Britain has the Power of Veto

By AM Wednesday, September 10, 2014

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Sean Bresnahan,  PRO 1916 Societies, in a letter featuring in the Irish News in August raises concerns about the power of the British state to block Irish unification.

Pat Fahy (July 17) makes the argument that the UK Parliament does not have the right to block Irish Unity. Whatever the legal finery of that position the most important thing to consider is that while it may not have the RIGHT (something itself open to debate to say the very least) it still retains the ability. To all intents and purposes, especially given Britain's notoriety for duplicity when it comes to Irish affairs, we're splitting hairs for the sake of argument.
Let's just set the clever legal niceties aside and deal with reality in layman's terms. Under the 1998 Agreement or Act (whichever we choose to call it) the British government at Westminster reserves to itself alone the power to call a 'border poll' on the constitutional status of the six-counties, it reserves the exclusive right to determine the wording and parameters of any such poll, and by its legal standing as a political instrument of the sovereign British Crown itself any such poll and its outworkings remain subject at all times before and after to the assent of the British Parliament at Westminster.

Regardless of the fine points of the law it's pretty clear that Britain retains the power to block the reunification of our country. Indeed it actively does so on a daily basis and has done so since the very day it partitioned this country against the democratic wishes of the people who actually live here. To my mind Britain does indeed have no right to block Irish Unity but that's not how the situation stands. No amount of vague legal distraction, however nuanced, can disguise that.

By reducing the concept of Irish self-determination to facilitate a Unionist veto (the same veto republicans railed against throughout the long years of opposition to the six-county state) Britain has boxed clever and found a way of retaining its ability to block Irish reunification while appearing as though it holds no such legal position. That might pass with those who now find themselves in the position of upholding the legitimacy of the Unionist veto but there remain others who can still see the wood for the trees.

The only right that's really in question here is the long-denied right of the Irish people to full, unimpeded self-determination. Any process that allows a Unionist veto to qualify that right contravenes the very principle of self-determination itself and should be rejected by those who hold Irish Unity as their primary political aim. Those who suggest otherwise might ask themselves if Britain does not have the right to block Irish reunification as claimed then why does Ireland remain partitioned despite the presence of an overwhelming majority among its people who favour a United Ireland?