To wit: Irish scholars and analysts suggest leaving the European Union is both viable and in keeping with the democratic principles of Irish sovereignty.

Vermonters have many reasons to take interest in the current affairs of our friends across the Atlantic – specifically in the small island nation of Ireland. Historically, Vermont’s Irish connection couldn’t be any closer. Our very own Ethan Allen was once captured by British forces and taken across the ocean to be imprison in Cork, Ireland which, at that time, was still under British rule. Of course the Irish at the time had their own issues with anti-monarchical resistance as Theobald Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen sought to establish Ireland as an independent republic. In fact, when the Irish rebels learned that Ethan Allen was on his way to Cork, they began plans to break him free from British custody forcing the Crown forces to reconsider holding Allen. More recently, the Irish-American community in Vermont, still driven by their independent republican cause, target British establishments on the other side of the Canadian border and from Franklin County, launched the infamous Fenian Raids in the name of the Irish republican cause.

History aside, Vermont retains a lot of other commonalities with Ireland, both culturally and economically. Therefore, we should watch events as they unfold in Ireland carefully as the tiny, largely rural island grapples with the challenges of globalization and resists the exploitative neoliberal policies of the European Union.

Today, as the dust settles on the 2016 “Brexit”, many EU member states are reconsidering their place within the transnational political and economic bloc. The international neoliberal establishment quickly rallied to the “stay” position, suggesting that those who sought to leave the EU were motivated by xenophobia and outright racism particularly as refugees from the war-torn Middle East arrive by the hundreds of thousands. But presenting the “Brexit” vote as purely a reactionary nationalistic position is a gross oversimplification – especially in Ireland which, while still technically part of the United Kingdom in certain areas, has a very unique political culture and a long tradition of egalitarian politics.

Last September, I visited Ireland and toured the country talking with residents both north and south of the partition divide and was astonished by just how complex the issue of the UK “Brexit” vote truly is. I was also fortunate to have been invited to a weekend of discussions hosted by the Desmond Greaves School which included highly respected political and economic analysts as well as Irish constitutional law scholars. There I also learned was that, while the institutions and terms differ, the heart of the issues now facing the people of Ireland are very similar to the issues facing Americans in the 21^st century.

Before delving into the perspectives put forward by some of these Irish experts, it might be useful for a US audience to offer some insights and context on both the background of the EU and Irish politics.

A BRIEF HISTORY

The EU is the product of a long effort to create cohesion between the economies of Europe. The Single European Act of 1989 was driven by neoliberal political forces dominating the British and German governments during that period. Their goal was essentially to create an irreversible shift in governance that would enable the two governments to essentially monopolize their spheres of economic interest: the Germans sought industrial dominance; the British sought dominion over financial markets.

According to the United Nation’s 2012 Trade and Development Report, “the financial crisis and the bailouts have led to even greater concentration in the financial sector, which has largely regained its political clout. Short-term rewards rather than long-term productivity remain the guiding principle for collective behavior in the financial industry, even today.”

That same year, just before the EU summit, the chair of the House of Lords EU sub-committee on economic and financial affairs, Lord Harrison, clearly stated Britain’s objectives and role within the EU:

Tomorrow the government must go into battle at the critical European summit to fight for the City of London to retain its premier position as the centre of the EU financial services. It is vital that the UK Government get the negotiations right so that the Banking Union does not undermine the single market as a whole and the single market in financial services in particular, which is so vital to the UK and the City of London.

In this sense, the EU has – since its inception – served to grow and consolidate the industrial and financial power of a few member states in spite of any rhetorical statements as to its goal of enhancing the security and prosperity of Europe as a whole.

As everyone knows, British involvement in Ireland has been problematic for generations and the people of Ireland have endured a particularly turbulent 20^th century in their efforts to assert control over their own domestic affairs. But some Irish people see a great irony in the fact that Ireland’s long effort to assert its independence was not crushed militarily but surrendered politically and economically upon entry into the European Union.

While resistance to colonization and occupation has defined Irish political and spiritual perspectives since the Norman Invasions, the complexity of Irish politics has only intensified since the late 18^th century and the birth of the modern Irish republican movement. That history has been well-documented – it should be emphasized that perhaps the most significant moment in the modern Irish republican struggle for national sovereignty occurred a century ago during Easter week of 1916 when members of the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Republican Brotherhood mobilized with radical activists from Ireland’s labor organizations and secret nationalist associations to launch an uprising in the capitol city of Dublin. This year’s centennial commemorations of the famed Easter Uprising of 1916 however have been less than jubilant considering the fact that the Irish republican movement has yet to achieve its long stated goal of a unified Ireland. This fact has become more pronounced since Ireland has surrendered a great deal of the nation’s limited sovereignty to the European Union which now has the authority to dictate policy on a variety of issues.

