Hibernia

Signing Away the Six Counties of Ireland

One of the hottest debates going on right now in Ireland involves the very heart of the Republic’s Constitution, namely Articles Two and Three, which together stake a claim for the Irish Republic on the six counties of Northern Ireland. Many feel that scrapping Two and Three would be an unforgivable act of treason that would finalize and fully justify the partition of Ireland.

But there are others who feel that these sections are an outdated and possibly illegal claim to land which belongs to someone else, namely, the United Kingdom.

The Articles were written during the infancy of the Irish Free State, when the bitterness of signing away the six counties was still fresh in the memories of people. At the time it was felt that the treaty of 1922, which gave the six counties over to England, was merely a temporary agreement that would one day be outdated in a unified, 32-county Ireland.

However, in 1991, almost 70 years down the road, Articles Two and Three are on the political hit list. Unionists in the North and in England have been demanding the removal of the Articles for decades, and it seems as if many of the people in the Republic now agree. Politicians are tripping over each other as they race to denounce the Articles as Civil War relics, and the Irish Sunday Independent newspaper recently reported that their survey showed that 52 percent of people in the Republic think there should be some form of “amendment” made to the Articles.

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Brooke has been trying to start negotiations on the future of Northern Ireland between politicians from Dublin, London and the North and both Unionists and constitutional Nationalists. Militant Nationalists from the likes of Sinn Féin have been told that they are not welcome to the bargaining table because of their advocacy of violence.

These negotiations, dubbed the “Brooke Initiative,” would attempt to foster peace in the North.

Brooke feels that inviting the Irish Republic to take a more active role in the running of the North and to have them work things out with the Unionists, (who are still angry that they were left out of the talks leading to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement), would start the groundwork for peace.

However, Two and Three seem to be in the way of progress. Unionists have refused to talk to any politicians from the Irish Republic, and point to Two and Three as the reason. To them, the Republic’s continuance of Two and Three is akin to, for example, the government of Mexico claiming that Texas still belongs to them. They also claim that the Republic’s adherence to the Articles justifies the IRA’s campaign of violence.

All of this is seen as political gameplaying by the supporters of Two and Three, who feel that the Articles have become the scapegoats for the Unionists’ repeated refusal to accept that the Republic of Ireland should have some sort of say in what goes on in the North.

But politicians in Ireland itself are increasingly siding with the Unionists.

Every major party has said that, at the least, some degree of change must be made to Two and Three. The Fine Gael party has called for a “consent clause” to be added to the Articles, which would retain the desire for a united Ireland, but only if the majority of people in Northern Ireland agree.

Others such as the Workers Party and the Labour Party have called for the complete scrapping of the Articles.

In December 1990, a bill which would have amended Two and Three was brought up before the Dail (Irish Parliament) but defeated because of heavy opposition from the coalition government of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats.

Prime Minister Charles Haughey of Fianna Fail called the bill, which was supported by Labor, Fine Gael and the Workers’ parties, “divisive and counter-productive.”

Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats have said that they agree that work needs to be done to Two and Three, but that the timing of this bill was all wrong.

Haughey feels that any amendment to the Articles should be made as part of negotiations in the Brooke Initiative. Like a poker player who is just about to sit down for what is bound to be a difficult game of negotiations, Haughey does not want to just give away two of his cards before he comes to the table.

Finally, to many Irish people all over the world, the idea of writing off the six counties entirely is an act of heresy to the dream of a united nation. Nationalist-minded people both in Ireland as well as here in America and elsewhere fear the worst, that an integral part of Ireland’s heritage will be railroaded and blamed for the problems in the North, and that the six counties of the North will be thrown out with the bathwater.

Maureen O’Hara Returns to the Big Screen

After an absence of nineteen years Maureen O’Hara is back in the movies. She returns to the screen to play John Candy’s mother in the upcoming film, Only the Lonely, which also stars Anthony Quinn, Jim Belushi, Ally Sheedy and Milo O’Shea.

Born Maureen FitzSimmons in Milltown, County Dublin, Maureen began her career with the Abbey Theatre, where she was discovered by the English actor Charles Laughton. Laughton took her to England where she starred in Jamaica Inn, her first film.

A year later, at the age of 20, she made her Hollywood debut in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Laughton.

In Hollywood, Maureen became close friends with director John Ford and graced the screen in many of his films, most notably The Long Gray Line, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man, the legendary film about Ireland in which she starred with John Wayne.

Always known for her spunk, Maureen was one of the first in the film business to win a libel suit against Confidential magazine, the gutter press of the ’50s, leading the way for other libel suits and the eventual closure of Confidential.

These days Maureen divides her time between homes in New York, Los Angeles, the Virgin Islands, Dublin and Glengarriff, County Cork.

When filmmaker Chris Columbus, (whose film Home Alone was the top grossing film of 1990) decided he wanted her for Only the Lonely, he had a hell of a time finding her. “It took four weeks to even find her,” he said, and “There was no agent to go to.” He eventually located her through Joe Murphy, Advertising Director of Irish Voice newspaper, and a personal friend of Maureen, and a meeting was arranged.

Maureen liked the script, and the movie was on its way. Columbus, found her to be “just as enthralling as ever,” and was very impressed with her ability to work. “One night, it was 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., and she was still incredible,” he says.

The filming is finished now and Maureen says she “nceds a good rest. We put in long hours, sometimes in very cold weather, all through the night, until the early morning but it felt good to be back in a role again,” she said.

Irish Heritage Month

A resolution has been passed by the House of Representatives designating March, 1991 as “Irish American Heritage Month.”

The resolution was sponsored by representatives Thomas J. Manton (D-NY) and Brian J. Donnelly (D-MA), at the suggestion of the American Foundation for Irish Heritage. 

This first-time national recognition of the contributions made to America by Irish immigrants and their descendants, calls attention to the fact that by 1776, nearly 300,000 natives of Ireland had emigrated to America, and that following the victory in Yorktown, a French major general reported that “Congress owed its existence, and America, possibly her preservation, to the fidelity of the Irish.” 

The American Foundation for Irish Heritage plans to build an Irish Heritage Center in Washington, D.C., to honor the contributions made to America by Irish. 

 

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the February 1991 issue of Irish America. ♦