Exclusive | ‘My simple solution to NI was Brits out, 32-county Ireland’: Taoiseach on how his thinking has changed since first visit

Exclusive | ‘My simple solution to NI was Brits out, 32-county Ireland’: Taoiseach on how his thinking has changed since first visit

In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, Micheál Martin sets out his policy on Northern Ireland in more detail than ever before. In its own way, it’s radical – and not what Irish unity activists will want to hear

Micheál Martin first crossed the border as a young man desperately curious about a place which, since his childhood, had been an erupting volcano of sectarian slaughter.

It was the early 1980s and, amid the hunger strike chaos, Martin’s visit was atypical.

When the Waterford writer Dervla Murphy came north a few years earlier in 1976, she observed: “South of the Dublin-Galway line, there is little sense of personal involvement with Northern Ireland; it seems much further away than Britain… or even than the USA.”

The Taoiseach is an earthily practical politician. But sitting in Dublin Castle’s grandeur, there’s a fervour as he speaks about Northern Ireland.

Yet it’s far less threatening than the rhetoric of his early predecessors who fed unionist suspicion that the south was itching to take over the north.

When Martin first came to Belfast, he had an uncomplicated republican view: “The simple solution to Northern Ireland was Brits out, 32-county Ireland — that’s it, done and dusted. Everybody join up; they’ll all be happy after.”But what he saw reshaped his politics.“

That was the turning point for me. Particularly when we met young unionists in their homes and they were saying ‘how would you like it if your uncle or your dad was killed and murdered just because he happens to be wearing the wrong uniform? And how are you going to unite Ireland if that continues to happen?’

“That set me thinking that this was much more complex.”

After becoming a TD in 1989, he went to Corrymeela with northern and southern politicians, among them another future Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, and the Ulster Unionist McGimpsey brothers.

That week, he came to see that “the mythologies about each other, the perceptions, we got so wrong”.Few votes in Cork South-Central turn on the issues dominating Radio Ulster’s news bulletins.Yet Martin says he was “fascinated by the north because I was eight years of age when it blew up. And so all my teenage years were bombs, bullets, terrible atrocities, watching horrific things happening on one television channel… but we became immune; we actually believed it would never end.

“I never thought I would be a minister in a government signing an agreement for peace.”

The interview is on April 10, the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, and Martin talks about it almost as a sacred text.

Where Sinn Fein present the Agreement as a route to a border poll, Martin takes something very different from it.

Earlier, in a speech in Dublin Castle’s historic St Patrick’s Hall, he quoted the Agreement’s pledge “to strive in every practical way towards reconciliation”.

That speech set out the latest iteration of his centrepiece Northern Ireland policy — the Shared Island initiative. That €1.5bn fund encourages practical north-south linkages. A test for funding is that projects would make sense irrespective of whether the border is ever removed.

Despite latent suspicion, even many unionists see this as benign.

When asked if the initiative has anything to do with Irish unity, Martin says: “No, in the sense that it’s not part of a political project or anything like that and it’s most certainly not a Trojan horse.“

It very much is grounded on people-to-people connections and basically the simple question: Can we share this piece of ground together in a harmonious way that involves real sustainable peace and friendliness for generations to come?”

Emphasising the value of relationships, he says when he was last Taoiseach he visited the Orange Order and “they took back their reservations on Shared Island because of the engagement that I had with them”.

There is “increased and significant engagement” with unionists, he says. That was visible on Thursday, with Orange grand secretary Mervyn Gibson and Ian Paisley in the audience.

Senior unionists speak privately of Martin as someone they respect and with whom they can do business. They trust him in a way they didn’t trust Leo Varadkar. Some of that is about circumstances; had Martin been Taoiseach in the worst of the Brexit years, he may well have followed Varadkar’s course and been viewed with hostility. But he has a deeper well of goodwill from which to draw, having built decades-long relationships.

Watched by Orange supremo and Ian Paisley, Taoiseach launches new element of his key NI policy

“People are coming to us with projects…some of the projects that unionist politicians are coming to us about are about shared identity or experiences across different traditions,” he says.

“Some are more practical in terms of greenways, which I think is a no-brainer. We put people into boxes too much; we label people too much. Part of Shared Island is taking away the labels. So if you’re interested in biodiversity or climate change and you’re from a particular community, where you’re from or what tradition you’re from or what politics you back should have nothing to do with a shared interest in developing a biodiversity project, for example, or in developing a greenway or a road or connectivity. I see the politics evolving differently, in a way, and it’s also through reflection myself.”

He tells how two of his uncles fought in the Second World War while his father was in the Irish Army; one of his uncles became a British Conservative supporter, another was a British Labour Party member, a third was a communist, and his father was a Fianna Fail member. His “staunchly republican” mother’s family were involved in the War of Independence.

Sinn Fein is demanding a border poll by 2030, but Martin has almost as much of a veto on that as London. While the Secretary of State would legally call a referendum, it would be a hopeless cause without a detailed policy proposal for the new state.

Even Sinn Fein now accepts that is necessary, yet only the Irish Government can provide it.

When asked about a 2030 plebiscite, Martin is curt: “We’re not planning for a border poll in 2030 and I believe the work we’re doing now — making the Good Friday Agreement work, in parallel with that the Shared Island which is very practical incremental investment, continually engaging with people… it’s less attractive politically. You will notice that I’ve never sought to trumpet the Shared Island initiative.

