The victory by Ireland’s leftwing Sinn Fein Party in the Republic’s recent election has not only overturned some 90 years of domination by the island’s two center-right parties, it suddenly puts the issue of Irish reunification on the agenda. While the campaign was fought over bread and butter issues like housing, the collapsing health care system, and homelessness, a united Ireland has long been Sinn Fein’s raison d’être. In the aftermath, Party leaders called for a border referendum on the subject.

But nothing is simple in Ireland, most of all, reunification.

For starters, the election’s outcome is enormously complex. Sinn Fein (We Ourselves) did get the largest number of first-choice votes—Ireland has a system of rated voting—but not by much. The center-right parties that have taken turns ruling since 1922—Fine Gael (the Irish Tribe) and Fianna Fail (Soldiers of Destiny)—took 22% and 21% respectively to Sinn Fein’s 24.5%.

Although other progressive parties, like the Greens, also did well, it would be extremely difficult to form a government without one of the two big traditional parties. Fine Gael has ruled out working with Sinn Fein because of its association with the Irish Republican Army, but Fianna Fail is hedging its bets. Party leader Michael Martin was coy in the aftermath of the vote, saying he respected the democratic decision of the Irish people.

But getting from the election’s outcome to actual governance promises to be a difficult process, and one that, in the end, might fail, forcing yet another general election. Sinn Fein will be reluctant to play second fiddle to Fianna Fail—the latter won one more seat than Sinn Fein—since junior partners tend to do badly in follow up elections. Sinn Fein would have won more seats if it had fielded more candidates, but it was reluctant to do so because it had taken a beating in local elections just seven months earlier. The Irish lower house, or Dail, has 180 seats.

If governance looks complex, try reunification.

On the one hand, there are any number of roadblocks to reuniting the Republic and Northern Ireland, many of them historical. On the other hand, there are some very practical reasons for considering such a move. Sorting them out will be the trick.

Northern Ireland— called the Plantation of Ulster by Elizabeth I—was established in 1609 after driving out the two major Irish clans, the O’Neills and the O’Donnels, and seizing 500,000 square acres of prime farm land. Some 20,000 Protestants, many of them Scots, were moved in to replace them.

From the beginning, Ulster was meant to be an ethnic stronghold. Protestants who used native Irish labor had to pay special taxes and eventually even intermarriage with Catholics was discouraged. Protestant farmers got special deals on rent and land improvements—the “Ulster Privilege”—and Catholics were politically and economically marginalized. Hatred between the two communities was actively stoked by extremist Protestant organizations like The Orange Order. The name comes from William of Orange (William III), the Protestant husband of Mary II, queen of England.

This is hardly ancient history. Up until recently, Protestants controlled Northern Ireland through a combination of disenfranchising Catholics and direct repression. In 1972 a peaceful march in Londonderry demanding civil rights was attacked by British paratroopers, who gunned down 24 unarmed people, killing 14 of them. “Bloody Sunday” was the beginning of “The Troubles,” a low-scale civil war that took more than 3600 lives and deeply scarred both communities.

Getting past that history will be no easy task, even though the Good Friday Agreement ended the fighting in 1998 and established the current assembly in Northern Ireland, the Stormont. A recent agreement between the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the largely Catholic Sinn Fein Party has the Stormont up and running after a three-year hiatus.

The practical reasons for re-examining reunification are legion.

During the 2016 Brexit vote, Northern Ireland, like Scotland, voted to stay in the European Union (EU). A majority of Protestants voted to leave, but a strong Catholic vote tipped the scales to “remain.” Northern Ireland gets more than $780 million yearly from the EU to support agriculture and encourage cultural development and intra-community peace.

What was once one of the most heavily militarized borders in the world has been dismantled, and Ulster exports to the Republic are worth $4.4 billion a year. And because the border is open, the North has an outlet for its goods through the Republic. If Ulster follows Britain out of the EU, however, that will change. While there is agreement not to reestablish a “hard” border, Ulster’s imports from Britain will still have to be inspected to make sure they follow EU regulations.

