Who, on this forum, is in favour of a 32 county Republic?

Tommy Bateman

By god i'm in favour, them brits have been repressing Ireland for over 800 years, its about time they went home and left our country to ourselves because its ours and not theirs. Brits go back and leave us alone.

lugha

Mike 1972 wrote: »

And could Unionists not just as easily attempt to persuade Nationalists that they would be better off remaining in the United Kingdom ?

I don't think they all need to be persuaded. For all their misty eyed nationalism quite a few of them are well aware that they are doing just nicely under British rule.

Judgement Day

Tommy. Humour and Ranting & Raving Forums this way......:pac::pac:

lugha

Tommy Bateman wrote: »

By god i'm in favour, them brits have been repressing Ireland for over 800 years, its about time they went home and left our country to ourselves because its ours and not theirs. Brits go back and leave us alone.

And when the Brits go back, would you advise them to take the several billion net that they pump into the NI economy every year with them?

Judgement Day

lugha wrote: »

And when the Brits go back, would you advise them to take the several billion net that they pump into the NI economy every year with them?

Alas, judging from some of poor Tommy's previous posts on other threads he appears to be an FF backwoods man like Pee Flynn, so there's no point try to reason with him.

I wonder is Bateman his real surname? Sounds suspiciously English in origin.

lugha

Judgement Day wrote: »

I wonder is Bateman his real surname? Sounds suspiciously English in origin.

Not to mention "Tommy". Maybe he has a whole irony thing going on that's too subtle for us? :pac:

Tommy Bateman

Judgement Day wrote: »

Alas, judging from some of poor Tommy's previous posts on other threads he appears to be an FF backwoods man like Pee Flynn, so there's no point try to reason with him.

I wonder is Bateman his real surname? Sounds suspiciously English in origin.

My name isn't British! My grandad fought in the GPO, and died for you, and yet this is how you treat his grandson? This sort of thing is a feckin disgrace.

Judgement Day

Tommy Bateman wrote: »

My name isn't British! My grandad fought in the GPO, and died for you, and yet this is how you treat his grandson? This sort of thing is a feckin disgrace.

He didn't die for me - my lot were across the road shooting at the GPO.

A quick google search reveals that Bateman is an English name and pre-dates the 1066 conquest.

Martin 2

Mike 1972 wrote: »

If one really wants a 32 county republic they could always lobby to have -say the six largest counties in the Republic split in two :pac:

Mike, I think you may have a partionist mentality:)

dlofnep

Dlofnep supports Irish reunification. Shock shock, horror!

Exile 1798

bobbysands81 wrote: »

But the 06 is a gerrymandered statelet that came about intentionally so that it would retain a Unionist majority.

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

You could turn that around and say that the 26 is a gerrymandered statelet that came about intentionally so that it would retain a separatist majority (from the UK). Countries are arbitrary divisions of land.

No actually, you couldn't.

rovert

SLUSK wrote: »

Northern Ireland would just be a financial burden which the ROI cannot afford.

^ This

Hopefully nationalism will be a forgotten concept in 20-25 years.

lugha

rovert wrote: »

Hopefully nationalism will be a forgotten concept in 20-25 years.

Hooray and amen to that (but I don't think it will happen )
Forget about religion being the root of all evil, there is nothing like nationalism / tribalism, whatever guise it takes, to bring out the most barbaric, inhumane and just downright evil side of man.
Just look at the biggest horror stories in history, be it the genocide in Rawanda and many other places, the systematic rape and much worse in the Balkans and not forgetting to mention the spot of bother caused by the Nazis in the last century. You'll find nationalism / tribalism is never too far away.
This is one bear that I think we are better not to be poking.

AckwelFoley

bobbysands81 wrote: »

But the 06 is a gerrymandered statelet that came about intentionally so that it would retain a Unionist majority.

I would hazard a guess that the majority of people in Great Britain would prefer to be shot of the 06. I would also hazard a guess that a majority of people in the Republic would prefer a United Ireland.

