One of the tragedies of Brexit is that it is coming at a time when relations between Ireland and our nearest neighbour have never been better, as the welcome given to Prince Charles during his visit to Cork and Kerry last week so amply demonstrated.
In truth most Irish and English people have always had a high regard for each other but it seems that in every generation Tory ultras and extreme Irish republicans have done their best to poison the relationship.
The contempt for Ireland voiced by the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg, the caricature of a Tory toff who would be laughable if he wasn’t so dangerous, was countered by Prince Charles’s sensitivity to this country’s complex heritage.
The heir to the British throne paid a respectful visit to Derrynane, home of the Liberator Daniel O’Connell, who has every right to be regarded as the greatest leader in Irish nationalist history.
O’Connell’s campaign for “the rights of Catholics and universal liberty” encompassed the abolition of Negro slavery and the emancipation of the Jews as well as equality for his own people and made him a widely respected international figure in his own time. His opposition to violence as a means of achieving political ends is also as relevant now as it was in his own time.
It was striking that Prince Charles appeared genuinely touched during his time in Cork when he was shown a bothan, the mud cabin in which a large proportion of the Irish population lived before and after the Famine.
Myths of Irish history
One of the enduring myths of Irish history is that Charles’ ancestor Queen Victoria was callously indifferent to the Famine and gave a paltry £5 contribution to the relief fund. This myth was propagated successfully by the appalling Maud Gonne who dubbed Victoria “The Famine Queen”.
In fact Queen Victoria, who was plunged into despair by the Famine, was listed as giving £2,000, the highest donation of all, to the Rothschild Famine appeal of 1847, while her husband Prince Albert gave £500. In today’s money that would amount to many millions.
While the queen’s donation was funded by the British exchequer, she actively intervened to try and get the government of the day to act in response to the Famine. She encouraged prime minister Robert Peel to get rid of the protectionist corn laws so that cheap food could be provided for the Irish poor. The move split the Conservative party and Peel lost power as a result.
In any case it was appropriate that all these years later Prince Charles visited a bothan to get some idea of the tragedy that probably did more to blight relations between Ireland and England than any other event in our history.
His meeting with leading political figures during his visit, including those from Sinn Féin, was a reminder of the role the British royal family has played and continues to play in promoting reconciliation in Ireland.
At a reception in Windsor Castle in 2014 during the state visit of President Michael D Higgins to Britain, the late Martin McGuinness told me that he regarded queen Elizabeth as a great woman whose commitment was a vital ingredient of the peace process. He reflected on how much had changed for the better when the queen of England could shake the hand of an Irish republican leader and he could reciprocate in the same spirit.
Political backdrop
Prince Charles’s visit was all the more important in the light of the current political backdrop which has opened up a rift between the Irish and British governments over the future relationship of the two countries when the UK has left the European Union.
Rees Mogg’s casual insult to Irish sensibilities reflects a strain of opinion in the Conservative party but it remains to be seen whether than strain represents a minority or majority view.
Rees Mogg is a Catholic but one of the misapprehensions about him is that he comes from an old English Catholic landed family who refused to conform during the Reformation. In fact his religion comes from his devout Catholic grandmother who was an Irish American from New York.
It is a nice irony that his Catholicism is of the “Irish papist” variety, most likely passed down from impoverished peasants who fled the Famine, rather than the exclusive version practiced by aristocratic recusants.
On the purely political level there is every chance that relations between Ireland and Britain will become strained if no solution can be found to the vexed issue of the Border backstop. The latest developments in Brussels and London suggest that the two sides are still very far apart and the EU is warning that the prospect of a hard Brexit cannot be discounted.
If this happens it will be important that political institutions like the British-Irish Intergovernmental Council are developed to take account of the new relationship between the two countries but Prince Charles’s visit has highlighted the potential role of the royal family in ensuring that the bridges built over the past two decades don’t crumble under the strain of Brexit.