Trevor White: Yes. Our flag was supposed to unite us \u2013 but that\u2019s not how it has gone <\/p>\n
St Patrick\u2019s 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<\/a>, 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\u2019s Day<\/a> parade \u2013 invented in America <\/a>\u2013 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. <\/p>\n Take the flag. Honestly, take it. It is a contentious part of our history. Get another one \u2013 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n It must go. <\/p>\n Anyone who wants a united Ireland is well advised to hasten slowly. Yet the country is full of two-pint republicans who rarely stop waffling for long enough to consider the implications of their demand for a 32-county state in jig-time. Sure, why would we bother changing the flag when the land will be ours alone? A more pertinent question is how we might unite the people of this island without any part of the island descending once again into violence. <\/p>\n Any sensible answer involves change and compromise, a willingness to experiment with new ways of seeing the world. Redesigning our flag would demonstrate that we can consider a fresh start. Refusing to do so would give unionists good cause for concern. <\/p>\n States often adopt new emblems. Think of post-apartheid South Africa, which marked the transition to a \u201crainbow nation\u201d with a new flag. Or Canada, which replaced colonial symbols with a maple-leaf flag. Such decisions speak to noble instincts and mature deliberation. If we get it right, Irish unity could some day be an equally positive moment in our history. A new flag would signal the creation of a new political settlement.<\/p>\n What, then, should the flag look like? That decision must not be left to politicians and barroom bores. It is far too important. Indeed, reimagining emblems of the state should be the work of artists, who have the imaginative capacity to look beyond shibboleths and worn-out pieties. <\/p>\n