NATIONALISM'S UNEXAMINED LIFE.......

An ideology that does not have all the answers.

I  was in Asia when I read the New York Times obituary of Benedict Anderson posted above.

I confess I had never read any of his books but was struck by the huge contemporary relevance of the quotations from him in this  fascinating obituary.

Many of the disturbances in the world today are driven by the phenomenon Anderson spent his life analysing.....nationalism.

For example,

• it is nationalism that lies behind the tension between China and its neighbours over islands in the South China Sea.
• It is English nationalism that lies behind the UK effort to detach itself from the EU, while still enjoying its benefits.
• It is French nationalism that is fuelling the growth in support for the Front National.
• And it is, of course, a particularly virulent form of  American nationalism that lies behind the anti Muslim, and anti Mexican, rhetoric of Donald Trump and friends. 

Nationalism frequently defines itself by the people it is AGAINST, rather than by the values it is FOR.

US Senator Cruz exemplified  this aspect of nationalism when ,in a recent speech, he called for "moral clarity" in US foreign policy, defining moral clarity as knowing how to identify America's enemies!

Unfortunately nationalism often has to pick on violent events to provided cohesion for the "imagined community" that is the "nation".

In Ireland, for example, we are embarking on a year of celebration of killings and death, in the Dublin rebellion of Dublin in Easter Week 1916,  and this rebellion, and the Proclamation that launched it, is being presented as the  "founding event" for the Irish nation. 

This is historically inaccurate.

The Irish national identity was built,  much earlier, by peaceful agitation, by people like Daniel O Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and others, much more than it was, by the killing and dying of the 1916 to 1923 period. In fact O Connell's movement was arguably the first peaceful mass democratic movement in the world. 

But I fear that will not be not the message that will be conveyed to Irish school children during 2016. 

One interesting thing about nationalism is that is so un self critical.

It does not examine the assumptions it makes, whether about

+ who belongs to the nation,

+ who can opt out of the nation,

+ whether a nation is about territory or people and

+ whether the nation comes before the individual or vice versa.

Another thing to note is that nationalism is modern, and not an ancient, ideology.

It came about, as Benedict Anderson says, because  the other forces, that  previously sufficed to persuade people to cooperate such as a shared religious belief or a shared allegiance to a ruling dynasty, had lost their force . Nationalism has replaced Communism in Easter Europe since 1989.

Nationalism also uses simplifications of history, and mysticism, to  avoid asking difficult questions of itself.

This is evident in Japan, in its approach to China and to the legacy of its  war in China from 1936 to 1945.

Similar over simplifications and blindness to the other side are also present in the dispute between Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms.

These conflicting interpretations of history make it difficult for people, whose objective interests may actually largely coincide, to cooperate fruitfully with one another.

That is why I believe there should be an open debate about what nationalism really means.

The 150 traditional "nations" of the world ,who met in Paris on our global climate,  are all  of them far too small to cope on their own with the  challenges of global interdependence, global waste, and global environmental degradation. Nationalism does not have an answer to that problem.

While nationalism will always be with us, it needs to accompanied by other, more global, foci for loyalty and common action.

NEW INSIGHTS ON NINETEENTH CENTURY IRISH FAMINES AND ON THEIR IMPACT IN NORTH AMERICA

I recently read  “Irish Hunger and Migration......Myth, Memory and Memorialisation” which is edited by Patrick Fitzgerald, Christine Kinealy and Gerard Moran and published by  Irelands Great Hunger Institute,  in Quinnipiac University in Connecticut

HOW WAS THE GREAT FAMINE REMEMBERED?

A number of years ago I visited the Museum Exhibition on the Irish Famine in Quinnipiac University. 

Having grown up in Ireland, and read Cecil Woodham Smith’s seminal work on the Irish Famine, I was well aware of the drastic impact the Famine of the 1840’s had had on my own country, and how the strict application of free market economics had needlessly increased the appalling death toll when the potato crop, on which the majority of the Irish people survived, failed in 1846. 

But I was puzzled as to why a University in the United States, the home of free enterprise, would be devoting so much attention to an event, however appalling, that had occurred on another continent, 150 years previously, given all the other horrors that had occurred elsewhere in more recent times.

This book answers the questions that were on my mind back then

Beyond Ireland itself, the Irish Hunger, and the wave of immigration to the Americas that it caused, had a huge impact on the psyche, the demography, and the religious diversity of North America itself.

It provided much of manpower that fought the American Civil War.

Its memorialisation provides a shared source of identity for generations of Americans of Irish ancestry.

 Initially, the memories of the starvation in Ireland were suppressed by the Irish immigrants, whose immediate goal was to fit in as Americans, and indeed to maintain their sanity, by not dwelling too much the horrors they had left behind.

By the early 20th century the situation had changed, and Irish Americans were ready to talk about  the Famine. But they tended to do so in a simplified way, which highlighted British neglect , as proof of the case that Ireland should separate itself from Britain politically and economically.

