Why I'll say no to a united ireland

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121897178#Comment_121897178

The blame for what lies with my leadership? And you are at it again, that it all started 100 years ago. A bunch of angels lived on this island until 1921.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121898373#Comment_121898373

How did that work out for them? It did nothing for them because it doesn’t apply to Britain throwing Unionism under a bus, again.

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121897501#Comment_121897501

If you are correct then, why is the PSNI currently in crisis trying to get the Catholic numbers up. We are headed for a more unionist police force in Northern Ireland than we ever had, if we are not there already.

what are you going to blame for this decrease in unionists?

1980 2,600 catholic officers

2001 2,316 catholic officers

2023 2,203 catholic officers

and obviously I am aware that many of those Catholic officers will be unionists. But catholic officers from the days of the RUC to PSNI down, and down again this year

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121897507#Comment_121897507

Still a few border foxes around, so I’ll not hang out with the hens

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121897514#Comment_121897514

They were such a small minority. They didn’t stand a chance, so there was never going to be an armed conflict in the Republic. A bit like many very unionist places in Northern Ireland there was no trouble because the others kept their head down

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121898463#Comment_121898463

Again let’s be clear in what you are saying or not saying. Francis MCM got themselves in to a corner trying to pain the ROI as more problematic and sectarian (to put it mildly) than NI.

I will of course be clear in that ROI had its issues and was not a perfect place, however I know which state had endemic hatred built in to its fabric.

Do you support that stance or wish to play whabboutery?

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121898481#Comment_121898481

Absolutely, the Republic of Ireland, was at least as sectarian, and I would argue more sectarian than Northern Ireland. You were a Catholic state for Catholic people and the church called shots. my father‘s family of 11 all escaped it as they became 18, to suggest that your country was not under the sectarian grip and control of the Catholic Church is simply incredible.

of course, Northern Ireland had it issues, but there is no way one faith was as dominant as it was in the Republic

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121898442#Comment_121898442

How is that linked to UDR historical numbers?

Suckler

Absolutely, the Republic of Ireland, was at least as sectarian, and I would argue more sectarian than Northern Ireland.

Now you’ve definitely lost any scintilla of credibility.

NI had its issues is one way of summarising circa 100 years of hatred and violence.

But this is again self evident of the division you crave; “its not us it’s yous”

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121898502#Comment_121898502

The Unique History Of Ireland book again.

Could you point to any history of the island that says this kind of rubbish?

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121898507#Comment_121898507

The point is exactly the same as McM was laying out about the UDR. Everyone is doing all they can to try to even sustain the current Catholic numbers in the PSNI, but their targeting and murder by Republicans is making that impossible. Those Catholic police officers who do join the PSNI immediately move to unionist areas to be safe. Unionists welcome them and they integrate. That is your problem, repeating itself.

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121898560#Comment_121898560

Again nicely simplistic, nothing to mention of Catholics being mistrustful of a historically domineering police force.

abhorrent dissident threats are part of the problem but for you and your brethren Francis MCM to solely dress it up as you have is disingenuous

Why is every topic a tooth pulling exercise for you to be honest?

Miniegg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121898502#Comment_121898502

Ireland was an overwhelmingly Catholic country for hundreds of years, ruled with a heavy (and often bloody hand) by the colonialist protestant ascendancy who never made up a good portion of the population.

When they lost power of the south, most of them fled north to further impart their supremacist leanings upon the Catholics up there - i.e. sectarianism.

The south was overwhelmingly Catholic for years before the free state, and so it was after the free state. This is not an indication of sectarianism, it is merely demographics.

That's not to say the church didn't have too much influence and power here. We broke out of the clutches of one abusive relationship straight into the arms of another. I'd wager the church caused more harm to Catholics in Ireland than it ever did to Protestants.

downcow

Interesting article

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02r9baqqFDD7mqWYtRRb5M9pT2pqQN9KUE9cReW9y7jao6Fvsdp3CHNycowBdiaJfzl&id=100027859458428

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121899036#Comment_121899036

Could have been written by some on here. Just ignores a whole chunk of what’s actually happening

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121899036#Comment_121899036

interesting to you now but generally in line with what I’d said earlier about the massive failure of your leaders to date; had they not followed a sectarian diktat; A United Ireland would be a whimper compared to the current rumblings.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121899160#Comment_121899160

Have to say the disgraced Eoghan Harris comments gave me a chuckle. Don’t be saying anything to counter the article or I’ll delete the comment’ 😁😁

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121897600#Comment_121897600

The librarian in Mayo and Fethard on Sea, we always get these two examples 30 years apart. Is that really the best that you can do? Surely in a century you have something else?

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121899551#Comment_121899551

They never want mention the first President of Ireland not being Catholic…..a bit less controversial than a librarian.

downcow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121899228#Comment_121899228

I never heard of the guy and can only imagine by ‘disgraced’ you mean, he says things you don’t like. It doesn’t seem like there are too many unionists cosying up to him, so he seems to just be giving his honest opinion, maybe that is what you don’t like. Here’s a example below:

”I am happy to do so, although I am still sad about the failure to invite me, the author of his Nobel Prize speech, to a recent unveiling of a bust of Trimble in Leinster House. Apart from Arlene Foster, no unionist politician contacted me privately to express sympathy, never mind protest publicly at my absence.

