Every ancient nation takes the long walk to modernity in its own roundabout way. None is as ramrod straight as the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park down which the royal newlyweds were driven through happy crowds on a memorable and sun-kissed Saturday. National journeys between past and present are more tortuous. Interruptions, setbacks and turns in the road abound. That’s one reason why the royal wedding should not be oversimplified as a transformative, nothing-more-need-be-said knockout blow for a modern tolerant Britain over the older uptight and status-ridden version. But let’s get real about what happened at the weekend. The racial inclusivity of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding was something new. It was a milestone moment on that long and winding walk to a fairer Britain.
It cannot be overlooked that Saturday’s uplifting events took place in a country disfigured by Brexit. The disjunction is real and painful. The same nation that proved it is now more at ease than ever with the different heritages of its modern self is also the nation that is split down the middle over whether to shut its doors on the world or remain confidently part of it. Part of the Brexit tragedy, Professor Robert Ford argued in our Observer sister paper this week, is that the more, as a people, we think about the migration issue, the more open we have become to a fairer, more liberal view of the subject. On that evidence, and on the evidence of Saturday’s events, this country’s long walk is now at a critical crossroads.
Yet Britain is not alone in trying find its way to its own form of modernity. Across the Irish Sea this week, the Irish Republic is grappling with the challenge too, in its own distinctive way. On Friday, Ireland will vote in a referendum whether to repeal or retain the so-called “eighth amendment” clause in its constitution. This clause effectively outlaws abortion in most circumstances. For most of the campaign, opinion polls have suggested that the “yes” side, in favour of repeal, would win. We hope so. Yet as polling day nears, doubts have bubbled up. The possibility that rural Irish voters may be preparing to send a Brexit or Trump-style rebuff to the Irish urban elite haunts much of the coverage and comment.
Britain’s ambivalence about migration and Ireland’s over abortion may seem very separate arguments, with little in common. In fact each highlights a national state of mind – and each has to be seen in the context of Brexit. Every year more than 3,000 women from the Irish Republic travel to Britain for abortions that are illegal at home. So do about 500 women from Northern Ireland, where the abortion laws are also very restrictive. Both the south and the north restrict abortion in the confident knowledge that Irish women can travel to Britain for terminations. That approach is cruel, hypocritical and unjust to women. It may also be rudely exposed as complacent if Britain crashes out of the EU next year, raising questions about whether the common travel area between the UK and the Republic can continue.
The commentator Fintan O’Toole wrote recently that Ireland’s mentality on abortion is not so far removed from the mentality of Brexit. In each case – over migration in Britain, and abortion in Ireland – a proud island nation has defined itself against a caricature of a permissive Europe. In each case it has pretended that an ancestral fantasy of its own purity and exceptionalism can be upheld. If Ireland votes no on Friday, it will take a perverse stance against modernity, just as Britain did over Brexit. The long walk will never be a straight line. But it is a journey that must be taken, by princes and peoples alike.