The Protestants were promised by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that there would be no EU inspections, but “promises” and “principles” are two words that don’t easily co-exist with the word “Johnson.” The Prime Minister—no longer dependent on the DUP for votes in the London Parliament—double crossed the DUP and agreed to a EU inspection regime in the Irish Sea.

It is not clear how most of the people in both countries feel about reunification. Exit polls in the south found that most voters would support a referendum on unification.

Polls also show that many Northern Irish would consider it as well, although that sentiment is sharply divided between “unionist” Protestants and “loyalist” Protestants. The former are more concerned with stability than religious sectarianism, and if Brexit has a negative impact on Ulster—the outcome most economists expect—they might be open to the idea.

The “loyalists,” however, will certainly resist, a fact that gives Irish in the Republic pause. The south has gone through a long and painful economic recovery from the crash of 2008 and many are not enthusiastic about suddenly inheriting a bunch of people who don’t want to be there.

Sinn Fein argues that the Good Friday Agreement essentially says that the Irish have a right to choose without reference to Britain, and is pushing for a border referendum. Under the Agreement, however, if the vote to reunite fails, another can’t be taken for seven years.

Sinn Fein did as well as it did—particularly among the young—because of its political program to build 100,000 homes, freeze rents for three years, increase aid to education, house the homeless, improve health care, and tax the wealthy. Those are also issues in the north, where 300,000 people are currently waiting to see a medical specialist. Some15,000 medical workers recently went on strike to protest long hours and poor pay.

At this point, Ulster’s Sinn Fein has seven representatives to the British parliament, but refuses to send them because they would have to swear an oath to the Crown. If Sinn Fein has any hopes of getting enough people in the north to consider reunification, however, it will have to rid itself of such nationalist trappings, and convince the majority of Protestants that their traditions will be respected.

This may be less difficult than it was several years ago, because the Catholic Church in the Republic has gone into deep decline, pummeled by charges of child abuse and the exploitation of unwed mothers. The Catholic Church in the Republic fought hard against initiatives in 2015 and 2018 supporting gay marriage and abortion, and lost badly both times.

If unification is the goal, supporters in the Republic and Ulster will have to be patient, and show that they can deliver a better life for the entire community. That will have less to do with Ireland’s “long sorrow” ancient hatreds than with decent health care, good schools, affordable housing and well-paid jobs. All the Irish can get behind that program.

dispatchesfromtheedgeblog

With Britain having officially exited from the EU that seismic shift has fired up long-held claims for independence in Scotland and for the reunification of Ireland. Scottish nationalists, who want to remain in the EU, have stepped up demands for a referendum on independence from Britain since the general election in December when their party won by a landslide in Scotland.

Now the Irish question has gained powerful impetus from the historic victory of Sinn Fein in the general election this week held in the Republic of Ireland. The party came first in the popular vote, beating the two main establishment parties which have dominated government in Dublin for nearly a century. The two-party status quo has been smashed by Sinn Fein’s electoral breakthrough.

Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Fein, announced that the British government must now prepare for holding a referendum in Ireland on the issue of reunification of the Republic of Ireland with Northern Ireland. The latter has been British-held territory since 1921 when a separatist movement in Ireland failed to gain full territorial independence from Britain’s empire.

Sinn Fein, formerly the political wing of the guerrilla movement, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is the only party to have an all-Ireland structure. In the British election held in December, Sinn Fein became the leading party in Northern Ireland. Demographic changes over the past century have resulted in nationalists outnumbering unionists who want to remain part of the United Kingdom.

In the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Fein has now gained the biggest popular vote. It is capitalizing on the electoral results in both jurisdictions of Ireland to push for its long-coveted goal of full independence from Britain to create a united Ireland.

Due to the different electoral system in the Republic of Ireland – a system of proportional representation – there is as yet no party to emerge this week with a clear majority to form a government in Dublin. Sinn Fein won 37 seats out of a total of 160 in the Dublin parliament. The two traditional ruling parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, won 38 and 35 seats respectively. Fianna Fail picked up one more seat than Sinn Fein despite losing the popular vote because of transferred votes from other parties.