A "United Ireland" will come about because it is the pragmatic thing to happen. Unionists will eventually realise that they've been shat on as well, as has been previously said it will involve the setting up of a "new" country with new flags/emblems/constitution etc... The 06 will not be subsumed into the Republic but a partnership of "States" will happen instead.

It is inevitable, there is no other logical response.

You make alot of assumptions.

The biggest one is that the unionists will want to join the "new state" Thats actually as likely to happen as Ireland Joining the British union again when we realise we were "shat on" by our own government >enter builders bankers rabble rabble here<

People aiming for a united Ireland need to think outside the box. Gerographical politics is now bigger than us, we are part of a european union now

maggy_thatcher

Exile 1798 wrote: »

No actually, you couldn't.

Yes you could. At the time, the full state was the United Kingdom. A small section of that state wanted independence. The section that wanted independence was divided out from the full state and became what is known now as the Republic of Ireland. What left remained in the United Kingdom. As such, the Republic of Ireland was/is an artificially constructed statelet divided from the full state composed of a group of people who mainly wanted independence.

VampiricPadraig

I personally am in favour of a 32 county Republic!

ei.sdraob

not until we sort our problems and they sort theirs

anyways no one asked a simple question of the OP,

why?



are there only nationalistic reasons?? or some other reasons and pros of rejoining?

maggy_thatcher

ei.sdraob wrote: »

are there only nationalistic reasons?? or some other reasons and pros of rejoining?

The only real advantage I could see is that we could then be full citizens of Europe and join the Schengen agreement (though a lot of nationalists would probably not like that). We currently can't join Schengen because the British won't join, and we have a Common Travel Agreement with the UK. We can't easily remove the CTA with the massive unmanned land-border, therefore can't join the rest of Europe. If we removed the land-border, we could easily introduce passport controls at the various ports for British travellers (and remove the passport controls from any of the rest of the EU).

Irlandese

trapsagenius wrote: »

I hate to get sidetracked here but this is one of the most biased pieces of nonsense I've heard in a long time.The bit in a bold is complete rubbish-"shame at his illegitimate birth", "a borrowed surname", what in gods name is this-anti-Dev propaganda?You should point out that this is your own take on the Devs situation and many others would have a completely different view.Also describing one of the greatest statesman Ireland has ever seen as "self interested" is BS.

I have no doubt Collins was a great man but he was not a man without sin.He was completely ruthless and while he did well at the Treaty, part of the opposition to it was that from signing the treaty Collins had committed treason as he had sworn an oath to the republic and was now willing to swear an oath to the British king.In the 21st century it is hard to see what the fuss is about, but in 1920s Ireland , when nationalist sentiment in the country was at fever pitch, it is easy to understand how young men who had watched their friends and family die for a republic could oppose the Treaty.Accusing Dev of rewriting the facts is also utter nonsense-didn't Dev himself accept that Collins greatness would be recorded at his own expense?

I also take issue with you blaming the anti-treaty side for the whole civil war-the ruthlessness and sometimes even sadism among the Free state forces is often strengthened republicans resolve to fight on even when the war seemed lost.Killing 4 innocent prisoners is a war crime, but interestingly there's no mention of that in your post.I accept there were wrongs done on both sides, so the issue is not black and white as you try to paint it.




Is that what you'd define as a "true" republic-only 26 counties?



That accusation from Browne against Mcquaid was almost certainly complete bollix by the way.Have you actually read it?It was in the end of the biography on Mcquaid and it was completely dubious.Lets not forget that Browne and Mcquaid despised each other.While I am definitely not a fan of Mcquaid, you should not be slandering someone with one of the worst accusations you can throw at them, especially when it most likely isn't true.

And while you rightfully criticise Dev for giving a "special place" to the Church in the constitution, surely you accept what a truly magnificent piece of work the constitution was on whole?

