Options for Northern Ireland

Abstract

Is Northern Ireland an integral part of the United Kingdom? Can it be effectively governed by the same democratic system as the rest of the United Kingdom? The answer to both these questions is ‘probably not’. Northern Ireland is not an integral part of the United Kingdom in that successive British governments have declared themselves to be willing to cede it to the Irish Republic if a majority of the people in Northern Ireland so wish, and in that the Labour Party and many others have committed themselves to the active pursuit of the reunification of Ireland. Attempts to govern Northern Ireland by the same democratic system as the rest of the United Kingdom have patently failed, and there is a large measure of consensus that some other form of democracy will have to be established before effective powers can be devolved back from London to Belfast. In the meantime, pending the achievement either of Irish unification or of some other democratic system of government, Northern Ireland is governed by a more or less colonial system of ‘direct rule’, and the civil strife and terrorism which has been going on there since 1969 seems likely to continue indefinitely.