Latest news with #Covenant
Time of India
03-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Jaipur royal family wants state to return 140-year-old Town Hall: SC to decide whether claim justified as per 1949 merger covenant
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine whether a pre-Constitution Covenant facilitating merger of Jaipur princely state with Dominion of India decide the ownership right of the royal family over 145-year-old Sawai Man Singh Town Hall, or Old Vidhan Sabha now proposed to be converted into a Heritage Museum? Or are the jurisdiction of the courts, including the SC, is ousted under Article 363 of the Constitution from entertaining any dispute arising from treaties and Covenants entered between any ruler of an Indian state and to which the government of the Dominion of India or any of its predecessor governments was a party. The state's Oct 2022 decision to convert the building, used as state assembly from 1952 till the 1990s, as heritage museum alarmed the royal family members of the attempt to erase their ownership over the property, which according to them was acknowledged in the March 1949 Covenant signed between government of India and United states of Rajasthan. Under the agreed terms of the Covenant, the princely states of Banswara, Bikaner, Bundi, Dungarpur, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jhalawar, Jodhpur, Kishangarh, Kota, Mewar, Pratapgarh, Shahpur and Tonk merged with Dominion of India. Under the Covenant, the title of the private properties of the princely state rulers would continue to vest in them. For the Jaipur royal family, senior advocates Harish Salve and Vibha D Makhija said Article 363 - which bars the jurisdiction of the courts, including that of the SC - to entertain any dispute arising from treaty or Covenant needs to be given a restrictive meaning as it cannot extinguish titles of royal families over their private properties. A partial working day bench comprising Justices Prashant K Mishra and A G Masih was initially reluctant to entertain the petition as it apprehended that this would enable the heirs of erstwhile rulers of princely states to lay claim over huge tracts of land and villages owned by them earlier. But Salve said it pertains to only a few properties mentioned in the Covenant and not for widening the title rights over villages. When the bench issued notice to the Rajasthan govt, its additional advocate general Shiv M Sharma and advocate Kartikeya informed the court that it would honour the pendency of the case before the HC and not precipitate the issue. The state govt's Oct 2022 decision to convert the Town Hall into a heritage museum had forced the royal family members to file a civil suit seeking possession of the property. Though the suit was entertained, the trial court refused to stay the proposed conversion into a museum. The state moved the HC questioning maintainability of the suit in the face of clear bar under Article 363. The royal family members moved HC for interim injunction against the museum. The HC rejected the plea for status quo. When they challenged the HC order, the SC too refused to stay on the proposed museum but ordered an expeditious decision on the suit. On Apr 17 this year, the HC on state's appeal ruled that the royal family members' suit against the state under the Covenant is barred under Article 363.
Axios
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Former Nashville police lieutenant indicted for charges related to Covenant records leak
A former Nashville police lieutenant was indicted Tuesday on charges of official misconduct related to his handling of records from the Covenant School shooting investigation. Driving the news: Former Lt. Garet Davidson is the subject of two indictments, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced Tuesday in a press release. A legal filing last year indicated Davidson was the person who leaked sealed records related to the Covenant investigation, but the filing stopped short of overtly accusing him. In total, Davidson is charged with 36 counts of official misconduct, plus additional charges for theft and burglary. He was booked into a Nashville jail on Tuesday on a $150,000 bond. Flashback: Davidson is at the center of two separate high-profile issues facing the Metro Nashville Police Department. In addition to the Covenant records leak, he filed a sweeping whistleblower report last year accusing police leadership of misconduct and mismanagement. Mayor Freddie O'Connell appointed former U.S. Attorney Edward Stanton to investigate the claims made in the whistleblower report. The TBI said it began investigating Davidson at the request of District Attorney General Glenn Funk. Zoom in:"While employed as a lieutenant of the Office of Professional Accountability at (MNPD), (Davidson) used his position to gain access to restricted areas that he was not authorized to access within MNPD," TBI said in the release. "He then took multiple criminal case files, internal investigation case files, original case files, and other documents he was not authorized to retain." The intrigue: The official release of the Covenant records investigation file was the subject of intense scrutiny and eventually a lawsuit. Before Chancellor I'Ashea Myles ruled in that suit, parts of the investigation file were leaked to conservative outlet the Tennessee Star. A sworn declaration filed by Lt. Alfredo Arevalo last year singled out Davidson, Axios previously reported, noting that the investigation file was stored in the safe inside Davidson's office for 13 days. Davidson was the only person who had the key and combination to the locked safe during that time, according to Arevalo. Davidson subsequently left the department and frequently did interviews with the Tennessee Star about the Covenant case. Earlier this year, police released the case file.