Discussion on a United or re-partitioned Ireland

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by backstothewall

Interesting.

As a nordie I'm quite willing for NI to continue, provided Antim, Down, Derry, Tyrone, Armagh And Fermanagh all join with the Republic.

And people say we're stubborn up here...

---

As a Mexican I agree with this sentiment.

In light of the Stormont results, can a referendum now be expected within 10-15 years? The discussion may just be beginning in the Republic, but the economic, social and political implications will need rigorous analysis before a nationalist majority occurs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by culloty82

In light of the Stormont results, can a referendum now be expected within 10-15 years? The discussion may just be beginning in the Republic, but the economic, social and political implications will need rigorous analysis before a nationalist majority occurs.

---

I honestly think too much stall is put in the economics of this. It's a pure emotive issue that even if it cost a 100bn a year would have Free Staters clambering to vote for it. What party would campaign against it in any circumstance? (outside the unionists)

The "Nationalist" majority will occur before the analysis.

A referendum will be held much sooner given the upheaval across the water. The ship is sinking. Who wants to go down with it?

A referendum can only be called if the secretary of State feels there is a chance of it succeeding. And if defeated another one can't be held for 7 years. No one wants it until it can succeed, And we're not there yet.

Another poll...

One of the oddest sections of column-space I've encountered in a while; Melanie Philips believes we're not even a real nation: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news...-35508997.html

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Irish Independent

A UK columnist has come under fire after suggesting that Ireland is not a real country.

In her comment piece for today's UK Times, Melanie Philips talks about moves by Republicans in Northern Ireland and nationalists in Scotland to seek independence from the UK.

Under the headline 'Britain is the authentic nation in this battle' she describes Scotland and Northern Ireland as "the most troublesome bits of the United Kingdom".

However, it is her comments about Ireland that have sparked the biggest reaction online.

Ms Philips writes that Unionists in Northern Ireland are "not British".

She continues: "They're the bit that got tacked on to Great Britain to make the UK.

"Does that mean Westminster should tear up the Good Friday agreement and bid farewell to Northern Ireland. No, because it has an obligation to the Unionists; and because the claim to unite Ireland is tenuous since Ireland itself has a tenuous claim to nationhood, having seceded from Britain as the Irish Free State in 1922."

The column has caused a big reaction online with many taking to Twitter to lambaste the writer.

Irish ambassador to the UK Daniel Mulhall wrote: "As Ambassador I cannot ignore @MelanieLatest's outlandish claim @thetimes that Irish nationhood is 'tenuous'. 100 years of independence.

"Irish nationhood based on strong sense of identity, distinctive culture & shared values and interests. Nothing 'tenuous'."

---

If she believes northern unionists aren't British and believes there to be no such thing as a real or authentic Irish nation, what nationality does she actually believe unionists to be? :confused:

Here's the full article - http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/co...vnf0c8nhx?t=ie

Quote:

---

Britain is the authentic nation in this battle

Melanie Phillips

Nationalist claims of Scots and Northern Irish don’t outweigh the ancient unity of the British Isles

The most troublesome bits of the United Kingdom are once again showing signs of disuniting. In Scotland, the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is demanding a second independence referendum on the grounds that, contrary to the English, the Scots voted to remain in the EU by 62 per cent to 38 per cent. In Northern Ireland, a surge by Sinn Fein to within one seat of the Democratic Unionists after a divisive assembly election has revived the spectre of a united Ireland, now given further rhetorical push by the jubilant nationalists on the grounds that the province also voted to remain.

It is a curiosity that the SNP and Sinn Fein want to leave the UK in order to remain in Europe. In other words, they want to reclaim powers from Westminster in order to surrender them to Brussels.
Of course they don’t see it like that. The EU, which concentrates power in Brussels while reducing nations to the status of provinces, is conversely regarded by weak nations and provinces as a way of boosting their status and income.

