Has partition saved democracy in Ireland?

Mr.Nice Guy

I had hoped that when I returned to this forum I would find an answer from you mycroft to my hypothetical. Instead you have persisted in avoiding it and resorted to snide comments. I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall so I will not persist in asking you to answer me since it is apparent you will not give me an answer. I can't force you to. I must say however that I find your refusal to give me an answer disappointing.

MT

cdebru wrote:

except the evidence does not support that Southern Unionist felt much the same way as their northern counterparts however once the realisation that an independent Ireland was not a threat to them they have accepted the 26 counties

As any one with a good knowledge of Northern history will tell you Ulster’s Protestants and their co-religionists further south have always been quite far removed from each other in terms of self-identity. The Anglo-Irish never had as much difficulty in identifying themselves as Irish at least in part. This contrasted with the considerably more tenuous connection with Irishness maintained by Protestants in Ulster. Indeed, it’s this competing and now sole identity of ‘Ulsterish’ – the last survey of NI’s Protestants found that 75% did not consider themselves Irish – which gives rise to a substantial part of the dislocation with Nationalist Ireland.

The size of the southern Protestant population had a large bearing on their decision to make an accommodation with the new Irish state. This is not the case in the North were a massing effect of Protestants ensures a powerful minority and a far greater feeling of communal identity – an identity they perceive to be separate from the Irish nation. Unlike Protestants in the south the smooth absorption of a mass of northern Protestants into any future united island state will be difficult, if not impossible, if they decide to seek a separate existence. A few pockets of Protestants pose little threat but a determined and sizeable group in the North would I believe lead to a Tamil Tiger scenario.

On the subject of Northern fear that a united Ireland would present ‘a threat to them’ any analysis of this thinking demonstrates it to be at best dismissive. Such a viewpoint is naïve in that it assumes Ulster Protestant identity is entirely negative – ‘If only the poor soles could open their eyes and see we mean them no harm, they’d jump at the chance of unity’. The truth is that unlike the stereotype of bigoted backwoodsmen, the vast majority of northern Protestants frequently visit the south and many if not a majority see nothing threatening in the place. Your thinking seems to be in line with Republican theory that claims Unionism or northern separateness is merely an ill informed reaction against that which they don’t understand. Such sentiments unfortunately dismiss the very real feeling on the part of the Protestant community in the north that their identity is real, positive – at least to them - and based not in fear but in the genuine desire to maintain a separate ‘Ulster’ existence. Just as in the same way Irish people do not fear Canada or a Canadian lifestyle, however, if offered absorption into the latter they’d no doubt reject out of hand any such union. And the desire for separation would have nothing to do with negative fears. Merely a desire for self-determination, much like the one that brought the Irish Republic in to existence in the first place.

Again, your views on the aspirations and identity of Ulster Protestants is appallingly reductionist, not to mention patronising in the extreme. The same crass thinking could be applied to Northern Nationalists. Given full equality and a harmonious future in the UK would they soon forget about their Irish identity? I mean, isn’t their Irishness merely a reaction caused by their experiences and fear of future hardships while living in the British state? After all, if in time they realise there’s nothing to fear won’t they fully accept the UK? Surely their current desire for separation will eventually die – ‘it may not die immediately it may take a couple of generations but it will die’. I hope you can see the extent to which this viewpoint is as ludicrous as your own. The identity of Northern Nationalists is every bit as real as their counterparts in NI. Neither identity will die, or should be expected to, in exchange for a reduced threat to its existence.

Having said all this NI’s Protestants might well have good reason to fear for their existence in any future united Ireland. When that eventuality is being proposed most vigorously by a party which is wedded to an organisation that’s butchered hundreds of Protestants, I’d say they’d have good grounds for caution. Add this to the sectarian anti-Protestant bigotry of much of the party’s support base in NI. Then, throw in countless Republican academics that dismiss Protestant identity in the North as nothing more than a fearful reaction and it’s no wonder some run a mile from endorsing a future that would give SF its greatest impetus yet.

Furthermore, look at the fate of Protestant communities in the Republic. I for one have no time for this contrived nonsense of pogroms or expulsions but look at what became of their identity. Prospering, even surviving economically is not the sole objective of those in the North. Their struggle has been to preserve their very identity. And it’s the identity of Protestants in the south that they’ve witnessed evaporate over the last 80 years. Sure, they continued to live well and in most cases harmoniously with their neighbours. But how many still feel or express their sense of Britishness? How many march in Orange bands? You and I may not feel or see a need for either of these but to many Northern Protestants at least one - never mind their Ulster identity - is at the very heart of their being. Why would you exchange being British in the British state for trying to be British in a state that sees your preferred homeland as a foreign country. If it were that easy to maintain an identity at odds with the state you inhabit then Gerry Adams would have no difficulty in reconciling his future with NI’s place in the UK.

