Citizenship case shows how nationalists do not understand or accept the Belfast Agreement

Although UK citizenship law, in the form of the British Nationality Act 1981, is abundantly clear that persons born in the United Kingdom (to at least one UK-citizen or settled-status parent) are automatically British citizens.

De Souza – who, despite being born in the UK, claims she is not a UK citizen – has been attempting to argue that this is superseded by the Belfast Agreement.

As a legal argument, this fails at the first hurdle, since international treaties require legislation to be given direct effect in law.

The Belfast Agreement was given legal effect by the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which did not amend the 1981 Act. The Home Office, therefore, had no option but to appeal a bizarre tribunal ruling that had previously found in favour of De Souza.

On strictly legal grounds, therefore, De Souza is bound to fail, but we can be sure that her campaign, supported by Sinn Féin, will move beyond the courts and into the political arena.

They will seek to have the 1981 Act amended so as to remove automatic UK citizenship from people born in Northern Ireland. In doing this, it will be argued that the Belfast Agreement, which provides a ‘right’ to identify as Irish, British or both, requires UK citizenship to become merely an option.

This is despite the very same provision of the Agreement referring also to a right to hold ‘both British and Irish citizenship’.

The agreement, therefore, rightly distinguishes between identity and citizenship, affirming a right to acquire Irish citizenship in addition to British citizenship, but separate to how we might choose to identify.

The De Souza case is based on the misunderstanding that identity and citizenship are the same, and that being a UK citizen prevents somebody from identifying as ‘Irish only’.

The implications of this are significant: to accept such an interpretation would be to equate Irish identity to citizenship of the Republic of Ireland, implying that the many unionists who identify as Irish are not really Irish at all, unless they choose to become Irish citizens; and to envisage a divided society in which one section of the community is encouraged to opt out of citizenship of the state in which they live.

This campaign exposes an unspoken truth about nationalism: it has never honestly or genuinely accepted the implications of the agreement’s affirmation of Northern Ireland’s membership of the United Kingdom.

They do not, therefore, accept that this means that UK citizenship is the default, or that the appropriate use of UK symbols is legitimate, but seek to change, restrict or undermine such basic manifestations of sovereignty.

As well as not understanding the terms of the agreement, neither do they understand its nature as, literally, an agreement with unionists.

Unionists did not agree that UK citizenship law should be changed, and that is why the agreement does not say that it should be, and why the law was not changed.

The Belfast Agreement is not a platform for nationalists to undermine Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, but the ongoing failure of unionists to defend it in the face of the De Souza campaign (and other demands such as the extension of Irish presidential voting rights into Northern Ireland), means they are currently pushing against an open door.

J. Martin, Belfast