Sorry people, I was off to bed before this very long and disjointed and multi-issue reply came in. Let me begin by admitting that I have the advantage of a certain age and of being a "neighbour's child" who benefitted from the strong oral tradition in limerick/Cork where the facts about the cover-up of De Valera's origins are well known. All that I wrote is unfortunately true and comes from family and friends, many, like me, with grandparents and other relatives actively involved in the war for independance. My childhood was spent listening at fireside chats about the facts as known only perhaps to those wholived those times. This is because successive generations have been successfully indoctrinated through history courses approved by successive generations of De Valera supporters. You will recall that he founded Fianna fail ? Many of my own and many more from earlier generations utterly despised De Valera for what he was and what he had done. Statesman? What a laugh. I can think of many words to describe someone who lied about the Treaty instructions and went about the country stirring up former brothers-in-arms with devious lies and worse, to cause a bloody civil war at such cost to the entire country. All this for his own machievellian, selfish objectives? many of us believe so.

The parish registry of births where he was baptised and recorded as I described were "adjusted" as in falsified quite soon after De Valera became taoiseach. Local oral tradition has it that his mother had in fact "borrowed" the name of an american sailor with whom she had been transiently more than friendly, possibly without any real certainty about whether there was a blood link between the sailor and the future taoiseach. This imagined slur more than preyed on the child's mind after early years of cruel jibing from other children and living with his mother under the extreme prejudice about births outside of marraige in rural Ireland at the time. It was no fault of his that he was illegitimate, thankfully an outmoded concept now, but it did affect his personality and character in very negative ways. He was always a devious and false dealer in later life and had few friends, who knew him well. His entire life was a show, a facade and a lie. Even his twisting out of being executed with the other volunteer commanders after the rising, by getting intermediaries to contact the US Embassy and plead a case for american ancestry, through his highly dubious borrowed half-parentage, shows the mark of a machievellian coward, prepared to put personal advantage before collective principle. We did not see Connolly or the others seeking similar safe passage from the collective ultimate sacrifice.

For him, the church was the route to respectability and he was a willing subservient to the unscrupulous and bullying Mc Quaid. This subservience gave us a badly tainted constitution, that held us back for years. We can argue it's contribution, too, in results even today in the horrors we now know well as regards the raping of children by priests and religious, thanks to their special status and power over a humbled populance of slaves to that often malign influence.

I am glad you grasped that Collins did a great job at the Treaty negotiations. What he did was almost incredible and just as important as his almost single-handedly ensuring the ultimate success of a badly resourced guerilla war. What you probably do not know is that De Valera and others, including the heroic Liam Lynch, another neighbour's child, were privately convinced that the negotiations would not achieve the "wish-list" de Valera gave to Collins and Co., This wish list was muddled out in a very obtuse and ambiguous but quite inadequate set of instructions, further muddied by his reported seperate comments to the ostensible leader of the negotiations, Arthur Griffiths and to the acknowledged key negotiator Collins. Both De Valera and Collins knew it was a poisoned chalice, but Collins was a patriot and a pragmatist and had been down in the bloody fields with the almost exhausted volunteers, while De Valera scuttled around with his intrigues, so Collins took it on board, knowing his life and his death was tied to the outcome.

It was widely believed among the volunteers, who had heard reports of De Valera's secret meetings with sympathisers, that De Valera insisted on Collins attending, knowing the english would welcome the opportunity to at last have a visual on the "Green Pimpernel ", whom they had failed to capture or even identify during the successfully organised guerilla war for independance. In fact, the english arranged a steady rota of visits to the negotiations and social events surrounding same, by army intelligence personnel, to familiarise them with Collin's physical description and voice. De valera, Liam Lynch and the British generals all expected the treaty talks to fail.

It was a triumph for Collins that they achieved what they did. Collins reportedly achieved much more than De Valera had suggested as enough, while agreeing in principle to the empty mechanism of taking an oath to the Crown, as "Head of the Commonwealth", which we were to join as a new member, but as an almost independant state, of 32 counties. De Valera was a smart if machievellian character. He perhaps saw his future chance of redemption for years of shame, through the maximum respectability of Taoiseach gone forever, if an authentic hero such as Collins entered the national political stage. He is reported to have hated Collins for years, envying him on almost every front, as the man he would never be, the comrade loved as he never could and the patriot prepared to give his all, as de Valera never would. As I heard another relative steeped in our family history explain, never has a fiction work such as the film "Michael Collins" more accurately captured the real truth of our twisted early years as a nation and the opposite characters of Collins and de Valera more accurately than the tainted history books written to enhance the reputation of a born liar and scoundrel.