Sinn Fein’s success was due to the party tapping widespread popular disgust with the two centrist parties which are wedded to neoliberal economics and austerity. Aching social problems of economic inequality, chronic housing shortages and failing public services propelled voters to back Sinn Fein’s leftwing manifesto for “workers and change”.

The election was a popular rebuke for the two traditional main parties. Both lost significant seats compared with the last election in 2016. Sinn Fein’s gain was also matched by similar gains for a host of other small leftwing parties and independents.

McDonald, the Sinn Fein leader, says her party is now aiming to forge a coalition administration with the other small parties to form a “people’s government for change”. If that can be negotiated successfully, that would see McDonald becoming the next prime minister of the Republic of Ireland.

Combined with a Sinn Fein majority in Northern Ireland the political configuration across Ireland now represents a formidable mandate for Irish reunification and independence from Britain.

There would seem to be an unstoppable dynamic of natural justice. Sinn Fein is the oldest political party in Ireland. Formed in 1905, it historically spearheaded the movement for independence when the whole of Ireland was formerly under British colonial rule. In a British general election in 1918, Sinn Fein won over 70 per cent of the vote across the entire island on a platform for independence. London rejected the mandate back then, which resulted in a bloody war of independence and the partitioning of Ireland to produce partial freedom for what became the Republic of Ireland and a British entity known as Northern Ireland.

Neither of the erstwhile two main parties in the Republic of Ireland, Fianna Fail or Fine Gael, ever gave much advocacy to Irish reunification as an aspiration. Their shared political establishment devolved over the decades into parochial politics of cronyism and complacency.

For decades Sinn Fein was damaged politically because of the armed conflict in the North of Ireland between the IRA and British state forces. Many Irish voters were alienated by the association of politics and guns. The British and Irish news media, as well as political establishments, ran intensive campaigns to demonize Sinn Fein as “terrorist sympathizers”. There is still a residual antipathy among the Irish establishment. Even today, the two traditional parties have sniffily said they would not form a coalition government with Sinn Fein, owing its past connection with the IRA.

The conflict in Northern Ireland ended more than two decades ago in 1998 with the signing of a peace agreement, the Good Friday Accord. In that internationally binding accord, the British government committed itself to Irish unity if a majority of the population on the island agreed to it.

Many voters have evidently moved on from the past conflict. The old demonization trick against Sinn Fein has lost its allure. Social and economic issues have come to dominate voter concerns, and the two previous ruling parties are seen to be part of the problem, not the solution.

If Sinn Fein can head up the next government in Dublin, the question of Irish unity will be high on its to-do list. Negotiations to form a new coalition government in Dublin may take several weeks to pan out.

An eventual referendum which takes Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom in addition to the Scottish nationalists clamoring for independence spells the break-up of Britain’s constitutional amalgam of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

A major part of the dissolution dynamic has been British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s desire for Brexit which has unleashed separatist forces within the UK with a vengeance. In which case, it might be said: ought to have been careful what you wished for Boris!

I suspected from the moment the general election was called that the result would be a large Conservative majority, a calamitous defeat for Labour, and a decisive victory for Brexit. To prevent myself getting too depressed by this grim prospect, I picked out and read two books on crises that were far more dire: one on the Wars of the Roses in 15th century England and the other on Verdun in 1916, perhaps the most horrific battle in the First World War.

My idea was that by concentrating on these savage conflicts I would have some relief from thinking about Brexit and its consequences. It would also help me view the turmoil over leaving the EU in less apocalyptic terms than is usually the case. Is it, for instance, likely that we are facing the break-up of the UK as nationalist parties – Conservatives, SNP, Sinn Fein, DUP – establish their dominance over different communities? For all the debate over Brexit, it is still unclear how far Britain ruled by a hard-right government will diverge from EU norms and follow the US model.

