Two Nations Theory (Ireland)

The Two Nations Theory holds that the Northern Ireland Protestants are a distinct Irish nation.

According to S.J. Connolly's "Oxford Companion to Irish History" (pg.585) this idea first appeared in the book "Ulster As It Is" (1896) by the Unionist Thomas MacKnight.

It was advanced in 1907 by the future Sinn Fein Supreme Court judge and Republican TD Arthur Clery in his book THE IDEA OF A NATION. [reprinted 2002 by University College Dublin Press; edited by Patrick Maume] . Clery appears to have been motivated by his view of Irishness as essentially Gaelic and Catholic, and by the belief that partition would facilitate the achievement of Home Rule. He is unusual in supporting the "two nations" theory from a nationalist perspective; it is more usually advocated by Unionists.

In 1962, the Dutch geographer M. W. Heslinga argued in his book "The Irish Border as a Cultural Divide" that there were good cultural reasons for the existence of the border. Paramount among these was religious difference which resulted in the Partition of Ireland being a division between ‘two nations’ on the island of Ireland – the Catholic Irish nation in the Republic and Protestant Ulster nation in Northern Ireland. [The Irish border as a cultural divide : a contribution to the study of regionalism in the British Isles. (2nd. Edition) M. W. Heslinga ; Assen [Netherlands] , Van Gorcum, 1979.]

This view was also put forward by the Irish Communist Organisation in 1969, in response to the crisis in the North. On the basis of the Leninist theory of nationalities, they theorised that Ireland contained two overlapping nations and that it was necessary to recognise the rights of both.

The ideas of Conor Cruise O'Brien about Northern Ireland, especially in his book "States Of Ireland" (1973), were also labelled as a “two nations theory” by some commentators. [See, for instance "The Irish Question :Two Centuries of Conflict" by John McCaffery,1995. p. 210 and "A History of the Irish Working Class", by Peter Beresford Ellis, 1985. pg. 329]

References

External links

The Debate on the Irish National Question, by Robert Dorn [http://www.workersrepublic.org/Pages/Ireland/Trotskyism/robertdorn2.html]