For example, the Famine was remembered as if all its victims had been Irish Catholics, and as if Irish Protestants had escaped. As this book shows, that is simply false. The death rate in many Protestant areas of Ulster was just as great, but it suited neither the Unionist nor the Nationalist myth makers to emphasise that.

This reminds us that memorialisation of any historic event serves a different function in each succeeding generation. The way we commemorate an important event in the past, tells us what it is about the past, that we regard as important (and unimportant ) today, and thus how we see ourselves now and in the future. 

If, for example, we only commemorate the dead on one side of a conflict, that shows us that, for us, the conflict is not really over at all.

As our current needs change, so too will be the way we commemorate the past.

This point is brought out very well in one of the essays , by Catherine Shannon,  which describes  how a  coastal community in Massachusetts  commemorated the fatal shipwreck of 99 Galway and Clare emigrants fleeing famine at home in 1849. The way the local commemorations of this shipwreck changed, in tone and format over time, showed how the Irish community in that part of Massachusetts  made the transition from marginalisation and obscurity, to  noisy self assertion, and then ultimately to complete and contented integration.

FAMINE RELIEF IN QUEBEC, AND BY THE QUAKERS

This collection of essays also deals with the integration of Irish Famine immigrant in the French speaking community of Quebec. Much help was given to the starving Irish by French speaking Catholic orders of nuns. But eventually the Irish settled down  so well in Quebec  that a concern grew that Irish influence might displace the French in the hierarchy of the local Catholic church!

The vitally important role of the Quakers in famine relief in Ireland is described, as is how the Quakers drew on their Irish experience, in helping in famine relief in Finland in the 1850’s.

IRISH IMMIGRANTS IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY

The part played by Irish immigrants in the defence of the Confederate States of America is described by David Gleeson. Here the Catholic and Protestant Irish made common cause. 

Forinstance, Randall McGavock of Nashville, a planter and proud of his Ulster Scots roots, was happy to emphasise his Irishness when seeking a command in the Confederate Army.

This was presumably because this would make it easier for him to recruit the post famine Irish immigrants to his command.

Randall, one of whose descendants is a good friend of mine, lost his life at the head of his Irish troops at the battle of Raymond in Mississippi in May 1862. I have seen the standard of McGavock’s regiment at my friend’s home in Franklin Tennessee. It features a harp on a green background

Another Irish supporter of the Confederacy was the Young Irelander, John Mitchell.

A Derry Presbyterian , Mitchell was an opponent of the constitutional politics of Daniel O Connell and  had taken part in the 1848 Rebellion in Ireland.  In America, however, he became a strong supporter of slavery. 

Writing in the Richmond Examiner, of which he was editor, he justified secession on the ground that the North has broken the compact establishing the United States by its attack on the “God given” institution of slavery. He also criticised the statement in the American declaration of independence that “all men were created equal”.

THE FORGOTTEN FAMINE...1879 TO 1881

For me, the most interesting of all the essays in this book is the one by Gerard Moran on the forgotten Irish famine of 1879 to 1881.

This later famine was also due to potato blight, but its effect was confined to the western seaboard, and to some poorer inland counties like Monaghan and Longford, because it was only in those parts of Ireland that exclusive dependence on the potato for food had persisted, after the terrible experience of the 1840’s.

Still reliant on the potato, the population in these counties had increased  in the 1861 to 1881 period, whereas population had been allowed to fall in the rest of the country. This meant that when, in 1879 after a series of earlier poor harvests, blight struck, starvation was  immediate  in the counties still that were still unsustainably dependent on the potato.

This time , however , relief was provided with greater speed that it had been in the 1840’s.

The Lord Lieutenant’s wife, the Duchess of Marlborough, wrote a letter to the “Times” newspaper  in December 1879 drawing attention to the famine. Her letter sparked the formation of the Mansion House Relief Fund and also to a fund bearing her own name.

Gerard Moran alleges that the Land League “was a reluctant participant in relief operations because it diverted  its activities away from  its main functions as a political and agrarian organisation” and he  quotes Parnell as launching a blistering attack on the Mansion House Relief Committee and its chairman, Edmund Dwyer Gray, which led to Irish Americans contributing to the Land League’s political fund, rather than to the direct relief of starvation through the Mansion House Fund. 

This, perhaps, points up a deeper conflict of interest between the west and the east of Ireland.

In the west, the priority was simple survival, whereas in the east, the priority was wresting the ownership of the land from the landlords, and transferring it to the Irish farmers. 

This book enables the reader to understand the global impact of the Irish famine, and  it acts as an antidote to the misuse of famine memory in the service of contemporary identity politics.

THE US PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST.......BIG NEWS FROM IOWA?

The news that Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Senator, is beating Donald Trump by 10 percentage points in the latest polls in Iowa, increases the possibility that he will be the eventual Republican nominee.