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The British military families being failed by their country
When Holly Parish's* husband was posted from Salisbury Plain to Aldershot halfway through the academic year four years ago, she immediately rang round the primary schools in the area to find school places for her eldest two children. The only places available were in two separate schools, one either side of Aldershot. When Parish asked how she was supposed to drop children in two places at the same time in the morning, she was told by the local authority that she would need to book one or both of her children into breakfast and after-school clubs that she'd have to fund herself. The alternative, she was told, was to home-school them, for which no financial support was available. Desperate, Parish tried calling primary schools in nearby Pirbright, seven miles down the road, where all three schools offered her places for both her children. Parish and her husband ended up begging the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to house them in Pirbright, although 'it took so long that we didn't have an address until two weeks before we moved'. The family then had to buy a second car so that Parish's husband could get to work each day. The whole experience, says Parish now, was so stressful that she ended up on antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication. Families such as Parish's are supposed to be protected in situations such as these by the Armed Forces Covenant, an official 'promise by the nation' that those who serve in the military, of all services and all ranks, and their families, will not be disadvantaged or treated unfairly 'in the provision of public and commercial services' – that is, access to health care, education, housing, employment or financial services – given that military families inevitably forgo some of the rights enjoyed by ordinary civilians. The Covenant, originally an unspoken pact between the military and society based on a duty of care that dates back as far as Tudor times, was formally codified in 2000, and its principles were first enshrined into law in 2011, when every local authority in Britain signed it. Initially, it officially applied only to the Army, although now covers all three services. In practice, it's supposed to mean that if, for example, someone is posted to a new location halfway through the academic year, their children won't have to suffer when it comes to school places. The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also supposed to adhere to the Covenant; the Armed Forces Act 2021 introduced a new requirement in law for some public bodies, including the NHS and local authorities, to 'pay due regard' to its principles when carrying out specific public functions in the areas of housing, health care and education. The reality, however, is that the Covenant is falling far short of what it's supposed to do. A new report published by the House of Commons' Defence Select Committee on April 8, which drew on almost 100 pieces of written, oral and reported evidence to an official inquiry, found that the Covenant is misunderstood, being inconsistently applied, and in many cases disregarded altogether, meaning that military personnel and their families are being disadvantaged. 'The majority of evidence we received was negative,' says Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough who chairs the committee. 'Patchy implementation of the Covenant was a consistent theme. People feel it's nothing more than a gimmick.' Talk to almost any member of the Armed Forces, serving or veteran, or any military family, and you'll hear much the same sentiment – along with any number of stories as to when the Covenant has fallen short. 'When we moved last, the local head teachers hadn't even heard of it and told us they had no intention of going above the quota of 30 [children in a class] in Key Stage 1 for a military child, so our three boys were split between two schools,' says Camilla Rogers*. 