In Northern Ireland, something rather Amazing

Last week, IRA dissidents killed two British soldiers and a Catholic Ulster policeman. Their goal, which they announced in claiming credit for the killings, was to restart the violence. So far it has not worked. Yesterday at the funeral for the slain policemen, Constable Stephen Carroll, Catholic and Protestant leaders came together to denounce the killings and call for peace. John Burns in the NY Times:

But as formerly sworn enemies filed into a provincial church on Friday to mourn as one, the funeral of the slain policeman provided the latest and most powerful demonstration of the ways in which the province’s people and its leaders have united against a return to the violence that racked Northern Ireland for 30 years. Rallies that drew thousands to silent vigils this week in Belfast and other major towns across the north, and dozens of interviews across the province, suggested that the old antagonists — Roman Catholics and Protestants, nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Unionists committed to keeping Ulster a part of Britain — remain determined to settle their future in peace.

And:

One of the week’s most arresting moments came when Martin McGuiness, a former I.R.A. commander who now serves as the province’s deputy first minister, visited Kate Carroll, the policeman’s widow, and called the constable’s killer’s “traitors” who should be turned in to the police, a demand that many in Northern Ireland said no senior member of the republican movement had ever made before.

The change is heartening, and it gives one hope about our species.

I think what Burns leaves out of his account is the way the conflict has been reshaped by social and economic changes in Ireland. Thirty years ago Protestants saw Ireland as a backwater inhabited by ignorant peasants, and they wanted to remain part of modern, wealthy, cosmopolitan Britain. Catholics very much resented this attitude. The north at that time was much richer than the rest of the island, better educated, more urban, more industrial. But as Ireland has developed, achieving very rapid economic growth, the influence of the Catholic church has lessened, and it has come to seem to the British as a much less absurd place. On the other hand the north has de-industrialized like the rest of Britain, and the development of new economic activities has been greatly hindered by the ongoing violence. So the two parts of the island have become much more alike, economically and socially, and that has greatly aided the peace process.

While I'm on the subject, the rapid development of Ireland has been made possible by the European Union. Ireland has become the perfect place for American firms to set up a foothold within the EU, with lower wages than England or Germany and close ties to the US. So in this case the dream of the EU's founders, that economic unity would eventually end war on the Continent, is working very well.