Iowa will host the first contest of the Primary season. It will be followed by New Hampshire where Trump still leads the Republican field by a large margin.

Also according to the latest research, Cruz would be 2.5 percentage points behind Hillary Clinton is a General Election contest confined to the  two of them, and probably further behind if Donald Trump were to enter the race as a third party candidate. Trump would be even further behind Clinton in a two candidate race.

The  potential Republican Presidential candidate  most likely to beat Hillary Clinton is a head to head is Ben Carson, and that is by just 0.4 percentage points over a range of polls.

Senator Rubio of Florida has also been ahead of her in some polls.

Jeb Bush would lose to her but by a narrower margin than most of his Republican rivals, but the early primaries are not ones in which he can be expected to do well.

Cruz has a poor record of working with fellow Senators and some Republican leaders have suggested they might not even vote for him in November.

He gave a speech in the Heritage Foundation recently which sets out his foreign policy approach.

He wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico, and raised the spectre of “terrorists swimming across the Rio Grande”. He says that 40% of illegal immigrants in the US are visa overstays.

He says the US needs “moral clarity” in it foreign policy. “That starts with defining our enemy” he claims. 

This is a mistaken view. Moral clarity, I would argue, starts by defining one’s OWN values rather than by defining ones enemy. But defining one own values is much harder work, than is picking an enemy.

He argues for a foreign policy based on pursuit of America’s interests, and against making democracy promotion a central goal. He is thus critical of US support for regime change in Egypt, Libya and Syria. “We do not have a side in the Syrian Civil War” he states frankly.

In many ways Ted Cruz is appealing to the same core views as Donald Trump. Both are addressing anxieties among the American middle class that America’s standing in the world, both materially and psychologically, has diminished.  

It is something that is important to them, and goes to the heart of their identity. This sense of decline is accentuated by the fact that middle class incomes in the US have stagnated, while the top tier of society has gained.

Hillary Clinton would like to address this question, but many of her financial backers would lose if she did so. While she is well ahead in most Democratic contests, she could lose to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire. Sanders is from the neighbouring state of Vermont. 

She also has to cope with the conclusion of the FBI investigation into her use of a private email for State department business.  Disclosure of classified information to outsiders would be a serious matter if it is found to have occurred, inadvertently or otherwise. Evidence of any subsequent attempt to cover up mistakes would also be a big problem.

One has the sense, at this stage, that the Presidential Election next November  will not settle things, and the United States will remain deeply divided, with at least  one house of the Congress continuing to resist the President of the day.

A TOPICAL BOOK....A RECENT HISTORY OF SYRIA

I have just finished reading “Syria, a recent history” by John McHugo, which was first published last year by Saqi Books.

The author is a senior fellow in the Centre for Syrian Studies in St Andrews University.

It shows that Syria is not a natural political unit on its own, but is part of a much wider Arabic speaking “Greater Syria”, which included the entire area from Gaza and all of Palestine, to the Turkish border, and from the Mediterranean as far as the Iranian border with Iraq. Uniting “Greater Syria” has been a longstanding theme of Arab politics

This book also reminds the reader of the long, and troubled, history of relations between Syria and France. 

After the First World War, France was awarded a League of Nations responsibility to administer Syria, with a mandate to prepare it for full independence.

Britain was awarded a similar mandate for the area that is now occupied by Israel/Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. Both mandates covered an area that had hitherto been  part of the defeated Ottoman Empire.

Both Britain and France were rivals for regional influence, and both wanted to retain as much control as possible in their own hands.

France had to suppress a major revolt against it rule in Syria in the 1925 to 1927 period, and it used brutal tactics in that war. Even at the end of the Second World War, France still wanted to hang on the Syria, and was engaged in hostilities with Syrians seeking independence as late as May 1946.

This book described the complex post independence history of Syria right up to 2014.

Initially Syria had a parliamentary democracy of sorts, but this was gradually replaced by military regimes.

The parliamentary regime proved too weak to cope with the external threat posed by the rise of Israel.  The parliamentary regime was dominated by wealthy Sunni interests, who had traditionally exercised power in Syria.
After 1948, the Army was increased in size and strength. The army’s increasing involvement in politics brought new groups into power in Syria, but it weakened the army itself, because of factionalism and politically motivated purges. This weakness was exposed when Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israeli occupation when it was defeated in the 1967 War
That led, indirectly, to the takeover of the state by Hafez Al Assad, a former Army officer, of Alawite religion, who has been Minister for Defence in 1967.

He was a ruthless pragmatist and held power for 30 years.

He ensured that Syria performed better in the 1973 war, although it did not regain the Golan Heights.

His regime was a police state, although it did provide order, and it improved education and infrastructure in the country.

His regime was not a sectarian one, in the sense that it did not set out deliberately as a matter of policy to grant privileges to the Alawite minority at the expense of the Sunni majority. But patronage jobs in the public service have always been a way of building a power base in Syrian politics.

