The interminable saga of Brexit and its consequences for Northern Ireland, with backstops, protocols, Article 16, treaties and borders, has been confusing, troublesome and downright dispiriting for me and many others.  However, inadvertently and unexpectedly, thinking about it has also afforded me a modicum of personal clarity. 

I am not the first, I know, to suggest that it is all to do with identity.  Concepts of personal and group identity are integral to all the main political forces, including unionism’s/loyalism’s sense of Britishness, nationalism’s/republicanism’s adherence to Irishness, and significantly the English nationalism that was Brexit’s driving force. That is even with leaving the Scots and Welsh out of it for now.

Some unionists and loyalists might well be happy with a hard border on the island of Ireland, but not so much with regulatory checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea because of the threat that poses to their sense of Britishness. The despicable and threatening graffiti that has appeared on Alliance Party property and elsewhere recently, is testament to that.

For nationalists, republicans (and many others) a return to checkpoints on ‘The Border’ is unthinkable. This may be for many reasons but significantly because it metaphorically and literally cuts across people’s personal and group understanding of what it means to be Irish.

On top of this, if Brexit has taught us anything, it has shown that these ancient and deep-seated beliefs and affiliations are so powerful that they can allow people to act, speak and even vote contrary to their own economic self-interest. Identity politics and identity politicians dominate the current climate both at home, across the water and around the world.

In the middle of a pandemic and the climate crisis, we now see countries fighting over access to vaccines in the way they may one day fight about access to water. At a time when human beings need to pull together, work together and actively co-operate as adults to safeguard our future, we seem more intent to fight like children, call each other names and refuse to share. This stems largely from our unshakable compulsion and deep need to belong to some particular nation, ethnic group or tribe.

This seems to have produced a  growing infantilisation of international affairs: selfish, nationalistic and sometimes regional concerns, consistently overriding the imperative to work together to share the planet and it’s resources. It seems our individual desire to identify with one particular clan inevitably takes precedence over our collective need to protect the future for our children and our species. 

Likewise, on this shared island of ours, notions of our own identity and adherence to our own side, always seem to prevent us from genuinely considering and realistically seeking to meet the needs of those who do not share our particular sense of who we are. Competing identities foster the misguided notion that for us to win the others have to lose. With a few notable exceptions, many of our local politicians have played and continue to play into this deadly serious, high stakes, zero sum game.

Which brings me back to that little glimmer of personal illumination I mentioned at the start.

The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement allows me the choice of being Irish, British or both.

So I choose both. 

Linked to that are the competing and antagonistic, cultural and political identities of unionism/loyalism and nationalism/republicanism.

So I choose neither.

However, whatever choice we make about our political identity, significant challenges remain. For unionists and loyalists the problem is how to convince their neighbours that it is possible, indeed preferable, to retain an Irish identity within the United Kingdom. This will require the invention of a much revised version of unionism that swaps its traditional internal rabble rousing for a genuine and concerted effort to persuade outsiders of the benefits of the status quo. Making fun of the Irish language, for example, clearly doesn’t do that.

For nationalists and republicans the challenges are equally significant, because they must explain how people with a British culture and identity can be realistically accommodated within some version of a united Ireland. Misty-eyed renditions of ‘A nation once again’ will not be enough to bring the other side into the fold. Wasn’t it John Hume who said you have to first unite the people before you unite the land?

Which brings us to the ‘neithers’ – those like me who choose to reject the traditional defining sectarianism of our homeland. We cannot simply wish away the binary nature of our history and politics but need desperately to spell out an alternative version of the future for all of us. In this utopian vision a diverse and inclusive population, at ease with itself would sit comfortably with a range of cultural, political and religious identities.

Borders, north/south, east/west would be virtually irrelevant as mutual co-operation, trust and inter-dependence would see us all pull together to deal with pandemics, climate change, poverty, racism and all the various threats of the age. Which, of course, all looks like daft, unobtainable idealism, in the face of the current harsh realities of Brexit, the pandemic and politics as we know it.

If there is reason for optimism in all of this, I guess it must be in the heroic self-sacrifice of those who have worked tirelessly to treat and care for the thousands of people who have suffered during the COVID-19 outbreak. These exhausted, selfless, skilful, caring, inspiring people have given us a powerful example to follow in how to choose wisely.

They choose life.

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