“Many of my own parliamentary colleagues say to me ‘people don’t know enough about it’ or ‘you’re not broadcasting it’. There’s a deliberate reason for that — because I understand the sensitivities that you asked me in the opening question.

“These are easy things to call for and I find some of the work around that — and I’ve met with the project from Notre Dame [university] and so on — and I would be somewhat concerned with some of what I would perceive to be a contrived approach to this.”

Contrived by who?

“People saying ‘the end goal is this, so how do we get to the end goal?’ And so then everything around research — and people would dispute that — but that’s the sense I get at times whereas what I witnessed on the stage there, that is actually the future of the island.

“You can put what political shape you want on it afterwards but… politicians don’t exist for political institutions’ sake. Institutions don’t exist for their own sake. They must serve the people — and that’s what I’m about… the vast majority of middle-ground opinion on the island get this. There’s been a huge response in the north; people just want to get on with this and the practicalities of it.”

Martin doesn’t quite say he’s indifferent to the border, but his entire emphasis is on uniting people rather than territory. This is John Hume reinterpreted for a modern audience.

Speaking of his own ideological evolution, he says: “The more fundamental change has been not to look at people from a different tradition as ‘the other’ and to seek to understand where people are coming from.”

It’s hardly a coincidence that having seen his own views alter after building relationships, he now believes that is key to the future.

Repeatedly, he plays down urgently removing the border and plays up uniting people: “The whole Shared Island thing is about reconciliation. In a way, there’s a comfort zone within political parties, saying ‘here’s our objective’ and ‘here’s our aim’ and here’s this and here’s that; it’s much harder work to actually connect people and to do the hard work of reconciliation.”

What does he want Northern Ireland to look like in 2075?

Even here, he doesn’t say “a united Ireland” but responds: “My vision is very much the Wolfe Tone vision that the people are much more comfortable in each other’s skins… the political configuration I’m open about.

“What I mean by that is: It will evolve. I think politics has to work in Northern Ireland and there has to be a sustained manifestation of politics working in Northern Ireland so that even the politicians of Northern Ireland are comfortable working with each other.

“That has happened in starts and stops over the last number of years — too many stops. There needs to be a period where people engage and move things on and then, over time, I think let things evolve, but I don’t believe in forcing people into anything.”

Does that mean prolonged Stormont stability is a prerequisite for a border poll? He doesn’t quite say so, but comes close, saying that “politics does have to for its own sake work — if it’s not working in Northern Ireland, it’s certainly not going to work on a broader canvas… I mean, people have to be comfortable in whatever emerges.

“And we know the history of the northern state and all of that. We’ve had those arguments time and time again. It’s very interesting when you look at De Valera and Lemass, for example, they both realised this, actually… De Valera realised early on that this had to be about building bridges and reconciliation. Lemass certainly did when he visited Terence O’Neill on that occasion. They were trying to free themselves from the rhetoric that surrounded them, and from where they’d come.”

In drawing on solidly republican predecessors to defend his stance, Martin will surprise some people. Yet despite Éamon de Valera and Seán Lemass being seen as exemplars of traditional anti-partitionist attitudes in the decades after 1921, both had a more nuanced view.

De Valera came to believe in improving cross-border relations and made clear his willingness for Northern Ireland to continue under Stormont’s rule after unity.

Lemass said in 1969 that he would be appalled at compelling northerners into a united Ireland against their will, something he said would be “morally destructive”. Unity would need agreement, he said, “although not necessarily 100% assent by the people in the north”.

Thomas Duffy of New York’s United Ireland Publicity Committee wrote to Lemass, dismayed at this lack of urgency around ending partition. He asked if they were “to just sit and wait it out, waiting for the Orangeman to see the light?”

The Orange Order’s most influential figure still opposes unity, but his presence in Dublin Castle last week signifies how drastically relations have improved.

Writing in 1968, TK Whittaker, the brilliant Rostrevor-born bureaucrat who reshaped the Republic, told Lemass that after accepting partition couldn’t be ended by force, they were “left with only one choice, a policy of seeking unity in Ireland by agreement in Ireland between Irishmen. Of its nature this is a long-term policy, requiring patience, understanding and forbearance and resolute resistance to emotionalism and opportunism. It is none the less patriotic for that”.

Martin is someone now confident to make clear he doesn’t think Irish unity is on the horizon and will only happen after patient unglamorous toil.

Martin’s approach will dismay Irish unity activists who believe unity is near at hand.

The difficulty for them is that Martin’s stance is overwhelmingly popular with southern voters.

In a poll published by The Sunday Independent last weekend, when voters were asked to pick two issues which should be the Irish Government’s most important priorities, a united Ireland was selected by just 1%.

Some unionists will be jubilant about this, but they should be cautious to avoid the mistaken assumption that the circumstances which now pertain will forever endure.

Martin’s time as Taoiseach will be temporary.

Less than two years ago, the then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said: “I believe we are on the path to unification. I believe that there will be a united Ireland in my lifetime.”

A few hours after Martin’s interview with this newspaper, Varadkar said in Philadelphia that “every generation has its great cause — I believe ours is the cause of uniting our island”.

These are two fundamentally different southern visions of the future.

As someone with deep personal knowledge of Northern Ireland, and whose deputy chief of staff, Pat McParland, is from Camlough, Martin has thought this through carefully.

He knows Northern Ireland well enough to know the counter arguments. He’s rejected them not from a position of ignorance, but from one of knowledge.