When Hafez al Assad died in 2000, he was succeeded by his son, Bashir.

The rebellion against the regime was sparked by a minor enough incident in March 2011, when some children were arrested and detained for writing anti regime graffiti on a  wall in a town near the Jordanian border.

The conflict with Israel contributed, from its beginning in the late 1940’s, to the militarisation of the Syrian regime.

This book does not provide any solutions to the current civil war, but it may help in the avoidance of mistakes. It gives a good sense of the deep complexity of Syrian politics and society.

HOW DIFFICULT WILL IT BE TO KEEP THE UK IN THE EU?

Prime Minister David Cameron’s letter, to   European Council President Donald Tusk , about  the renegotiation of the  terms of UK membership of the EU, shows that he has invested time in trying to understand the perspective of other EU states. This is good.

That said, the timing of this renegotiation is bad, because the EU has so many other politically difficult problems on its plate just now, problems from which the UK has excluded itself, namely

+ the refugee crisis and the threat  it poses to free movement within the Schengen zone and 

+ the fact that a number of EU states are at risk of breaching the terms of the fiscal compact on debt reduction and fiscal deficits.

A supportive attitude by the UK on the resolution of these EU wide problems would  help create the impression that the UK is, potentially at least, in the EU for the long haul, which would make it worthwhile for other members to go all the way to their bottom lines in attempting to meet the UK’s requests.

It is welcome that David Cameron’s letter says that he is open to “different ways of achieving the result” he sets out in his letter.

It is also welcome that he seeks to put his proposals in a context of “reforms that would benefit the European Union as a whole”.

He further says that it “matters to all of us that the Eurozone succeeds”.

Although David Cameron has expressed similar sentiments himself before, these sentiments have not been prominent in much of the general UK debate on the EU, which has often tended to treat the EU as something alien, and a matter of indifference to the UK, which objectively it is not. Occasionally in the UK debate, “schadenfreude” has trumped UK interests.

David Cameron’s approach is shaped by the contents of the Conservative Party Manifesto. It is a response to an expression of identity politics, which is a form of politics on which compromise is inherently very difficult indeed, as we know from Irish history.

David Cameron’s letter deals with four sets of issue, and I will deal with each in turn.

ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE

On Economic Governance of the EU, David Cameron  says that

+ the integrity of the Single Market for non Eurozone countries must be protected,

+  that non Eurozone countries must not be liable for operations to support the Euro as a currency, 

+ that the financial supervision of banks must remain a matter exclusively for national institutions in the non Eurozone countries and that

+  any issues that affect all member states must be decided by all member states.

I am not sure that these issues can be as neatly separated, as David Cameron suggests. 

For example, the bailout of Greece by the EU and the IMF was not just an operation in “support of the euro as a currency”. 

If Greece had gone under, UK banks would have been hit hard.

Furthermore it is arguable that, even if it is not in the euro, the UK had a greater obligation to help a fellow EU member, in the situation Greece was in, than had (say) the United States.  

After all, the UK, even if not in the euro,  as a member of the EU, had agreed to treat economic policy as a “matter of common concern” with all other EU states, including Greece, under Article 121 of the EU Treaty. 

Furthermore, the UK has had power to join fellow members in warning member states like Greece if they were deviating from agreed economic policies under Articles 121 (4), and under Article 126 . Non EU states were not in that position.

In light of those articles, it is hard to see that the UK, as an EU non euro member, could say it has no more responsibility for helping Greece, than has a country that is not in the EU at all.

If the UK wants that to be the position, its role in EU economic governance under article 120, 121 and subsequent articles of the Treaty should be changed. 

David Cameron also asks in his letter that the EU “do more to fulfil its commitment to the free flow of capital”, presumably across the whole of the EU and not just within the Eurozone.  

That sits uncomfortably beside his insistence that the Bank of England alone be involved in supervising UK banks lending across borders into the rest of the EU, including the Eurozone. 

As we in Ireland know, unsupervised flows of capital can contribute to bubbles in another country, and if those bubbles were to burst, none of the countries involved would escape the pain, including the countries whose banks had been lending the money, even if those countries were not members of the Eurozone.

His principle that “any issues that affect all member states must be decided by all member states” is very widely drawn.  Few EU decisions affect all members in precisely the same way.

This principle could be interpreted to mean that the UK should have a vote on all Eurozone decisions. Virtually all Euro zone decisions will affect the UK to some limited and indirect extent , not least because the UK does so much business with the Eurozone. This is so even though David Cameron insists the UK will not be financially liable for any of those decisions. 

In a sense, his request could amount to the Boston Tea Party demand in reverse, namely as  a demand for “representation without taxation”.

COMPETITIVENESS

David Cameron makes an interesting proposal under the heading of Competitiveness. It is potentially a big opportunity for Europe. I hope it will be strengthened and emphasised in the negotiations.

