ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT JOHN MOORE’S UNIVERSITY, “THE ROSCOE 2000 LECTURE”
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT JOHN MOORE’S UNIVERSITY, LIVERPOOL 24 NOVEMBER, 1998 “THE ROSCOE 2000 LECTURE”
The concept of citizenship - or of being a citizen - is something which, because you’ve grown up with it and live it every day of your life, you generally take for granted. And when you’re asked to talk about it your first inclination naturally is to reach for the dictionary for a formal definition of what precisely it means. In my case, the dictionary definition of citizen is “an inhabitant of a city: a member of a state: a townsman: a freeman: a civilian”. So straight away you know you’ve got some work to do even if only updating for gender balance. You know that the lived experienced of being a citizen is something a lot more than those few words in the dictionary can encompass. The complexities of living as a citizen are so different from any principled definition of citizenship, because the concept touches people in the most passionate of places - where their identity, their sense of who they are, their sense of belonging, their sense of worth and their sense of value all merge, or don’t, as the case may be.
As a person who came from a place where there were a very complex set of issues to do with citizenship, my starting point is my own experience. I was born in Belfast - an Irish person born into an Irish nationalist background, with a very strong sense of identity with the south of Ireland - where the constitution recognised my citizenship of Ireland but didn’t confer any voting rights on me whenever I went to stand for election because I lived North of the Border. And in the place where I had a vote – in Northern Ireland – although I was a citizen, there was the feeling that my full citizenship was always an issue. My teenage years coincided with the civil rights movement, which drew attention to the many aspects of full citizenship what were denied to Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Issues to do with citizenship and to do with identity very often are at the heart of some of the more intractable conflicts in our world. Getting those relationships right between the individual and the place in which they are going to live their lives – and the structures that are built up around it – is crucial. In the past, the accepted citizenship model I was expected to live in was an old conflict model – you could only be one thing or the other – Irish or British – Irish or European, British or European. Life was built around tight and exclusive choices. The notion of parallel and twin and even triple identities was anathema, yet these identities were part of my own personhood and the crude choices of course shaped an understanding of ourselves, our history and our times.
Yet the Irish have shown that you can be a citizen of Ireland, a citizen of Europe. Our global outreach has made us natural citizens of the world. We are a people who are particularly well placed to talk about citizenship, because our gift to the world for centuries has been our people – we are 70 million right across the globe today. But if we go back into another millennium entirely - long before the word ‘global’ was ever thought of - we were citizens of the world. While other countries endured a Dark Age, there never was a Dark Age in Ireland. Indeed at the point at which England was enduring its Dark Age, we were experiencing one of our greatest cultural highlights – we were interconnecting with the Viking world, the world of Islam - in that sense, we were outreaching to the world. So this quirkiness today which sees us almost in a “Reformation time warp” is certainly part of our present – part of the colonial legacy, but we are building on and rediscovering a very ancient tradition – a very ancient set of sources which are helping us now in a very profound way to craft a new future of citizenship.
We know for example that there are big issues in Britain to do with citizenship of Europe and citizenship of Britain. Indeed, the old empire had its problems too – people who were citizens of part of the far flung Empire who thought of themselves as British citizens found when they went to assert their British citizenship that it was often problematic and did not confer the entitlements they had presumed. So, while the lived experience of citizenship is extraordinarily tangled – it repays untangling.
Over the last two months, I have been on State Visits to Australia and Canada – my first since coming to office just over a year ago. In both countries – or the “new countries” as they were once known – I met with communities and individuals who cherished their links with their ancestral homelands – who were proud to celebrate their inherited cultures and traditions. And yet, they were participating fully with pride, enthusiasm and, in a great many cases, with considerable levels of success in the economic, political and cultural lives of their “adoptive” countries. What struck me also was the comparative ease with which they were able to live and prosper side by side with others from different traditions and cultures – and at times even with former foes.
In the case of those who emigrated from Ireland, with the exception of the very recent emigrants, the vast bulk of those 70 million who comprise the global Irish family are first or subsequent generation descendants of those who were persuaded, or even compelled to leave Ireland because they endured a form of ‘stunted citizenship’ where the ‘common interest’ did not encompass their needs or did not adequately provide the means and mechanisms for them to meet their needs. They were excluded from real participation in the economic and social life of their native country – which in turn inhibited their involvement in the societies in which they lived. Their citizenship of their natural land did not confer political, social or economic opportunities – never mind equality! Their giftedness remained locked in. In contrast to that experience, they were to blossom and flourish in the “new world” – as if to prove that they were just as capable as anybody else at the task of building a viable and sustainable society that rewarded enterprise and cherished a broader concept of the common interest.