Scottish nationalism and Irish republicanism are cultural phenomena rooted in romanticism and myth and hatred of the other in the form of the English or the Protestants.
Nevertheless, the genie of national identity is now out of the bottle. Trans-nationalism, or the drive to erode the autonomy of nations, has been stopped in its tracks by British voters. This raises some complicated questions.


Brexit expresses the desire for independent self-government by a sovereign state based on the history, institutions and cultural ties that constitute a nation. Great Britain, though, is a confederation of three ancient nations: England, Wales and Scotland. The UK is a super-confederation of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

If national aspirations are now validated for the UK, what about the national aspirations of its constituent parts? Do all national identities have equal status? What happens when one is in direct competition with another? Scotland says it is a nation. Republicans in Northern Ireland say Britain dismembered their nation which they want to unify again. Are these claims to national identity valid? If so, where does that leave the UK?

The historians Linda Colley and Benedict Anderson famously declared the nation to be no more than an artificial construct or “imagined community.” In this post-modern formulation, the nation could therefore arbitrarily be either declared or dissolved. The nation is not, however, artificial or imagined. It is solidly rooted in a group of people united by different things at different times: geography, language, law, religion, ethnicity, history, institutions, culture.

The UK is an extraordinarily complex web of identities: civic, ethnic, cultural, national. As the historian Jonathan Clark wrote in his book Our Shadowed Present: “Britain was not invented; it developed.”

The pattern of this development has been “the resilience of a diverse and plural system of identities”. Englishness, however, came to stand proxy for all the communities of the British Isles. Even Edmund Burke, although a loyal Irishman, wrote of himself as an Englishman rather than describing himself as British.


The Scots developed over time the characteristics of a nation: a distinct language, religion, legal system and so on. The UK was formed in 1707 by the union of two distinct kingdoms, England and Scotland.

Kingship matters because monarchs unify tribes into a nation. Wales was subsumed into the English legal system by Henry VIII and so lost its separate identity except for residual ties to the Welsh language.

Northern Ireland is different again. The Unionists hate this being said but they are not British. They’re the bit that got tacked on to Great Britain to make the UK.

Does that mean Westminster should tear up the Good Friday agreement and bid farewell to Northern Ireland? No, because it has an obligation to the Unionists; and because the claim to unite Ireland is tenuous since Ireland itself has a tenuous claim to nationhood, having seceded from Britain as the Irish Free State only in 1922.

Britain, by contrast, is an authentic unitary nation. It didn’t begin with the union with Scotland but as the British Isles, an island nation defending itself (or not) against invaders from across the seas. Throughout its history, it was beset by attempts at secession by tribes across Hadrian’s Wall and across the Irish Sea.

The prime minister’s speech to the Scottish Conservatives last week was said to have attacked the SNP for wanting to do to Britain precisely what Mrs May was doing to Europe: seceding on the grounds of independence. The comparison, however, is spurious.

Britain is a nation with the right to rule itself. It is the EU which is the artificial construct, the imagined community that falsely claims for itself the hollow appurtenances of a nation. The EU therefore has no prior claim on its constituent nations which are under no obligation to remain. By contrast, the United Kingdom is a nation which is governed in accordance with its name. Scotland has no right to rip it asunder if it wants to secede from the Union (which in any event is highly doubtful).

Faced with the contemporary resurgence of regional or tribal uprisings, it’s the ancient British Isles that must hold itself together to take its place once again as a sovereign nation in the wider world.

---

Melanie Phillips is a right wing nutjob.

"The EU, which concentrates power in Brussels while reducing nations to the status of provinces". Yet at the same time the UK Government White Paper on Brexit admits that UK parliament is sovereign and always has been, it just didn't always "feel that way".

"Scottish nationalism and Irish republicanism are cultural phenomena rooted in romanticism and myth and hatred of the other in the form of the English or the Protestants."

Nothing to do with Catholics getting burnt out of their houses, denied access to jobs, housing and education and getting shot at during demonstrations.