His proposal  is that the EU should “bring together all the different  proposals , promises and agreements on the Single Market,  on trade and on cutting regulation, into a clear long term commitment to boost the competitiveness of the EU, and drive jobs and growth for all”.

This idea of a big competitiveness package, as a price for continuing UK membership of the EU, could be used to drive through changes that have been stalled for years by inertia in individual member states.  In Germany, for example, the implementation of Single Market rules is often blocked at the level of the Lander. France is another country that could do more to open its market to EU competition, to the advantage of French consumers. 

If the British are to get a credible package on competitiveness, it may be necessary to demand prior enactment package of measures at national level, in all member states, in the same way as the Greeks had to pass certain laws, before they could get access to bailout funds.

There is, however, one aspect of David Cameron’s letter which could potentially run directly counter to his desire to complete the Single Market. 

This is a proposal he makes under the heading of  “Sovereignty”.

SOVEREIGNTY

Under this heading, David Cameron proposes that a group of national parliaments, presumably a minority , should be able to come together to stop what he calls “unwanted” (EU) legislative proposals.

This idea that a minority could block a majority would alter the entire dynamic of EU decision making. It would make it hostage to the vagaries of national electoral politics in a new and unpredictable way.  We should not forget that Lord Cockfield, the UK Commissioner, would never have been able to create the EU Single goods market, without the majority voting created by the Single European Act.

This proposal is actually as likely to be used against UK interests, as in favour of what the UK wants under the heading of Competiveness.

It is easy to envisage such a veto mechanism being used by a sufficient number of national Parliaments of other EU states to block legislative proposals to complete the Single Services Market or the Single Digital Market, both of which David Cameron wants, to protect some national vested interest. 

A  solution might be to exempt all Single Market related legislation from this blocking mechanism. 

Another solution might be to associate all national parliaments with the EU legislative process in a manner similar to the involvement of the Economic and Social Council or the Committee of the Regions, but without creating a new veto point.

David Cameron also wants the UK exempted from the commitment to “ever closer union”. This phrase  has been in all EU Treaties since the UK joined, and was in the EU Treaty when the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland  voted in a referendum to stay in the EU in 1975. 

Essentially the UK wants to “constitutionalise” the idea that there are two types of EU member, 

   + those committed to “closer union”, and    + those who are not committed to it. 

This is a formal recognition that there is a “two speed” EU. This idea may be welcome by some big states but not by smaller ones. If Britain is exempted from the commitment to ever closer union, it is not hard to imagine that other EU countries will demand a similar exemption.

He says he wants this distinction to be “irreversible”, which implies that a future UK government could not decide to commit itself to ever closer union in future, without getting the permission of all other EU states, by means of  a Treaty change, or the amendment of a protocol(which is the same thing legally speaking).

This runs counter to David Cameron’s own expressed wish for flexibility in the UKs relationship with the EU. 

The notion of legal irreversibility is contrary to the British constitutional tradition itself, which declares that Parliament is not trammelled by external legal constraints.

A legal device can probably be found to accommodate this request but it does raise a wider question of whether the UK will ever be satisfied. 

The UK already has special arrangements on the euro, on passport controls, and on Justice and Home Affairs.  The more exemptions it gets, the more exemptions it seems to want. 

Will this renegotiation /referendum process result in a full and final settlement, or will it just be an instalment?  This is not a mere debating point. If the UK will keep coming back for more, the EU will never settle down. Indeed other member states may not be prepared to go all the way to their bottom line, if they feel whatever they offer could never satisfy UK public opinion.

IMMIGRATION

Immigration is the area in David Cameron’s letter which has attracted the most comment.

There is no doubt that the UK has been more open to immigration in the past than have many other EU states.  This is partly because English is a second language for people from all over the world. The restraint David Cameron is proposing will not change that.

Clearly, if one does not like immigration, the fact that English is a second language for so many of the world’s population has disadvantages, as well as advantages.

On the other hand, the cost of living in London and the south east of England is already a strong deterrent to immigration to that part of the UK.

David Cameron wants, if the UK remains in the EU, to be able to require that people, coming to the UK from other EU states (presumably including from Ireland,) must have lived in the UK for four years, before they qualify for in work benefits or social housing.

If this four year principle is accepted, it could be implemented in all other EU states for other purposes as well.

David Cameron also wants to “end the practice of sending child benefit overseas”, which presumably means that an Irish worker in the UK could no longer get child benefit for his children, if the children are living in Ireland .

The principle of not “sending benefits overseas”, if accepted , could conceivably be applied to pensions, which would affect the UK pensioners living in Spain.

If one has to live four years in another EU country to get benefits, access to health services could also be denied to people living in another EU country.

David Cameron then acknowledges that these issues are “difficult for other member states”.

This is a revealingly narrow way of putting it.

In his speech, David Cameron mentions “other member states” but does NOT mention Article 45 of the EU Treaty, which covers free movement of workers within the EU. 

Article 45 bans

“any discrimination based on nationality as regards employment, remuneration and other conditions of work and employment”. 

