[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 11, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10176-H10179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, JOHN BRUTON, PRIME MINISTER OF IRELAND

  PRIME MINISTER BRUTON. Mr. Speaker, Senator Thurmond, Members of 
Congress, it is a great honor to Ireland that I have been asked to 
address this joint session of Congress today, as only the 30th head of 
State or government of an European country to do so since 1945. But it 
is a particular honor to be asked to speak here on this day, the 11th 
of September.
  For it was on this day, the 11th of September, 210 years ago almost 
to the hour, that delegates from New York, New Jersey, Delaware, 
Pennsylvania, and Virginia met just 32 miles from here at Annapolis in 
Maryland, and it was there, at Annapolis, that they decided to convene 
the convention in Philadelphia that gave the people the Constitution of 
the United States of America, the world's first Federal constitution, 
the constitution that made Americans ``the first people whom Heaven has 
favoured with an opportunity of deliberating upon, and choosing, the 
form of government under which they shall live,'' making America the 
pioneer of that most powerful of all political ideas: democracy under 
the rule of law.
  Two hundred and ten years later Americans can look back with pride at 
what they have given to the world. Never before in that long period 
have more of humanity lived under a system based on democracy and the 
rule of law than do so today.
  Even in the case of countries as afflicted as Burma, people are 
standing up for democracy and the rule of law. For the first time in 
their history, the Russian people have freely elected their own 
President. The American model, constitutional democracy, has succeeded 
and spread because it is built on a realistic view of human nature. 
Checks and balances are needed.
  As James Madison said: ``You must first enable the Government to 
control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control 
itself.''
  American democracy has worked because it has controlled itself 
through the separation of powers in a written Constitution, and through 
a strong and independent Supreme Court that interprets that 
Constitution.
  As President Andrew Jackson, a man of Irish ancestry, said in 1821: 
``The great can protect themselves, but the poor and humble require the 
arm and the shield of the law.''
  I speak today as President in office of the European Council, a body 
that is aiming to do for the 15 member states of the European Union 
what the men who met, and they unfortunately only were men who met at 
Annapolis and at Philadelphia, did so long ago for the 13 colonies of 
America. The European Union, through an Inter-Governmental Conference 
launched last April in Turin, is seeking to write a new constitution 
for Europe that will enable the European Union to add new members to 
its east, just as your constitution of 1789 enabled this great union to 
add so many new members to its west.
  The establishment of the United States of America was the great 
constructive constitutional achievement of the late 18th century. The 
establishment of the European Union out of the devastation of World War 
II could be described as the great constructive constitutional 
achievement of the late 20th century.
  We in Europe have much to learn from American experience. Americans 
came together because of necessity. Very few of the eventual Framers of 
the U.S. Constitution who met at Annapolis were inspired by the 
theories of Montesquieu or Locke, wanting to build the perfect state, a 
model democracy, a castle built in the sky. They came together rather 
because they had to reach urgent agreement on a framework to sort out 
immediate problems about shipping on the Potomac, about how they would 
pay for the army, about who was going to pay taxes and how they were 
going to be collected, how they would get their goods to market, and 
how their frontiers would be protected, very practical problems.

  Americans in 1786 knew at Annapolis that they could not agree on 
commercial reforms to protect trade without making political reforms as 
well. That is why the men at Annapolis 210 years ago decided to call a 
constitutional conference in Philadelphia the following May. By working 
together to find the means of solving the practical problems of life 
for their citizens, the Framers of the U.S. Constitution forged the 
most durable and perhaps the fairest system of government the world has 
ever seen. They came together as people who were each loyal, first and 
foremost, to their own States. But they knew that that loyalty and 
allegiance could find its best expression as part of a wider American 
continental loyalty.
  Mr. Speaker, it was necessity that brought Europe together too, the 
necessity of reconstruction after World War II, the necessity of 
resisting communism, and the necessity to resolve national conflicts 
that had caused 3 wars in just 80 years. That dynamic, that necessity, 
continues in Europe today.
  It is often said that politicians and politics are made to serve 
commercial needs. The European Union has done the reverse. It has made 
commerce the servant of a great political objective. By creating a 
single coal and steel industry, a single agricultural market, a single 
commercial market, the European Union has created economic bonds that 
bind its members together politically.
  The European Union has undermined the economic base of that force 
that causes wars, national chauvinism, but the psychological base of 
national chauvinism still remains a threat in Europe. If Europeans do 
not constantly work at bringing their union closer together, the 
strains arising from remaining differences will gradually pull their 
union apart.
  Can the European Union create economic bonds that are strong enough 
to persuade European states to make sacrifices and take risks for a 
common objective? That is an important question for Europe, and it is 
also an important question for Europe's allies and the United States. 
And it is a question that Europe has to answer for itself. And 
depending on that answer, we will know whether the Yugoslav violence of 
1992-93 was just the last convulsion of an old and primitive Europe or 
a sign of wider threats to come. And Europe has to answer that question 
while simultaneously bringing in new members, with a different 
political tradition from Central and Eastern Europe. That problem, that 
precise problem of bringing existing members closer together, while 
also expanding membership, is a familiar problem to anyone who has 
studied the 19th century history of the United States.