She's also pretty much a professional troll these days and a great example of how the internet and the ability to link and share content has changed how media organisations try and attract consumers/clickers.

She's the next RDE, in waiting and a Zionist nut. Ironic as remember her as a Guardian columnist!

So is Britain a unitary state or a confederation?

I already castigated a friend from sharing this on fb. And how in a nation so long dealing with RDE and K Myers that we should know better. A horror show of an article. There's nothing wrong with trolling if done intelligently and with knowledge. She has neither.

That been siad, when will Unionists/Brits/Home Countiers ever learn that the cause of the union isn't helped by belittling those who they feel should bow down and accept their serfdom.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DeLorean

Here's the full article - http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/co...vnf0c8nhx?t=ie

---

Thanks for that.

She appears to confuse statehood and nationhood/nationality.

On the non-applicability of use of the loaded, incendiary, "anachronistic and frankly revanchist" term "British Isles" when referring to Ireland - which the Irish government advises against and which the British government correspondingly avoids - I wrote the following a while back:

Quote:

---

Ireland is not a British isle politically, nor is it part of Britain (also referred to as Great Britain, of course) geographically. Neither is it a possession of Britain. Incidentally, the use of the prefix “Great” before “Britain” distinguishes Great Britain, otherwise known in Latin as Britannia major, not from Ireland – as is sometimes incorrectly assumed – but from Britannia minor, which translates as “Lesser Britain” and approximates to the modern-day Celtic region of Brittany in north-west France.

Furthermore, Ireland’s predominant lingua-cultural history is Goidelic, or Gaelic; Ireland has never been culturally Brittonic, from where the name of Britain is derived on account of Common Brittonic (which later evolved into the various Brittonic languages) having been widely spoken there by the people who inhabited it, the Britons. The Goidelic and Brittonic lingual branches are indeed both Celtic in origin, but they are understood to have evolved separately and simultaneously on either side of the Irish Sea, in Ireland and Britain respectively, from a common Insular Celtic predecessor.

The contemporary incarnation of the term “British”, latterly misappropriated by the non-Brittonic English crown, only ever came to be applied (inappropriately) over Ireland in the late sixteenth century by the crown (and by force) in tandem with, or in attempted justification of, the latter’s politico-military conquests and activities; exploits that impacted severely upon the Irish people, landowners and native aristocracy. The term’s connotations are thus unavoidably political. Indeed, Welsh nationalist Gwynfor Evans once described Britishness as “a political synonym for Englishness which extends English culture over the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish”.

---

I see no-one picked up on the result of that poll above...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wolfman

I see no-one picked up on the result of that poll above...

---

Ah, I'm not sure how much significance you can take from the results of polls where the samples are self-selecting as opposed to those that are conducted with random samples or using a cross-section that is as proportionate as possible to existing and relevant societal demographics.

Belfast's Siobhan Fenton, writing in the UK's Independent, believes unity is now an inevitably: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a7615756.html

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Siobhan Fenton

Growing up in Belfast at the tail end of the Troubles, the so called “Irish question” always seemed a hypothetical one. The Good Friday Agreement was seen as answering the question of whether the island of Ireland could be reunited once and for all, establishing as it did that Northern Ireland would only rejoin the South if a majority of citizens voted in a referendum or plebiscite for the option. With nationalists being demographically subordinate in Stormont, the simple mathematics meant it would never happen.

Reunification was a position which I always considered somewhat fanciful; a naive sentiment which was expressed in republican pockets in Belfast and Derry, meriting few serious contingency plans.

But Ireland now looks set to join the roster of political shocks and upsets we have seen rippling across the world. Here's a sentence I never thought I’d utter: for the first time in my lifetime, a united Ireland is now credible – and perhaps inevitable.

Last week, a shock election saw unionists lose their majority in the Northern Irish parliament for the first time. Sinn Fein, once a hardline republican party considered the political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army, is now just one seat short of being Stormont’s largest party, with 27 seats to the Democratic Unionist Party’s 28 seats.

