Trevor White: Yes. Our flag was supposed to unite us – but that’s not how it has gone

St Patrick’s Day is an excuse for a bit of navel-gazing that must be the envy of the world. Every year we toast the plucky resilience of the Irish, the day off work and the craic that flows long after closing time. Such festivities play well with Irish-Americans, who underwrite many expressions of what it means to be Irish. From Temple Bar to the Paddy’s Day parade – invented in America – our nation is feted through the eyes of people who left here long ago. (Their devotion is marked by dyeing things green.) Yet we struggle to accommodate the views of people whose families have been here for more than 300 years.

Take the flag. Honestly, take it. It is a contentious part of our history. Get another one – quickly, before our friends in the North take the hump. Yes, they are bound to object, not because unionists are truculent, but because the flag has come to represent a strand of nationalism that is toxic and racist. It has no place in a united Ireland.

The flag and us: it was not supposed to end like this. The Tricolour was designed in a spirit of reconciliation. Unlike our national anthem, with its shameless glorification of violence, the flag was supposed to unite rival notions of what it means to share this island. That was before the Tricolour became synonymous with the provisional IRA and republicanism in the North. In the South, it has recently become such a potent symbol of xenophobia that immigrants know to fear its presence on a lamp-post.

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Anyone who wants a united Ireland is well advised to hasten slowly. Yet the country is full of two-pint republicans who rarely stop........

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