Of course, none of this even begins to cover the growing strain of Northern sentiment which feels less and less for British identity but equally rejects the Irish nation. This expanding group of northern Protestants feels their identity is tied solely to Ulster/NI and would most prefer an independent Northern state.

All in all, the hopes and wishes of NI’s Protestants are much too complex to be summed up using Marxist false-consciousness rhetoric attributing their identity to a mixture of ignorance and British manipulation.

cdebru wrote:

it may not die immediately it may take a couple of generations but it will die

Cromwell seemed to hold a similar view of Irish identity but centuries later it’s still going strong.

cdebru wrote:

once the possibility of a propped up statelet is removed then the reason for fighting will be by and large gone as long as we dont replace protestant domination with catholic domination

But how will that possibility be removed. And most importantly how will hope for its occurrence be extinguished in the minds of the North’s Protestants. The Tamil Tigers have continued their war of separation for decades to disastrous effect on Sri Lanka. Hope and belief is often all it takes for such campaign to ignite. Did Ireland ever relinquish its aim of independence during the long centuries of British imperial might?

cdebru wrote:

there is also the fact that that is what the people of Ireland north and south have agreed

With the DUP in the ascendancy in Northern elections it looks as if Protestants there would beg to differ. I think you’ll find the people also agreed to the end of the IRA but that didn’t get them far.

cdebru wrote:

there will not be any constitutional uncertainty one reunification happens

You have no way of knowing that. What we can assert is that given the experience of much of the rest of the globe and the tumultuous history of the north there will be uncertainty aplenty. Never mind a destabilising desire for separation on the part of many. Or do you believe Northern Protestants will prove to be vastly more docile than the Tamil people, Kosovans, Kurds, the East Timorese and countless other separatist minorities across the globe?

MT

continued...

cdebru wrote:

whilst the IRA campaign was centred on the constitutional issue

The less said about the so-called justification of the IRA campaign and its mindless brutality the better. Especially, when attempting to have a rational discussion on this island’s fractured identities.

cdebru wrote:

from a republican perspective the only way to end the sectarian divisions and oneupmanship you refer to is to end the cause
ie british imperialism

To reiterate my earlier point I believe the northern strife has long since ceased to have anything to do with British imperialism. It is a struggle between two peoples that believe their different cultural and ethnic identities preclude them from existing in each other’s preferred nation on an equal basis. The identity of NI’s Protestants is entirely genuine, as is the different identity of Northern Nationalists. That separate Protestant identity is not maintained by external influence but instead perpetuated by a sincere belief that they are a people apart from Nationalist Ireland. Much in the same way as Danes don’t consider themselves Germans. Were Britain to vanish tomorrow they’d still have a separate identity and would continue to seek a separate homeland as its most concrete expression. Would Northern nationalists give up on their desire for independence from Britain if the Republic’s draw and influence ceased to exist?

cdebru wrote:

sectarian divisions happen in other places for example glasgow

Completely contradicts and undermines your previous point. Have sectarian divisions diminished in India given the country’s more than 50 years of independence from Britain? Indeed, wouldn’t that sectarian hostility be even greater had the British not partitioned Pakistan from India? For that matter are sectarian divisions anywhere the consequence of imperialism, British or otherwise?

Were the Muslims of Pakistan inspired to seek their separate state and culture by the British or by genuinely held and sincere beliefs? No, the British bogie man is much to simple an excuse for the North’s or anywhere else’s communal divisions.

cdebru wrote:

the simple fact of the matter is that the Uk does not want them

Nationality has never depended upon popularity. Otherwise Scousers, Glaswegians, Texans and Parisians would have found themselves dumped in independent states long ago.

Furthermore, should this discussion not be about what the people of the north want? Ignoring their wishes will only lead to injustice and trouble in the long run.

cdebru wrote:

and the expresed wish of the population of the 26 counties is for a unitary state
Iam afraid that is life however we do live in a democracy…

I’m afraid both the electorates of the Irish Republic and the UK wish for the people of NI, solely, to decide on the future constitutional position of their region. That’s life and one guided by democracy too.

cdebru wrote:

if people wish to maintain their culture and identity that would be their right i would not expect them to change over night but i think with time and a system that protects everyones rights and the knowledge that a return to a northern statelet propped up by british taxpayers would be impossible atitudes would change just as they have amongst the descendants of former southern unionists

But can’t you see that that argument can simply be applied in reverse to the future of the UK and the potential for Northern Nationalist’s reconciliation to it. Furthermore, are you happy to protect the British identity of Northern Unionists by flying the Union Jack alongside the Tricolour above government buildings, the GPO etc. in this united state? If not, why should they support a diminution in their Britishness?

cdebru wrote:

now you are just being silly

As silly as your apologies for a terrorist organisation masquerading as a democratic political party?

