Ahern's Historic Speech to the House of Commons
Mr Speaker, Lord Speaker, Prime Minister, Distinguished Guests, I am grateful for your welcome and I am honoured to be the first Taoiseach to speak here at the heart of British parliamentary democracy.
But I speak not for myself today; I speak for the Irish people and for the history and the best hopes of our two island nations, yours and mine.
Today, following as it does so many remarkable days, is a new and glad departure in an old and extraordinary relationship.
Ours is a close, complex and difficult history. But now with energy and resolve this generation is leaving the past behind, building friendship and laying the foundation for a lasting partnership of common interests between our two islands.
For over two centuries, great Irishmen came to Westminster to be a voice for the voiceless of Ireland and at times a conscience for Britain too.
I am thinking above all of Daniel O'Connell and of Charles Stewart Parnell, but the tradition is long and noble. And their struggle to further the cause of the Irish nation in this parliament resonated across the Irish Sea through the lives of every Irish person.
Those who travelled that sea to take a seat in this place believed in the proposition that democratic politics, however imperfect, is not, first and foremost, a career or a means of acquiring power. Rather it was, and is, the surest way to secure and advance a fair society.
This year, Britain commemorates the 200th anniversary of the Act of this Parliament that ended the appalling wrong that was the Atlantic slave trade.
This happened despite powerful interests that argued the financial costs of abolition. But in one of the most remarkable examples of a collective political act on moral grounds, those interests were overcome. It was a moment of great moral authority and one of the great stepping-stones to freedom.
In the words of Daniel O'Connell who died 160 years ago today:
'There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.'
And it was this faith too that was turned to the cause of the rights of the Irish people.
It was O'Connell who built a mass civil rights movement to achieve Catholic emancipation, and then to take on the cause of the repeal of the Act of Union.
The movement was founded firmly on principles of non-violence, and became an inspiration for peoples everywhere, confirming the power of an idea that again and again has changed the world. That idea is an inspiration to Irish people to this day.
O'Connell was also the champion of a wider and generous liberal tradition which looked far beyond Ireland's shores to right injustice and support the weak and the poor.
Two generations later, Parnell and his colleagues used their disciplined mastery of the parliamentary system to force the issue of Home Rule to the center of British politics and in so doing created the first modern political party in these islands.
We remember too that it was Ireland that first elected a woman, Constance Markiewicz, to the House of Commons - although she chose instead to take her seat in the first Dáil as elected by the Irish people.
Mr Speaker, Lord Speaker,
The historical relationship of Ireland and Britain too often seemed as if it could be more accurately measured out in repression and rebellions, over cycles of decades and centuries. Conflicts have become synonymous with years - 1169, 1690, 1798, 1916 and into the recent agony of the Troubles.
It is a litany that too often seemed to confirm the inevitability of conflict between us.
But, it was never the whole story - and now in our day and generation, we have seen the dawning of a new era.
In an act full of the symbolism of new days of hope and promise in Ireland, I had the honour last week to welcome the new First Minister of Northern Ireland, the Right Honourable Ian Paisley, MP, to the site of the Battle of the Boyne.
This was a battle for power in these islands and also part of a wider European conflict. Its outcome resounds through the centuries of Irish and British history to this very day.
That time marked the beginning of an unbroken period of parliamentary democracy in this country. But its legacy in Ireland has always been a matter of deep contention and division.
It is surely a miracle of our age that the undisputed leader of Ulster unionism can meet with the leader of the Irish Government, on that battlefield, in a spirit of friendship and mutual respect.
The intertwined history of Ireland and Britain was - let us not deny the truth - in large measure indeed a story of division and conflict, of conquest, suppression and resistance.
But, of course, there are episodes in that story which are a source of pride - just as there are others that are rightly a source of regret and anguish.
Last year, I was proud to commemorate the 90th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising. It was a hinge of history - and the turning of events has continued since.
Those who fought did so in pursuit of a state which, in the words of the 1916 Proclamation, 'guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts cherishing all of the children of the nation equally'.
The Rising did not have immediate universal support, and was opposed, at least initially, by many of those Irishmen who served in this Parliament, just as many in Ireland were shocked by the heavy-handed exercise of power by the British authorities in its wake.
Irish nationalism has its heroes as does unionism. We need to acknowledge each others pride in our separate and divided past.
In 1998, in a groundbreaking act of recognition of our shared journey, President Mary McAleese and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth jointly opened the Memorial Peace Park in Messines - a requiem to the 200,000 young men from across the island of Ireland, Catholic and Protestant, North and South, who fought in the First World War, side by side. Some 50,000 did not return.
Last year, we renewed this tribute in Dublin - and paid homage at home to the spirit of an imperishable heroism - through a national commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the battle of the Somme.
In another shining example of how we can engage with difficult chapters of history without descending into spirals of accusation, I remember the brave and generous initiative of the Prime Minister in acknowledging the failures of those governing in London at the time of the Great Famine in Ireland.
Mr Speaker, Lord Speaker,
Of course, the subject of Ireland was not always welcome in this Place. I recall the words of Gladstone, who in November, 1890, noted that:
'Since the month of December, 1885, my whole political life has been governed by a supreme regard to the Irish question. For every day, I may say, of these five years, we have been engaged in laboriously rolling up-hill the stone of Sisyphus.'
Prime Minister Blair and I can certainly empathise with this!
The so-called 'Irish Question' was for a long time shorthand in these halls for a nuisance, a problem, a danger. A recurring crisis that was debated here, but not where its effects were most felt.
Today, I can stand here and say that the 'Irish Question' as understood then has been transformed by the Good Friday Agreement.
The Agreement has delivered peace and promise to Ireland by accommodating the rights, the interests and the legitimate aspirations of all. It represents the triumph of common interests over inherited divisions.
It is not an end of history. But it is a new beginning.
It is an unchallengeable consensus on how any future change in the status of Northern Ireland will be effected: only with consent freely given, and with full respect for the rights of all traditions and identities on the island.
As an Irish republican, it is my passionate hope that we will see the island of Ireland united in peace. But I will continue to oppose with equal determination any effort to impose unity through violence or the threat of violence.
Irish Republicanism is inherently democratic and seeks to unite - in their common interests - Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.
That is the principle on which I stand.
None of what has been accomplished in Northern Ireland in the past decade could have happened without the most beneficial transformation in British-Irish relations in over 800 years.
The depth and complexity of relationships between our islands generation after generation defy summary or platitudes.
But now let us consign arguments over the past to the annals of the past, as we make history instead of being doomed to repeat it.
Ours must and will be the last generation to feel the pain and anger of old quarrels.
We cannot look back through eras far removed from the standards and promise of today, through the very pages of our common past, and tear out the bloodstained chapters.
But that does not mean we should write them into the story of our future. Violence is part of our shared past that lasted too long. Now we close the chapter, we move on, and it will remain there as it was written.
Mr Speaker, Lord Speaker,
I stand before you as the elected leader of a young, modern and successful country. The gathering pace of change in Ireland since independence, and in this generation especially, has been extraordinary.
We have seized our opportunities and honoured our heritage. Ireland is a small country, but today we are one of the most globalised and enterprising in the world.
We have taken a place on the world stage in the United Nations and the European Union. We have built a country of ideas, energy and of confidence.