Act of Union

While the poem tells the story of a man and woman dealing with a pregnancy, the underlying allegory likely makes the most impression on the reader. Although England, Britain, Ireland, and Ulster are never explicitly named, the difficult relationship between the two countries—particularly the “Troubles” that began in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s—gives the poem its bite. The consequences of history must be acknowledged (as Heaney noted in his interview with Dennis O’Driscoll [p. 169]). The title of the poem suggests that the difficulties go back a long way—at least to An Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, as it was officially called, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1801. The speaker, as England, is fully aware of what England has done toward Ireland in its capacity as an imperial power, and he knows that the tragic and violent consequences of that policy are now upon them both in the form of the troubled province of Ulster.

As with the pregnancy story, the male speaker, England, expresses some ambivalence in his attitude toward Ireland, presented as female. The poem is written from England’s point of view. He knows that the violence in Ulster is the result of a long process, “our past” (Line 8), for which he, as the imperial male, must bear the brunt of responsibility. He insists, however, that England’s action in Ireland was not a conquest because Ireland has not been subdued, and conflict in the northern part of the “half-independent” (Line 12) island is “inexorably” (Line 14) growing. (This opens the possibility that conquest might have been intended, if not achieved in practice.) He/England does not exactly express feelings of guilt, but he is aware that the coming storm would not have happened had he, “the tall kingdom” (Line 9), not mingled with the smaller island to his west. He knows that the “heaving province” (Line 8) of Ulster, pregnant with violence, is his “legacy” (Line 13). He does not blame Ireland; he knows he acted as the colonial power against a weaker country, and that this left Ireland “with the pain, / The rending process in the colony” (Lines 16-17).

The consequences of England’s long involvement in Irish affairs are most apparent in the second sonnet, in which the threat presented by Ulster, the child of the union between England and Ireland, is most apparent. Had England—as the speaker must surely know—allowed the whole of Ireland to become independent in 1922, instead of excluding Ulster, the present conflict may have been avoided (or taken a very different course, impossible to predict). Ulster is seething with pent-up aggression, the “wardrum [sic]” (Line 21) is heard, a “battering ram” (Line 18) is being prepared, and the bastard child of Ulster has its “ignorant little fists” (Line 23) beating at the borders of the province, presenting an intractable problem for England.

It is interesting to note that the speaker seems to identify this direct threat to England (“I know they’re cocked / At me across the water” [Lines 24-25]) as coming from the Protestant loyalists. He likely means that their extremism and intransigence is escalating the conflict and hampering any efforts by the British government to resolve the crisis. (The word he uses is “obstinate” [Line 19]). By saying this he discounts, by omission, the deadly role played by the terrorist Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), which began a bombing campaign in England in 1972, with the aim of driving the British out of Northern Ireland. The speaker, however, declares that the main danger comes from a “fifth column” (Line 19), which cannot mean the IRA but must refer to the Protestant loyalists and paramilitaries, who were guilty of many killings as the conflict worsened. They could not be budged from their fervent anti-Catholicism and belief that Northern Ireland must at all costs remain part of Great Britain.