I’ve come back from three recent trips to Ireland marvelling: this is what a grown-up country looks like. A giant, potentially divisive issue comes along — the sudden prospect of a united Ireland, a republican dream since long before Irish partition in 1921 — and instead of treating it as a winner-take-all, biff-bang argument as in certain countries one could mention, almost all Irish seem determined to move slowly, seriously and fairly. How to reassure mostly Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland, who for generations have identified as British? I’ve seen a hall full of Irish people applaud a woman urging them “to be open and inclusive to Unionists”. The 4.8m Irish in the Republic and 1.9m in Northern Ireland still face a scary decade. Irish unification could revive the north’s violent Troubles. But blessedly, most Irish people realise that. Here’s a rare case of a country learning from history.
最近我去了三次愛爾蘭，對這個國家相當敬佩：這是一個成熟國家該有的樣子。一個巨大的、潛在造成分裂的問題撲面而來——愛爾蘭統一的前景突然浮現，早在1921年愛爾蘭分治之前很久，共和主義者就抱有這一夢想——然而與某些國家不同，幾乎所有愛爾蘭人都決定緩慢、認真且公平地採取行動，而不是將此當作一場你死我活、贏者通喫的爭論。如何安撫北愛爾蘭占人口多數、世世代代自認爲是英國人的新教統一主義者（unionists，支持北愛爾蘭留在聯合王國的人；支持南北愛爾蘭統一的人被稱爲「共和主義者」(republicans)——譯者注）？在一個大廳，我看到一位女士贏得了在座愛爾蘭人的喝彩，她力勸人們「持開放心態，包容地對待統一主義者」。在愛爾蘭共和國的480萬愛爾蘭人以及在北愛爾蘭的190萬愛爾蘭人仍然面臨著前途未卜的10年。愛爾蘭統一可能會令北愛爾蘭不安定時期(Troubles)死灰復燃。但幸運的是，大多數愛爾蘭人都意識到了這一點。這是一個國家從歷史汲取經驗教訓的罕見案例。