'Luckily our local primary got a new head a year later who had worked with military families before, and the three children were reunited into one school. What saddens me is that there are so many people out there that haven't heard of the Covenant or simply don't care.' The Defence committee's report contains multiple similar stories, especially concerning those moving back to the UK from a posting abroad, or families whose children have additional needs: one family had a six-week wait to find a suitable educational setting for their child post-move; another anonymous contributor said the mission of finding a place in a good school for their children each time they moved had been so great that they had ultimately decided to send their children to a boarding school, against their preference. Finding NHS doctors or dentists is a similar challenge for many military families – the report heard evidence from one family who, having finally managed to get a place at an NHS dentist in 2021, went on to move locations twice, so chose just to stay with the practice and haul the entire family across the country every six months for a check-up. When it comes to waiting for treatment for an ongoing medical issue, meanwhile, many find they go back to the bottom of the queue with every new posting. Those working in the devolved administrations come up against even more issues: the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, David Johnstone, told the inquiry that the current political make-up of the Northern Ireland Executive meant there is limited implementation of the Covenant because 'the largest party [Sinn Fein] just refuses to acknowledge and engage with anything around the Armed Forces Covenant'. 'Here in NI, the Covenant only applies to the serving person, not their dependents – which they don't tell you before you come,' says Parish, whose husband's next posting after Aldershot was to Belfast. Parish has been unable to find NHS dentists to take any of the family on, and has ended up having to pay for military Bupa cover. 'It's been a nightmare, to be honest.' This, say many of those involved in the debate about the Covenant, is the real issue: that it's not the serving personnel who are most disadvantaged by their jobs but their families – the ones who are expected to decamp to a new town and immediately need access to school places, dentists and doctors. 'A lot of the Covenant is a very big sticking plaster, quite frankly,' says Collette Musgrave, the chief executive of the Army Families Federation, a lobbying charity that works to question and influence policy on behalf of British Army families around the world. And, she adds, one of the biggest issues is that the MoD itself not only acts as if the Covenant doesn't apply to it when it comes to considering policy, but that it doesn't pay attention to the ways in which military decisions affect families. 'I think the military don't know enough about families,' agrees Lt Gen Sir Nick Pope, who retired from the Army in 2020, now chairs Cobseo, the military charities confederation, and refers to the Covenant as a 'bumper sticker – an aiming mark but not a strategic outcome'. Of his own time in the military, he says, he lived in 31 different married quarters; in one 14-month period, he had five different postings, each of which required his family to move with him. 'The system does not think about the family consequences at all.' Nor, he adds, are things properly joined up, because the status of Forces agreements are all different in different countries, which means, for example, that if a family is posted to Kenya, regardless of what rank the serving person is, there will be restrictions on spousal employment – which in turn means that a spouse loses out on not just income but pension contributions too. Labour's manifesto before the last election included a commitment to put the Armed Forces Covenant 'fully into law'; John Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence, has said that this will happen in the next Armed Forces Bill, to be introduced in the next session of Parliament. This would mean, says Dhesi, that all government departments would be obliged to pay due regard to the Covenant, from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to the Home Office, which he believes 'would help to focus the minds of policymakers in various departments. We want to make sure that includes the devolved governments.' But the ongoing issue is not just that the Covenant is not unilaterally recognised, but that, even for those organisations such as local authorities that are legally obliged to 'pay due regard' to its principles, in practice that means nothing – and is not enforceable. Although campaigners hope that extending the legal duty across all government departments will help, ''due regard' is not determined or defined,' points out Musgrave. 'Is bringing it into law really going to make it work across the board without any enforcement?' Unlikely – as enforcing it would basically be impossible. 'Fundamentally, it's a political statement of intent, but what it isn't is a delivery plan,' says Pope bluntly. 'It lacks the connection between great words and meaningful actions.' Because the intent is there, service families are in a better place than they were 15 years ago, he says. But looking after our Armed Forces – and their families – matters. 'Why? Because we're losing too many young soldiers.' In the 12 months to December 2024, 14,830 personnel left the Armed Forces, 61 per cent for voluntary reasons; the most recent Armed Forces satisfaction survey found that the proportion of personnel rating their service morale as low had increased for the third year in a row, up from 42 per cent in 2021 to 58 per cent in 2024. 'You've got to double down,' says Pope, 'and make sure both the focus and the policy is in the right place.' Britain quite literally depends on it. *names have been changed Additional reporting: Ollie Corfe Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
