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

OhNoYouDidn't

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

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?

Thats like saying when you remove a growth from someone you are doing so to protect the cancer cells.

With respect, its textbook specious reasoning.

Exile 1798

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

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?

I'm happy only to see you so poorly representing the pro-partition position. It's an easy position to malign when it's proponents are so badly versed in facts and reality.

maggy_thatcher

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

Thats like saying when you remove a growth from someone you are doing so to protect the cancer cells.

Assuming you think people from the UK are like cancer cells, then yes. However, I believe they are a little more endearing than that!

EDIT - or do you mean the other way around? (That the separatists are the cancer?)

OhNoYouDidn't

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

Assuming you think people from the UK are like cancer cells, then yes. However, I believe they are a little more endearing than that!

EDIT - or do you mean the other way around? (That the separatists are the cancer?)

Sigh. You really are struggling here, aren't you?

If you want to take the logical fallacy that the 6 county statelet being artifically created to protect a quasi-fascist regieme means that the 26 county is equally as artificial, good for you. Meanwhile the rest of us will discuss the topic at hand if thats alright with you?

LordSutch

trapsagenius wrote: »

I would describe myself as a republican but I despise the dissidents(criminals is a better word) as much as the next man. I also think a united Ireland should only come about with majority consent in NI.

And that's how things still stand ............

Maybe in twenty years time, maybe never? its up to the people who live up there!

Eliot Rosewater

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.

In the context of the titling of the United Kingdom "Great Britain" and "Ireland" are clearly geographic references, not political ones. Also the "whole country" of Ireland that was annexed was itself the product of the British. Ireland wasn't united before that.

Exile 1798 wrote: »

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

Whats wrong with this? Why should the 26 Republic counties have the right to force their will on the other 6?

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Shengen goes a little bit further
showing a passport is not exactly a big deal

As maggy thatcher has said, it would simplify the visa process. Its also about being able to freely engage in the European project without being held back by our neighbor (something I know you agree with).

But theres the irony: the one tangible benefit of unification is something the main party advocating it don't believe in.

Lockstep

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Whats wrong with this? Why should the 26 Republic counties have the right to force their will on the other 6?

What about Fermanagh and Tyrone?
Both counties with a majority of Nationalist voters and who were forced in with the majority unionist counties. Even nowadays SF gets the majority of the votes.
Clearly a case of 4 counties imposing their will on the remaining 28.

Even within Northern Ireland, there was a high degree of gerrymandering in majority nationalist areas. Derry/Londonderry being the prime example.

Shea O'Meara

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.

Ireland was once a country invaded by your United Kingdom. Ireland sought freedom from this in various guises over a very long period of time. It was achieved as we see it today, by making a very big concession. This was sold to it's supporters as the best deal available/better than nothing, we'll still lobby/fight to unite the country.
All you state above is nonsense.

Was the Czech Republic, Poland (I could go on) 'an artificially constructed statelet divided from the full state (Soviet Union) composed of a group of people who mainly wanted independence'?
In your view the reunification of Germany was pointless as the east was a part of the Soviet Union and nothing to do with the West?

So basically you can invade a country and if any part of that country achieves independence in any form, it's a breakaway state?

Eliot Rosewater

kickoutthejams wrote: »

What about Fermanagh and Tyrone?
Both counties with a majority of Nationalist voters and who were forced in with the majority unionist counties. Even nowadays SF gets the majority of the votes.

I don't see your point.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Clearly a case of 4 counties imposing their will on the remaining 28.

You will have the explain this a bit more. Are the 4 counties trying to force the other 28 into a parliament in which the 4 will have a majority control over the 28? No, they're not. Some nationalists are of the belief that the 6 counties should be incorporated into the Republic against their will, a Republic in which they will have little say.

Shea O'Meara

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've brought this up twice before in other threads citing Saint Dev;
FACT: DeValera was a thief/swindler and a poor patriot.

Look up Dr. Mark OBrien's book looking into the Irish Press. In a nutshell, Dev set up shares for people at home and abroad to invest in our own National newspaper. He sold it as a patriotic thing to do.
Unbeknownst to everyone he set up two lots of shares. 'A' shares which you and I could buy, which were literally worthless, and 'B' shares which he kept for himself. His family made a pretty penny for themselves.

dlofnep

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Whats wrong with this? Why should the 26 Republic counties have the right to force their will on the other 6?

Nobody is forcing anybody into anything. The terms of the Good Friday Agreement cater for the above.

But another poster made a good point - the 6 counties were created to give a minority, an artificial majority. Which means that you have strongly nationalist towns/cities like Derry, Strabane, Omagh and Newry which are stuck under British rule.

So when he asks why should the residents of the above areas, and other nationalist areas be forced? I think it's a question that you might have to answer when you ask that sort of question that you've posed to us.

Eliot Rosewater

dlofnep wrote: »

So when he asks why should the residents of the above areas, and other nationalist areas be forced?

I think ye are assuming that I support Tyrone and Fermanaghs placement into the North - I dont. When it comes to this issue I put far more precedence in democracy than any affiliation to one of the sides. I think putting them in was a bad move.