[[Page H10177]]

  Europe's task of constitution-building today is particularly 
difficult. Europeans were on different sides in past wars, whereas 
America's Founding Fathers had all been on the same side. But, Mr. 
Speaker, we are determined to make the European Union work, to make it 
work for peace, to make the European Union a firm friend and partner of 
this great American union.
  The United States has built a union that is robust enough to 
accommodate radical disagreements and still take tough decisions when 
tough decisions have to be taken. Europe must do the same.
  This union, the United States, has worked because it is based on 
freedom. As Thomas Jefferson said, ``Error of opinion may be tolerated, 
so long as reason is left free to combat it.''
  Conformism of thinking, political correctness, if you will, is the 
great enemy of democratic discourse. We must not be afraid to disagree. 
We must not dismiss other people's opinions just because they have used 
the wrong words to express them. Equally, we must accept that some 
people's views are so profoundly different from ours that we will never 
agree with them or them with us.

  Living with difference. That's the challenge for the United States 
today. It's the challenge for Europe. It's the challenge for Ireland as 
a whole, but in a very particular way, it is a challenge for Northern 
Ireland--living with difference.
  In Northern Ireland we see two communities, each offended by the 
views of the other, and by how those views are expressed. Two 
communities, each feeling itself to be a minority, a minority that has 
been oppressed or a minority that may be oppressed in the future. The 
fears of each community mirror those of the other.
  Two minorities, equally justly proud of their heritage, each 
believing that their heritage is founded on tolerance and civil 
liberties, and each believing that sincerely. Two minorities who yet 
will always be different from one another, but who have not yet been 
able to see that, on many important issues, they already agree with one 
another far more than they disagree, and far more than either agree 
with others. They have exaggerated their differences and minimized 
their similarities.
  Thus, if there is to be a peaceful and fair accommodation in Northern 
Ireland, each tradition must be willing to sit down and listen for long 
enough to the views, the worries, and the concerns of the other 
tradition, to uncover the common ground.
  Thanks to the efforts of so many people here in the United States, 
the President and Vice President Gore, Speaker Gingrich, and other 
leaders of both Houses of Congress, most of the parties in Northern 
Ireland have been sitting down and listening to one another since the 
10th of June, under the able chairmanship of Senator George Mitchell, 
whose skill and commitment I salute today. They have had about 6 weeks 
of talks together, and they have reached agreement on important 
procedural issues, and laid the foundation for forward movement.
  Against the background of 25 years of barbarity of every kind, and 
almost four centuries of distrust, it is hard to expect rapid agreement 
between nine different parties in the space of only 6 weeks. My own 
view is that the harmony that we seek will not come overnight. It will 
come in stages, from the experience of working together to solve 
practical, immediate problems.
  But, if that is to happen, it is the strong view of my government 
that the talks must now move beyond procedure and soon discuss really 
substantive issues, substantive issues of disagreement. This must 
happen quickly. This must happen quickly if we are not to miss the 
window of opportunity, so often highlighted by President Clinton during 
his recent visit to Ireland.
  On that occasion, the President spoke for all Americans. Almost as 
much as the Irish themselves, Americans welcomed the political efforts 
that gave us a ceasefire of 17 months. But now all of us want the IRA 
to stop for good. True negotiations can only take place in an 
atmosphere of genuine peace.
  The all-party talks, for which we have all worked so hard, have been 
delivered. We must have everybody there at those talks now, genuinely 
willing, and able, to negotiate. That can only happen when everyone has 
been convinced that violence will never be used again to intimidate 
opponents or to control supporters, never again. That means a cessation 
of violence by the IRA that will hold in all circumstances, and I know 
that I have the full support of the U.S. Congress for that vital 
objective.
  In trying to work out a system of government that all can share in 
Northern Ireland in quality and parity of esteem, we are not asking 
Unionists to cease to be loyally British, any more than we are asking 
Nationalists to cease to be loyally Irish, any more than the original 
Framers of the U.S. Constitution ceased to be loyal Virginians or loyal 
members of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We are asking 
Nationalists and Unionists to agree on a political framework which will 
allow them, together, to take on responsibility for solving the day-to-
day problems that affect the lives of the 1\1/2\ million people who 
live in Northern Ireland, and to do so in harmony and cooperation with 
Britain and with the rest of Ireland.
  Let the parties build on what they already agree about. All parties 
in Northern Ireland already agree that the form of government should be 
democratic. All agree that there should be a Bill of Rights. All agree 
that there should be links with the rest of the island. Each tradition 
agrees that the other should be respected, and each agrees that the 
other tradition cannot be coerced.
  The Irish Government has no interest in propelling anybody into an 
arrangement that they do not wish to be part of. We are not motivated 
by any interests of our own other than that of obtaining an agreement 
which is reasonable and fair to the aspirations of both communities in 
Northern Ireland.
  Mr. Speaker, as a historian, I know that you are very conscious of 
the fact that Europe has many psychological boundaries that go back to 
the Thirty Years War and further, boundaries of religion, boundaries 
between one world view and another. One of those psychological 
boundaries does indeed run through the ancient province of Ulster. Yet 
similar boundaries in Europe have not prevented the development of 
agreed political structures across boundaries, which allow regions and 
countries, majorities and minorities, and within states, to work 
together in partnership, to the mutual benefit of their people.
  We in Ireland can admire our history. We can regret aspects of it, 
too, but we certainly cannot erase it. We don't owe our history any 
debts. We can't relive our great-grandparents' lives for them. We are 
not obliged to take offense on their behalf, any more than we are 
obligated to atone for their sins.