Ireland’s relationship to the European Union has been controversial and tumultuous from the outset. Granted, the European Union helped to fast track the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland into economic prosperity during the Celtic Tiger boom of the late 1990s and early “oughts.” But a deeply researched and sharp policy document presented by Anthony Coughlan, Secretary of The National Platform for EU Research and Information Centre and retired Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Social Policy at Trinity College, Dublin shows that the honeymoon between Ireland and the EU may be coming to an abrupt end.

The presentation document, titled “Why Irexit should go along with Brexit” provides a laundry list of reasons why Ireland should follow the British and leave the European Union – and none of them have anything to do with racism or anti-refugee perspectives.

COST VS. BENEFIT ANALYSIS: GOVERNMENTAL TRANSPARENCY, ECONOMIC ACCOUNTABILTIY AND THE IRISH AUSTERITY REVOLT

Along with many other EU member states, Ireland has been suffering under what is widely known as the ‘austerity crisis’ which, in simplified terms, is the result of the Brussels’ government pressing neoliberal economic and social reforms to roll-back public benefits provided to citizens in many European member states. Perhaps the most controversial issue driving mass unrest throughout the Irish Republic is the institution of water charges, something that the people of the United States have long endured but from a European perspective, public access to clean water is a basic human right and should not be treated as a sellable commodity. In Ireland, the implementation of water charges has provoked residents to take to the streets in the nation’s largest and most militant clashes with state authorities in recent memory, ranging from mass payment boycotts to physical confrontations between Irish citizens and the Irish Gardai (police). Water charges are but one issue emerging from the Brussels’ government austerity initiatives being foisted on the Dublin government.

According to Coughlan, “Most Irish people do not realize how undemocratic interference by the EU now affects most aspects of their lives. The EU is the ‘elephant in the room’ in several of our current political controversies. Water charges – an EU requirement; Bin charges – an EU requirement; Social housing – restricted by EU requirements on State aid; Mass governmental surveillance of e-mails, internet usage and social media – an EU requirement…and the list goes on.”

Making reference to the Irish rebels’ statement declared amidst the Easter Rising, now known simply as the 1916 Proclamation, Coughlan recounted a critical passage that has defined Irish nationhood for over a century: “We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.” Coughlan goes on to observe that “This situation [with the EU] is clearly far from “the unfettered control of Irish destinies” which the men and women of the 1916 Easter Rising aspired to for the independent Irish State they fought and died to establish. It raises profound questions regarding the compatibility of EU membership with normal national democracy.”

NEW DIMENSIONS TO THE DIVISION OF IRELAND: EU CONCEPTS OF JUSTICE AND THE RETURN TO A “HARD BORDER”

The Anglo-Irish War of the 1920s forced the British monarchy to accept a limited level of Irish independence, granting 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties the status of a “Free State” while retaining direct control of 6 northern counties. The concession was the product of a fierce guerrilla war led by the Irish Republican Army whose members are oath bound to conduct and unremitting armed struggle until all 32 counties are united as one national entity. Following the partition treaty of 1921, many IRA members refused to accept the division of Ireland which then led to the civil war between IRA hardliners and the British recognized Irish Free State government.

Since that time, the Irish Republican Army has remained a secretive paramilitary organization that has considered itself the inheritor of the first united Irish government. But the IRA faded from the international scene until the 1960s after British commandos serving in the UK’s occupation force indiscriminately fired into a crowd of unarmed Irish demonstrators. The IRA then split into two factions, one that continued to focus primarily on political solutions to achieving full national sovereignty and those committed to “armed struggle” as the primary means of securing national independence.

It was the resurgence of IRA violence that spurned a return to a “hard border” between British occupied territory and the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. But EU entry by both the UK and Ireland during the 1990s – along with delicate negotiations between nationalist leaders and unionists (those Northern Irish resident who desire to remain part of the British Empire) – have since relaxed militarization and other tensions over the continued controversies of partition.

Britain’s “leave” vote, however, complicates this tension further by threatening a return to the hard border dividing the country.

“If the Republic [of Ireland] remains a member of the EU when the United Kingdom leaves” says Coughlan, “the North-South border within Ireland will have a wide range of EU-related dimensions added to it, affecting trade, travel and diverse laws and legal standards.” Coughlan also observes, “norms in EU crime and justice policy, which differ significantly from the jurisprudence of the Anglo-Saxon world in such areas as trial by jury, the presumption of innocence and habeas corpus…would adversely affect good relations within Ireland…”

DIFFERING CONCEPTS OF STATE SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY

As issues of immigration, terrorism and international criminal organizations become an increasing concern throughout Europe, the EU has and continues to enact measures that contravene many Irish attitudes toward civil rights due to pressure from key member nations like France and Germany. Even before Brexit, Ireland was concerned with the slow and subtle moves toward the establishment of a transnational military body controlled by the Brussels’ government but with authority throughout the EU.

The militarization of the EU has been criticized as a threat to Irish sovereignty and is widely acknowledged throughout Ireland as a glaring violation of the Irish constitution which forbids the presence of foreign troops on Irish soil. Ireland’s continued membership in the EU further obliges the Irish armed forces to participate in armed conflicts that are largely opposed by the Irish people. This further contradicts Ireland’s long history of military neutrality.

