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The British-Irish Council: the trans-islands symbolic and political possibilities

Simon Partridge, a political analyst, looked at the issue of Englishness from a different perspective, that of the English positi on i n the whol e North East Atlantic Archipelago.

In The British-Irish Council: the trans-islands symbolic and political possibilities he argued that the questi on of the political re-organisation of the territory of England cannot properly be addressed on i ts own. Nor can it be addressed simply in a British context. It needs to be tackled alongside the political re-organisation of all the countries in the British-Irish islands. Simon Partridge argued that the raci al and cul tural i ntegration of the peopl es of these islands is so deep that the centuries old melting pot needs a meaningful political expression. That expression has at last been given in the British-Irish Council (BIC) - more popularly known as the Counci l of the Isl es - whi ch was establ i shed by the Good Fri day Agreement.

At the beginning of his lecture Simon Partridge wrote on the board behind him the word BRITISH in which the "T" had been replaced by an "R" - suggesting a new meta-commonality of BRIRISH. It remained there throughout almost as the "logo" of his lecture, a reminder that the term ' British' is by no means all-inclusive. (Simon Partridge noted, of course, that permanent establishment of the British-Irish Council depended on the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons early in 2000. The political institutions of the Agreement were in fact suspended from 12 February until 29 May, but have been restored in the light of the IRA's commitment to put their weaponry verifiably "beyond use" by June 2001.)

Simon Partridge's argument was that the Council, formally launched on 17 December 1999, is a political expression of the mixed racial and cultural make-up which has existed in these islands for centuries. The current state of peace and the final setting up of the governmental organs of the Belfast Agreement is the end of "the cold war" in these islands, according to David Trimble. The British-Irish Council is made up of the UK's and Irish Republic's governments, the executive ministers of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament, and the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. It is the first time that all the peoples, countries and political entities in the North East Atlantic Archipelago have grouped together to participate in one democratic, representative political body. When England thinks of itself politically it should think of itself more and more in its role in the British-Irish Council.

The 'Brirish' melting pot has been going on for centuries. "Racial purity on these islands is nonsense", said Simon Partridge. The racial mix of the British-Irish islands is made up of Bronze Age peoples (the genetic sub-stratum), Celts, Picts, Romans, Saxons, Angles, Danes, Vikings, Normans, Huguenots, Jews and now Commonwealth peoples. Everybody's family has several of these races in them. Probably the biggest diaspora in these islands is that of the Irish, who started coming to England in large numbers with the rapid industrialisation of England in the 1800s. People talk about the diaspora of the Irish spreading to the USA, Canada and Australia, but in fact a huge number of Irish people have come to England. Studies of population shifts reveal the extent of the melting pot in Britain, and show the Irish as the biggest diaspora. Today there is an extensive English presence in rural Scotland and Wales; a considerable number of Scots in almost every part of England apart from the Welsh borders and the South West; many Welsh-born people are settled in large numbers in the English counties bordering Wales; there are large Irish settlements in the Clyde, the North West, the West Midlands and Greater London; and there are significant South Asian and Afro-Caribbean populations in London, the Midlands and central Northern England.

The movement of peoples over hundreds of years naturally brings with it a cultural overlap that creeps into the national psyche. How many people in Britain would consciously identify writers such as Beckett, Burke, Heaney, Joyce and Yeats as coming from a different culture? How many people in Ireland would regard those same writers as writing in a foreign language? A recent example of the literary overlap was when Seamus Heaney won the 1999 Whitbread Award for his new translation of the Old English epic poem, 'Beowulf'. Television also provides a big source of overlap, as does sport. Manchester United Football Club has the biggest club support of any in Ireland, not so surprising given the large Irish-descended population in Manchester.

Even nowadays in the European Union the sense of kinship between the British and the Irish is greater than between any other EU nations. The great majority of the British feel more identity with the Irish than with other Europeans, and indeed most do not feel that the Irish are foreigners. Practical political links have been there for some time, the two nations have been a common travel area and residents can vote in each other' s elections. Now these politi cal rudi ments have f ound expl ici t governmental expression and recognition in the British-Irish Council.

So what are the implications of the Council on English devolution? There is a provision for the English regions to be included in the British-Irish Council and this is likely further to encourage the movement towards regional devolution in England rather than an all-England parliament. However, this may create problems for the Irish Republic. A sovereign state is not likely to accept having to share power with an English region like the West Midlands (though, of course, looked at in another way this region, in common with several other English regions, has a considerably larger population than all of Southern Ireland). The issue of how to represent the 49 million people of England is a crucial one that cannot be ducked. Simon Partridge suggested that perhaps the solution is for England's representation to be on a regional basis with each of the nine administrative regions having, perhaps, three or four members.

Aside from the pragmatic governmental problems there is still a great problem of outlook facing everyone involved in the Council - insularity. Sinn Fein means "ourselves alone" in Irish Gaelic. While on the English side ordinary people, and even opinion-formers, in England can be so unaware of the political situation in Ireland that they often do not realise that Southern Ireland too has very similar political and "identity" problems. It would probably be a great surprise to many people in England, for example, to learn that Southern Ireland too has an immigration problem, caused by the pull of the Celtic Tiger economy.

"We have always been mongrel islanders, but in a global age we are even more so", argues Simon Partridge. In the new, emerging political landscape, the very title "British-Irish" with its hyphen is significant. It suggests transcending insularity and finding common ground, but recognising differences such as they are. For a start Simon Partridge recommends discarding the phrase "British Isles", which derived from a period of 16th century Anglo-Welsh Tudor dominance. It is Simon Partridge's view that the British-Irish Council is an important step away from the politics of prejudice and insularity and towards a representative, co-operative and inclusive British-Irish politics and culture.

Read the complete text of Simon Partridge's paper The British-Irish Council: the trans-islands symbolic and political possibilities.

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