The Troubles were stupid. The explanation given for all the violence was the distorted history and the natural rambunctiousness of the two major communities, etc., etc., but I am unconvinced by these and similar explanations. I believe that the conflict was more ideological than it appeared and a staging point for a much wider conflict.
There was a dilemma for successive UK governments as to how to deal with the IRA: a domestic terrorist organisation, made up largely of native British people, albeit who mostly self-identified as ethnic Irish. In some countries, even in Europe - Spain and ETA spring to mind - the government would have just rounded up all the Provisional IRA and either detained them until old age or just shot them. Witness Spain's ruthlessness with dissidents of the Basque Country. The identities of nearly-everybody in the IRA were known, even well-known within the communities, so this was possible, but a brutal crackdown of the scale seen elsewhere would never have happened in a country such as Britain with its deeper respect for the rule of law and judicial independence, and so on. Yet the IRA's position was always precarious.
Within the Republican movement itself there were conflicting philosophies and ideologies, and very different objectives. Some Republicans were Gaelic Irish ethno-nationalists of some stripe and seemed to be pursuing an ethnic-cleansing strategy that would pay dividends demographically decades later. Others were neo-Marxists and saw the Provisional IRA as the spearhead of a socialist revolutionary cause that happened to be in geographic Ireland. In that school of thought, uniting Ireland would be one-in-the-eye for Imperialist Britain and its capitalist-fascist running dogs, but there was common-cause and sympathy with working class British people. Even the Middle East conflict got a look-in, with the Green side rooting for the Palestinians and the Orange side cheering on the Israelis.
Republicanism itself, in its purer form, is a more or less a benign philosophy that just says both major traditions, Ulster British and Irish Protestants on the one side and Gaelic Irish on the other, should unite under one all-Ireland civic polity - hence the Irish Tricolour, orange and green, with white in the centre signifying a truce between the two and onward co-existence. White, of course, is a combination of all colours in the colour spectrum, and I sometimes wonder why pride activists don't fly a white flag instead. Perhaps because a white flag is also a symbol for surrender.
It's easy to see that Irish Republicanism has its roots in radical Enlightenment thinking, the brotherhood of Man, fungibility, etc. Republicanism in the dictionary sense and when applied to any country is the idea of an elected head of state, but the root of the idea is a rebellion against the manifestations of organic rule. The whole basis of kingship is that a country comes from somewhere, and we are of Somewhere, we are not citizens of Nowhere, as William Morris would have it (A Dream of John Ball). If you are a citizen of Nowhere, then life is materialistic and it makes sense to vote for rulers rather than accept or reject them on the basis of their kingliness, nobility and martial strength.
It is easy to present organic nationhood as archaic, even primeval in the looser sense of that term, whereas 'liberal republicanism' can be presented as modern and attractive. For now, the point I make is that the radical liberal Enlightenment is the true ideological starting-point of Irish Republicanism. Revanchist nationalistic aspects were wrapped-up in it, but not at the core of it. Thus, Provisional Sinn Fein's embracing of multi-culturalism and mass immigration is not necessarily inconsistent with the underlying philosophy of Republicanism. Sinn Fein was never strictly 'nationalist'. There is where I take issue.
Republicanism is a benign and noble idea, but it can't work. The reasons it can't work cannot be exhausted here and are in any case difficult to explain because they require an understanding of everyday experience and a measure of common-sense, which is not always common among people focused on book study. We are not born as tabulae rasae. Tribalism is natural and imperative to Man. When an attempt is made to mix one community with another by imposition of force, the end result is the domination of one community by the other. In the case of the British and Irish dividing Ulster, the border served as a peace wall to keep the two communities apart and should have been adhered to and respected.
The IRA's post-War activities destroyed this peace, and ultimately, as I think Steve may be hinting, preclude any possibility of a real peace between the two communities in our lifetimes based on respect for a border that maintains the two traditions. Instead, the Liberal Republicans - their proper name, I think - insist that the two communities live together cheek-by-jowl. Common-sense tells us this can't work if there is to be respect for culture. One culture must win out over the other, therefore the likely ultimate outcome is the end of the Ulster-Scots as a distinct and discrete ethnic people and the end of a British culture in geographic Ireland, or any culture at all - and probably, the end of British sovereignty there. Thus, as Gerry Adams says, 'equality is a weapon' you can beat your opponents with. It truly is.
The more I consider it, the more I believe that the true winner in all this is globalism and its interests. I do not know if Ireland will be united politically. I imagine there are lots of Gaelic Irish in Northern Ireland who see themselves as Irish but would prefer to remain part of Britain - for all sorts of complex reasons. But if Ireland is not united politically, then it will continue down the road of 'Hibernisation' in its politics, civics and everyday culture and will orient itself to the South - becoming one country in two, if not two countries in one. It will be done in the name of 'uniting' everybody, and it may even be that the victory banners are for Republicanism, but Ireland, whether two countries or one, will become just another anodyne, multi-culturalist globalist place. As will Britain. As will France. As will almost-all countries.