28-04-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
The British military families being failed by their country
When Holly Parish's* husband was posted from Salisbury Plain to Aldershot halfway through the academic year four years ago, she immediately rang round the primary schools in the area to find school places for her eldest two children. The only places available were in two separate schools, one either side of Aldershot. When Parish asked how she was supposed to drop children in two places at the same time in the morning, she was told by the local authority that she would need to book one or both of her children into breakfast and after-school clubs that she'd have to fund herself. The alternative, she was told, was to home-school them, for which no financial support was available. Desperate, Parish tried calling primary schools in nearby Pirbright, seven miles down the road, where all three schools offered her places for both her children. Parish and her husband ended up begging the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to house them in Pirbright, although 'it took so long that we didn't have an address until two weeks before we moved'. The family then had to buy a second car so that Parish's husband could get to work each day. The whole experience, says Parish now, was so stressful that she ended up on antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication. Families such as Parish's are supposed to be protected in situations such as these by the Armed Forces Covenant, an official 'promise by the nation' that those who serve in the military, of all services and all ranks, and their families, will not be disadvantaged or treated unfairly 'in the provision of public and commercial services' – that is, access to health care, education, housing, employment or financial services – given that military families inevitably forgo some of the rights enjoyed by ordinary civilians. The Covenant, originally an unspoken pact between the military and society based on a duty of care that dates back as far as Tudor times, was formally codified in 2000, and its principles were first enshrined into law in 2011, when every local authority in Britain signed it. Initially, it officially applied only to the Army, although now covers all three services. In practice, it's supposed to mean that if, for example, someone is posted to a new location halfway through the academic year, their children won't have to suffer when it comes to school places. The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also supposed to adhere to the Covenant; the Armed Forces Act 2021 introduced a new requirement in law for some public bodies, including the NHS and local authorities, to 'pay due regard' to its principles when carrying out specific public functions in the areas of housing, health care and education. The reality, however, is that the Covenant is falling far short of what it's supposed to do. A new report published by the House of Commons' Defence Select Committee on April 8, which drew on almost 100 pieces of written, oral and reported evidence to an official inquiry, found that the Covenant is misunderstood, being inconsistently applied, and in many cases disregarded altogether, meaning that military personnel and their families are being disadvantaged. 'The majority of evidence we received was negative,' says Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough who chairs the committee. 'Patchy implementation of the Covenant was a consistent theme. People feel it's nothing more than a gimmick.' Talk to almost any member of the Armed Forces, serving or veteran, or any military family, and you'll hear much the same sentiment – along with any number of stories as to when the Covenant has fallen short. 'When we moved last, the local head teachers hadn't even heard of it and told us they had no intention of going above the quota of 30 [children in a class] in Key Stage 1 for a military child, so our three boys were split between two schools,' says Camilla Rogers*. 