But the question is: is it feasible for them to join the Republic now? Should we bring the question of unification down to each individual county? Im not sure thats workable.

dlofnep

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

I think ye are assuming that I support Tyrone and Fermanaghs placement into the North - I'm not. When it comes to this issue I put far more precedence in democracy than any affiliation to one of the sides. I think putting them in was a bad move.

But the question is: is it feasible for them to join the Republic now? Should we bring the question of unification down to each individual county? Im not sure thats workable.

Nah, it's not feasible. It would be very practical, and better for the people living in the individual counties - but I think that campaigns for a 32 county Republic would still continue - and the 6 counties would probably become the 3 counties - which wouldn't be feasible as a state.

OhNoYouDidn't

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Whats wrong with this? Why should the 26 Republic counties have the right to force their will on the other 6?

Why should the 6 counties have the right to block the will of the 26 counties and most international opinion in terms of a unitary Irish state....?

Its a post colonial situation and the game is up. Why should the 6 counties be treated any differently to the rest of Britian's empire?

OhNoYouDidn't

dlofnep wrote: »

- and the 6 counties would probably become the 3 counties - which wouldn't be feasible as a state.

When was the 6 county statelet ever feasible?

dlofnep

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

When was the 6 county statelet ever feasible?

It wasn't, and isn't. Which is why it's heavily subsidized by the British Government and has no internal means to break even economically.

I think the biggest issue is to rid the mass dependence on public sector employment in the north. Lowering the corporate tax would be a start to entice business, and localized business.

maggy_thatcher

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

Why should the 6 counties have the right to block the will of the 26 counties and most international opinion in terms of a unitary Irish state....?

Self-determination? The majority of the people in the 6 counties didn't want to be ruled by Dublin at the time of partitioning (hence why they opted out of the Irish Free State).

The will of the republic may (at least back in the 1920s it did) say "give us the rest of this island", but that doesn't give us the legal right to take it. Otherwise the argument in the UK could be "why should the 26 counties have the right to block the will of the 48 English, 6 Northern Irish, 22 Welsh, 33 Scottish, etc. counties for a unitary archipelago of all the islands in this group."? Or lets expand it further -- why not have a unified European state, or a unified global state? They are all as arbitrary as each other.

Overature

hell yeah, i would like to see a united Ireland, it belongs to the people of Ireland and nobody else

LordSutch

You might indeed like to see a so called 'united ireland', but the fact still remains that the majority of people actually living in Northern Ireland wish to remain as part of the United Kingdom.

GFA 1998.

Lockstep

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

I don't see your point.

You are complaining about the 26 imposing their rule on the 6. Even though 4 of the 6 were imposing their will on 2 themselves.
What's not to see?

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

You will have the explain this a bit more. Are the 4 counties trying to force the other 28 into a parliament in which the 4 will have a majority control over the 28? No, they're not. Some nationalists are of the belief that the 6 counties should be incorporated into the Republic against their will, a Republic in which they will have little say.

You're wrong there; Carson and the Unionists repeatedly spoke against Home Rule and toured Ireland giving speeches against it( ever hear of the Ulster Covenant?) A clear case of the 4 attmepting to impose their will on the 28.
Regardless, there are 2 nationalist countries forced in with the 4. Do you agree with this?
The question then arises; how small do we break it down before the "will" emerges?

Eliot Rosewater

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Do you agree with this?

No, as I said here.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

The question then arises; how small do we break it down before the "will" emerges?

That depends. When Ireland was partitioned I would have proposed doing it on a county-by-county basis. However now moving two counties from the North to the South would be unfeasible.

sparkling sea

This thread shows there isn't a general consensus in the Republic regarding the Republic and NI coming together as a so called united Ireland.

It also shows how this upsets some people - they should leave my country and move to N I if they want it so much joke -or is it.

It also shows the people who want NI and the Republic united will have a battle on their hands because there are many people in the Republic who don't want to see the make up of their country changed.

BluePlanet

Yes i do want a 32-county Republic. But we have to get consensus on that.

What say we become the United Kingdom of Great Britian and Ireland.
Have our own All-Ireland Parliment, just like Scotland and Wales. And with that, we have the option of a Referenda to succeed from the Union, just like the Scots had.

That vote will probably pass here, henceforth we become The Republic of Ireland again, only this time as an All-Island entity.

Of course, the Unionists will see this coming and probably refuse to be part of the UK tied to the hip with us. But maybe we could do a deal? Say we won't have the independence referenda for X amount of time.
By then the pros and cons of the UK should influence people's decisions here, and people will vote on it's merits.

The 26-County Republic is a partitionist entity, generally speaking so i don't see why we should have such deference to it.

trapsagenius

Irlandese wrote: »

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 !

You talk about a "strong oral tradition" and "fireside chats"-sorry to break it to you but your relations probably had biases and prejudices just like everyone else.While I'm too young to have spoken to a 1920s veteran, my father did and the stories he heard were much different to yours.The stories he heard involved surrendered anti-treatyites being used as human mine detectors by the free staters.

