The insistence by the SDLP that it is 100% for the Good Friday Agreement and that it should continue even if Irish unity were achieved is a welcome and innovative idea. One reason why the DUP and right-wingers could frighten sections of the unionist electorate is that the agreement was presented by Republicans as an interim arrangement pending Irish unity. The idea that the agreement was transitional did nothing to engender confidence but instead sustained a Paisleyism that thrives on negativity.
It was about a year ago that a friend from the nationalist community suggested we should insist on Northern Ireland remaining an administrative unit, even if Irish unity were achieved. The SDLP's idea that the agreement would remain does precisely this but this contribution to the debate was not taken as seriously as it deserved. It is now central to the SDLP's election manifesto and has some potential to appeal to unionists.
The SDLP manifesto proclaims, "Uniquely among parties in the north, the SDLP is clear that in a united Ireland the agreement should endure. Its institutions – like the assembly and the executive – should stand. All its equality guarantees and human rights protections should continue.
"The SDLP believes that all the rights, protections and inclusion that nationalists sought within Northern Ireland while it is in the United Kingdom, must equally be guaranteed to unionists within a united Ireland. We are emphatic that unity must not be about the entrapment of a new minority".
Of course many unionists will suspend judgment and suspect the SDLP of trying to make Irish unity appear more attractive at a time when there is relatively little support for it. But the SDLP is up front about this and argues legitimately that unity is less likely to be opposed if the survival of the agreement is assured. I quizzed a leading member of the SDLP about the continuance, for example, of the British-Irish Council designed to facilitate constructive relationships between our islands and the response was positive. Links with the other island will remain and are likely to be enhanced.
It has to be said that leading members of Sinn Féin also accept that Northern Ireland will remain as an administrative unit and that links with the other island will continue whatever the constitutional configuration in these our islands. This in any case would follow if the 1916 declaration's reference to "cherishing all of the children of the nation equally" quoted by Sinn Féin in their Strategy Framework Document, was taken seriously.
The difference is that the SDLP is now committed to continuance of the agreement and ipso facto Northern Ireland, publicly.
If we are truly committed to the agreement and mutual accommodation then we must move beyond zero sum mentalities and mutually exclusive frameworks – as in United Kingdom verses united Ireland. The SDLP claims to reject "the entrapment of a new minority" and this has to mean transcending old divisions. Sinn Féin also claims it is not going to do to unionists what it believes unionists did to nationalists. This should mean that in future any potential unionist minority would be accommodated at all levels within Northern Ireland and possibly within the whole island. Power-sharing and accommodation of minority traditions and institutional links between our islands would remain. The crazy notion that Irish is the first language in the south and the remaining exclusively Catholic elements in the Irish Constitution would have to be ditched. The reality of close ties of many kinds between out islands should be given official recognition and in that context perhaps the Irish Tricolour might fly freely alongside the Union Flag in Dublin and Belfast without causing offence.
Mark Durkan's words favouring the continuation of the agreement are potentially helpful but they must be incorporated into the agreement itself.
The provision for a 50% plus one majority as a basis for a change of sovereignty should also be adjusted to reflect the reality that Northern Ireland, and Ireland itself, will persist in facing east-west as well as north-south.
The two islands are intimately and inextricably linked and our mutual relationships must be enhanced rather than diminished.
The old days of aspiring to complete independence are long gone and interdependence is now the name of the game in the modern world. Despite the 1916 declaration on cherishing the children of the nation equally, the reality was that under the old dispensation unity was to be imposed and based upon exclusion. The SDLP could yet provide a countering Mandela moment with potential to shatter ancient myths and herald a new pluralist Ireland – united in diversity, integrated in the context of devolution throughout these islands and open to a changing modern world.