'Luckily our local primary got a new head a year later who had worked with military families before, and the three children were reunited into one school. What saddens me is that there are so many people out there that haven't heard of the Covenant or simply don't care.' The Defence committee's report contains multiple similar stories, especially concerning those moving back to the UK from a posting abroad, or families whose children have additional needs: one family had a six-week wait to find a suitable educational setting for their child post-move; another anonymous contributor said the mission of finding a place in a good school for their children each time they moved had been so great that they had ultimately decided to send their children to a boarding school, against their preference. Finding NHS doctors or dentists is a similar challenge for many military families – the report heard evidence from one family who, having finally managed to get a place at an NHS dentist in 2021, went on to move locations twice, so chose just to stay with the practice and haul the entire family across the country every six months for a check-up. When it comes to waiting for treatment for an ongoing medical issue, meanwhile, many find they go back to the bottom of the queue with every new posting. Those working in the devolved administrations come up against even more issues: the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, David Johnstone, told the inquiry that the current political make-up of the Northern Ireland Executive meant there is limited implementation of the Covenant because 'the largest party [Sinn Fein] just refuses to acknowledge and engage with anything around the Armed Forces Covenant'. 'Here in NI, the Covenant only applies to the serving person, not their dependents – which they don't tell you before you come,' says Parish, whose husband's next posting after Aldershot was to Belfast. Parish has been unable to find NHS dentists to take any of the family on, and has ended up having to pay for military Bupa cover. 'It's been a nightmare, to be honest.' This, say many of those involved in the debate about the Covenant, is the real issue: that it's not the serving personnel who are most disadvantaged by their jobs but their families – the ones who are expected to decamp to a new town and immediately need access to school places, dentists and doctors. 'A lot of the Covenant is a very big sticking plaster, quite frankly,' says Collette Musgrave, the chief executive of the Army Families Federation, a lobbying charity that works to question and influence policy on behalf of British Army families around the world. And, she adds, one of the biggest issues is that the MoD itself not only acts as if the Covenant doesn't apply to it when it comes to considering policy, but that it doesn't pay attention to the ways in which military decisions affect families. 'I think the military don't know enough about families,' agrees Lt Gen Sir Nick Pope, who retired from the Army in 2020, now chairs Cobseo, the military charities confederation, and refers to the Covenant as a 'bumper sticker – an aiming mark but not a strategic outcome'. Of his own time in the military, he says, he lived in 31 different married quarters; in one 14-month period, he had five different postings, each of which required his family to move with him. 'The system does not think about the family consequences at all.' Nor, he adds, are things properly joined up, because the status of Forces agreements are all different in different countries, which means, for example, that if a family is posted to Kenya, regardless of what rank the serving person is, there will be restrictions on spousal employment – which in turn means that a spouse loses out on not just income but pension contributions too. Labour's manifesto before the last election included a commitment to put the Armed Forces Covenant 'fully into law'; John Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence, has said that this will happen in the next Armed Forces Bill, to be introduced in the next session of Parliament. This would mean, says Dhesi, that all government departments would be obliged to pay due regard to the Covenant, from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to the Home Office, which he believes 'would help to focus the minds of policymakers in various departments. We want to make sure that includes the devolved governments.' But the ongoing issue is not just that the Covenant is not unilaterally recognised, but that, even for those organisations such as local authorities that are legally obliged to 'pay due regard' to its principles, in practice that means nothing – and is not enforceable. Although campaigners hope that extending the legal duty across all government departments will help, ''due regard' is not determined or defined,' points out Musgrave. 'Is bringing it into law really going to make it work across the board without any enforcement?' Unlikely – as enforcing it would basically be impossible. 'Fundamentally, it's a political statement of intent, but what it isn't is a delivery plan,' says Pope bluntly. 'It lacks the connection between great words and meaningful actions.' Because the intent is there, service families are in a better place than they were 15 years ago, he says. But looking after our Armed Forces – and their families – matters. 'Why? Because we're losing too many young soldiers.' In the 12 months to December 2024, 14,830 personnel left the Armed Forces, 61 per cent for voluntary reasons; the most recent Armed Forces satisfaction survey found that the proportion of personnel rating their service morale as low had increased for the third year in a row, up from 42 per cent in 2021 to 58 per cent in 2024. 'You've got to double down,' says Pope, 'and make sure both the focus and the policy is in the right place.' Britain quite literally depends on it.