Dev was spared in 1916 because of either the fact that he was American, or because public opinion had already turned against the British because of earlier executions.Take your pick .He did not "twist out" of being executed-it had nothing to do with him.Essentially accusing him of cowardice in this instance is despicable. Dev did not rewrite history to suit himself-if you believe this I feel sorry for you.

The fact Dev was illegitimate had little to do with his support for the church-have you forgotten that this was conservative early 20th century Ireland, where most of the country had a strong faith?You also agree that his illegimaticy was not his own fault but then you use it as a stick to beat him with. And Dev was a statesman, make no mistake about it.While I would agree with you that some of his actions during the treaty negotiations, treaty debates and civil war were sometimes near-unforgiveable, have you forgotten all the good work he did bringing Ireland to a "Republic in all but name", the constitution and how successful he was in guiding Ireland through the world war?

And I'm not going to drag this into a Collins /Dev debate, because I have great respect for Collins, but Collins was never in the "bloody fields" during the war of Independence.This is not a criticism, this is a fact, so you should retract that claim.There is a line of thinking that if Collins had had any experience of war he would not have been killed in that ambush in Beal na mBlath.And you give too much credit for Collins for the successes of the IRA.The war was mainly won by the flying columns in Munster, not in Dublin.


It seems the extent of your knowledge on Dev is what you read in TP Coogans biography and what you saw in the Michael Collins movie.Let me do you a great service by telling you both those sources are nonsense.Dev was not a "lying scoundrel".He was a great man who did his best to change Ireland for the better.While he erred at times, like all men do, history will look favourably on him.It is not case of "Collins was always good, Dev was always bad"-history is rarely black or white, no matter what way Coogan tries to paint it, and it is important you realise this.To conclude I will ask you to try and gather some more facts about Dev before you post more ill-advised rubbish.Dev was one of the greatest statesmen Ireland has ever seen.Also, too much of what you write is based on "hearsay".I do not consider this viable.

P.s this will be my lost comment on the issue on this thread, as I'm bringing my own thread off topic.There is a thread in the history forum about Best and Worst Taoisigh if you wish to continue the discussion.

Shea O'Meara wrote: »

I've brought this up twice before in other threads citing Saint Dev;
FACT: DeValera was a thief/swindler and a poor patriot.

Look up Dr. Mark OBrien's book looking into the Irish Press. In a nutshell, Dev set up shares for people at home and abroad to invest in our own National newspaper. He sold it as a patriotic thing to do.
Unbeknownst to everyone he set up two lots of shares. 'A' shares which you and I could buy, which were literally worthless, and 'B' shares which he kept for himself. His family made a pretty penny for themselves.

That is not a fact-it is your opinion.IMO, Dev was not a "poor patriot" or a thief/swindler.While the dealings with the Irish Press might not have been entirely above board, they were done before he was Taoiseach and the many good things he did in his life far outweighed the bad.

Shea O'Meara

trapsagenius wrote: »

That is not a fact-it is your opinion.IMO, Dev was not a "poor patriot" or a thief/swindler.While the dealings with the Irish Press might not have been entirely above board, they were done before he was Taoiseach and the many good things he did in his life far outweighed the bad.

Dev swindled people out of money under the guise of patriotism. What hat he was wearing at the time is of no matter. The facts are the facts. You can justify it in your own mind, but he still swindled people out of money for personal gain. Using peoples patriotism as a selling point makes him a poor patriot and of very self serving low character. I'm sure it's a coincidence he had recently formed Fianna Fail when all this took place. I shudder to think how this affected the ethos of the party over the decades...oh wait..I've an idea.:rolleyes:

dublinscot

BluePlanet wrote: »

And with that, we have the option of a Referenda to succeed from the Union, just like the Scots had.

That vote will probably pass here

The Scots have never had a referendum on seceding from the union.

Lockstep

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

No, as I said here.

We agree on something then.

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Out of interest, if Kent decided it wanted to join Ireland, they should be allowed to?
What about Brussels? It's a French speaking city in a Flemish speaking province; if Belgium were to split, should they join Wallonia despite being surrounded by Flanders?

Why would it be too much of a problem? If the people there are mostly nationalist, why should they be forced to remain part of a nation they have no interest in being a part of?

BluePlanet

dublinscot wrote: »

The Scots have never had a referendum on seceding from the union.

Oh really?
I thought there was a big refrendum about 10 years ago.
I guess i wasn't paying enough attention.

maggy_thatcher

BluePlanet wrote: »

Oh really?
I thought there was a big refrendum about 10 years ago.
I guess i wasn't paying enough attention.

You're probably thinking of the devolution referendum which created the parliament in Scotland. It didn't provide for an independent Scotland, just allowed the Scottish people to manage internal matters (external matters would still be controlled through Westminster). The only part of the UK left without a locally controlled government is now England.

Eliot Rosewater

I see you confusing me with donegalfella

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Why would it be too much of a problem?

Its not hard to see why, is it? Changing the currency, signage, tax systems, justice systems etc etc in two counties? There must be a tradoff somewhere.

Anyway, it shouldnt matter what country you're in once your Government doesnt discriminate against you.