There is no reference in this Treaty Article to any qualifying period of residence to be free of such discrimination.

In the UK, tax credit payments are dependent on worker’s hours worked and income, and whether they have children.

So restricting them would amount to discrimination in income, between a UK citizen and  EU immigrant, doing the  same job in the UK.  It would presumably apply to Irish workers in the UK who have been there for less than 4 years. It will be difficult for an Irish Government to consent to this.

I would have expected David Cameron to have directly addressed the interpretation of Article 45 of the EU Treaties, rather than pretending the difficulty is with “other member states”.

By targeting in work benefits so explicitly, David Cameron has left himself very little room for manoeuvre in light of the provisions of that Article.

Indeed there were reports on the BBC this morning that the UK Government is now considering applying the 4 year rule to UK residents as well, which could mean that young, new UK born entrants to the UK labour market may not qualify for in work benefits until they have been working for 4 years. That would create a whole new swathe of people inclined to vote for the UK to leave the EU.

CONCLUSION

This negotiation will not be easy. 

Sides have already been taken in the UK , regardless of what may be conceded in response to David Cameron’s letter. 

The impact on the EU itself, of a possible UK exit, is incalculable.

So also are the effects of the precedent the UK is setting, and the consequences for the EU, of conceding some the UK requests.

Solving this politically generated problem will require statesmanship and imagination of a very high order indeed.  Keeping the UK in the EU is a vital matter for Ireland and for Europe. 

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Speech by John Bruton, former Taoiseach and former EU Ambassador to the United States, at a seminar on “Free Movement and Labour Mobility in the European Union”  organised by the Institute of European Democrats, in NUI Maynooth, at 12.20 pm on Friday 13 November .

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THE LITTLE KNOWN WOMAN WHO RULED CHINA FOR OVER FORTY YEARS

I immensely enjoyed reading “Empress Dowager Cixi” by Jung Chang, published by Vintage Books in 2014.

It tells the story of a well read young girl, named Cixi, from the Manchu aristocracy, who was selected to be one of the concubines of the Chinese Emperor.  In 1861, the Emperor died young, without a male heir by his wife. Cixi ,had, however, borne him an infant  son, and this son  became Emperor

Power was to be exercised on his behalf by Regents.

But, with the surprising connivance of the legitimate wife of the late Emperor,  the  infant Emperor’s mother, Cixi succeeded in dismissing the Regents,  and, along with the old Emperor’s widow, the exercised full power on her sons behalf.  

In 1875, her son, the Emperor, died,  not long after he reached maturity. Cixi  then managed to have another infant, a nephew of hers, named as Emperor.

Cixi thus continued to be the real power in the Chinese Empire, until her death in 1908.

She  opened China up to modern ideas in public administration, transport and education. She wanted to learn from the West, so that China would not be dominated by the West.

But Japan had been modernised twenty years earlier than China, and had developed a far stronger army and navy. Japan wanted to control China, or at least the Chinese market. When it did not get its way, Japan defeated China in a war over Korea in 1894.  As a result , Japan obtained huge reparations, which further weakened China economically and politically..

Other powers then made  demands on China, which, in 1900, provoked a popular, anti foreigner, uprising known as the Boxer rebellion.

Cixi sympathised with the Boxers, and was forced to flee Beijing when her capital  was taken by foreign troops from a number of nations, including Britain, Germany and Japan, who had intervened to suppress the Boxers. 

The foreign troops  could not , however,  fully  control China without the legitimation of a native Chinese government.  Cixi was thus able to return to power in Beijing after the foreign troops had left.

At this stage, having learned the lesson of the failure of the Boxer revolt,  she set out to prepare dramatic reforms of China, including an elected parliament and turning the Empire into a constitutional monarchy. The laws for this were passes, but Cixi  died before these could be brought into effect.

A few years after her death,   the Empire itself was replaced by  a Republic . This Republic survived, but not as a democracy as Cixi had  envisaged, until 1949.

This book is a dramatic story on intrigue, tragedy and extreme ruthlessness. The character of Cixi, and of her advisors and opponents, is drawn out very skilfully.  So also is  self satisfied and inefficient  social structure of mid nineteenth century China, which Cixi did so much to change, long before China became a republic in 1911. 

Cixi’s role has been downplayed  by both the Nationalist and the Communist Chinese  leaders, because both want to claim the full credit for the modernisations she had, in fact, initiated. 

Above all  this book is the story of how an intelligent  a woman was able to exercise immense power, in what appeared, on the surface, to be a completely male dominated society.

It is also the story of the humiliations suffered by the people of an ancient nation at the hands of foreigners, and explains why China today, is so determined to equip itself to resist unwanted external interference.

DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY

CHINA CHANGES ITS ONE CHILD POLICY ....................

AFRICA COULD BE THE WORLD’S 21ST CENTURY ECONOMIC GIANT

I was in China this week. The purpose of the visit was to promote Chinese investment in Ireland. 

