From the Politics of the Island to the Islands
A Green Political Analysis of and for Northern Ireland
By John Barry

It is (yet another) sad reminder of the limited political vocabulary we have here in Northern Ireland that for many people ‘Green Politics’ will be initially interpreted as perhaps another dimension of the ‘pan-nationalist’ front that so haunts sections of Unionism. So, let me make this clear, as I’ve had to do on many an occasion on the doorsteps – green politics is not another form of Irish Nationalism, but instead a radical, internationalist and progressive politics, part of a world-wide green movement.

While other parties on this island like to proclaim that they are organised on an all-island basis, the Green Party in Northern Ireland has sister parties not just in the Republic (where at the last election they increased the number of TDs from 2 to 6), but in Scotland (where the Greens increased their representation from 1 to 7) , England and Wales (London has a Green deputy lord mayor as well as 2 MEPs), as well as parties in Europe, and the rest of the world. Green politics, while resolutely local in rooting itself in the contested space of Northern Ireland, also is global in focus, concern and reach. And Green Politics is growing, tapping into the growing concern within society about the dangers of ‘economic globalisation’ which has disseminated manufacturing across western Europe (witness the latest casualties in Shorts and Mackies), the arrogance and failures of New Labour, and above all offering a real alternative for those seeking to transform society along more egalitarian lines, empowering individuals and communities to take control over their own lives and offering radical policies to achieve this.

The main principles of green politics, which all Green Parties share are, a commitment to equality and social justice, radical democratisation and decentralisation and the empowerment of local communities, the creation of a sustainable economy and society and a commitment to peaceful means in the transformation of society. A shorthand way to encompass what green politics is about would be ‘quality of life’, a concern with the real, day-to-day issues that affect everyone’s lives, whether it’s a concern with food safety and quality, inadequately heated and insulated housing, poor public transport, job insecurity, safer communities, making technology work for people rather than vice versa.
It should therefore be clear from the above, that green politics offers something distinctively different from the other main ‘nationalist’ (British and Irish varieties) parties here in Northern Ireland. The rather predictable critique of green politics as ‘hippy’ or a middle-class concern could not be further from the truth. It is a politics with origins in the progressive political struggles of the 1960s and has kept this progressive character ever since, leading the way in challenging the corporate domination of the world, the global degradation of the natural world, and exposing the limits of the ‘modernising’ projects of New Labour in the UK or social, economic and ecological costs of the ‘pro-globalisation’ strategy of the right-wing Fianna-Fail/PD coalition in the Republic.

Equally a green analysis of Northern Ireland is distinctive, critical as it is of the failed ‘nationalist’ projects of both Irish Nationalism/
Republicanism and Unionist/British Nationalism. While not simplistically seeking to ‘wish away’ Unionism and Nationalism and their accompanying mindsets, language and history (which would be impossible), it still remains the case that a Green political analysis profoundly challenges them. Green politics in short seeks to ‘trouble the troubles’, stand with and represent those who consider themselves resolutely ‘other’, as well as supporting democratic and just institutions whereby people who do consider themselves ‘Irish’ or ‘British’ or both, can live peacefully in their contested space.

An Islands Perspective
The flow of people, ideas, goods and services, culture and politics between and within the various elements of these islands – Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland North and South – is something that has been on-going for centuries and indeed, I would suggest this flow and exchange (sometimes positive sometimes destructive – IRA campaigns in London or Loyalist ones in Dublin are sad reminders of how destructive this flow can be) is actually constitutive of the identity and self-understandings of most people living on these Islands. Yet the extent of interaction, travel and exchange between these islands is often (for ideological or other purposes) overlooked.
There is much to be gained from placing ‘nationalist’ self-understandings and politics – in which I include both ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Unionism’ as examples – within a wider Islands context, to shift the political and cultural space against which collective identities are forged away from the ‘nation-state’ and view the political and cultural space within which these identities can be created and recreated as existing beyond the nation-state at the European Union level and below the nation-state at more regional and local levels.

Such an Islands perspective (or in the geography of the Belfast Agreement – the North-South and East-West dimensions) is consistent with a Green Political analysis of Northern Ireland and provides an interesting and positive set of indicative guidelines to help us navigate not only the transition to stability here in Northern Ireland but also provides a set of principles by which we can understand and perhaps guide the transformation of state-based, centralised and minimally democratic government into new patterns of governance which have the potential to open new spaces for community empowerment, overlapping senses of identity, local democracy and effective forms of citizenship.
Hence, such talk of an Islands political perspective offers a different, positive but realistic perspective on not just the situation here in Northern Ireland but also within and between the constitutive political parts of these Islands. In the words of Richard Kearney, we need “to think beyond our inherited models of sovereignty, nation-state and nationalism, in order to create new paradigms of political and cultural accommodation between all the citizens of these islands” (Post-Nationalist Ireland, p. 11).

Critical Regionalism
The concept of ‘critical regionalism’ offers an extremely rich vein of intellectual, cultural and political thought and practice for the Greens to tap in their response to competing forms of nationalism in Northern Ireland. I refer to Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism as forms of nationalism. In so doing, the Green Party in Northern Ireland stands ready to engage with the communal blocks of nationalism and unionism – and will not settle for a comfortable cross-community role. In our new and emerging identity formations we must find a kind of liberation, and a spark of the universal in the midst of our own sense of belonging to a place we love. Those who seek a region, island or political gain at the expense of another or for ‘ourselves alone’ are standing before a crashing tide of cultural and political change, not least the power of globalisation. Identity, power and responsibility (ethics) are fellow travellers now; one without consideration of the other will always run the risk of polluting the political culture and landscape.