Reading these two books – Alistair Horne’s The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 and Thomas Penn’s The Brothers York: An English Tragedy – was also a useful distraction from another irritating thought. This was that Boris Johnson might be the luckiest politician alive. It never made sense that Jo Swinson should have precipitated a general election, in which the Liberal Democrats would be squeezed, and would give up the advantages of being a small party in a hung parliament. Jeremy Corbyn should have been able to see that the one thing Labour had to avoid, as Tony Blair had warned, was a Brexit election in which its ambivalent policy on leaving the EU was bound to sink it and close the door to remaining in the EU.

Commentators before and after the election queued up to deny Boris Johnson’s claim that he would get Brexit done and denounce it as a fraud because he still has to negotiate the terms of departure. But, more realistically, the Rubicon has been passed and Brexit of some sort is bound to happen soon.

Johnson could adopt a more conciliatory mode, but I doubt it. Much the same was said about President Donald Trump when he was elected. Populist nationalist politicians, of whom Johnson is one, tend to repeat the same political gambits that got them into power in the first place.

Now that Brexit in its current version has been approved by the electorate, it is easy to forget what a weird project it continues to be. Much of what its proponents say is fantasy or simply unrealisable. There is only so much Britain can do to diversify its economy away from the EU, since 45 per cent of British exports go to there compared to 15 per cent to the US, while exports to Ireland easily exceed those to China. Britain’s negotiators will once again bump into economic and political realities that are the same as under Theresa May.

Brexit is bound to leave the UK weaker and poorer as a state than it would otherwise be – and part of this damage has already been done. But for Leavers, Brexit was always more of a political than an economic project. However often Remainers proved to their own satisfaction that leaving the EU was economic idiocy, it never made much impression on the level of support for Brexit.

Earlier this year, I visited different parts of the UK to discover why so many people appeared to be voting against their own best interests. Why, for instance, did people in the de-industrialised Welsh Valleys want to leave the EU when Brussels had heavily funded projects in the area. The answer in Wales, and in the rest of de-industrialised Britain, was that EU funding was never enough to reverse their decline, though it was not clear that anything could have done so.

The EU became the great scapegoat. Graham Simmonds, an independent councillor in the Valleys, told me that everybody from the government in London to the Welsh Assembly might have failed Wales, but “it was the EU against which people decided to push back.” They were impervious to arguments about the damage Brexit would do to the national GDP because they never saw it as their GDP.

This alienation was there at the time of the referendum in 2016, but it solidified farther between over the next three years, which helps explain Labour’s rout in its former working class strongholds on Thursday. Alex Snowden, a radical activist in Newcastle, told me that people’s core sense of identity had become more wrapped up in their position for or against the EU since 2019. He said that Brexit “isn’t just about views on the EU anymore, but a wider sense of alienation and dislocation.” A canvasser in the Canterbury constituency made the same point to me this week, saying that she had just talked to some Leave voters and “it is as if supporting Brexit is part of their identity. They don’t want to discuss it.” For many, Brexit and English national identity have united and submerged traditional loyalty to the Labour Party. This will be difficult to reverse.

The triumph of nationalism was always a likely outcome of the election. The three parties that had most to celebrate after the poll, primarily appeal to a single national community: Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, the SNP in Scotland and the Conservatives in England and – exceptionally  – to some small degree in Wales.

Scotland is not Catalonia, but the repeated successes of SNP and Sinn Fein are bound to loosen the bonds holding the UK together. There will come a moment when people in the British rust-belt notice that voting Conservative has done them little good. Fresh crises are in the offing. I suspect it will not be long before I will once again be seeking solace in reading up on Verdun or the Wars of the Roses and thinking that at least things are not as bad as that.

counterpunch.org

On 8 May 1987 a Provisional IRA unit of eight men attacked a police station in the village of Loughgall in county Armagh 15 miles from the Irish border. One man drove a digger with a bomb in its bucket towards the building, half of which was destroyed in the explosion. But British forces had been informed of the time and place of the assault and SAS soldiers waiting in ambush opened fire killing all eight Provisionals and a civilian.