                              {time}  1030

  It is our task to live in this generation, as people who live in 
Ireland and whose children will live there too.
  Northern Ireland needs a political system that allows the people 
there to take responsibility together for their own future. Taking 
responsibility, something that you, Mr. Speaker, and many other Members 
of this Congress on both sides of the House have emphasized time and 
again, taking responsibility. Thanks to the generous support of 
Congress, the people of Northern Ireland, of both traditions, already 
take responsibility together for economic projects, aided by the 
International Fund for Ireland.
  They also have taken responsibility together at a local level this 
summer by agreeing in very different circumstances in many areas the 
routes of contentious marches. Unfortunately, agreement was not reached 
in every case, but one should not underrate the importance of 
responsibility having been taken in many other cases.
  But a wider political agreement is what we need now. The destructive 
force of sectarianism is all too easily fanned. It can quickly get 
beyond the control of those who fan it, making compromise impossible, 
and eventually coming back to consume its authors.
  That is why we need an agreement, within a workable timeframe. Such 
an agreement is within reach. The Irish and British Governments were 
able to agree last year on a detailed model or framework of such an 
agreement. The parties can add to that. They can subtract from it, or 
they can come up with

[[Page H10178]]

an entirely new draft. But the core problems that the two governments, 
the British and Irish Governments, have plainly identified last year 
must be tackled and overcome by this present generation of political 
leaders. I am absolutely determined that that will happen.
  Mr. Speaker, a number of the men who met in Philadelphia to frame the 
U.S. Constitution were of Ulster Scots ancestry. Some of their distant 
cousins sit on the Unionist benches at the Belfast talks, just as some 
of their ancestors defended Derry's walls in 1689.
  If men of that ancestry could devise the fairest and greatest 
democratic Constitution in the world, surely they can work with 
neighbors today to devise a fair and just system for their own country.
  Agreed institutions for Northern Ireland must be ones that enforce 
fairness and check the arbitrary excesses of whoever happens to be in 
the majority in any area at any particular time.
  Your second President, John Adams, made a bleak, but not altogether 
unrealistic, comment on universal human nature, when he said:

       The people, when unchecked, have been as unjust, 
     tyrannical, brutal, barbarous and cruel as any king or senate 
     possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has 
     eternally, and without exception, usurped over the rights of 
     the minority.

  Mr. Speaker, that is why the enforcement of fairness through law has 
been one of the keystones of the American Constitution.
  That is also why we need rules, and a balanced system of 
institutions, in Northern Ireland. Rules which limit uncontrollable 
power. Rules that require people to share power. Rules that allow 
people to build trust through small successes. Rules which recognize 
that people are different from one another, and that people's 
allegiances may be many and varied.
  That is a lesson that the world as a whole needs to learn, if it is 
to live at peace.
  Political theorists of the 19th century assumed that a person could 
only have one sovereign allegiance to his or her territorial nation 
state.

