saabsaab wrote: » A UI will involve change Ireland politically an extra 2 million people will change the balance of power. A new anthem a new flag and a new capital are a small price to pay. Anyway it won't be them up there joining us it will be a new start. Not that it related to a UI but any new commemoration should make it clear from the start that illegal and outageous acts by British forces are not being forgotten or in any way being commemorated.
Jimmy Garlic wrote: » A new capital? I propose Dundalk.
Hamsterchops wrote: » Varadkar is totally right, if Nationalists & Republicans really WANT a United Ireland, then commemorations must be balanced. If the brutality & death of the actions of Rebels can be commemorated, then surely the police force can also be commemorated, otherwise why would Unionists be even slightly interested in Uniting with a State that dismisses them & their history outright. Unionists biggest fear is the takeover of Northern Ireland, both geographically & culturally, with their British identity & history being rewritten in favour of the Irish Nationalist/Republican version.... Therefore we commemorate & celebrate the Rebels & "the old IRA" whilst stamping on the RIC & the DMP. I guess Unionists might forsee the same fate in a hundred years time for the memory of the RUC as the bad guys, with the Provisional IRA being commemorated & celebrated as the good guys and the saviours of the natives! A every unpleasant prospect for Unionists, indeed a very scary prospect for all of us if the Provo memory is to be celebrated (which is what SF is desperately working towards). Going forward, commemorations both Irish & British need to be balanced.
Matt Barrett wrote: » . Why should I honour the Black and Tans to what, 'prove' that? You are mixing up a lot of things here. Commemorating the Black and Tans has as much to do with Morris Dancing as it does the 'old' IRA, SF or the DUP for that matter. Let me know if the British government decide to commemorate IRA Michael Collins et. all.
crossman47 wrote: » The intention was never to honour anyone and certainly not the Black and Tans. The RIC was composed of good Irishmen and they should be commemmerated if we are serious about inclusivity. People are citing the Black and Tans in order to create a row.
Plumbthedepths wrote: » You'd almost think the RIC was some glorious decent organisation....https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/analysis/padraig-og-o-ruairc-ric-legacy-burns-a-century-on-974105.html
ReginaldSmythV wrote: » No, this is Ireland. We should commemorate our own and not our enemies. Let them commemorate their own.
markodaly wrote: » Exactly the point I and Leo made about a UI. We are utterly deluded if we can pass or make a UI work if we cannot even get a simple commemoration of the RIC/DMP right. A UI is not taking over the 6 counties, telling Unionists to get ****ed and business goes on as usual for us in 'Ireland'. We are simply not ready for it yet, and the last few days has shone a light on this. Moderate Unionists who are needed to pass any border poll will be rightly running scared. I see a situation where the status quo will be fine for decades and decades to come.
MrMusician18 wrote: » As I've said before, this is often stated as some sort of truism without any form of supporting evidence. As the unification referendum is by simply majority, it will not be necessary for the state to pander to unionists. They like unionists in the free state in 1922 will just have to adapt to the new reality.
FrancieBrady wrote: » Minister Flanagan cited the record of the Black and Tans in his press releases. Why are people continually trying to separate them out here? People who applied to join the B&T's did so knowing they would be as the advertisments put it 'a PART of the best policeforce in the world'. Stop with mistruths, it isn't helping.
FrancieBrady wrote: » Partitionists do not get to decide whether 'we are ready for a UI or not'. Nor does Leo and neither do Unionists or Republicans. The people will decide that under the aegis of an already agreed deal.
markodaly wrote: » Ah, you have finally come around to my thinking on a deal, before the vote Francie. It will be that 'deal' that will decide it, as well as moderate Unionists and middle-class Catholics in NI. I am looking forward to having an official state commemoration of the rising, along with the Ulster Covenant and Battle of the Boyne among others...
crossman47 wrote: » The RIC existed as a decent force for decades before the Tans came. You shouldn't distort the issue either. The RIC was composed of decent Irishmen doing a necessary job but, of course, 1916 changed everything.
saabsaab wrote: » Commemoration or not it is a totally separate issue and won't make any difference to a UI. As for pandering to anyone all will have to adapt to the new reality the new Dail will have a very different shape.
Fann Linn wrote: » There is a link on the previous page describing the RIC from their inception up until the War of Independence. It is written by a professor of history and should take no more than 5 minutes to read. Please read it and come back here and say that they existed as a decent force prior to and after 1916.
pjohnson wrote: » But is that the FG version of history or reality?
Zebra3 wrote: » Like when they were evicting starving people from their homes during the British genocide in Ireland?
saabsaab wrote: » Although technically part of the RIC like it or not they were separate and were seen as such.. 'John Duffy, an RIC member, recalled that “it was a common practice for them, when they went out the country in their lorries, to shoot down fowl and other poultry, the property of poor people, and bring them back to the mess where some of them were cooked for their own use and those that were not required were dispatched to their families in England’. Many in the RIC strongly resented the coming of the Black and Tans, whom they regarded as morally and professionally reprehensible – “they’d have shot their mother”, according to one witness – and reactions to them can be traced through the Bureau of Military History statements taken in the 1940s and 1950s. Jeremiah Mee, instigator of a mutiny within the Listowel RIC against the taking over of their barracks by the British military, explained the sentiments behind the mutiny: “When we joined the police force, we joined with characters second to none and we refused to co-operate or work in any capacity with the British military, men of low moral character who frequented bad houses, kept the company of prostitutes and generally were unsuitable and undesirable characters”. John Flannery, one of the participants in the Mutiny of the Connaught Rangers in India in 1920, when a company of the Rangers stationed at Jullundur on the plains of the Punjab refused to perform their military duties as a protest against British military activity in Ireland, insisted that the mutineers’ action was prompted by the treatment of their mothers and sisters by the Black and Tans. The mutineers’ spokesman “put it to the general if it was a fitting reward for the sacrifices that thousands of Irishmen had made on many fronts throughout the Great War and to these men on parade who came through this great ordeal, to return home and learn that our own fellow countrymen and women were being shot down by the orders of the British government”. Such was the cementing of the notorious reputation of the force that the war of independence was often referred to as “the Tan war”.
saabsaab wrote: » Although technically part of the RIC like it or not they were separate and were seen as such..
suicide_circus wrote: » One day perhaps the concept of Irishness will stop being defined by '800 years!' but today is not that day.
Fann Linn wrote: » At last you agree. They were part of the RIC.
FrancieBrady wrote: » And who defined it in that context? Youse are trying hard...I'll give you that.
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