Irish Times
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
For a united Ireland to work messy compromises will be needed, but we can't gift Irish identity to the far-right
Do you 'cherish all the children of the nation equally' or pledge to 'stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship'? What's the difference, you may fairly ask. Well, the former are well known words from the 1916 Proclamation, but you may not know that the latter words are contained in the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant. These two documents are often considered the sacred texts of two opposing traditions on this island, but perhaps the values underlying them are more similar than their staunch adherents would care to admit. If so, perhaps we on both sides of the Border are more similar than some of us believe. Consider the above exercise something of a North-South constitutional blind taste test. You may have undertaken a similar taste test with Tayto crisps or Dairy Milk chocolate from North and South of the Border, probably at the insistence of a gastronomic partisan who militantly maintains that their chosen foodstuff is superior in one of the two jurisdictions. Regardless of the outcome, the premise is that the two are different and one must prevail. Answering that you detect little difference but are pleased to have two treats to eat rather than one seems as though you are not being a good sport. Waistlines aside, such taste tests are a harmless exercise in themselves, but they illustrate a wider phenomenon: that we spend too much time on this island fixating upon our differences, far too little on identifying our similarities. Lisa McGee captured this through the famous scene in Derry Girls where the students are asked to write on a blackboard the similarities and differences between the two communities in Northern Ireland . Tellingly, it was the blackboard describing the many differences that became iconic and has since been displayed in the Ulster Museum. Reimagining Irish identity would allow us to reclaim this concept and provide a convincing answer to the far right. It is patriotic work If we are to create an Ireland where all on this island feel comfortable describing themselves as Irish, we must begin the work of identifying what we have in common. This work must involve looking beyond the superficial and symbolic to find the shared values and ideas that are strong enough to hold us together. I believe that if we succeed in this work Ireland can become a nation founded on shared values, rather than history or ethnicity: an enlightened republic. READ MORE I use the word 'enlightened' as the idea of founding national identity on shared values can be traced back to the political outworkings of the Enlightenment in the late 18th century, where both the United States of America and France emerged in their modern form as nations founded upon a set of values held to be self-evident among their citizens. On returning from a trip to the United States , the late John Hume reportedly quipped that the thing that impressed him most about it was that it is one country. By this he was expressing his admiration for the strength of the country's founding ideals, encapsulated in the shorthand of the American dream, which held together a nation far more diverse than Ireland. As for France , Charles de Gaulle famously despaired that a country with 246 different types of cheese was ungovernable (imagine the taste tests there ...) yet its founding creed of liberté, égalité and fraternité has remained a unifying rallying cry through multiple wars and constitutional revisions. A cynic may fairly argue that the present conditions of the United States and France show that establishing a nation on shared values is no guarantee of patriotic harmony. That is true, but I would contend that much of the polarisation that characterises those nations today is a product of having departed from their founding ideals and embraced a nationalism defined along ethnocultural lines. This temptation will always be present, for humans are hard-wired to embrace tribalism and it is far easier to define the tribe through tangible cultural markers than intangible shared values: the price of an enlightened republic is eternal vigilance. So if we were to create an enlightened republic in Ireland, what values might we found it upon? The excerpts I have drawn from the 1916 Proclamation and the Ulster Covenant suggest a commitment to equality across both of the main traditions on this island, although both traditions can fairly be accused of failing to honour that commitment in practice. Establishing equality as a founding ideal of an enlightened republic may leave less space for quietly resiling from such commitments in future. The Air Corps perform a fly-past during a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising at the GPO on O'Connell Street, Dublin, earlier this month. