The Political Thread

[JayzusB.Christ]

do you not think the good people of Ireland would have been better served with near-total autonomy (national security, foreign relations, and matters of currency and Monarchy notwithstanding) within the United Kingdom, that way, they would had free rein to run themselves as they saw fit, with Westminster pretty much having an 'out of sight, out of mind' view,

Maybe.  I can't help feeling that (as Joe says) it would have led to even more sectarian violence than there already was.  My own preference for total independence is purely a matter of personal feeling and emotion, in the same way I don't want to be ruled even symbolically by royalty; rather than an actual breakdown of the pros and cons of each situation. The truth is, I just don't know. 

[Ancient Otter]

plus Ireland would have had all the financial and economic benefits of the Union...

But how do we know they wouldn't have walked away from us like all resource-loaded colonies they had like Iraq, Iran, Nigeria etc.?

[Frank]

That time-lapse map of Europe demonstrates the arbitrary and contingent nature of national boundaries, but the global concensus in embracing the ideology of Free Market Economics means the imaginary lines that have exercised such debate on these pages are- at best- an irrelevance. Those of you resident in the Poblacht na hÉireann have experienced centuries of having all your important decisions taken in a small city on mainland Europe, but we'll all soon be getting used to the idea of checking with the ECB in Frankfurt before we make any major purchases.

As John Stewart pointed out in the piece I posted previously (here), and Robert Peston indicates here- whether Germany steps in to bail out Greece, Italy and Spain or not- some degree of Federal government, administered by Germany, is pretty much inevitable. What the Aryan idiots of the German National Socialist Workers' Party couldn't achieve, the greed and incompetence of Goldman Sachs is about to deliver.

Federation isn't necessarily a bad thing, but- as the example of the USA demonstrates- the further you are from the centre of power, the lesser your ability to influence those decisions. Even assuming the UK stays out of such a federation, we're still so economically and geopolitically tied to our closest neighbours to make the results of any Independence referendum a formality.

[JOE SOAP]

Germany will pull out of the EU when it realises there's a load of parasites living on its back and the increasing price of fuel due to dwindling resources will put a stop to global free marketeering.



Worth a punt:


http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/05/16/ireland-clones-pound.html

[Roger Godpleton]

This is all the fault of Professor of Roads David Knight and Mayor of Australia Thryllseekyr.

[Beaky Smoochies]

But how do we know they wouldn't have walked away from us like all resource-loaded colonies they had like Iraq, Iran, Nigeria etc.?

Very good point, and they did, but I don't know that there would have been more sectarian violence had all of Ireland remained in the Union, there was none in the Republic until the Troubles began (granted, because only 3% of the populace were Protestant), and much of the violence in da Nort' really began as Paisley and his mad minions first caused a three-day riot in a Catholic area in the early 1960's by demanding the police remove a tiny Tricolour in a Sinn Fein office window (subsequently radicalizing a whole new generation of young Catholics that weren't previous to this incident), then tried to oust a democratically-elected reformist Unionist Prime Minister, namely Terence O'Neill, whose outreach to the Catholic minority was starting to work and pay dividends, but who Paisley and co. were denouncing as traitors and sell-outs (an accusation as ludicrous as it was untrue), the Catholic backlash from Paisley's rampage soured the body politic here and started raising tensions to the point that by August 1969 (the official start of the Troubles), no-one was really listening to pleas for restraint and for cooler heads to prevail... and when you thought it couldn't get any worse, Bloody Sunday happened (the old English tactic of using the proverbial sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut!), and after that, the dye was cast for the next three decades!

Speaking as an Northern Irishman, born and bred, I honestly believe that Ireland would have been better served in the Union to this day, I also understand others' views to the contrary, and I don't believe that had they remained, further sectarian violence was a foregone conclusion, as intransigent Unionism/militant Nationalism would both have backed off and calmed down if the 1914 Home Rule Act had been implemented immediately upon Royal Assent being given, unfortunately the gun-running escapades on both sides, the gratuitous execution of the Easter rebels, and the conduct of the Black and Tans made up majority Ireland's minds on that matter...

[Mikey]

But how do we know they wouldn't have walked away from us like all resource-loaded colonies they had like Iraq, Iran, Nigeria etc.?

Eh? Ireland is pretty low in natural resources - do you mean mainly people and farmland?

Those of you resident in the Poblacht na hÉireann have experienced centuries of having all your important decisions taken in a small city on mainland Europe,

Eh? Partition was in 1922, it's not even a century yet! Never mind the EEC started out in the late '50s...

M.

