These islands are increasingly diverse and multi-cultural, with some of the old divisions being steadily eroded
THE LEADERS OF THESE ISLANDS Michelle O’Neill, Leo Varadkar, Hamza Yousaf, Vaughan Gething, Rishi Sunak — Leo Varadkar remains Taoiseach until a new Fine Gael leader is chosen (all photos by Getty Images)WHEN Rachel Dolazel identified as black yet was exposed as having been born to white parents, she was vilified.
Yet she had spent most of her childhood in the company of black friends.
Another black person, growing up among white people, perhaps with an English or Irish accent, wholly acculturated into white society, had somehow more claim to be black than she had.
Identity determination should never be as simple as that.
I identify as Irish. There is some flexibility in that. I lived in India for four years in my twenties and it was usually pointless to insist that I was not English.
I don’t choose to be Irish. I feel when I describe myself as Irish that I am simply stating a fact as solid as the fact that my first language in English, that I have blue eyes and that I am, to all intents and purposes, heterosexual.
Living in a divided society like Northern Ireland I am occasionally confronted, at least online, by people who will say that they are more Irish than I am or indeed that I should identify as British.
In some ways, if I were in doubt about the matter, it would be easier to identify as British than as Irish.
Britain is a much more diverse society. You can be of Pakistani or Nigerian origin and be British. Irish people like Eamon Holmes and Graham Norton are fully assimilated within the British media. Eamon was proud to receive an OBE from the Queen. This didn’t go down well with all the folks back home.
A similar diversity is emerging in Ireland. The Republic - which calls itself simply ‘Ireland’ - has a gay Taoiseach of Indian origin, - at least for a few more days.
With Vaughan Gething being elected the head of Welsh Labour, becoming Welsh First Minister, Northern Ireland is now the only one of the five nations of the British-Irish archipelago — if I may overlook the Isle of Man — which has a white Christian for a leader.
Here in the North two women share the office of First Minister, one a Catholic and one a Protestant, and we consider that to be a great breakthrough in our emerging diversity, though both of these women were appointed by men elected to those roles before them.
The traditional nationalist argument is essentially that Protestants and unionists in Northern Ireland should own up to being Irish and identify as such.
The proclamation of the Irish Republic describes Northern Protestants as subject to a division ‘carefully fostered by an alien government’, distracting them from the allegiance to which the republic was entitled.
The Good Friday Agreement contradicts that. It acknowledges each person’s entitlement by ‘birthright’ to identify as British or Irish.
So it is no longer acceptable to tell people what they are.
I get called a traitor to the nationalist cause because I say that I will make up my own mind how to vote in a future border poll when I have a clearer idea of what the options are and which is better likely to serve my needs.
By the concept of inherent identity some presume that I have an obligation to devote myself to the creation of a united Ireland and that I am a souper, a West Brit, a Castle Catholic, a token taig or a turncoat because I don’t.
If you go on my twitter/X feed, @malodoherty you’ll find lots of people who think they are democratic republicans accusing me of betraying the community I was born into, as if they think my politics are determined by my birth certificate. Some notion of republicanism that is!
Surely I have a right to identify according to my own tastes and desires.
Voting for a united Ireland on the basis of identity would be like voting Labour or Conservative in England because that is how your father and grandfather voted.
Scotland seems to have developed a nationalist culture which does not depend on identity. Scottish nationalist don’t parade in kilts, start their speeches in Gaelic or commemorate militant nationalists who tried to further the cause with letter bombs.
Scottish unionists, apart from a few, don’t align there with to be British with a Protestant identity.
Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism will have to go the same way because either side, to win a border poll, must convert some on the other side to their cause.
Nationalists will have to demonstrate to unionists that their identity will be secure in a new Ireland and unionists will have to persuade Irish identifying people in the north that their Irishness will no longer be reviled or sneered at.
Both will have to give up identity politics, their claims to represent identity communities.
This should not require as big a step as the one Rachel Dolazel tried to take.
In the new assembly both sides do seem to have resolved to relax if not end the culture war between identity traditions. We’ve seen the Sinn Féin first minister Michelle O’Neill getting praised for going to a soccer match and the deputy first minister Emma Little Pengelly demonstrate some skill with a hurley stick. That these events were seen as breakthroughs and became front page stories gives you an idea of how deep cultural divisions have been and how transformative gestures like this have the potential to be.
Real politics, when we get round to it, may prove even more challenging.
Malachi O’Doherty’s book How To Fix Northern Ireland is released in paperback in April