If you get a chance, ever, try to spend some time in the places where all this happened and try to speak, if they will, with the older relatives of some of the volunteers and their countless helpers, sock-darners, milk-carriers, hedge-nurses and others who fought the war that gave us a chance. That we were cheated of the potential, through the sad inadequacies of De Valera and others is not their fault. Neither is it the fault of those brave heroic volunteers who were tricked into opposing Collins by the most devious and low-down cur we ever spawned, with or without thehelp of a randy sailor !

ei.sdraob

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

The only real advantage I could see is that we could then be full citizens of Europe and join the Schengen agreement (though a lot of nationalists would probably not like that). We currently can't join Schengen because the British won't join, and we have a Common Travel Agreement with the UK. We can't easily remove the CTA with the massive unmanned land-border, therefore can't join the rest of Europe. If we removed the land-border, we could easily introduce passport controls at the various ports for British travellers (and remove the passport controls from any of the rest of the EU).

thats certainly is an interesting point
but really not much preventing free travel within the EU as is, hell thats whole foundation of it, just Shengen goes a little bit further
showing a passport is not exactly a big deal


the way i see of theres a referendum in South and in North and both peoples vote for reunification then thats the wish of the people and so be it
from my understanding the Good Friday agreement will make such a referendum possible?


unfortunately both parts of the island currently have major issues (social, political and economic), by uniting we become a bigger basketcase

Morpheus

But what you call for involves "senseless mindless bigotted violence".
Take away the reasons for war and there is no war.

no it doesnt, i've encompassed all walks of life that exist north of the border, I havent singled out any one group to get the crap nuked out of them!!!!

It is only the dead who have seen the end to war (PLATO)

amacachi

lugha wrote: »

Hooray and amen to that (but I don't think it will happen )
Forget about religion being the root of all evil, there is nothing like nationalism / tribalism, whatever guise it takes, to bring out the most barbaric, inhumane and just downright evil side of man.

I just made that same point in the thread in AH, looking forward to the replies I get. :pac:

maggy_thatcher

ei.sdraob wrote: »

thats certainly is an interesting point
but really not much preventing free travel within the EU as is, hell thats whole foundation of it, just Shengen goes a little bit further
showing a passport is not exactly a big deal

There's a lot more to it than that -- it would allow any tourist/business traveller who is present in a country within Europe to visit Ireland without going to the trouble of having to obtain a separate visa. I know (personally) many people who would benefit from this.

ei.sdraob wrote: »

the way i see of theres a referendum in South and in North and both peoples vote for reunification then thats the wish of the people and so be it
from my understanding the Good Friday agreement will make such a referendum possible?

A straight majority vote would marginalize a significant minority of people, which would need to be addressed. That's why I believe if it's done, it should be performed as a super-majority vote.

ei.sdraob wrote: »

unfortunately both parts of the island currently have major issues (social, political and economic), by uniting we become a bigger basketcase

Agreed -- there's no way Ireland could currently afford to take on the North.

Exile 1798

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

Yes you could. At the time, the full state was the United Kingdom. A small section of that state wanted independence. The section that wanted independence was divided out from the full state and became what is known now as the Republic of Ireland. What left remained in the United Kingdom. As such, the Republic of Ireland was/is an artificially constructed statelet divided from the full state composed of a group of people who mainly wanted independence.

It was actually the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland - Ireland being recognised as a separate and whole country and having being annexed in the Act of Union as such.

Partition was not something required (or desired) by Nationalists as you falsely claimed. The borders of the Republic are artificial but not to ensure a Nationalist majority in the Republic. An utterly absurd argument.

maggy_thatcher

Exile 1798 wrote: »

It was actually the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland - Ireland being recognised as a separate and whole country and having being annexed in the Act of Union as such.

A country in this aspect is not the same as a state. The UK is unique in that it is a collection of countries/provinces mixed under the same government. I treat the entire state of the UK as a single entity.