I met the Irish Ambassador, Paul Kavanagh and his small team, who are working very hard to promote links between Ireland, and what is now the largest economy in the world.

The Chinese economy is being rapidly restructured.

Services are now the largest sector, 48%, as against 41% in manufacturing. There is now less reliance on exports and more on the home market.

Last Thursday, it was announced that China is to end its one child policy. This is a response to the fact that labour shortages will eventually be a problem for China.

This one child policy was first brought into force in 1980.

It  has been very effective.  The Total Fertility rate globally is 2.5, in developing countries it is 2.7, in the poorest countries it is 4.4, but in China it is only 1.6! 

The Chinese population will peak in 2027 and begin to decline thereafter. In this, China is like Europe.

In contrast, the population of Africa could increase from 1.1 billion to 4.8 billion by the end of the century.  Africa’s labour force will grow whereas that of Asia will remain stable, and Europe’s labour force will fall. As a result, Africa’s economy could enjoy the fastest growth in the world, over the next century, if it can maintain political stability.

A labour shortage is already evident  in China. The number of young people in the 18 to 24 age group today is 108 million, as against 124 million in 2008.   The number in that age group will fall by 7 million in each of the next 10 years. 

At the other end of the age spectrum, the number of retired people will start to grow rapidly. That is bound to have an effect on the overall productivity of the Chinese economy.

More and more Chinese families now consist of four grandparents, two parents, but only one child.. Growing up as an only child is a very different experience from growing up in a  large family and it remains to be seen what effect this will have on society.

Because of the preference of families for sons over daughters, more female babies are aborted, which has led to an imbalance in society. Abortion is contrary to the tenets of traditional Chinese religions, like Taoism, as I saw in a plaque displayed in a temple I visited in Beijing. But it is the policy promoted by the government. The fact that more girls than boys are aborted has not got much attention from the world feminist movement.

The new two child policy will not become effective straight away. Regional laws have to be passed to bring it into effect, and to remove the severe penalties that still apply to having a second child. 

There are also practical difficulties in the way of parents who may wish to have a second child. Housing is in very short supply in the big Chinese cities and there will simply not be room for a second child. Already many parents, who have gone to work in the cities, have had to leave their only child behind them in a rural village, to be cared for by a relative, because they cannot find room for the child in the city where they work.

A declining labour force and housing shortages are among a number of challenges China must face at the same time.

The country must also

• orientate the economy away from heavy industry to consumer goods
• reduce the level of debt of local governments, state owned enterprises, and households. 80% of all public spending in China is done by local governments 
• reduce reliance on coal as an energy source because coal burning causes so much pollution

A REFLECTION ON SOME OF THE CHALLENDES THE EUROPEAN UNION MUST MEET TODAY

We are in  a  time of war, war not in Europe itself, but close enough to Europe to have led to massive outflows of refugees across borders and into Europe. I heard this described at the EPP Congress in Madrid as the “most serious crisis for the European Union since its creation”.  This is not an exaggeration.

This refugee crisis is on a scale unprecedented since the Second World War and the Spanish Civil war, because this is a war, in Syria and Iraq, of a ferocity and intensity not seen since then 300,000 people have been killed in the Syrian War.

Most of these people are not coming to Europe for economic reasons, or because they are on a mission of any kind, but because they are in fear of their lives. They are seeking refuge. They are the human embodiment of the price of war.

Their plight is a human manifestation of what the voluntary European Union was created to avoid in Europe itself ...war.

UNITY OF SOME KIND IN EUROPE HAS BEEN THE RULE, NOT THE EXCEPTION OVER THE PAST 2500 YEARS

If the EU is facing its most serious crisis ever, it is important that we keep a sense of historical perspective. Only thus can we realise how much is at stake.

Over the past 2500 years, Europe has tried various methods to create internal security on this continent. The idea of European political unity of some kind is not something new.

It was achieved, initially by force, in the form of the original Roman Empire. Because it was created by force, its unity also had to be maintained, from time to time, by force.

When it came to an end there was a dramatic collapse in living conditions, because Roman money, as a continent wide means of exchange,  and access to silver to make it, was lost. Living standards in Britain, for example, fell dramatically in the 5th Century AD. There are lessons in this story for the 21st century.

Later, from the Middle Ages up to the Reformation, there was a form of unity in Europe when, apart from his religious role, the Pope exercised, without the use of military sanctions, a role of arbiter between European states, analogous to that of the European Court of Justice, combined with elements of that of  the United Nations. 

Even after the Reformation and the Thirty Years War, a form of unity in part of central Europe persisted in the continuance of the Holy Roman Empire, until, after 100 years,  that was dissolved by Napoleon, who attempted to impose his own form of secular European unity by force of arms. 

