This year’s general election saw much talk about the perceived demise of student activism and the political passivity of today’s university population. This accusation has been dismissed. Even if this appears on the surface to be the case, the opposite is surely true, as the marriage referendum campaign demonstrated.
However, perhaps our hasty dismissal of this idea is too immediate, with no pause to reflect and self-examine. While campaigns such as repeal the eighth, marriage equality, and even – albeit to a weaker extent – Students Against Fees manage to muster up student support and arouse our will for change and equality, what if some of the things we should be fighting for are already in existence? Most of us are happy to live with the status quo of our times, because – let’s face it – compared to what has come before, it isn’t half-bad. Yet, let us not confuse not needing to fight for great change with not having to fight at all. We need to fight to maintain what we have.
While my grandmother may argue that things were better before we got “roped into” Europe, for the most part our generation recognises the steps forward since accession.
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The idea that the European Union (EU) has provided countless benefits for Irish people over the past four decades is well-expounded. While my grandmother may argue that things were better before we got “roped into” Europe, for the most part our generation recognises the steps forward since accession. In Ireland in 1973, married women were banned from working, life expectancy was almost ten years lower than today and third-level education was a privilege reserved for a mere 27,000 people. The existence of the EU has revolutionised many aspects of our lives and it continues to do so, no matter where we travel.
But now Europe is in turmoil. From the euro crisis to the refugee crisis to the threat of Brexit, what has provided us with so many opportunities seems to be crumbling away, piece by piece. At a DU Germanic Society event several weeks ago, Derek Scally of The Irish Times spoke of how, upon seeing identification checks introduced for passengers travelling on the Øresund bridge between Copenhagen and Malmo, a bridge which had once been a great gesture of European cooperation, he wondered whether this could possibly be a symbolic beginning-of-the-end moment for European border-free travel, and even for the very union itself?
Perhaps it is time to move past euro-scepticism and accept that the biggest problems with the EU are not due to its existence, but rather due to not allowing it to reach its full potential. Recent experience has shown time and again that it is when integration and collaboration are weakest that the biggest problems emerge. This makes any argument to dismantle the EU misplaced and unhelpful. While unity may not always seem to reap strength, setting out alone in the turbulent, globalised twenty-first century is not an action to be advised.
As students and young people in Ireland today, do we not owe something to the union that has transformed our ability to work and travel, allowed us to learn vibrant new languages and given us the opportunity to partake in the famous Erasmus programme?
However, we should not place the blame solely on euro-sceptics, but rather look to ourselves, the passive majority, who keep quiet about most issues and leave the debate open to others. As students and young people in Ireland today, do we not owe something to the union that has transformed our ability to work and travel, allowed us to learn vibrant new languages and given us the opportunity to partake in the famous Erasmus programme? These possibilities took years of piecemeal agreements and tense negotiations to reach the coherency they now possess. They did not come easily, but they could be easily destroyed.
John F. Kennedy famously urged his citizens to “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. These lines have been so often quoted that they have become clichéd. However, we would do well to take on board the sentiment of his words. In twenty-first century Ireland, where the threats of war, conscription, democratic collapse and godly punishment are more distant than ever before, maybe it is time to fight for the union that has brought us much of our privilege.
While Europe may be a bureaucratic giant and many may blame it for burdening our small nation with debt, we have to recognise both the bad and the good. We must make it our responsibility to promote the right changes, while preserving the essential nature of a union which has brought a continent at war to peace. As parts of Europe struggle with unprecedented challenges, we must realise our duty and assert our voice. We must stop merely claiming that we care and instead act to defend the union that benefits our lives. We must become activists for improvement and real allies of Europe.
