Are you a fourth-green-field fool?

In today’s Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole has an article entitled ‘Doublethink on united Ireland part of who we are’. In the sub-heading, we’re told there’s a big difference between believing ‘in’ something and then believing you are then required to do something about it.  I’m not sure about the main headline, but the sub-heading is bang-on the money.

For example, I believe in a society free from the scourge of drug gangs, but I don’t believe I’m expected to do something about creating such a society. Doing something would be the job of the PSNI or the garda, or maybe the government (I’m thinking here of the government north or south giving up on the futile ‘war against drugs’, which they’re never going to win).

I also believe the curriculum in schools north and south should be radically overhauled, but I don’t think Fintan would expect a superannuated octogenarian like myself to ‘do something’ about it. That’s the job of practising academics or teachers or parents of school-going children – or, once more, the government.

And I believe that it is an obscenity for any country to build nuclear weapons and threaten, under certain circumstances, to use them . Once again, though, I’m far from certain I can do anything about the deployment of such suicidal weapons.

But of course all this is really about Fintan having a whack at the hypocrites and fools who believe in a united Ireland. He points out that many people are keen on Irish unity, but say they aren’t prepared to consider changing the national anthem. It’s just like the Irish language, Fintan says – so many people value it but aren’t prepared to learn it.

On that last one I’m totally in agreement with Fintan – if you value the Irish language, you should learn how to speak it, even if that’s just a few basic sentences.  But changing the national anthem is a very different matter, and Fintan knows it.

It’s one thing to ask people how they feel about changing the national anthem in an opinion poll, and another asking for anthem-change as part of a national package which would create Irish reunification.  Just as I’m unlikely to give you my scarf on a chilly day like today, but if you made scarf-change part of a package where I’d end up with a warm jacket, gloves and shoes that made my feet think they’d died and gone to heaven, I’d definitely be interested.

The thing is, Fintan has a column to fill, and he knows what will chime nicely with many of his readers: the notion that Irish reunification is just a silly rebel ballad bawled by half-tight bar-stool patriots who wouldn’t lift a finger to assist in creating a new Ireland.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, Fintan, but there are quite a few people who are members of a very big political party north and south who passionately believe in a reunited Ireland and are most definitely doing a lot to help realise that goal. There are also growing numbers  – ever hear of an organisation called ‘Ireland’s Future’, Fintan? – who belong to no political party but are meeting, planning, pressuring the Dublin government to put their unification money where their mouths (sometimes) are.

There has never been a time in my life when more people were committed to creating a united Ireland, and prepared to work hard to persuade others. The positive attitude to the notion of national reunification is growing by the day, and it’s surprising how people, when they begin to see the shape that change might take, will join their voices and their energy into furthering the state which Fintan and the Dublin government fear most:  a thought-through plan of what our joint future might look like.

It’s coming, Fintan. And all the columns in the paper of record, however shrill and dismissive,  won’t be able to stop it.