It’s remarkable just how devoid of a sense of humour many Republicans appear to be.

cdebru wrote:

but that is more of an unworkable solution that either the status quo or a unitary state

As a long-term solution it’s an awful lot more tenable and sustainable than the alternatives. And it won’t be half as much work as suppressing the successive insurgencies emanating from either side while languishing in a state they want no part of. As long as both communities in the north are forced to exist in a country they find alien to their identity then fractious volatility will remain bubbling just beneath the surface. The pain of partitioning NI and resettling its people would be more than accounted for by a future free from internecine feuding and violent constitutional struggles.

The status quo or your solution involves trapping a substantial minority in a nation they reject with all the attendant feeling of rejection and rebellion. It’s not good for stability and certainly not good for communal harmony or democracy.

shltter

cant link to the pm

you have to cut and paste it

Ok guys.

Temporarally closing this thread untill Its decided what to do with it.

Mr Nice guy, you are not entitled to put pm's out in public like this, however undesirable their content.

Take a help desk ticket and complain to an admin,they will take the appropriate action.

mr nice guy is banned for reproducing an abusive pm and for replying to the abuse here.

If I ever see anything like that here again there will be a ban for all concerned.
Reproducing pm's and abuse around them will not be tolerated here.
The place to take that is to the admins via the help desk where you can take a ticket and they will act on it as appropriate for you.

Now back on topic please-thread reopened.

Bucephalus

Macmorris wrote:

What do you think the result of mass immigration into Ireland will be if not an ethnic realignment of the entire country? It may not be an engineered, systematic plantation, as the Ulster plantations were, but the result will be the same. We will have a large ethnic minority in this country in the next few decades who will have the numbers and the resources to impose their will upon the majority and undermine our values and our way of life.

What do you mean "our values and our way of life"? That's so vague it could mean anything.

rightleftright

from reading some of those posts you'd think ye were members of the Loyalist Volanteer Force or Orange Order. Total traitors to the brave Irish men who died to end an evil occupation.

btw, i wouldnt be surprised if some of ye where loyalist or brits who hate ireland.

Sand

from reading some of those posts you'd think ye were members of the Loyalist Volanteer Force or Orange Order. Total traitors to the brave Irish men who died to end an evil occupation.

To be honest, Im almost cynical enough to believe that the Provos are some vast British conspiracy to totally discredit Irish republicanism. Lets face it, theyve done a wonderful job reducing Irish patriotism to stamping, cutting and slashing up men outside pubs.

We do not have the best way of life. We suffer from a myriad of problems such as rampant unemployment, pollution, corruption and high crime levels. We do not live in an utopian society that needs protection at all costs! Societies throughout the ages have grown by assimilating and borrowing culture from other societies! If we wall ourselves up culturally and become hostile to all foreign culture then our society will stagnate and die. Plus I do not think that our culture of binge drinking idiots with serious health problems is something that should be lauded.

Yes we do. We have the best way of life by far. Girls are not mutilated as part of some rite of passage into adulthood. Women are not murdered by their own families for dishonouring the family by flashing an ankle. Rapists do not offer to marry their victims "because no one else will now" as one Indian rapist put it. People are allowed to criticise their own leaders, political and spiritual. We have the right to vote, we have the right to call our leaders to account. We have the right to own property and work to better ourselves. I hate to be one to shock you but those rights might be universal ideally, but not in the real world, and certainly not in a lot of other cultures.

Our way of life is so bloody great that people from across the world risk death - literally - to get here to experience it. Apologies for the rant, but I find the desperate political correctness of the above statement irritating. You can respect people equally, or you can respect cultures equally. You cant do both. I for one choose people.

It is a struggle between two peoples that believe their different cultural and ethnic identities preclude them from existing in each other’s preferred nation on an equal basis.

Thats the crux of the issue. Neither side feels their rights and culture would be/is being protected or promoted in a United Ireland/United Kingdom. Independance from either isnt an option because both feel they need to be the majority to protect themselves from the other. That said, Dub In Glasgow can vouch for living under British rule as an Irish republican. The provos on the other hand have done nothing to reassure Unionists with sectarian massacres like Kingsmills or Enniskillen. For all their talk about Wolfe Tone theyre just a bunch of sectarian thugs.

