Skip to main content
Why would Nationalists hold up a united Ireland?
From Belfast, FRA HUGHES reports on a topsy-turvy and upside-down political mess with those supposedly in favour of uniting the island looking out for narrow electoral interests instead, as 100 years of 'Northern Ireland' approaches

AS Irish Republicans and Nationalists commemorate the centenary of Terence James MacSwiney, the lord mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike in October 1920, the current Taoiseach of Ireland Michael Martin has ruled out a border poll on Irish reunification — while the former First Minister of  the North of Ireland Peter Robinson calls on Unionism to prepare for the vote.

MacSwiney, the playwright, author and politician, had been arrested for sedition against the British military and political occupation of Ireland during the War of Independence and died after 74 days in London’s Brixton prison aged 41. His funeral in Cork was attended by tens of thousands of mourners. What would he make of his nation’s leaders today?
 
Taoiseach Martin, an elected Irish leader whose party’s founding ideology was built on national reunification, eschews that very principle — while the ex-leader of a Unionist party built on the continuation of the link with Britain, debates the position Unionism might adopt in the event of a border poll.

The present leader of the Orange Order in Ireland is calling for a new North of Ireland based on continued consent to remain in the UK and is making plans for a 12-month centenary celebration next year for the mini-state which was born in violent division and discrimination in 1921.
 
A state with a bloody sectarian history founded on a religious headcount that turned a Unionist Protestant minority in the whole of Ireland into a regional majority in a partitioned Ireland.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
FINDING COMMON CAUSE: Supporters of the Irish rap group Kneecap outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London with London Irish Brigade solidarity placards for Mo Chara
Ireland / 9 March 2026
9 March 2026

AARON SMITH discusses why the Protestant diaspora are still part of Yeats’s ‘Indomitable Irishry’, and an integral part of any future united Ireland.

Print depicting the 1791 Bastille Day celebration in Belfast, discussed in the entry for Society of United Irishmen  Pic: John Carey/CC
Ireland / 5 February 2026
5 February 2026

TOM GALLAHUE argues that asking what role Irish diaspora educators can play in shaping Irish unity is to ask a deeper question about democracy itself

ALL IN A GOOD CAUSE: The statue of James Connolly in Dublin, designed by the sculptor Eamonn O'Doherty unveiled in 1996 was commissioned by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) / Pic: William Murphy/CC
Features / 30 October 2025
30 October 2025

A new group within the NEU is preparing the labour movement for a conversation on Irish unity by arguing that true liberation must be rooted in working-class solidarity and anti-sectarianism, writes ROBERT POOLE

Independent presidential candidate Catherine Connolly with Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O'Neill and party TD Pearse Doherty at a rally in Monaghan town, during campaigning for the Irish presidential election. Picture date: Wednesday October 22, 2025
Ireland / 23 October 2025
23 October 2025

The independent TD’s campaign has put important issues like Irish reunification and military neutrality at the heart of the political conversation, argues SEAN MacBRADAIGH