Their successes were largely facilitated by the culture of opportunity – and by the imperative of building new societies based on the principles of liberalism which prevailed, especially in the 18th century, as exemplified in the writings of Rousseau which spawned the revolutionary movements in places like France and America. Indeed, that revolutionary spirit was echoed in Ireland in 1798 when the United Irishmen drew on events in America and France for inspiration – and promoted the ideal of a non-sectarian, democratic and inclusive politics - which could attract and sustain all Irish people, with all their inherited complexities. Rather than grimly clinging to a divisive past, they sought to create a shared future. As they stated in their first declaration of principle - “We have thought much about our posterity, little about our ancestors”. In that process they were to succeed in uniting Dissenter, Anglican and Catholic in a common political mission. Indeed, it is not entirely without significance in this momentous year in Ireland’s recent history – a year in which we have seen a major step forward in reconciling long held differences and divisions – that we should reflect on the ideals and aspirations of those people of two hundred years ago, who tried to bring hearts and minds together in the common cause of a new citizenship for all of the people of Ireland, regardless of creed or tradition.
Rousseau’s concept of the state was that it should be capable of forming a general will for the common good, and that “It is one of the most important functions of government to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes”.
Looking at Rousseau and at others who have been exercised by the concept of citizenship since the time of Aristotle, you get varying definitions of citizenship - each moulded by the prevailing circumstances and in some cases drawing on earlier and ancient definitions – each pertinent in its relevance to bringing order out of the “chaos” which then obtained – and each subject to definition and redefinition as circumstances changed. So while the Greeks were concerned with smaller city-states riven with conflict between rich and poor and by wars with neighbouring states – they, in their wisdom, felt that citizenship was not possible in Persia because “excessive heat made men supine and ready for despotism”, while it was equally impossible in the colder northern countries because “excessive cold” meant that people were limited to basic survival.
As we know, citizenship was to flourish in republican Rome which enjoyed a mixed government, made up of princedom, aristocracy and popular government, where all three had their share – and where liberties were safeguarded by a continuous tension between the senate and the people – where, as Machiavelli put it, “The aspirations of free people are seldom harmful to liberty, because they result either from oppression or from fear that there is going to be oppression”.
Whatever the type of citizenship that prevailed in the different ages, the underlying rationale for the concept of a political community was to bring order into society, in place of chaos or caprice. With the passage of time and the ebb and flow of history, citizenship has developed and altered to reflect contemporary concepts of the “common good” and its balance with the interests of groups and individuals. Machiavelli believed that there was a cyclical nature to governments with bad governments being replaced by citizens who “conducted themselves according to the laws they laid down, subordinating all of their advantage to the common good, and with the greatest diligence cared for and preserved things private and public” – only to be followed by a succeeding generation “refusing to content themselves with equality . . but turning to avarice, to ambition, to violence against women, caused a government of the best of men to become a government by the few, without having regard to civil rights”.
The 20th century has seen the turbulence of two world wars and other serious conflicts. There has been massive dislocation of peoples with all that implies for the undermining of citizenship and the rights that go with it. Thankfully, the 20th century has also seen a serious discourse on human rights and we are now celebrating the 50th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
The Declaration does not confer rights, but simply enumerates the God-given rights of the person and provides a vehicle for vindicating them and ensuring Governments honour them – giving us hope that the 21st century will show more evidence of the sacredness of the human person which lies at the heart of true citizenship. That sense of the sacred – that sense of respect is what matters for contented citizens – where there is serious discontent that respect is usually absent.
For Ireland, the circumstances in the 1840’s that saw a population decimated by the Great Famine, while food producers were allowed to export with the support of a Government that did little to alleviate the desperate plight of the population – citizenship was a hollow concept for those who bore the brunt of the suffering. For them there was no recognition that famine was a threat to the common interest. Famine was not considered to be a threat to the particular “society” in which officialdom had an interest and on which it focussed. The victims were therefore not considered to be ‘participating’ citizens and were left without a sense of belonging to the political community – a feeling of inclusion and respect that is an essential pre-requisite for active citizenship. So, while they were Irish nationals and ‘citizens’ of a part of the British Empire, they could not subscribe to the accepted establishment view of what constituted the common good. They were alienated. In the words of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair: “Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy....That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today..”.
In the century and a half since the Great Famine there have been profound changes in political structures throughout the world – especially in the decades which followed the First World War. Those changes which have seen the spread of democracy and a greater level of inclusion have in turn brought the concept of citizenship to new levels. With the higher concentration of populations in cities, and the need to redefine the concept of community, the definition of what constitutes the ‘common good’ has had to be continually honed and re-crafted to fit the new order. In places where there were attempts to confine the domain of citizenship to select groups – or to pursue sectional interests by limiting access to full participation, - conflict has eventually ensued. If you look at South Africa where a regime of apartheid saw the majority of the population living a scaled-down version of citizenship, it was inevitable that sooner or later they would react as they did – and come to a new level of political community where the common good embraces all. In Northern Ireland the decades-long exclusion of the Catholic minority from the mainstream of civic life led inevitably to frustration and the scene was set for political instability.