Some of my nationalist friends made remarks like: “You got no thanks for looking after that lot – hope you’ve learned a lesson.” Afraid not. Being snubbed for reasons still unclear, does nothing to shake my belief that unionists are innocent victims of the Provisional IRA’s vicious campaign, followed by Sinn Fein turning the Good Friday Agreement into a campaign for a united Ireland.”

Peregrinus

I never heard of the guy and can only imagine by ‘disgraced’ you mean, he says things you don’t like

Harris is a political activist and journalist who, over the course of his career, has migrated from being the principal theoretician of the Workers' Party in its Marxist-Leninist days, to being an adviser to John Bruton — that gig did not last long — to being an adviser to the UUP. But he has been consistent well, pretty consistent — in his opposition to republican violence.

The disgrace referred to was his firing by the Sunday Independent in 2021. when it emerged that a battery of Twitter accounts were being run by Harris and his family under various pseudonyms to abuse and harrass other journalists (including some in the Independent) as well as academics and activists whose positions did not align with Harris's increasing anti-nationalist political views. The accounts also leaked information which Harris acquired in his capacity as a journalist with Independent Newspapers and which should have been first published in their newspapers. He has not worked in journalism since. A defamation action against Harris by some of the people targetted in his pseudonymous Twitter postings has not yet come to trial.

Fionn1952

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900183#Comment_121900183

Believe it or not, he has worked as a journalist since. He's pushing an absolutely transparent appeal to the audience type content as an occasional contributor to The Newsletter.

They're more interested in his Shinner bashing than whether or not he has completely undermined his credibility with the Barbara Pym scandal.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900183#Comment_121900183

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900352#Comment_121900352

His rant on the radio just before the 2020 GE was really quite something. Almost like someone who had lost his grip on reality.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121899551#Comment_121899551

Plenty more besides the above and the other well known cases like the West Cork pogrom that took place in 1922. The IRA went to murder 28 innocent Protestants in one area area near Dunmanway and they murdered 13. They were all shot. The effect on other Protestants around Dunmanway was such that 100 familes immediately upped and went to England, many just in the clothes they were standing in and little else, leaving all of their possessions, animals etc behind to be looted by Republicans. Plenty of other cases like the sectarian killings in Co. Offaly. There is a book on it : Coolacrease : the true story of the Pearson executiions.

Most intimidation and smaller incidents however was never officially recorded. For example, I was watching the documentary on RTE last night about Charlie Bird, well known RTE journalist. It showed him again with his torn jacket, having been beaten to the ground and assaulted by 3 people on O'Connell Street Dublin who called him "An Orange Bastard". Now, that was reported and will be available to researchers in 10, 20, 50 years time. If it happened to an ordinary member of the public it would never have been recorded. And if someone said that now ( that joe public was assaulted by Republicans in apparent sectarian attack ) , it would not be long before Republicans ridiculed the person for claiming it. Plenty of shop-owners got phone calls ( sometimes from someone with a northern accent) during the H-block era to ask them were they "closing for the funeral"? Some people got windows broken, and a decade before that some people got "brits out peace in" grafitti sprayed on their property, and worse, but that is all in the past now.

Best to keep the head down and not express political opinion. And during the troubles if you lived in the country and heard shots, best to ignore and definitely best not to speculate (or worse still, report or "inform" ) was it "the lads " doing some target practice.

The murder by pIRA of democratic Protestants like FG's Billy Fox here south of the border was a clear message. I know one lad at a school, he was always bullied with an English nickname etc, his family eventually emigrated, his parents and all.

Nowadays of course, with so many other nationalities, and people more aware of racism etc, things are different or at least not as bad as during the troubles. Many Protestants in the 20th century were assimilated through ne Temere and the special place of the Catholic Church in Ireland then.

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900604#Comment_121900604

Another scramble to Wikipedia to cherry pick I see.

Any luck addressing the lies and the other post you made up? You know seeing as you coincidentally just watched another documentary about Charlie Bird last night….

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900604#Comment_121900604

As with the 'ethnic cleansing' claims in Fermanagh, the Cork killings have a less sensational motivation.

This competent witness directly contradicted his own government’s propaganda on this point. We should take Curtis’s opinion seriously. Not only was he there at the time, the evidence supports the conclusion, and the conclusion is inimical to the case Curtis would otherwise have wished to put on behalf of his government. The killings in late April 1922 in West Cork were not motivated by either land agitation or by sectarian considerations. Evidence from Brian Murphy (1998, 2006) and Meda Ryan (2003) suggests that the victims were shot because of their previous intelligence role on behalf of Crown forces.

https://www.academia.edu/170416/After_the_War_of_Independence_some_further_questions_about_West_Cork_April_27_29_1922?hb-g-sw=1862050

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900645#Comment_121900645

This issue here is Francis MCm just clicks and copies the first link they find for an ‘info’ dump and scurries off again

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900604#Comment_121900604

And for clarity, Charlie Bird was attacked by a drunken degenerate that couldn’t begin to go in to any accurate discourse on sectarianism. Pure opportunist scum, but you again need to cling to this as purported evidence.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900618#Comment_121900618

I did not tell any lies. Typical of you to attack the messenger.  You should read "Buried Lives, The Protestants of Southern Ireland" by Robin Bury. Even though he lived here, after writing the book I think he got attacked, lets say.

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121900714#Comment_121900714

I doled it out for you clearly.

you lied when you misquoted me yet lack the honesty to admit it.