Britain and Ireland: a new pattern of islands

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/07/britain-and-ireland-a-new-pattern-of-islands

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It will seem extraordinary to many people in Britain, if they actually stop to think about it, that no Irish president has ever made a state visit here until President Michael Higgins this week. Tyrants such as the Shah of Iran, Nicolas Ceausescu of Romania and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe have had the red carpet rolled out for state visits. Vladimir Putin has had the full Buckingham Palace treatment, too. Yet the head of democratic and republican Ireland, our closest neighbour, with which Britain has been at peace since 1922, a fellow member of the European Union since 1973, and a state that dropped its territorial claims over Northern Ireland 15 years ago, has had to wait until now. Mr Higgins is warmly welcome here. But his invitation is long overdue.

That it has taken nearly a century for Ireland's head of state to be welcomed here is, of course, explained by history and politics. Britain is the former imperial power in an Ireland born amid nationalist martyrdom. For decades, an enduring mix of Irish and British resentments, stoked by the conflicts in Northern Ireland, combined to turn both nations into hypersensitive sticklers over formalities. This occurred even though thousands of Irish people continued to settle in Britain, while millions travelled back and forth for all kinds of ordinary reasons without even having to show a passport. Now, with the passage of years and following the Queen's highly successful visit to Ireland in 2011, a new normality is emerging. The president's arrival is a symbol of that. This is another landmark visit.

Mr Higgins's four days in Britain offer a chance for Britain and Ireland to continue the process of normalisation. The presence of Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, a lifelong republican, at tonight's formal banquet at Windsor Castle, is another signal of a less history-bound approach. But it would be misleading, in spite of all the good things about the visit, to pretend that the past has been entirely defused. It has not, especially in the Northern Ireland context. Dissident terrorism continues to disrupt life and to cast a cloud. Arguments over flags and marches remain unresolved following the failure of the Haass talks. The issue of historic prosecutions, on which the former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain had pragmatic things to say yesterday, nearly brought the devolved government to a standstill in February. And yesterday also relatives of the victims of the 1974 Birmingham bombings were rebuffed in their call for a fresh inquiry. Little of this is directly linked to the state visit. But the reconciliation embodied in the visit is not universally shared, especially by those who see normalisation between London and Dublin as a threat to their interests.

Overall, however, the visit can usefully be seen as part of an uneven but generally positive process in which the different peoples of these islands are attempting, with some noises off, to establish richer and more generous mutual relations appropriate to the modern era. In that sense, the visit can be seen against the backcloth of the current centenaries of the first world war, in which thousands of Irish people fought and died, a sacrifice that was rarely publicly acknowledged or honoured in Ireland until recently. It comes two years before Britain will be faced with the equally important and sensitive decision of how to participate in and to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising.

Some in Britain will be tempted to dismiss the Higgins visit as a sideshow. But this is not how it is seen in Ireland. That's worth remembering, because the networks of connection between the different nations of these islands are currently being put to the test. The Scottish referendum, like the history of British-Irish relations, is a reminder that nations and states can evolve as well as endure. The British – the English, in particular – have paid too little attention to this, with the consequences that now loom in Scotland. This week's pageantry and mutual self-congratulation should not mask the reality that political relationships in these islands have rarely been in such flux.