THE SHORT,  AND BLOODY,  ERA OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

When Napoleon failed at Waterloo in 1815, Europe entered the era on nation states, supposedly based on absolute national sovereignty, and the balance of power. That era ended, after a mere 150 years, in the holocaust of two world wars, the last of which was preceded by an economic crash and the collapse of democracy across the continent.

THE RETURN TO UNITY AS THE GOAL

In response to that failure, something entirely new was attempted, a union of European states held together not by military force, or even by  religious sanction, but by a free and voluntary pooling of sovereignty, based on freely agreed rules. That in the European Union of today.

There is much to criticise about the EU, and I will voice some myself this morning, but we should not lose sight of the bigger picture.

The Union has attracted a stream of new member states, starting with 6, it is now has 28.  Other  Federal Unions and Confederations, in other parts of the world, have not had that experience.

It has created  a single market of 500 million consumers, although some barriers still remain. 

ANOTHER ECONOMIC CRISIS...BUT NO RETURN TO PROTECTIONISM, DICTATORSHIP OR WAR AS IN THE 1930’S

The EU has come through an economic collapse in Europe, similar to the one that occurred in the 1930’s, but , in contrast to the 1930’s democracy has been preserved in Europe, protectionism and competitive devaluation have been avoided, and, most importantly, European states are still at peace with one another. 

AN UNPRECEDENTED, AND UNEXPECTED, REFUGEE CRISIS

Now, just as it has begun to put in place a banking union to underpin its currency, and  fiscal rules to ensure that this generation does not rob the next by excess borrowing, it now faces a challenge for which it seems quite unprepared, a flood of refugees fleeing war in their own countries-- Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea--- and impossible living conditions in the countries in which they originally sought refuge----Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey----who have so many refugees they cannot cope with them. 70% of Turks say the 20 million Syrians in their midst should go home

In an ideal world, one would say that this refugee crisis is a global one and all the countries of the world should come together to receive them on a shared basis.  But this is not going to happen. They are heading for Europe.

Controls on the movement of people across Europe’s external borders, notably between Greece and Turkey, have broken down. As a result of that failure, barriers are now being re erected between countries within the EU, undermining one of the freedoms on which the EU is based, freedom of movement of people.

If this persists, one could see it leading to interference with the freedom to move goods across Europe too.  This is an existential challenge.

But a pooling of sovereignty can only work if states are able and willing to exercise the sovereign powers they have, one of which is controlling their portion of the EU,’s external border. So the next step will be a major EU border force, and EU reception centres where those who qualify as refugees can be separated from those who do not and the latter sent home.

Those who are refugees will need to be shared among all 28 EU states, which will not be easy as living standards vary within the EU and refugees themselves will  all want to go to the more prosperous states. That said, I believe a majority of them will want to go home to their own countries if peace can be restored.

TOO SLOW APPLYING THE LESSONS OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

Meanwhile the EU is moving too slowly in applying the lessons of the financial crisis. Most money in use is not coins or notes, but bank credit of one kind or another. So a currency union without a banking union never made sense.

We have some elements of a banking union now, a single supervisor for most European Bank and a common EU rule for winding up banks. But these have not been tested yet. That test will come when the EU has to close down a bank in a member state, imposing losses on shareholders bond holders and even customers. Will the EU authorities have the political capital to do that?

It will be particularly hard to do because Germany has resisted the idea of a common euro are wide deposit insurance system which would spread the losses. The burden will fall solely on the country in which the bank is being closed down. That is not politically viable....an EU institution closing down a bank, which it had supervised,  in a state and that state alone bearing the depositor insurance costs. 

There also may be problems with the Fiscal Rules designed to reduce the debt levels of EU states. These debts are just about bearable now, but if interest rates returned to normal levels, what would happen. For example, the proposed Italian budget for next year, which should be reducing the deficit, is actually increasing it. That may make sense in the context of Italian politics, but it undermines the rules, in the same way that France and Germany undermined the rules 10 years ago.

Europe does not need to create a complete political or economic union to solve these problems. That is politically impossible. But the European Union does needs to come to a shared pragmatic understanding on all of these problems, and think out a long term plan that serves the interests  of a very diverse group of countries in a fair and speedy way.

MEANWHILE THE EU MUST DEAL WITH THE UK PROBLEM

At a time when the EU is grappling with its own existential issues, it has the deal with one member state which wants to reconsider whether it should be in the EU at all or not.  I will not say much about the details of the UK case, and will just make a few brief points.

At a time when Polish and Baltic state populations are being asked to accept refugees to relieve the pressure on Italy, Greece and Germany, it will not be easy to persuade them that their citizens should have less  in work social benefits in Britain, when Britain is exempt from taking any refugees

If Britain wants to be exempt from paying any of the costs of future EU banking failures, it is hard to grant it a veto over rules that might be designed to prevent such failures.

On the other hand, British demands for a speedy conclusion of the TTIP agreement with the US, and for a completion of, the  long delayed,  EU single Digital and Services markets, are a big opportunity for Europe. They should be grasped with both hands.