A quarter of a century later in county Monaghan just inside the border with the Irish Republic but not far from Loughgall, there was an incident proving that the earlier killings were still a live issue. In the last few days somebody, evidently an opponent of the IRA, used a bulldozer to demolish a substantial memorial to two IRA men, Jim Lynagh and Padraig McKearney, who had died in the SAS ambush.

A statement from the Loughgall Truth and Justice Campaign described the bulldozing of the memorial as a “desecration” and declared that “to do this to any of the Loughgall families is to do this to us all… but our memories and thoughts cannot be erased”.

The episode is significant because it shows the human and divisive reality of the Irish border and why its reappearance at the top of the political agenda is such a threat to long-term peace. The backstop is often discussed in Britain as if it was an issue primarily to do with trade which has been given exaggerated significance by Ireland and the EU in order to sabotage Brexit. Boris Johnson denounces it as being unacceptably “anti-democratic”.

In all cases, there is blindness towards the true reason for the toxicity of the dispute over the 310-mile border which stems from it being the physical embodiment of relations between nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants not just in the border region but in the north as a whole. That is why it has been one of the most fought-over and blood-soaked frontiers in Europe over the last 400 years. The map of the area is dotted with the names of battles ancient and modern. The destruction of the Loughgall monument shows that antagonisms have not moderated and, while some people feel strongly enough to build a memorial to two dead IRA men, others feel strongly enough to destroy it.

The visit of Boris Johnson to Belfast this week reveals once again the mixture of frivolity and ignorance with which the Brexiteers approach Northern Ireland. A new post-Brexit border is supposed to be monitored remotely by yet-to-be discovered technical means. But it should be self-evident that any CCTV or other gadget located on the border in a nationalist/Catholic area will be torn down in a few minutes.

The neutrality of the British government between nationalists and unionists was the foundation of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that ended thirty years of war in Northern Ireland in which two per cent of the population was killed or injured according to historians of the conflict (the same proportion of casualties in Britain as a whole would have meant 100,000 dead).

Careless of this sanguinary record, Johnson’s approach is entirely opportunistic: he will maintain UK neutrality but he expresses an undying commitment to the union. He and the new minister for Northern Ireland had a convivial dinner with the DUP leader Arlene Foster, on whom the Conservatives depend for their majority, before meeting the leaders of other parties. DUP activists make clear in private that they would like a hard Brexit regardless of economic cost because they want to keep as far from the Irish Republic and as close to Britain as possible.

Supporters of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) comfort themselves by saying that the Conservatives kowtowing to the DUP will last only as long as they rely on DUP votes in parliament. This could prove over-optimistic: Johnson leads a hard-right government riding a resurgent wave of English nationalism in which anti-Irish sentiment has always had an integral part.

This does not mean that a shooting war is going to restart any time soon. The unreconciled fragments of the IRA are disorganised and lack popular support. But the building blocks of the GFA are being kicked away one-by-one. The power-sharing executive and Northern Ireland Assembly are suspended and are unlikely to be resurrected.

The DUP understandably prefers to share power with the Conservatives in Westminster than with Sinn Fein in Belfast. Sinn Fein, for its part, does not want to be the junior and largely impotent partner of the DUP in an executive which would be complicit in implementing a no-deal Brexitwhich it opposes.

Sinn Fein can also see a substantial silver lining for its brand of Irish nationalism in the present crisis. Northern Ireland voted 56 to 44 per cent to stay in the EU and, when the Conservatives ignore this and pretend that the DUP’s pro-Brexit stance represents majority opinion in the province, they de-legitimise the union with Britain. This will not necessarily impel pro-Remain unionists to vote for a united Ireland, but it does mean that the significant minority of Catholics/nationalists who previously preferred to stick with the union is fast diminishing.

This will matter because in the not-too-distant future Catholic voters will outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland. The outcome of a border poll will become more incalculable. But even the prospect of one – strongly advocated by Sinn Fein – will be deeply polarising. Brexit has succeeded in putting Irish Partition back at the centre of the political agenda, something that Sinn Fein had failed to do despite decades of effort.