In the Republic of Ireland, a recent poll found 65 per cent of people would back a united Ireland in a referendum. Across the South, student unions have passed or proposed motions backing reunification. In a sign that the issue is not just a flash in the pan, or the exaggerated opinions of a few vocal activists, the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny has announced that the UK’s Brexit plans must include a contingency plan for a united Ireland.

So how did we get to this point? A perfect storm has been brewing for years, with decades of anti-Tory sentiment (and more recently anti-Brexit angst) and unionist incompetence all making reunification more attractive. This Conservative Government, under both Theresa May and David Cameron, has turned a blind eye to politics in Northern Ireland. This was epitomised in the Brexit campaign, during which Northern Ireland was scarcely mentioned despite being the only part of the UK which shares a land border with another EU country. The Leave campaign also appeared to have no knowledge of or interest in what would happen to the border between North and South of Ireland should the referendum result go their way.

...

---

I've met Melanie Phillips a few times through work. Quite mild-mannered, unlike her Question Time/ Moral Maze persona. As Osarusan says, she's largely a media troll nowadays.

I see Siobhan Fenton doesn't offer much actual evidence for the inevitable UI. She could have usefully quoted the poll below or at least looked forward to a similar exercise post-Brexit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-34725746

PS I've noticed the term British Isles being used more often in recent years, including by people hardly sympathetic to Ulster Unionism or right-wing Conservative politics.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gather round

I've met Melanie Phillips a few times through work. Quite mild-mannered, unlike her Question Time/ Moral Maze persona. As Osarusan says, she's largely a media troll nowadays.

I see Siobhan Fenton doesn't offer much actual evidence for the inevitable UI. She could have usefully quoted the poll below or at least looked forward to a similar exercise post-Brexit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-34725746

PS I've noticed the term British Isles being used more often in recent years, including by people hardly sympathetic to Ulster Unionism or right-wing Conservative politics.

---

There is no evidence for an inevitable UI.

Fenton's piece is an opinion piece. She "feels" that it is more likely now than ever before.

Re that November 2015 opinion poll, it leads with a strange question and I dismissed it out of hand as a result.

The only question worth asking is "Do you want a United Ireland?", not something with qualifiers appended to it to make its uit some sort of narrative like "Ireland Thinks" from a few days ago.

Would you not take on board the spurious journal.ie poll from a few days ago?

A clear majority want reunification. Every party in the South has some positive policy on it. Stop living in cloud cuckoo land telling us that in fact we don't want it!


AS an aside:

Even the GFA mentions this majority within Article 1:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Belfast Agreement

The two Governments:
(i) recognise the legitimacy of whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people
of Northern Ireland with regard to its status, whether they prefer to continue to support the
Union with Great Britain or a sovereign united Ireland;

(ii) recognise that it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the
two parts respectively and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination
on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to
bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish, accepting that this right must be achieved
and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of a majority of the people of
Northern Ireland;

(iii) acknowledge that while a substantial section of the people in Northern Ireland share the
legitimate wish of a majority of the people of the island of Ireland for a united Ireland, the
present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is
to maintain the Union and accordingly, that Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United
Kingdom reflects and relies upon that wish; and that it would be wrong to make any change in
the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people;

(iv) affirm that, if in the future, the people of the island of Ireland exercise their right of self-determination
on the basis set out in sections (i) and (ii) above to bring about a united Ireland,
it will be a binding obligation on both Governments to introduce and support in their respective
Parliaments legislation to give effect to that wish;

(v) affirm that whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern
Ireland, the power of the sovereign government with jurisdiction there shall be exercised with
rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions
and shall be founded on the principles of full respect for, and equality of, civil, political, social
and cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of parity of esteem and
of just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos and aspirations of both communities;

(vi) recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be
accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their
right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not
be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland.

