ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY ROBINSON AT THE DINNER HOSTED BY THE CITY OF LONDON ON 5 JUNE, 1996
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY ROBINSON AT THE DINNER HOSTED BY THE CITY OF LONDON ON 5 JUNE, 1996
Your warm words of welcome mark well the special nature of this visit, and the opportunity it provides to take stock of the range and depth of the interconnections and relations between our two peoples. I am mindful, however, of Frank O'Connor's wise words. "Books about Ireland" he said "that begin with its history have a tendency to remain unread. The misunderstandings are too many ". So I shall not attempt to retrace the historical connections, but I will nevertheless acknowledge them, by recalling a link with one of your greatest poets.
I'm very aware tonight that I stand not only at the heart of this occasion but at the heart of a great city. Some of the best lines ever written in its honour were written by the 16th century British poet Edmund Spenser: "Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song". And we in Ireland can take a little credit, if not for the poetry, at least for the poet, who came to Ireland late in the sixteenth century. Not only did he live in Ireland but we owe to him some of the very best descriptions of our weather, which I can tell you he did not like one bit. It seems to me very appropriate that an English poet found names for the Irish weather - "secret shadows" and "watery clouds". He also told us in his "View of the present state of Ireland" that "Ulster" was "a most beautiful and sweet country as any is under heaven". And I invoke his name here, in the city he loved, to remind us that what we share need never diminish us, and can help us now to reshape our present relationship.
For we meet tonight at an important moment in the relations between our countries and our peoples. I have no wish here to refer directly to the political processes which are in train. But the connections between our cultures, our peoples, our past, concern every one of us. And I would not be candid if I did not say that I sometimes feel that while our countries have changed, while our peoples have developed and widened their interests, and while I stand in a nation which is now part of Europe and represent a modern Ireland which is similarly situated, our language for these new realities hangs well behind. We have certainly found words for our differences. But we have not always found the way to describe how those differences challenge and enlarge us.
In the house in Dublin in which I live for instance, which is the official residence of the President of Ireland, Áras an Uachtaráin, I am always conscious of the diverse and surprising history which fills almost every room. Queen Victoria stayed there when she visited Ireland. Winston Churchill played there as a small boy. When visitors come to the house today, many of them I am glad to say from Northern Ireland, it gives me pleasure to tell the story of this diversity, to have the chance to share a historical context which is in our past, but need never be denied in order to claim our present.
And that present, in Irish terms, is an exciting and expanding prospect. We are a country with a strikingly young population who are constantly in the process of revising and strengthening our identity. That identity, I like to think, is somewhat like the strength of Irish music at this moment: always able to draw on the past and always open to the energies and influences of the present. If you come to Dublin, as I hope you will, you will hear music on every side: the traditional music and songs of the past, the chamber music of Britain and Europe, and the rock music and country music of the United States of America. And all of them effortlessly absorbed into a confident national music which is never narrow. That language of music, when it is heard abroad -when for instance it is heard by our large population in Britain -no longer invites just emigrant regret and nostalgia. It invites a sense of a new Ireland.
And that brings me to the practical statistics of what we share. More than 850,000 people of Irish birth live on your island. And if we were to widen that to consider those of Irish inheritance, then more people of Irish descent live in Britain than in Ireland itself. They remain intimately part of our concerns and our affections. They represent for us a great hinterland of talent and energy of which we are intensely proud.
It's perhaps here, around these very statistics, that we can start to dispel some of the old misunderstandings and misapprehensions. For instance, I think many people in Ireland would be surprised at the sheer numbers who have chosen to come to this country, who live in your cities, who turn with pleasure to your countryside, who live in peace and friendship with their British neighbours. At the same time I wonder how many in Britain realize just how strongly the Irish are represented, for example, in the caring professions here, or how real a link they are to the valuable trading associations between our countries. Britain is Ireland's largest trading partner just as we are Britain's largest customer for items such as clothing, footwear and building materials and buy more from you, overall, than countries such as Canada and Japan.
I am very conscious that I speak to you tonight as Head of State of a modern Ireland. I am conscious of my responsibility to represent its vitality, its young population, its outward looking arts and vibrant industrial sector. Our history and our past are in no way, I believe, inimical to that modern consciousness. This year and next year we in Ireland, and Irish people throughout the world, will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Great Potato Famine. We will look back with a very real awareness of who we are as a people now and how deep our sources of identity remain in the vulnerable and desperate people we were then. I think it is quite right that we should honour our past. I also know we can do so without bitterness, because it is helping to shape our modern consciousness in two important senses. Children of Irish heritage are learning to negotiate the past images of the famine - the eviction, the workhouse, the coffin ship - into the facts of present day hunger in developing countries. And so they are encouraged to identify in a personal way with issues of sustainable development in our modern world.
So, too, the sad pattern of emigration from Ireland has now given rise to an Irish diaspora, numbering some 70 million world-wide, who cherish their roots and are increasingly interested in deepening the bond with Ireland. The rich diversity of that diaspora has, in turn, encouraged us to recognise that Irishness is not confined to those who live in Ireland and that Irishness is not simply territorial.
This, then, is what I mean when I say I have the honour to represent a new Ireland, open, tolerant and inclusive. It is this Ireland which will welcome our co-partners in the European Union to Dublin during the Irish Presidency of the Council of Ministers beginning next month. It is this Ireland which has a particular welcome for visitors from Britain, our nearest neighbour and home to so many of our people.