I am intrigued and somewhat disappointed at the media reaction to the Public Record Office 30 years disclosure about the suggestion to Prime Minister Heath that the border could be redrawn in 1972 and repatriation pursued. I am intrigued because the suggestion almost universally appears to be dismissed as a crazy notion, so mad in fact that it bears no further discussion whatsoever. Why not? Why did it not merit fuller discussion then, and why are we so loathe to consider the possibilities in the present day. Why, in fact was the possibility of border manipulation seen as outside the pale in 1972 when in fact the very state of Northern Ireland 50 years earlier had been created by that same border manipulation?
I am also disappointed because it seems that if a proposal at first hand looks a bit mad it should be summarily dismissed. I had hoped that if we humans had learnt anything by 2003 it is that the mad and at first sight crazy ideas often turn out to be the world savers of the future.
Think of the first reactions to the suggestion that the earth was not flat but round, to the initial concept of the potential of penicillin, telephones and television, and much more.
We can only be thankful that someone somewhere had enough vision and wisdom to say, "hang on a minute, maybe this isn't so crazy. Why don't we explore the possibilities"?
There are countless examples in the past and in the present where people everywhere are prepared to push out the boundaries and to think the unthinkable in the interests of knowledge and the development of science. Yet we do not seem to have the same capacity for lateral thinking when we are confronted with political problems that call for new political solutions. Indeed such is the policy makers lack of confidence in the voters capacity to think through and take informed decisions that politicians and administrators still appear to conspire to protect us from facing up to reality. The "for God's sake don't tell the children attitude" still exists. Yet we all know that children and adults have an uncanny ability to suss out when they are not getting the whole story.
All sides have exhibited such strangled emotions at different times with regard to the Good Friday Agreement.
The done deal seemed to promise all things to all men, even when on the face of it parties voting for the agreement want diametrically opposing nation states.
Would it not have been better in 1972, in 1997 and not too late in 2003 to put all the options on the table, to have experts develop the pros and cons of every option and then to trust the electorate to consider all the possibilities and make informed choices about their preferred options.
It is a pity that the possibility of repatriation was not given more thoughtful discussion in the 70s. Perhaps a proper analysis would have quickly pointed up the absurdity of enforced movement of people but might have outlined the benefits of voluntary repatriation- potentially a costly possibility of course, but given the billions subsequently spent by the governments on maintaining the security of this volatile state, perhaps not such an absurdity as first dismissed.
If the number of people from Belfast alone during the past 30 years who have opted for voluntary self-financed dual patriation with a second home in Donegal is anything to go by, Heath and his advisors might even have been on to a winner.
While our politicians may have had the opportunity to study all options for the future before they opted for the GFA, the hoi – polloi did not have that luxury, so perhaps in the current political hiatus the ordinary voter might be enabled to indulge in a little creative thinking. Our media might even mastermind illustrations and enable consideration of the options. What would a united Ireland of the future look like?
How would a federation work? Would cantons like Switzerland each with its own separate little identity be feasible here? What are the implications of a redrawn border, recreating a (smaller) largely protestant land for a protestant people. Would the Belgian, or Canadian system of separate identities within a bigger whole work? And so on. There are many models. What is needed is the capacity to use our heads to explore the options, not our emotions to react in ignorance. In the end we might even agree that the GFA is not just the only but also the best show in town.
