British-Irish Relations in a Postnationalist Context

Abstract

One of the most innovative proposals of the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 struck between the British and Irish governments was, I believe, the new ‘Council of Isles’. What this effectively acknowledges is that the citizens of Britain and Ireland are inextricably bound up with each other – mongrel islanders from East to West sharing an increasingly common civic and economic space. In addition to the obvious contemporary overlapping of our sports and popular cultures, it is worth recalling just how much of our respective histories were shared: from the Celtic, Viking and Norman settlements to our more recent entry to the European community. For millennia the Irish sea served as a waterway connecting our two islands, only rarely as a cordon sanitaire keeping us apart. And this is even truer in our own time with over 25 000 trips being made daily across the Irish sea, in both directions. It is not surprising that over eight million citizens of the United Kingdom today claim Irish origin, with over four million of these having an Irish parent. Indeed a recent survey shows only 6 per cent of British people consider Irish people living in Britain to be foreigners. And we don’t need reminding that almost a quarter of the inhabitants of the island of Ireland claim to be at least part British.