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Like most parties in Ireland, Sinn Fein seems to have a fairly pro-immigrant stance. It believes in equality and rights for those arriving in Ireland from many different parts. It seems likely, that if such immigration continues for the foreseeable future, Ireland’s culture will have to remould itself substantially to absorb and meld these newcomers into a common identity that everyone feels is equally theirs. The alternative would seem to be the emergence of a patchwork quilt of mult-culturalism in which there are many competing identities but little in the way of a common bond.
Either way much of the racial/cultural dimensions of Ireland’s Gaelic heritage will no longer predominate. In the first scenario, to form a common identity between those of varying racial and cultural backgrounds, the slate will most likely have to be wiped clean. To allow Gaelicism to dominate any future cultural outlook would surely result in a hierarchy of identities where some would be considered more Irish than others. In much the same way as most of the inhabitants of London’s present day East-end wouldn’t feel very Anglo-Saxon, I doubt very many future Irishmen whose ancestors hailed from India or China are going to feel like Gaels. As the former can no doubt feel they’re English, just not Anglo-Saxon English, the latter may well feel Irish without the Gaelic dimension. It seems to me that both Anglo-Saxon and Gaelic identities have and will become to be seen as restrictive, never mind exclusive, ethnic identities within England/UK and Ireland.
So if a new identity is not to be forged amongst the many strands of people that will come to form the Ireland of the future, it seems that fracture into a divided society will be the negative alternative. True, there will still be revivialist Gaelic culture with Gaelsoileanna, Gaelic names and political parties similarly titled but this will surely be one competing element in a mass of identities, each as equally strident in their separate ethnicity. A narrow Gaelic identity today will become but one patch on a quilt of many patches in sharp contrast to the melting pots that exist in constitutional republics such as the USA.
The inconsistency I see is that Sinn Fein seems to stand for both mutually exclusive futures. On the one hand their quest for a united Ireland seems to be based on a revival of a profoundly mono-cultural/racial past. What other reasoning is there for a united Ireland other than the re-unity of an island and people with a common Gaelic heritage? It can’t surely be for the sake of economies of scale or the inconvenience of borders or they’d be calling for a united Europe. Why unity with the North and its people and not, say, Iceland? Because one group shares our cultural/racial heritage and the other doesn’t.
So, many voters support both Sinn Fein and the unity and revival of this island’s Gaelic identity.
But what of those that support the party’s pro-immigrant stance and – possibly unwittingly – either of the two very different futures this stance will likely lead us towards? Surely immigration will require a change to a less prescribed identity possibly looking towards laws and institutions to form a common bond. Or, it will result in a variety of competing narrow ethno-cultural groups. But either way, a Gaelic identity will not define the cultural outlook of all this country’s inhabitants.
So, in time, will the party be forced to review such a contradictory outlook or lose one or both sets of supporters? Could rifts develop between the mono-culturalists, the multi-culturalists and those with a less identity based and more civic minded republicanism? Maybe the last two visions are incompatible with the party’s founding ideals?
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Originally Posted by Mellows