Exile 1798 wrote: »

I
Partition was not something desired or required by Nationalists as you falsely claimed. The borders of the Republic are artificial but not to ensure a Nationalist majority in the Republic. An utterly absurd argument.

I didn't claim that it was desired or required by Nationalists. It was put in by a state to protect its citizens from being governed by people who didn't want it. The majority of the state (the full UK) did not want independence (from itself!). It separated the full state into regions where the majority of the people wanted independence and where the majority of the people did not want independence.

Exile 1798

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

I didn't claim that it was desired or required by Nationalists. It was put in by a state to protect its citizens from being governed by people who didn't want it. The majority of the state (the full UK) did not want independence (from itself!). It separated the full state into regions where the majority of the people wanted independence and where the majority of the people did not want independence.

The majority of people in Ireland wanted independence.

The majority of people in Ulster wanted independence.

The only "region" we're talking about today is the artificial one created to ensure such an anti-Inpendence majority.

Which was the original point you so lamely tried to deflect by claiming that the Republic of Ireland could be called an artificial state gerrymandered to ensure a Nationalist majority in exactly the same was that Northern Ireland was an artifical statelet gerrymandered to ensure a Unionist majority.

You were wrong and clearly so. Why not simply acknowledge that and move on instead of continuing to dig yourself deeper into a hole?

maggy_thatcher

Exile 1798 wrote: »

The majority of people in Ireland wanted independence.

Yes

Exile 1798 wrote: »

The majority of people in Ulster wanted independence.

Debatable. There were a lot of unionists in Cavan/Monaghan (in the same way that there were a lot of nationalists in Fermanagh/Tyrone). As no referendum has taken place you can't with 100% certainty say that the majority of people in Ulster wanted independence.

Exile 1798 wrote: »

The only "region" we're talking about today is the artificial one created to ensure such an anti-Inpendence majority.
Which was the original point you so lamely tried to deflect by claiming that the Republic of Ireland could be called an artificial state gerrymandered to ensure a Nationalist majority in exactly the same was that Northern Ireland was an artifical statelet gerrymandered to ensure a Unionist majority.

You were wrong and clearly so. Why not simply acknowledge that and move on instead of continuing to dig yourself deeper into a hole?

Because I disagree. The majority of people in the UK did not want independence, therefore there was a need to create a subdivision to satisfy that criteria. You could argue that the subdivision created didn't suit some people (because of some belief that the wishes of the majority of people in the whole island excluding one sector should outweigh the wishes of a minority who are localized in one sector), but the fact remains - the 26-county republic is an artificial entity created to contain the nationalist majority.

OhNoYouDidn't

Shea O'Meara wrote: »

Firstly, the north being occupied is our problem, it's Northern Ireland not Northern Finland. We should only unify if there's something in it for us?
From an economics viewpoint I can see what you're saying, and no insult intended on choice here, but should we say, disassociate ourselves with Limerick because it may save us a few bob?

Exactly. The amount of people who are being swayed on an ideological issue by money is a sad indictment of modern Irish attitudes.

Also those who think that we voted away out claim to the 6 counties in the GFA need to read the constitution and what was actually voted on....

Exile 1798

Maggy Thatcher,

Your stunning refusal to accept the incorrectness of your original claim is noted for all to see.

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

You could turn that around and say that the 26 is a gerrymandered statelet that came about intentionally so that it would retain a separatist majority (from the UK).

I've nothing more to say other then if you find yourself either lying or denying reality to defend a position, then very likely the position you're trying to uphold isn't a justified one - in this case the partition of Ireland.

maggy_thatcher

Exile 1798 wrote: »

Maggy Thatcher,

Your stunning refusal to accept the incorrectness of your original claim is noted for all to see.



I've nothing more to say other then if you find yourself either lying or denying reality to defend a position, then very likely the position you're trying to uphold isn't a justified one - in this case the partition of Ireland.

Fine - I'll adjust it slightly:

You could turn that around and say that the 26 is a gerrymandered statelet that came about intentionally to protect the rest of the UK who didn't want to be independent.

Happy now?