In the event of united Ireland could DUP attract a significant vote in the Republic / 26 Counties ?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123466928#Comment_123466928

In the 1930's NI was in surplus and was a net contributor to the UK economy, by 1966, such was the decline, it required a subvention of nearly 60 million (1.3bn in today's money?)
During this period it was effectively a one party state.

P.S. Nobody has claimed the conflict/war didn't cause economic damage as well.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467038#Comment_123467038

 And this was compounded by the fact that the government, and politics generally, was dominated by the national question, by questions of identity, by prioritising dominance of one community over the other — economic issues didn't acheive the kind of political traction that they would in most democracies. And its undeniably the case that the Unionist party, which was in government the whole time, was fairly amateurish and not very competent.

And therein lies the tragedy of partition and Westminster rule.
They didn't and still don't care about the people of Ireland as a whole. They allowed the suprematist statelet to stagnate and decline into inevitable conflict.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467058#Comment_123467058

NI was a net contributor to the UK government finances. This doesn't mean that it was a net contributor to the UK economy, which is very different. Revenue collected in NI exceeded public expenditure in NI, but the same was true for most parts of GB, and it had nothing to do with prosperity. For most of the time before 1922, Ireland as a whole was a net contributor to the UK exchquer. India was a net contributor to the UK exchequer, and India was desperately poor.

Before the days of the welfare state, government expenditure was on the public and civil service (largely in London and in the UK's other major cities); on the navy and the army (heavily concentrated in the south of England); paying down government debt; etc. The exchequer was a system by which money flowed from the periphery to the centre. The same was true of most European countries. So NI being a net contributor in the 1930s is not particuilarly an indicator of NI's prosperity at that time.

What caused NI to move from net contributor to net recipient was the establishment of the welfare state. Once government started providing comp welfare payments and funding the NHS, revenues raise in NI fell well short of what was necessary to fund these services in NI. But that didn't mean that NI had become poor, relative to the rest of the UK; it had always been poor, relative to the rest of the UK, but now government policy was seeking to address poverty in ways that it never had before.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467347#Comment_123467347

Fair enough.
But the fact remains, (contrary to blanch's theory) that NI suffered decline after partition and that was due to the decline worldwide in it's industrial core businesses. The tragedy was that the UK government did not care enough to re-invigorate and establish alternate industry and the one party state hadn't the competence to do it and were happy to be subsidised. Reliance on GB to bail them out is still clung to as one of the reasons to prolong the Union.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467380#Comment_123467380

By the early 1960s, Northern Ireland was beginning to diversify, attracting investment in areas such as textiles. Unfortunately, as we all know, the terrorist campaign brought an abrupt halt to FDI in Northern Ireland, devastated the economy and increased poverty, particularly in areas such as West Belfast and others subject to PIRA community policing.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0176268012000638

"A synthetic control region constructed as a weighted average of other UK regions provides an estimate of counterfactual ‘no-conflict’ GDP. Comparing this with actual per capita GDP suggests a negative impact of up to 10%. Excluding the increased grants provided in response to the conflict, a 15–20% reduction is evident."

"

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467655#Comment_123467655

The oil crisis and changing markets were a bigger issue that put paid to the textiles.

They also missed out on post depression booms and post war booms that took business elsewhere.

Your continued attempt to single out terrorism, especially only one side of it, is disingenuous (again).

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467699#Comment_123467699

The academic study is absolutely clear - a 10% hit due to the terrorist campaign, and it would have been more - 15-20% without the extra subsidies and grants from the British government.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467655#Comment_123467655

Here is the point I made that you quoted.

The tragedy of partition was many faceted but economically it saw the most prosperous industrial part of Ireland remain in the UK to stagnate by the 50's (massive unemployment and it's main industries gone or in terminal decline) I think many now realise that lack of autonomy was the root cause of this.

Nobody has claimed the conflict/war did not contribute to further decline in NI's fortunes. Not sure why you are off on one tbh.
If you allow society to collapse to the point it did in the failed statelet why would economic damage not be inevitable?
The British allowed NI society to collapse by doing nothing about an out of control suprematist government and by trying to shore up that government and system until they were made to see sense and, as John Hume said, ended the Unionist veto.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467928#Comment_123467928

Economic damage wasn't inevitable in 1968, certainly not the scale of the damage seen in the 1970s. Northern Ireland had begun to pivot towards the outside, the terrorist campaign ended all that. Similar effects have been seen in regions like the Basque country and similar conclusions reached by economists.