  In the 19th and early 20th centuries, territorially based natural 
resources, agriculture and mineral, were crucial to the economy, so 
nation and territory normally had to be one and the same.
  In contrast, knowledge, instant communications, multiculturalism, or 
at least a multiplicity of cultures, and mobility, people moving from 
one country to another, money moving from one country to another in an 
instant, these would be the characteristics of the 21st century, and 
nationalities will inevitably become more and more intermixed, one with 
the other. That is why in many parts of the world, a new political 
model is needed to organize this new social reality, a model that 
recognizes that people can have more allegiances than one, and yet live 
and work happily together.
  The European Union reflects that new concept. In the European Union 
one can at the same time owe allegiance to Flanders, to Belgium, and to 
Europe, and yet share the same working and living space with someone 
who has the different set of national allegiances.
  If such a model can work for Europe, it can work for Northern Ireland 
too, and if we can get it right in Northern Ireland, we will be setting 
a model for similarly divided communities across the world, just as men 
of Irish descent set a model for the world 210 years ago today, when 
they met at Annapolis and decided to draw up the Constitution of this 
United States.
  Yes, both Ireland and the United States have responsibilities to the 
wider world, to the 6 billion people who inhabit this globe. There are 
three times as many people in the world today as there were when the 
Irish state was founded in December 1921, and six times as many people 
as there were when the United States was formed. Africa had half 
Europe's population in 1950. Thirty years from now there will be three 
times as many Africans as Europeans.
  All of these people will have to be fed and clothed. All will need 
around 2,000 calories per day, some will want to consume more, some 
ought to consume less, and will need, and this is even more important, 
two liters per day of clean, I emphasize, clean, water. There will be 2 
billion more people in the globe 30 years from now, all of whom will 
have those requirements, and we know that that is going to happen. And 
all of them, if we are to have peace, will need to feel that they are 
respected parts of the world community, that they are not second class.
  The world is a better place today than it was 50 years ago. It can be 
even better 50 years from now if we build freedom, freedom for all, 
within rules set by democratic consent.
  Lawmakers everywhere must remember that rules work best when there is 
consent to the way in which they have been played, and when everyone 
has had a recognized input to the making of the rules. That is why we 
need to reform the United Nations, because we cannot impose rules 
unilaterally. If the United Nations had not been set up in San 
Francisco in 1946, we would have to be inventing it today, because 
given the scale of the world's problem, given the extreme increase in 
world population, we must have a means of making rules which allow us 
all to share the world together, rules in which all nations have had a 
part in the making.
  Let me take one area as an example of where world rules are needed. 
We need global rules against terrorism, terrorism which exploits the 
freedom of our media. As President Bush said, ``simply by capturing the 
headlines and television time, the terrorist partially succeeds.''
  Violence and democratic politics can never mix. Civilized states do 
not negotiate under threat. That is why those who wish to win respect 
through democratic politics must give up all connections with terror, 
give up the threat of terror, and give up even giving coded warnings 
about terror.

                              {time}  1040

  Terror cannot be part of the political calculus of a democracy. That 
is why Ireland strongly supports the United States efforts to create 
world rules to combat terrorism, terrorism of which United States 
citizens have been victims in recent times.
  Freedom and democracy work, because in a democracy change must be 
based on consent, and because it gives space to individuals to 
innovate; creating the best conditions, freedom, for economic growth.
  Ireland is a good example of a democracy that works. Ireland's 
economic growth rate last year was the highest in Europe for the third 
year in a row. Inflation in Ireland is amongst the lowest in Europe. 
Government spending came down from 52 percent of GNP in 1986, to just 
40 percent today. Four times as many Irish people go to college today 
as did so in 1965. The proportion of Irish children who complete high 
school have quadrupled since then and the numbers have more than 
quadrupled.
  As a result, as a direct result, one-third of all U.S. high-
technology investment going to Europe as a whole comes to Ireland. One-
third.
  Education is the key.
  We do have problems. Too many Irish people are unemployed.
  But the biggest common factor amongst the unemployed is that they 
left school too early. It is not enough that 85 percent of Irish 
children complete high school, or to use the Irish term, sit the 
Leaving Certificate, we need 100 percent to do so. Not just to acquire 
a technical qualification but to understand their place in the world, 
where they are coming from, who they are, and as much as possible about 
the other peoples with whom they must share this increasingly crowded 
globe.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank all Americans, and Americans of Irish heritage 
in particular, for their contribution to Ireland's success. I salute 
the contributions that men and women of Irish heritage have made to 
this great Nation, in every walk of life.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask Congress to continue to support the peace process 
in Ireland. And, Mr. Speaker, I ask Congress, representing this great 
American union, to work together with the European Union to build a 
structure of peace for the world as a whole.
  Thank you.
  [Applause, the Members rising.]
  At 10 o'clock and 43 minutes a.m., the Prime Minister of Ireland 
accompanied by the committee of escort, retired from the Hall of the 
House of Representatives.
  The Assistant to the Sergeant at Arms escorted the invited guests 
from the Chamber in the following order:

[[Page H10179]]

  The Members of the President's Cabinet.
  The Acting Dean of the Diplomatic Corps.

                          ____________________