THOSE IRISH WHO DESIRE TO REMAIN WITHIN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Many Irish politicians as well as a large portion of the Irish middle class, which enjoys the benefit of unrestricted freedom of movement throughout the EU, are opposed to leaving the European Union. Some families have married citizens of other EU member states and enjoy the relaxed borders for maintaining families in other member states while others have purchased real-estate and hold other economic interests on the European continent. But according to Coughlan, “the monetary and pension concerns of such Irish personnel…should not be allowed to override the democratic interests of the people of Ireland and Britain, now and for future generations.”

He goes on to acknowledge, “Both Ireland and the UK face similar economic challenges if they are to take advantage of the opportunities arising from the restored political independence and sovereignty that leaving the EU provides. These have implications for, inter alia, exchange rate policy, interest rate policy, taxation policy and investment policy.” But Coughlan remains optimistic about a post EU situation: “For Ireland [independence] implies less reliance on foreign investment attracted by low rates of corporation tax as the principal engine of growth, more Government support for indigenous investors in manufacturing, agriculture and services, and the fostering of closer synergies between foreign and domestic investment.”

LIBERALISM IN FREE FALL AND NEO-LIBERALISM’S FAILED RESPONSE

Liberalism in Europe has been largely defined by high-levels of social security combined with high-standards for political participation but, since the end of the Cold War, the welfare states of most European nations have declined as have European standards of living, health and democratic transparency. Since the EU and its members have largely accepted the Neo-liberal approach to “expanding democracy and markets” – often through US-led military adventures – “blowback” has culminated in a variety of crises that Europe’s traditional liberal political parties have largely been unable or unwilling to solve. The failure of neoliberalism and conventional liberal politics has opened up political space allowing the extreme right to fill the vacuum through scapegoating immigrants and reverting to old nationalist chauvenisms. Today, fascist parties and Neo-Nazi organizations are burrowing deep into working-class communities throughout Europe in a very real way much as the extreme right has done in the US since the 1990s in response to the Democratic Party’s inability to resolve the issues facing so many working-class Americans. These anti-democratic tendencies, while numerically inferior, should not be underestimated. It is important to recall that the Nazi Party of the 1920s was the subject of much ridicule and went largely dismissed for its eccentricities and wild-eyed irrationality but as history has proved; rationality is not a prerequisite for attaining political power. One needs look no further than the 2016 US Presidential Campaign to find evidence of that fact.

THE BREAK-UP OF THE EU: LESSONS FOR THE US

Throughout Europe, there are a myriad of voices from across the political spectrum calling for disengagement from the EU as an institution for the enforcement of neoliberalism. This is certainly the case in Ireland. In other states, political diversity has ensured that countries such as Iceland have been able to address the issues of over-extension and the vulnerabilities of neoliberal globalization in progressive ways. But in the US, progressive politics has been largely dominated by the Democratic Party, which has insured that any critique of neoliberalism has been marginalized and pushed to the fringe. Nevertheless, the inadequacies of neoliberalism’s ideological truisms (that unregulated markets are the ‘best’, that corporate growth and the expansion of markets must be perpetual and pressed forward at any cost, that the answer to national security is more military spending and weakened civil liberties and personal privacy, etc.) then the problems created by these perspectives will grow beyond today’s crises culminating in unforeseen economic, political and ecological tragedies that will reshape our social order in irreversible ways.

It is clear that political accountability and transparency are essential to the survival of democracy but, unfortunately, the scale of today’s Neoliberal institutions has allowed those subverting our democracies to obscure their responsibility. In response, many are calling for a dismantling of bloated bureaucracies and recklessly globalized economies both in Europe and in the US. Unfortunately, in the United States, the impulse to reduce the size of our bureaucracies has been ignored by mainstream political liberals, allowing those issues to be monopolized by the extreme right.

Failing to acknowledge the problems of scale and allowing the extreme-right to set the talking points of the conversation for their own twisted ends will ultimately be the undoing of liberalism in the US. But fortunately for those of us in Vermont, our diversified politics have to a certain extent accounted for the wisdom of popular calls for scaling down. Vermonters have also resisted the tendency to be blackmailed or scared into surrendering objective analysis to either of the two Neoliberal parties – at least until recently. Like Iceland, if we continue engage in these conversations in an inclusive and proactive way (as opposed to reactive ways like Islamophobia and racial scapegoating, etc.), our efforts to disengage from Neoliberal’s Titanic institutions can allow innovation and economic development to flourish at a manageable pace and encourage people to more directly participate in the political and economic decisions effecting them. Like Ireland, we should also assert the legacy of our revolutionary founders in these conversations recognizing the continued relevance of their wisdom. Failing to do so will leave us adrift while surrendering the true legacy of the American Revolution to those who are neither truly committed to small ‘r’ republicanism nor democracy.

J.D. Thomason is a Vermont-based journalist, musician and citizen activist.