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire There is also a deep and distinctive commitment to community across this island. The young person who makes the weekly journey from Belfast to band practice at their local Orange Lodge and their counterpart in Dublin who makes the journey back to their parish GAA club for training may appear to be engaging in divergent cultural practices. Yet at heart both are performing rituals laced with a love of community, heritage and place. Ireland is also an island of innovators. Tractors, the Titanic and the ejector seat are testaments to Northern industrial heft. Hypodermic syringes, stethoscopes and colour photography are testaments to Ireland's place at the cutting edge of pharmaceutical and technological development. And yes, flavoured crisps belong on the list of Irish innovations too. So you might say that the blind taste test itself is an Irish invention. Immigrants may also play a role in identifying our shared values, as they may be better able to recognise what makes Ireland distinctive I offer the above values by way of example, and I hope that reading this essay prompts you to think of more. For the identification of shared values must be a democratic process in the hands of citizens as much as political leaders. Moreover, it can be an iterative process: our shared values can evolve as we are exposed to new ideas and encounters; we should not be afraid, as in the WB Yeats poem, to hear the call of Plato's ghost and ask 'what then?'. Those who comfortably call themselves Irish today may ask why all this work matters. Yet I believe it is vital to confront three of the defining challenges facing Ireland in the 21st century: the possibility of a Border poll; integrating immigrants ; and overcoming the far right. The results of the recent ARINS/Irish Times survey show that a clear majority of voters in both jurisdictions favour making preparations for the possibility of Irish unity regardless of whether it comes about. Much of this preparation focuses on accommodating cultural differences, asking what each tradition is prepared to sacrifice or compromise upon. The more that national identity is defined by shared values, the less that both sides will need to dilute the cultural aspects of their traditions in order to find a shared identity. A myriad of cultural traditions can sit under the banner of an Irishness defined by shared values. This is no panacea – messy compromises will be required to make a united Ireland work – but such compromises may be easier to achieve if there is a reservoir of shared values to draw upon. Members of the Defence Forces earlier this month. Photograph: Alan Betson Tying any future unity project to the reshaping of Irish identity can also make it both more inspiring to the agnostic and less threatening to its opponents. The many on both sides of the Border who are quietly comfortable with the status quo may rightly ask what is in it for them. The opportunity to build an entirely new conception of Irishness offers a more inspiring vision than tired nationalist cliches dressed in slick marketing. Similarly, unionists who have so far boycotted Border poll preparations need not shy away from this work: developing shared values across this island can encourage mutual understanding and ensure that any future Border poll is conducted in a healthier atmosphere without making unity more likely. Even if a Border poll never comes, rapid immigration over recent decades means that Ireland today is an island of many national and ethnic minorities. An Ireland whose identity is defined by history, culture or language may be one in which they cannot feel they fully belong. An Ireland where Irishness in defined by values may prove much easier to integrate into. The United States' erstwhile success in integrating immigrants stemmed from its ability to create 'hyphenated Americans' who could maintain aspects of their own culture while pursuing the American dream. We should aspire to a nation of 'hyphenated Irish' who subscribe to Irish values but still bring their distinctive culture to the rich tapestry of Irish identity. Immigrants may also play a role in identifying our shared values, as they may be better able to recognise what makes Ireland distinctive than those of us who have always called this island home. [ Emotional response to outcomes of possible referendums on unity ranges from pride to hate Opens in new window ] A failure to engage with the meaning of Irishness today also risks placing the future of Irish identity in the hands of malign actors. Many far-right groups in Ireland now appropriate traditional symbols of Irishness and present themselves as guardians of a 'pure' Irish nation. Those in the centre ground of western democracies have become squeamish about expressing patriotism in recent years, but national identity remains a source of pride and inspiration to many people. Reimagining Irish identity would allow us to reclaim this concept and provide a convincing answer to the far right. It is patriotic work. [ Irish and British futures are codependent and entangled Opens in new window ] I will conclude with one more constitutional blind taste test: 'I undertake to faithfully observe the laws of the State and to respect its democratic values'. These vanilla words form the substantial part of the declaration of fidelity to the Irish nation that is sworn by new Irish citizens, but their very sparseness betrays a nation that does not truly know what it stands for. If we are ambitious about what Ireland can achieve in the 21st century, and wish to harness the energies and talents of all on this island towards the fulfilment of those ambitions, we must begin the work of unearthing the shared values that bring us together and spur us on. If we commit ourselves to such work, Irish citizens – both old and new – may one day say that we live in an enlightened republic. Ross Neill is a solicitor from Belfast practising in Dublin
