Michael Fry: Equal opportunities for cross-border relations

THE official visit of the Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, to 10 Downing Street this week did not create any great waves but it was important both to him and to his host David Cameron.

The pair of them first of all had royal business on hand to discuss, itself a novelty in Anglo-Irish relations of a power yet to be plumbed. This year's second most important event for the House of Windsor will be a return in state to territory which detached itself from the United Kingdom 90 years ago. When the Queen goes to Dublin next month it will mark almost exactly a century since her grandfather, King George V, did so. He received a warm and loyal reception: there seemed then to be no cloud on the horizon.

The loyalty has gone, of course, but there is every chance the warmth will still be there. The Queen is such a grand old lady, she will just have got her grandson married and most of the Irish are heartily relieved that the clouds which loured for all those intervening years over relations with their neighbours have lifted at last. Here are reasons enough to make her feel welcome as, no doubt, only Ireland can. Kenny and Cameron would just have had to dot the i's and cross the t's on their plans for the royal tour.

Then came the hard part. Kenny, newly elected to the thankless task of doing something with a ruined economy, was in London to solicit the aid of what is still a global power in finance, if in little else. The burden of servicing Irish debts remains crippling - so crippling that the risk of default cannot be entirely ruled out, though exit from the euro remains the slightly less drastic and therefore more likely eventuality. One proposal Kenny could reasonably advocate to Cameron was an easing in the cost of the debts.

Britain has already helped out with its own loan to Ireland, and shows no more interest in Irish default than any other creditor. So doubtless ample slices of sympathy were served along with the tea in 10 Downing Street. In certain respects Kenny's cuts make Cameron's cuts look mild: both are taking money away from students, but would any British government dare to reduce medical benefits for pensioners? Yet that is just what the Irish government is doing.

When Kenny got back to Dublin there was a debate in the Dail where Gerry Adams, now Sinn Fein TD for Louth, called on the government to stop paying money back to banks which had lent it. Kenny, who is quick on his feet, said he would take no advice from a party accustomed to robbing banks.

With their common stock of ready wit, I imagine that Kenny and Cameron get on rather well. They are meeting hard times in a similar easy style, perhaps with a perspective lent by being alike the fathers of growing families.Together the two leaders seem to symbolise the fact that England and Ireland today feel quite comfortable with each other - in fact more comfortable than at any time in the eight centuries since Strongbow landed in Leinster. For most of that time the story was one of English conquest and domination, of Irish resistance and suffering. The independence of the 26 counties in 1922 did not lay the demons. Eamonn de Valera's republic set off on a vain quest to rid itself of the alien influence, while being met from across the sea by irritation, disdain and ridicule.

Things had to change with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but even then they did not change readily. When Jack Lynch offered his good offices early on, Ted Heath told him to get lost, Ulster was no concern of his. Only painfully and slowly could the efforts at peace on both sides be brought into concert so as to produce the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and the St Andrews agreement of 2006.

With this return to mutual involvement the Anglo-Irish relationship has flourished.

Despite the pain and violence that accompanied the separation of the 20th century, the English and the Irish anyway kept much in common. Looking aside from the politics to the underlying social and economic trends they in fact grew closer together, so that life in the suburbs of Dublin now differs relatively little from life in the suburbs of London. Their political separation is key to to ever-easier relations. It means they have to treat each other as equals. It means they have to accept each other's good faith.

In other words, the Anglo-Irish relationship is altogether happier than the Anglo-Scottish relationship. The Scots' attachment to Britain faded in the late 20th century yet the English proved far less understanding of this than of their loosening links with almost any other nation. They actually welcomed the maturing of the white dominions, while waving friendly goodbyes as the rest of the Empire took the road to independence. But the basic attitude to Scotland, lasting right till the turn of the 21st century, was that nothing should be given away.

That the old imperial and martial harmony could be sustained was of course a pretence, and the cracks in it appeared anyway. Scots' grudges grew to the point where anti-English sentiment became commonplace, even acceptable. The devolutionary settlement of 1999 took the sting out of that, but then the resentment was taken up on the other side of the border. Now, if you want to find racist rubbish about the next-door neighbours, look among English newspapers and English websites - that is, if you can bear to read the dreary prejudice for more than ten seconds.

Yet it would be hard to argue that on any deeper level the Scots and English are growing apart. If a man from Mars landed and read all the social and economic statistics about them he would say, "But these two peoples are the same".The differences among English regions are greater than the differences between Scotland as a whole and England as a whole.

The growing apart is a matter of the heart rather than of the head, though no less real for that. Basically, perhaps, it is a matter of Scotland still feeling subordinate to England, and of Scots not wishing this. Yet from the cuts to the constitution, the rulers of the Union reinforce the feeling. The answer? Make Scotland an independent country and then - as in the case of Ireland - watch the relations improve, as the relations now of equals.