Personally I think both British - mainland - and Irish just wish theyd grow up and stop bothering everyone else. I think actually that the Through Irish Eyes study pointed out that Irish unification was not popular with the young Irish. It was almost a century ago that Churchill remarked on the vast changes across Europe and dreary steeples of Tyrone and Fermanagh still rising above them. A century, and its still going on. People might say that theres ordinary people trying to get by up there, but as the Portadown News pointed out where are these ordinary people? Theyre all voting in extremists/terrorists and voting out the moderates who actually started and forged the peace proccess to begin with!

No one I know wants a United Ireland. Why would any modern, successful democracy want a bunch of political cavemen messing up their country with their ethnic and sectarian strife? Lets face it, if they all managed to kill each other tommorrow, whod miss them?

rightleftright

No one I know wants a United Ireland. Why would any modern, successful democracy want a bunch of political cavemen messing up their country with their ethnic and sectarian strife? Lets face it, if they all managed to kill each other tommorrow, whod miss them?

Of course you dont, your in the Orange Order.

This counrty has forgotten our brothers in the north because we have became rich and fat off greed down here in the south. We thank this wealth to outside Ireland influences and theirfor reject our own counrty.

MT

I think actually that the Through Irish Eyes study pointed out that Irish unification was not popular with the young Irish.

Yes, successive surveys have shown declining support for unity in the Republic. And really, it’s no wonder. While society there has evolved to keep pace with the rest of the Western world, they’ve witnessed a delinquent society to their north refuse time and time again to compromise or budge one inch to accommodate the other side. In its political preferences the northern electorate has continued to drift more and more to the extremes. It seems not to matter to people up here how many times Paisley and his Imams spew comments of a bigotry unmatched outside of the middle East, the DUP are now guaranteed an unprecedented share of the vote. Equally, on the other side, no matter how many beatings and murders the armed wing of the Republican Movement dishes out Sinn Fein can seemingly do no wrong. They too will win more seats than ever before at this election.

Simply put, most people up here have no moral compass when it comes to inter-ethnic violence and bigotry. Their ideological horizons stretch no further than fúcking over them’uns.

Where else in the democratic West would a sizeable proportion of society give serious consideration to the ‘weighty’ political philosophy of out-breeding the ‘Orange bastards’? This place is positively primeval.

rightleftright

Yes, successive surveys have shown declining support for unity in the Republic. And really, it’s no wonder.

No wonder indeed. Liberal media telling them thats its wrong to want a united country.. If we had claim to part of England, would they be so forgiving???

MT

rightleftright wrote:

This counrty has forgotten our brothers in the north because we have became rich and fat off greed down here in the south.

Oh brother, where art thou... are you and I related?

But on a truly serious point, you have to ask yourself is the trade off worth it? Is an exchange of what you have now - a stable, peaceful and prosperous democracy - for the all island state that you desire, a sensible aspiration? An all island state that would likely see a southwards spread of the north's brand of ethno-religious gutter politics; potential armed conflict and the entrenching of hatreds that would accompany it; the likelyhood of not only the corruption of your democracy with atavistic tribal animosty but the destabilising of the prosperity that has taken so long to come and many have worked to hard to bring about. You jeopardise your fair Republic at your peril.

To use your metaphor, when a rogue brother becomes a rancid bigot, commits murder and countless other unspeakable acts would it be advisable to invite him around to the house you've worked hard to build, to play with your kids and eat at your table? All in the knowledge that he continues to act as he always has and continues to show not one shread of remorse.

MT

rightleftright wrote:

No wonder indeed. Liberal media telling them thats its wrong to want a united country..

Come now, do you have such a low opinion of your fellow country men that you'd attribute their sincerely held views to nothing more than a column in a newspaper or a four minute bulletin on the news? Can they not think for themselves? Have they not seen the miasma that passes for 'democratic' society in the North? Don't they speak amongst themselves?

People are much too complex to be brainwashed by the media.

What sort of true patriot would dismiss his fellow citizens with such patronising tripe? Why is it that so many people that become obssessed with the goal of national destiny in the form of a united Ireland develop nothing but contempt for nation's very people. From IRA men who intimidate and murder Irish men and women to the those on the internet that disparage their sensible judgement, why is it that so many of these so-called Republicans care not a jot for the people of Ireland. Because they're not republicans at all.

In reality, they're nothing more than narrow minded all-island geographic absolutists.