Does this mean that Irish unity is getting closer? This prospect is increasingly if naively raised in the British media. But demographic and diplomatic change will not be sufficient in themselves to transform the political balance of power: the unionists/Protestants could not ultimately maintain their rule in the north despite being the majority. Catholics and nationalists are unlikely to be any more successful against resistance to a united Ireland by a determined Protestant minority.

Possibly Johnson’s gamble on threatening the EU states with a no-deal Brexit will pay off. They have hitherto never believed that Britain would do anything so self-destructive and they might just look to some last-minute deal. But, even if Leo Varadkar did want such an agreement, he would find it difficult to sell to Irish voters, while the EU would be seriously weakened by caving-in to Johnson’s bombast after declaring for so long that it would do no such thing.

Ireland does not relish a confrontation with the UK, but it has little choice but to demand that the EU stick to its commitments and, on the other side of the Atlantic, energise the political influence of the Irish-American diaspora. The Clinton administration was an essential driving force for the GFA. The US speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said that she will block any Anglo-American trade deal if it creates a hard border or the GFA is imperilled.

Winston Churchill famously lamented how quarrels over the Irish border, symbolised by “the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone”, had outlasted the cataclysm of the First World War. Brexit has made sure it is still there.

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The so-called Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is being wooed by May to provide its quota of 10 MPs in order to form an ad hoc parliamentary coalition. If a deal is done, that would give the Tories a total of 328 parliamentarians – scraping just enough lawmakers to pass future legislation.

It remains to be seen if the proposed arrangement will work. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has derided it as a «coalition of chaos» and is urging his own party to get ready to contend another election in the coming months resulting from the Tory government’s possible collapse.

Several leading British and Irish political figures are warning May that her gamble to govern with the Northern Ireland DUP is risking the return of violence in the British-ruled province. The danger stems from the DUP demanding concessions from London which would inflame sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland.

For the past 20 years since the signing of a peace agreement in 1997, Northern Ireland has witnessed a period of relative calm. A thirty-year sectarian conflict between mainly pro-British Protestants and pro-independence Catholics that began in 1968 had been largely settled. A local administration of power-sharing between the DUP unionists and republicans belonging to Sinn Fein was forged. That managed to keep the lid on seething sectarian passions. But now that lid is in danger of being blown away by May’s one-sided deal-making with the unionists.

John Major, a former British Conservative prime minister (1990-97) who helped facilitate the Irish peace process, has this week added his voice to a chorus of public figures warning Theresa May that her proposed pact with the DUP could reignite conflict in Northern Ireland.

Major said a «fundamental part» of the Northern Ireland peace deal is that the London government needs to be seen as impartial between competing political parties in the province. With May now moving to explicitly rely on the DUP to govern Britain that official impartiality is cast aside.

The warnings from Major have been echoed by the former southern Irish premier Enda Kenny, as well as by former British Labour minister Peter Hain. Hain, who was also involved in implementing the Irish peace process, said that any deal between May’s government and the DUP will come at a painful price for Northern Ireland.

This comes at a particularly delicate time in Northern Ireland. For the past six months, the local administration based in Stormont, Belfast, has been suspended. Sinn Fein – the second biggest party after the DUP – collapsed the power-sharing assembly over a public spending scandal involving DUP ministers.

Some members of the DUP – who were never supportive of the power-sharing deal anyway – are now seizing on the chance to end it entirely. With a direct line of power from London owing to the proposed coalition with May, the DUP are emboldened to go it alone, without Sinn Fein. The latter is the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, the guerrilla group that fought against the British army and police force during the 3o-year conflict. The DUP have never fully reconciled with Sinn Fein whom they accuse of being «terrorists».

Also, another incendiary factor is that the summer months in Northern Ireland are traditionally a time of increased sectarian tensions. This is because pro-unionist organizations led by the Protestant Orange Order (a Masonic group likened to the KKK in the USA), as well as associated paramilitary factions, take to the streets in large-scale marches to commemorate centuries-old battles. The marches which culminate next month on July 12 are seen by many Catholics as provocatively sectarian. Historically, the Orange parades are organized in a «triumphalist» display or supposed supremacy over the minority Catholic community in Northern Ireland.