Without the PIRA, there is no doubt that Northern Ireland would have become a more prosperous and better place than it is today, that is a sad but true reflection.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123468183#Comment_123468183

If you can show us a conflict/war zone that didn’t suffer economically you might have a point here.

The fact is a conflict/war involving two sides was allowed happen by a government that couldn’t care less for the people of Ireland.

If they cared they would never have allowed a blatantly sectarian suprematist statelet to exist. They were forced to create an equal society in the end. There was nothing stopping them ending the Unionist veto in ‘38-‘48-‘58-or 1968. A Unionist veto that ensured Nationalist's were trapped in economic penury, discriminated against in housing, education and employment not mention culturally. By the time Unionists destroyed the Sunningdale agreement it was clear there would never be prosperity or economic stability for one entire community if it was left to Unionism.
As pointed out, even on the grounds of competence alone the Unionist one party statelet should have been dismantled.

Edit: one of the IRA’s stated aims was to cause economic damage. They succeeded in that. Are you only realising that now?

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123468229#Comment_123468229

The government made us kill people, that is a pathetic excuse for the actions of the PIRA.

The only economic damage the PIRA caused was to their own people. Another example of their failure.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123468352#Comment_123468352

So which is it, the IRA damaged NI's and the South's and GB's economy or the IRA just economically damaged their own people?

And by the way, nobody claimed this

The government made us kill people,

the claim is, the 'government' of the UK allowed a sectarian one party statelet exist in Ireland and did nothing effective about ending it until they had to. And when they finally acted they did nothing that could not have been done 30, 40, 50 or 60 years previously, thus stopping society falling apart. A society, that when it ruptured and went up in flames. saw all sides including the British government 'kill and maim' people.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123468396#Comment_123468396

The PIRA caused minimal damage to the South and to the rest of the UK, the real damage was done to their own people.

You said "a conflict/war involving two sides was allowed happen by a government". That is a pathetic excuse that the government made us kill people. As many good people have said over the years, more would have been achieved quicker if the peaceful protests had just continued instead of the madmen of violence doing their thing.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123468409#Comment_123468409

Yes, the government of any country is responsible for the stability of that country.

They(the British government) allowed a sectarian statelet to exist for 60 years that discriminated against a community, culturally and in the areas of housing, education and employment.
Nothing to do with 'PIRA' society imploded as a result. To exacerbate the situation they tried to shore up and maintain that Unionist sectarian statlet and it went up in flames with ALL sides killing and maiming. With, as nationalists said at the time, and as we all know now, the British colluding frequently with one side in that killing, thus exacerbating the conflict even more.
The IRA have many many things to be criticised for but they are not the only side to blame. Nor does any serious credible historian.

Seth Brundle

Mod: @blanch152 final warning before a permanent Politics forum ban!

Peregrinus

I don't think you can see the Troubles as something that happened to Northern Ireland. They were something that emerged in Northern Ireland as a consequence of Northern Ireland's failure to develop into a functional democracy that could satisfactorily negotiate political differences by constitutional, democratic and nonviolent means. As such, the economic impact of the Troubles was not an external factor that disrupted what would otherwise have been NI's natural economic growth; they were an aspect of NI itself that impeded its economic growth.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123469584#Comment_123469584

They were something that emerged in Northern Ireland as a consequence of Northern Ireland's failure to develop into a functional democracy that could satisfactorily negotiate political differences by constitutional, democratic and nonviolent means. 

I agree that it happened in more than NI but why make seem like an accident?

The circumstances that ignited the conflict/war were no accident or emergence.

They came about as a direct result of how NI was run and the inaction of those tasked with ensuring that it was run in a democratic constitutional way.

