Diarmaid Ferriter: One significant block to unity hasn’t changed: apathy and ignorance south of the Border

According to the historian DG Boyce, the British Labour Party a century ago had “no Irish past to live down or to live up to”. Despite the new British prime minister Andy Burnham’s references to his great-grandfather Edmund Burke, who lived in Drogheda before emigrating to Liverpool in the late 19th century, Boyce’s declaration could just as easily be applied to Burnham, who has little space for Ireland on his list of political priorities.Burnham is probably unaware of the advice given to another British Labour Party prime minister, James Callaghan, who was once warned to avoid “getting sucked into the Irish bog”. Burnham is on a learning curve when it comes to Ireland and, thankfully, is not dealing with the intensity of the Troubles that O’Callaghan faced in the 1970s. But after his comments last week dismissing the desirability or possibility of a Border poll on Irish reunification, Burnham will now be aware of the enduring relevance of the advice to O’Callaghan.In the 1970s, the British government planned to oversee regular Border polls in Northern Ireland. In the words of the prime minister Ted Heath in 1972, what was envisaged was “a system of regular plebiscites in NI about the Border, the first to be held as soon as practicable in the near future and others at intervals of a substantial period of years thereafter”. The aim, according to then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Willie Whitelaw, was “to take the Border out of the day-to-day political scene”. But the farce of the only Border poll, held in 1973 and boycotted by nationalists, saw a 98.9 per cent vote in favour of remaining part of the UK on a turnout of 58.6 per cent, putting the kibosh on any more. A 2025 research briefing for British MPs in the House of Commons library observes, with some understatement, that the Belfast Agreement “left several issues relating to Border polls unclear”, most obviously the criteria by which the Secretary of State should decide if there is sufficient sentiment in favour of unity. Legally, there is no obligation on them to publish such criteria. How a referendum question would be framed also remains unclear, and clarity would be required on the possible governance of a unified Ireland. All Northern Secretary Hilary Benn would say last year was: “There is nothing one can point to that says the majority of people in NI are in favour of constitutional change ... it is certainly some years off.” Now, according to Burnham, it is “off the table”. READ MOREBut it was never really on the table, and that is where there is considerable Anglo-Irish unity. Taoiseach Micheál Martin told his own party this summer he “goes bananas” when party members call for a Border poll; his preference is his Shared Ireland initiative, established in 2020, with significant funding for cross-Border projects.[ Sinn Féin should forget its absurd timescale for a Border poll and focus on the nowOpens in new window ]There is a substantial library now on reunification scenarios and dilemmas. One of the more detailed books, Making Sense of a United Ireland (2022) by Brendan O’Leary, models different possibilities: “Whichever model is chosen in the South before the Northern referendum should be extensively researched, publicly deliberated and scrutinised – tested by the fire of public opinion, public debate and public reflection – with as much engagement of the peoples of the North as possible: British, Protestant, and unionist, Irish, Catholic and nationalists, as well as the neither/nors. We can do that. We have just enough time if the likely date for the referendum is about 2030.”O’Leary’s optimism, however, flies in the face of divided opinion in Northern Ireland and much indifference in the Republic, despite Sinn Féin’s warnings about the imperatives of commitment and planning, the need for a designated minister and discussion by a Citizens’ Assembly. According to Fianna Fáil in 2024, unity remains “a founding value and objective” of its party. Fine Gael nods in the same direction, but that was vitiated by party leader Simon Harris “frankly” admitting last year it is “not where our focus and priority should be”. In 2024, the joint Oireachtas committee on the implementation of the Belfast Agreement insisted preparations for a Border poll should begin “immediately”, having previously argued for careful planning and a Green Paper. But talk of urgency has generated little political momentum in the Republic.We’ve been here before. In 1983, historian Michael Laffan in The Partition of Ireland 1911-1925, said that southern nationalist attitudes to the Border were “schizoid” and that a passionate commitment to reunion by a minority “was diluted by general apathy or ambivalence”. Likewise, Clare O’Halloran in Partition and the Limits of Irish Nationalism (1987) identified ignorance in the Republic about Northern Ireland and a mindset about partition “founded upon evasion, equivocation and ambivalence”. For all the Brexit fallout and the recent scholarly studies, those roadblocks remain, both in Britain and the Republic.