce. Ultra-liberal capitalism driven by Margaret Thatcherundermined the defense of public and collective interests, left workers unprotected by taking away their rights in collective bargaining and, ultimately, led the country to the shameful and lurid scenes of dilapidated and ghettoized public hospitals.

if london is a boat that makes watercon four prime ministers in the last three yearsthe European Union is not there to embrace it like a flag, it tries to dribble a possible financial crisis generated by the repeal of Donald Trump’s banking regulations, it has to face a war within its geographical borders imbued in the costume of a hard-working secondary actress, it must cope with an inflationary crisis triggered by the energy dependency the result of not betting on renewable energies in a timely manner, while increasing support for the extreme right parties that are already in government in countries such as Italy, Poland, Hungary and shortly Finland. The EU is a market-oriented project to the detriment of the social sphere, in which the lobbys of dictatorships like Morocco or Qatar, and some of its parliamentarians allow themselves to be corrupted or they swallow toads if necessary, which is still a form of corruption, because toads always come from the same nauseating pools: Morocco, Israel, the Gulf emirates, Saudi Arabia… A thick cloak of silence covers the excesses of these Rogue states under the protection of the United States and the European Union, a silence that reaches the UN Security Council.

Like every colony, in Ireland there were first-class and second-class citizens.. The first class were the English and the second class were the Irish of course. Oscar Wildefrom an Anglican family, studied at the Trinity Collegethe most prestigious Irish academic institution (with one of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever seen: fine wood, leather-bound books and a coquettish and implausible spiral staircase), instead James Joyce was an Irish Catholic and studied at University College, less prestigious, more like walking around the house without stairs. Ireland was always an agrarian and backward country, vampirized by the Catholic Church to which it granted unlimited power on the moral, social, economic and political level in opposition to the Anglican Protestantism of the occupying power for a good part of its history. As in so many places, the result of that power was abuse in all its forms, of course with the complicity, if not the help, of the State institutions once Independence was achieved. “The Sisters of the Madeleine” (Peter Mullan, 2002), tells the story of this powerful Irish congregation where violence, humiliation and sleaze go hand in hand in a coven perpetrated to exploit and terrorize the weakest and most vulnerable. Recently, the crowd of Pedophilia cases led Pope Francis to ask for forgiveness, for the umpteenth time, to the victims. A petition that is late, it was in 2018, and it is unsatisfactory, more than 15,000 victims need justice, reparation and memory. The two right-wing conservative parties that have taken turns in power since Independence (Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael) have had a lot to do with it as necessary accomplices.

now something in Ireland is changing, the old bipartisanship is in danger of falling apart, since the last elections were won by the Sinn Fein in number of votes, tied for seats with the Fianna Fail. Sinn Feinn is the same left-wing nationalist party that it also won in the 2020 elections in Ulster, therefore, it is the party with the most votes on both sides of the imaginary border that divides the island in two, but it does not govern the north due to the obstructionism of the unionists and it does not govern the south for the coalition between the two “old political parties”, another of the atavisms that Ireland has yet to resolve: give way to a genuine alternative government.

When Ireland ceased to be an eminently agrarian country and the process of urbanization brought to Dublin enough suffering humanity and the increasing violence of the underworld and high births to make it the scene of black novelthere by the 50s of the 20th centuryappeared Quirk, the tormented coroner who performs the autopsy of the country at the same time as the autopsy of the last corpse that left him at dawn. Quirke is a powerful crime novel character born from the imagination of that prodigious writer who is John Banville, o Benjamin Black when you write “noir”. Self-absorbed and incredulous, sad like any good forensic man, with a life marked by alcohol adjusted to the Irish cliché, and a soul in tune with his own city: “A gust of hot breeze with a dusty mixture of diverse smells reached his face. , the exhausted breath of summer. He remembered the trams of yesteryear that rattled by with great noise and sparks from the tracks. He had lived in that city most of his life and continued to feel like an outsider ”(“ Laura’s other name ”. Benjamin Black. 2007).

No escape from Quirke’s surgical observation, this soulless city is also a city of handsome Georgian gates and streets lined with old pubs and ginger beer taverns. The same one that becomes the most welcoming city in Europe when the sweet and ancestral airs sound and settle on the leather of a bodrhan to which a bagpipe is joined and a violin is brought closer. The same Dublin that houses, within the walls of Saint Patrick’s, a dean who imagined the misfortune of a traveler through unknown countries, either populated by giants or by tiny men, Lilliputians to speak in their own terms. And the same as on June 16, 1904, he saw a citizen named Leopold Bloom to begin a journey that would last a day, a routine day, but that would open up a new way of saying a novel.

gerardo rodriguez

member of the National Secretariat of STEC-IC