Peregrinus

I didn't mean to suggest that it was an accident. It wasn't inevitable — perhaps it could have been avoided, or would have played out very differently, if particular people had made particular choices at particular times. But that's a speculative what-if; in the real world the Troubles did happen, and — I think we agree on this — the factors which led to them happening were baked into the characteristics of NI. The Troubles were the consquence of a fundamental design flaw, if you like.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123469891#Comment_123469891

They were the inevitable consequences of a partition that enabled Unionism to change the voting system and re-'design' via gerrymandering and denial of rights a sectarian government.

Nobody with responsibility did anything effective to end that even when the place inevitably went up in flames 60 years later.

Peregrinus

I'd go a bit further. I think NI was designed to include as many Unionists as possible, with as large a Nationalist minority as was consistent with assured Unionist dominance. There was no parity of esteem at work in partitioning Ireland; the whole poin was to privilege Unionist over Nationalists to the greatest extent practicable. So I think there was a fundamental imbalance built into the very origins of NI that was always going to threaten its stability, sooner or later, if not recognised, acknowledged and radically addressed.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123469957#Comment_123469957

Yes Unionism got almost everything it wanted but to be fair to those democrats in GB they did mandate a system of voting that might have allowed some semblance of democracy and representation but they stood idly by when Unionism changed that system and set about creating the failed sectarian government that brought about the circumstances for conflict and war and to further damage, tried to shore up that system.

Peregrinus

I think you may attribute a little too much importance to the switch from PR-STV to FPTP. Even under PR-STV unionism was assured a permanent majority, and if we look at the makeup of Stormont before and after the change it actually doesn't vary very much.

But on the wider point of neglect, and an abication of responsibility, at Westminster I agree with you. As I say, it's a historical what-if, but if Westminster had been more concerned and more internventionist about NI's social and political development, things might have played out very differently. But since Westminster was responsible for the original design flaws of the NI project, I think there were never great prospects of their trying to remedy those flaws.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123469992#Comment_123469992

I think you may attribute a little too much importance to the switch from PR-STV to FPTP. Even under PR-STV unionism was assured a permanent majority, and if we look at the makeup of Stormont before and after the change it actually doesn't vary very much.

I use it to show just what the Unionists got away with or were allowed to do. And also to illustrate that it was no accident that we ended up where we did.

maccored

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123469957#Comment_123469957

the idea was to create a unionist state that relied on westminster to survive. it was a corrupt setup in the first place and isnt fit for purpose now uniuonism is no longer at the helm. Time for change.

scottser

In answer to the OP, there would be plenty of ultra-orthodox Christians down here happy to cast a vote for the DUP. However, our PR-STV system would further dilute that vote and hopefully reward those willing to seek a consensus. The vast, vast majority of NI citizens want exactly the same things as we do and I think we would be good bedfellows in the event of a United Ireland.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123529651#Comment_123529651

Latest polling has shown that the gap between those advocating Irish unity and those advocating maintenance of the existing union has halved in 12 months and that for the first time (even in the absence of a game changing plan) more young people support Irish unity.
The DUP and indeed Unionism in general has to change tack soon or risk dying out altogether or dying to a point of being irrelevant and having nothing to offer anyone much in a new constitutional set-up.

scottser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123530482#Comment_123530482

And then there's this. If the cap fits, eh?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123542395#Comment_123542395

Geography was never a strong subject with those folk.

The DUP is going to be dead within the next five years or so. The DUP, even more so than Sinn Fein, are the biggest supporters of mass immigration into Northern Ireland and now even its own unionist supporters are turning against the DUP over immigration.

Incoherent DUP vulnerable if voters realise it lobbied for more migration while presenting very different message

Peregrinus

A fascinating theory, but it is dashed to pieces on the rock of fact. Northern Ireland hasn't experienced anything that could be discribed by a sane person as "mass immigration". Net immigration into NI in the year to mid-2022 (the last year for which figures have been compiled so far) was 2,314 people, or about 0.12% of the population. And that was pretty typical; in the past number of years annual net immigration to NI has been in the range 0.1% to 0.3% of population, with some years experiencing net emigration (i.e. more people leaving NI than arriving in it).

Loyalists like to pretend (a) that NI has experienced substantial immigration. and (b) that this is a problem, since this assists them in identifying with the British hard right, who they admire and wish to be like. But the reality is otherwise.