Opinion

Patrick Murphy: We have spent the past four years fighting for France and Germany against Britain, while neglecting Ireland’s interests at home

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

Patrick Murphy
Patrick Murphy Patrick Murphy

The Irish have a wonderful history of winning wars for other people and losing their own.

For over 300 years, we have fought for causes across the world.

We fought for France following 1690, including beating the British at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 (Young Irelander, Thomas Davis later wrote a poem about it). We fought for Britain following the French Revolution, for both sides in the US civil war and for Mexico against the USA. We battled for and against Franco in the Spanish civil war and we have served in a variety of “Irish” regiments in the British Army.

But despite military success abroad, we have never won a war in Ireland for ourselves. An interesting historical journey, you say, but what’s the point? The point is that we are still doing it.

We have spent the past four years fighting for France and Germany against Britain, while neglecting Ireland’s interests at home. Yes, we’re talking Brexit, as Irish fishermen and farmers face massive challenges following the UK-EU agreement.

A year before the Brexit referendum, this column suggested that to resolve growing domestic divisions, Britain should leave the EU, but maintain a close trading relationship with it. The idea was ridiculed because, we were told, the EU would never allow it.

Yesterday, what was ridiculed became reality. Britain can now trade with the EU, without tariffs or quotas, while maintaining political independence.

After the Brexit referendum, this column then argued that since Britain’s departure would impact disproportionately on Ireland, Dublin should seek special Irish exemptions, north and south, in any UK-EU treaty. Instead, the Irish decided to repeat history.

Using the border as a rallying cry, Dublin attacked Britain on behalf of France and Germany (who couldn’t care less about the border), led by Leo Varadkar and supported by the Dublin media, Sinn Féin and the SDLP. The main electoral beneficiary was Sinn Féin (as Leo found to his cost).

Ireland attacked Britain’s imperial past and the Tories (but ignored equivalent upper classes across the EU). France’s equally despicable imperial record, for example, was also ignored. No one mentioned the 45,000 Algerians who were killed in Setif in 1945 by French troops and the equivalent of our loyalist death squads.

We ignored a Paris museum’s collection of 18,000 beheaded human skulls, trophies of France’s imperial exploitation. We conveniently forgot about the massacre of up to 300 protesting Algerian immigrants in Paris in 1961, when police clubbed them and tossed them unconscious into the River Seine.

The Irish reasoned that since Britain was “bad”, France, Germany and the rest must be “good”. But they are just two sides of the same capitalist coin, as their similar poverty levels confirm.

Sinn Féin called the EU “an outward looking union”, even though a member state, Hungary, is no longer a democracy. Homelessness there is illegal, there is no free press, refugee policies defy international human rights and a national university has been forced into exile. Outward looking, indeed.

So if a member state can leave the EU and trade freely with it, the case for Ireland’s EU membership is no longer largely economic (especially since the EU economy is contracting). Like unionism’s allegiance to Britain, nationalists’ loyalty to the EU is now largely political.

With a wonderful irony, their anti-British rhetoric has shaped their thinking to the point where they now argue against Irish independence, by supporting Ireland’s EU membership. 800 years of rebellion have gone down the drain.

This week nationalists were still fighting for France and Germany. The Irish Times called Johnson “delusional”, the SDLP said Brexit was “a fantasy” and Varadkar “warned” Britain about its future behaviour (an ungrateful threat, since his political ancestors won the Irish Civil War with British guns). No one mentioned French President Macron’s move to the far right. (Never mind, he’s not British.)

Meanwhile Irish fishermen and farmers face an uncertain future. But, by God, we fought the British, didn’t we? If only Thomas Davis were alive to write a poem about it.