At the same time as the wider undemocratic and unaccountable forces of globalisation are daily shaping our lives in Northern Ireland – from the destruction of local economies, and the local knowledge, expertise and cultures that goes along with these, to the corporate control of our food supply – the ‘Islands’ view also points to something else which is troubling for the two ‘hegemonic’ competing nationalisms within Northern Ireland. This is the reality that the respective ‘patron-states’ towards which Unionism and Nationalism are orientated do not reciprocate or validate their aspirations. To use that much evoked phrase in Northern Ireland politics, ‘the reality of the situation’ is that on the one hand, there is only minority support in the Republic for a ‘United Ireland’ (support for this flawed project has been sharply declining since the 1980s and especially since the ‘Celtic Tiger’ experience). Equally important is the recognition that for most citizens of the Republic, Northern Ireland nationalists are regarded as having more in common with their unionist neighbours than with themselves and Northern Ireland is regarded as a ‘place apart’.

On the other hand, it is equally clear that there is no great support for the ‘Union’ within Britain, and the fact that Unionists cannot trust the British state to uphold their interests is a central aspect of its perspective and mindset. The implications of this for the Protestant community is that it is “fundamentally threatened by British actions and British attitudes. Ulster Protestants are well aware that the British public is largely indifferent to their efforts to preserve themselves and entirely uncomprehending of their history, attitudes and culture” (Bruce, 1989: 258-9). So Unionist culture and collective identity is problematic to the extent that its sense of ‘Britishness’ requires some recognition and acknowledgement of this from the British people and the British state. But since this recognition and affirmation is not forthcoming, this leaves Ulster Unionist identity unstable and unsure.

The Green project shares important inspirations with the early movement and strategies of the civil rights movement in the North. The Greens also grew up in 1968, out of critical social movements in a postcolonial world, questioning simplistic modes of ‘development’, bureaucratic centralisation, patriarchy and militarism. Where the North’s people and politicians have diverged from other parts of Europe is in their choice of political vehicles to take forward the resolution of our postcolonial conflict. Aspirations to move beyond our conflict have been frustrated by the presentation of competing nationalisms (Irish nationalism, and Unionism) as the only available discourses or languages: the only available mythologies or origin and stable identities.

With the Belfast Agreement, we now have a curious situation insofar as the institutions (North, South/East West) are, in a sense, post-nationalist. They attempt to transcend the exclusivities of nation-state centred affiliations. Paradoxically, the dominant parties who will operate those institutions remain firmly embedded within nationalist discourses of one kind or another. The Greens in having political parties on all parts of these islands are uniquely placed as ‘living examples’ of how the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement should be working.
So the question facing us today when we approach the myths that inform both Irish Republicanism/nationalism and indeed Unionism is how can we apply a critical perspective that will help us to move on. Unlike the neo-unionist version of regionalism based on an accommodation of two communal blocks, and based on an unambitious ethos of mere tolerance, a critical regionalism would take up the challenges first articulated by the United Irishmen and later a civil rights movement inspired by European critical social movements in 1968 by challenging the totalising claims of nation-states on individual identity, setting out to decolonise the mind-sets of colonised and coloniser, and advocating a ‘post-nationalist’ hybrid political formation in the Northern Ireland region (or inter-region), within a broader ‘Islands’ context, in which Northern Ireland is where ‘Britishness’ (and Scottishness) and ‘Irishness’ meet, intermingle and (hopefully) co-exist.

One thing is certain: the question of what it means to be Irish or British - who we are and where we are going to - cannot be limited to the frontiers of our island, and requires an Islands perspective. The affirmation of a dynamic cultural identity invariably involves an exploratory dialogue with other cultures and a genuine commitment to cultural diversity. Plagued by colonialism, famine and emigration, we became obsessed by the struggle with the ‘old enemy’ England and settled for a rather insular definition of national identity and culture. But since such dark times in our history, we have begun to re-explore the rich diversity and openness of our intellectual traditions.

In many respects the Green analysis draws much from the ‘Field Day’ cultural and political analysis of the 1980s. Although it never put forth a formal mission statement, their intention was to create a space, a ‘fifth province’, that transcended the crippling oppositions of Irish politics. The term ‘fifth province’ was coined by the editors of an Irish Journal, The Crane Bag, to name an imaginary cultural space from which a new discourse of unity in diversity might emerge.

The Green Party is often viewed as an exotic creature, with origins in Germany and with a recently imported brand succeeding in the Republic and Scotland. For the Northern Ireland party, the Green Party is a vehicle for all those who have longed to travel to the ‘fifth province’ (with all the enthusiasm, love and spirit of a journey to Donegal). The Green Party is not a party that seeks to locate itself beyond the two communal blocks, seeking to eke out a living from the indulgence of the disaffected. Rather, by reaching into our own literary, cultural, political and radical traditions: the Greens will challenge, deconstruct, agitate and outlast those who have inflicted a cold sectarian war on this part of the islands for over seventy years.

Reference
Bruce, S (1989), God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism, Oxford University Press.

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