[JOE SOAP]

Eh? Ireland is pretty low in natural resources

We have turf!

[Mikey]

Of course!

M.

[Frank]

Those of you resident in the Poblacht na hÉireann have experienced centuries of having all your important decisions taken in a small city on mainland Europe,

Eh? Partition was in 1922, it's not even a century yet! Never mind the EEC started out in the late '50s...

I meant the really important decisions, Mikey- like who, how and when you fuck- the city in question being Vatican City.

[TordelBack]

I meant the really important decisions, Mikey- like who, how and when you fuck- the city in question being Vatican City.

Except of course that people, in the nature of people, always heeded their own counsel on the matter of "who, how and when you fuck", the issue was who you could tell, and what happened when you were found out.  Who got to fuck you, now that was controlled from afar.

[Ancient Otter]

But how do we know they wouldn't have walked away from us like all resource-loaded colonies they had like Iraq, Iran, Nigeria etc.?

Eh? Ireland is pretty low in natural resources - do you mean mainly people and farmland?

M.

Sorry, I should have written that post a bit better. The point I have was trying to make was the British left the resource laden colonies (and they knew the resources were there), so why would they stick around Ireland when it is resource poor?

[Frank]

The point I have was trying to make was the British left the resource laden colonies (and they knew the resources were there), so why would they stick around Ireland when it is resource poor?

The forces of Empire only ever cut their losses and ran when their continued presence was politically, economically or militarily unviable, and Ireland- through the presence of the Ascendancy as a (mostly) sympathetic domestic ruling elite- meant Ireland largely paid for and governed itself.

At the time of the Napoleonic wars, the ability of the UK's enemies to make alliances with Irish dissidents to foment dissent, provide enemy forces with a platform to mount attacks on the mainland and force the British to fight a war on two fronts loomed large in Parliamentarians' thinking. That same strategic thinking carried into the 20th century, and Brit politicos couldn't have known that when the opportunity arose to stick the knife in, the government of an independent Ireland would prefer neutrality to a pact with the Axis forces.

I'm not sure whether Ireland was seen so much as a prize to be coveted, as something that couldn't be allowed to fall into a foreign power's sphere of influence. The idea of having Britain's access to international shipping lanes surrounded on all sides by hostile Catholic states would have been anathema to an establishment whose twin ideologies were free market capitalism and Protestantism.

I don't think there was any great desire to retain direct rule over Ireland- Gladstone and Parnell spent their entire careers almost finding a way out of their bind- but there were enough factors that would make that island's abandonment more problematic than maintaining the status quo.

[Beaky Smoochies]

What he said, and I agree...

It was the intent - if not the stated policy - of successive British administrations, from Gladstone through to Wilson, for the United Kingdom to extricate itself from the troublesome island as soon as could be guaranteed it wouldn't erupt into civil war once the last civil servant got on the boat, and who can blame them?  Yes, a lot of bad things were done by the Brits in Ireland, but they also brought civilization and infrastructure to a mainly tribal culture, and for the most part, the Union was good for Ireland... well, apart from London's non-interventionist policy regarding the potato blight that turned an agricultural crisis into a social holocaust, not exactly our finest hour ...

The truth is, and some here may be surprised to hear me say this, I actually think the northern Protestants missed an absolutely unprecedented, never-to-be-repeated opportunity in 1921 to name their price for participation in an independent Ireland - albeit one under the Crown with Dominion status - had Carson, Craig, and co. seen the writing on the wall, and threw their lot in with the rest of the island (retaining the northern Parliament at the same time), they could have practically written the eventual Constitution themselves, so desperate would The Big Fella' and his crew been to have the entirety of the island as a singular nation state.  It is my opinion that northern Protestants held all the cards at that time, and had no need to play bluff, they could simply have spelled out their terms and conditions for joining an independent Ireland, and within reason, the Irish nationalists would have agreed, that opportunity will never come again, the Irish question could have been permanently settled there and then, and tens of thousands of people would not have paid the price with life and limb...

[TordelBack]

...but they also brought civilization and infrastructure to a mainly tribal culture...

Now Beaky my lad, I thought better of you.  I think you and are going to have to have words, if'n you're suggesting that one of the central myths of Unionism can survive even the vaguest encounter with historical and archaeological analysis.  I've no problem with people holding odd beliefs, but id prefer if they didn't assert them as fact.

It's only a short hop to parroting the sectarian tracts I was exposed to as a proddy kid that claimed that prior to the modernising christianising interventation that was the Plantation the Irish peasant tied a simple plank to the tail of his horse and called it a plough.