An ominous fact is that the Orange marches were a tipping factor in the eruption of violence in Northern Ireland back in 1968.

Since the signing of the peace accord in 1997, the British government agreed to demands to restrict these pro-unionist marches from entering into Catholic communities. Again, now with the DUP being seen to have governing favor with the Conservative administration in London, the Orangemen and their overlapping rank-and-file membership of the DUP are demanding that the marching restrictions be lifted.

As former Labour minister Peter Hain notes «it will be difficult for May to say no to the unionists’ demands» owing to the imperative of her own political survival in Westminster. That imperative for the shaky minority Conservative government is all the more amplified because of the impending Brexit negotiations due to start next week with Brussels.

The Brexit talks following last year’s British referendum to leave the European Union are billed as the most important negotiations facing Britain since the Second World War. Yet May’s government is going into these talks with Brussels not knowing whether its negotiating position should be to seek a «hard» or «soft» Brexit, that is, what the degree of separation from the EU should be, either full or partial. May’s government is in a shambles on the Brexit rubicon. Shoring up a semblance of stability in London is therefore seen by the Tories as vital. And that is why May is wide open to leveraging by the DUP, no matter the potentially dire consequences for Irish peace.

Other inflammatory demands expected from the DUP include the closing down of historical prosecutions against members of the Northern Ireland security forces who are accused of collusion with unionist paramilitaries.

The notion that Northern Ireland was beset «only» by «republican terrorists» is a DUP hobby horse. A hobby horse which is shared incidentally by large sections of the Conservative party and the British establishment. That is why Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn was vilified as a «terrorist sympathizer» during the recent election campaign, owing to his past verbal support for Sinn Fein.

The truth is that other parties, primarily the Conservative government of the late Margaret Thatcher (1979-90) and unionist political parties in Northern Ireland like the DUP, were deeply complicit in colluding with illegal paramilitary organizations that supported the political cause of political union between Northern Ireland and Britain. These terrorist organizations included the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Freedom Fighters. They were enabled covertly by British military intelligence, in conjunction with the British-run but now-disbanded Royal Ulster Constabulary police force in Northern Ireland, as well as a local battalion of the British army known as the Ulster Defense Regiment (also disbanded).

This British state counter-insurgency apparatus carried out hundreds of assassinations of republican politicians and other innocent civilians in a deliberate covert campaign of terror to thwart republicanism and the reunification of Ireland as an independent state from Britain.

The DUP and associated organizations like the Orange Order and Ulster Resistance helped to arm the unionist death squads with massive caches of weapons smuggled into Northern Ireland from apartheid South Africa during the 1980s.

One of the present DUP MPs whom Theresa May will be counting on for support to govern Britain is Emma Little-Pengelly. Her father Noel Little, also a DUP member, was convicted for his part in the arms smuggling operation from South Africa.

Several other senior members of the DUP were also implicated in the gun-running for unionist terror groups, including the party founder Ian Paisley (died 2014) and Peter Robinson, who was formerly the First Minister of Northern Ireland before his replacement by the current head of the DUP Arlene Foster. Foster is leading the current talks in London with May to form an informal governing Westminster coalition.

Given the horrendous legacy of bad sectarian blood in Northern Ireland, it seems highly irresponsible for the British Conservative leader to be giving one of the parties to that conflict such disproportionate leverage.

However, tragically, history shows that British Conservative governments have always had a criminally reckless disregard for Irish peace and sovereignty. During the partition of Ireland in 1921, the Tories in London fully embraced the Northern unionists in their seditious threat to use wide-scale violence against Irish democratic rights.

Theresa May made a disastrous gamble to call the British general election last week in a misguided calculation that it would give her a stronger negotiating hand against the rest of Europe. She bet the House of Parliament on her party’s selfish ambitions and she lost big time.

Now May is gambling with peace in Ireland to recoup her disastrous losses.