Still today, in parts of Eastern Europe, we see history sadly repeating itself with one group trying to subjugate another and to impose their own narrow definition of citizenship, which sees the interests of the others relegated to second place or even excised completely. What is shocking and sickening to most people is that we have seen ethnic cleansing used yet again in this century as a means to ‘limit the pool’ to those who can comfortably live with the new and blinkered definition of the common interest.
Over the last decade in Ireland we have seen tremendous economic and demographic changes – changes that have brought prosperity and opportunity to many – and changes that represent challenges to individuals and communities. These recent developments have come about in large part because of our joining with our European neighbours twenty-five years ago - an event which forced us to look outward rather that inward – and one which has seen a broadening of horizons and a widening of our definitions of what constitutes the common interest. In the field of gender equality, the last quarter of a century has seen many barriers being dismantled and many obstacles to full participation being removed – at times only reluctantly and under duress. But the pace of progress has been relentless and has been brought about by the widening definition of the common interest, through our association with our European partners which has compelled us to look beyond our own parish and town to other places and other people with differing values and differing concepts of citizenship.
In Ireland, as elsewhere, these changes have precipitated an examination of where we are in relation to local, national and European institutions. The shift of administrative focus to Europe – and the concern that the interests of individuals and communities may be subsumed into a new homogenised European identity has in a way rekindled the concept of the local citizen – of being part of a unique place with its own cultures and traditions that are part of what people are. Paradoxically our very membership of Europe has sharpened and refreshed our sense of identity so that we have lived to see the truth of Professor Tom Kettles words written 80 years ago before he died at the Somme – “Ireland will only find her deep identity when first she embraces Europe”.
In Ireland we have seen how this has led to a growth in local community-based structures and partnerships which are adding a new and exciting dimension to the concept of citizenship - where local people have taken ownership of their communities and of their problems, and are working with statutory and voluntary bodies to address these as they see fit and in accordance with the community’s definition of their common interest. We have reached a new level of community empowerment. While some may argue that there is a danger that the narrow focus and limited participation in these local partnerships can lead to the domination of sectional interests, the mechanisms are there at county and national levels to ensure that the wider public interest is not detrimentally affected.
Yet with all the progress that we have made there are still matters to be addressed – there are yet things to be put right. None of us can afford to be smug and to say that the problems of exclusion and marginalisation are problems for somebody else ‘over there’ and away from our healthy society. In practically every society there are those who are marginalised – who are not embraced as full citizens enjoying full participation and recognition. While the numbers involved may be small – and therefore not posing an enormous threat to the communities in which they live – there confinement as a separate group who are deliberately excluded is fundamentally wrong and unhealthy – and holds the potential for future instability.
Even in the most advanced societies there is never room for complacency – there is a need to constantly review and critique how society is working and how it is using the talents and skills of its citizens - and how it is enabling its citizens to participate. Citizenship does not necessarily embrace how you feel about a place. There can be processes that alienate. We need to have sensitive ears and sensitive fingertips at the policy-making level. We need people in positions of leadership whose ears are attuned to those sensitivities and who can draw in the strands of disaffected citizens to really give them that spirit of citizenship. To be a citizen does not necessarily mean that you have that spirit of citizenship – to live without it is to live in a twilight, a limbo place and to see your gifts used only partly, badly or not at all.
In Northern Ireland, which has seen thirty years of conflict, and which had for decades before that followed the limited citizenship model that I spoke of earlier, and which contained the seeds of its own demise, this year has seen a new departure with the Good Friday Agreement which was overwhelmingly endorsed by the people, releasing into the dynamic of politics a huge new energetic empowerment. People decided individually to commit to a painful process of change, in which there would be winners and winners – not winners and losers. The old culture of conflict has given way to the building of a new culture of consensus. These exciting new developments are opening up that concept of citizenship where all citizens of the island of Ireland will have a sense of ownership and citizenship of their place. The Good Friday Agreement – and the “yesness” that was exhibited in the referenda that endorsed it - have given all of us hope for the future – the hope that citizenship is a concept that helps you transcend difference – not to obliterate difference – but simply to transcend it.
In developing our new concept of citizenship of Ireland we’re very grateful for the help we have received from the global Irish family. Whether through their words of encouragement or through their prayers – all of them have in their own way given the process the push that it needed. We are grateful too for the support and encouragement we have received from people throughout the world who have willed us on.
As I said earlier, we are building on a very ancient tradition – a very ancient set of sources which are helping us now in a very profound way to craft a new future of citizenship. We have reached a new plane in the spiral of history from which we can move forward with new perspectives. New relationships with our island neighbour are the reward of untangling the chaos of our complex identity – our skewed concepts of citizenship. A new, mature and comfortable citizenship is on offer to all.
Hopefully we will soon have something very profound to say to the rest of the world about citizenship.