---

A poll from two years ago, pre-Brexit? About as much use as a chocolate teapot. Or perhaps big Arlene...

On the basis of advice to his constituents over the last six months, presumably I.Paisley Junior would disagree!

As for the 'British Isles', a generic term made up by the Brits for use in the English language, so what?

Bonita- all I'm telling you is what every Government in the South (backed by public opinion) has done for 90 years. If you prefer to read too much into a few simplistic polls while dismissing the more detailed ones, go ahead.

Wolfie- had you read/ understood to the end of my last post, you'd have seen me suggest an update to the November 2015 poll.

Do better.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gather round

I've met Melanie Phillips a few times through work. Quite mild-mannered, unlike her Question Time/ Moral Maze persona. As Osarusan says, she's largely a media troll nowadays.

I see Siobhan Fenton doesn't offer much actual evidence for the inevitable UI. She could have usefully quoted the poll below or at least looked forward to a similar exercise post-Brexit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-34725746

---

Brexit is a game-changer. Surveys conducted in November of 2015 - prior to the Brexit referendum - aren't worth a huge deal in the present context (if they could be entirely relied upon anyway) insofar as they don't take account of what is, or will be, a massive material change for people economically, politically, socially and psychologically.

I envisage Tory policies and cuts, which (will) lead directly to further neglect of and hardship for people in the north of Ireland, also influencing a change in mindset amongst the northern population in favour of a preferable alternative - Irish unity perhaps - and I think you have acknowledged this yourself. The Tories are in the process of dismantling the NHS, for example; that's usually the main card that those content with remaining in union with Britain cling on to. Tory policies and cuts are bound to increasingly alienate even unionists.

Support for unity is on the rise in the north, as reported in this Irish Times piece from last September, and that's even before Article 50 has been triggered or Brexit has been put into effect: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/irela...eals-1.2784882

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amanda Ferguson

There has been a significant statistical increase in support for a united Ireland among people in the North, according to a new survey conducted by Ipsos Mori.

The face-to-face survey of more than 1,000 people carried out across Northern Ireland on behalf of BBC political programme The View, between August 16th and September 2nd, indicates a five-point increase in support for a United Ireland (22 per cent), from 17 per cent in 2013 . This is regarded as a significant change.

More than four out of 10 people with a Catholic background (43 per cent) would back a United Ireland, up from 35 per cent in 2013, an increase regarded as statistically significant.

---

Sinn Féin's recent electoral surge (combined with the fact that the SDLP maintained their ground) must surely also be indicative of the reality that a growing number of nationalists are less content with present arrangements.

Anecdotally, Brexit has also angered and alienated many of my (northern nationalist) friends who might have been previously-indifferent to the unity question. Since the referendum, they've been more open to the idea of Irish unity with some saying they would now prefer it to the 'status quo'. I think this change is reflective of a broader turning tide. Unity is at least been taken seriously as an option now; previously, many content nationalists just saw it as a romantic pipe-dream rather than as a serious proposition.

Quote:

---

PS I've noticed the term British Isles being used more often in recent years, including by people hardly sympathetic to Ulster Unionism or right-wing Conservative politics.

---

I thought its general use was waning, but perhaps I'm mistaken. Any specific examples of people who aren't sympathetic to unionism or Conservatism using it? Who are you referring to exactly?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gather round

Bonita- all I'm telling you is what every Government in the South (backed by public opinion) has done for 90 years. If you prefer to read too much into a few simplistic polls while dismissing the more detailed ones, go ahead.

Wolfie- had you read/ understood to the end of my last post, you'd have seen me suggest an update to the November 2015 poll.

Do better.

---

I'm ignoring all polls though, because they fail to ever ask a simple question and invariably contains some sort of extraneous qualifier that suits the person who commissioned the poll. Until a poll is commissioned asking "Do you want a united Ireland?" and nothing else and is of a standard that can be trusted then there is little point in discussing them.