Why the north outside EU changes everything for the island

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

I talk to northerners (many converted to a United Ireland suddenly, not all) regularly and the theme is clear and simple enough:

They are an afterthought in the UK - they get the scraps, but in the EU they got more and more funding and it gave them at least a feeling of being more central and worthy.

Now they face being a backwater within a small to medium sized country outside the EU. A country that will have more of a little Englander tinge to it than possibly ever before. They won't get the same funding and even in the EU they get sweet fcuk all from the UK government beyond what sustains the 6 counties at the minimum.

What will it be like when the EU is no longer there?

I feel we are at the crossroads now where northerners and soft unionists are genuinely pondering for the first time that staying in a UK outside the EU is not in their economic or social interest.

And just wait till farmers lose their EU subsidies in 2022 :eek:

Well, for some of them it appears to dawn that the DUP is the most backwards party in NI but still they don't seem to get rid of them which would be essential for any progress. let alone a UI.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Fr_Dougal wrote: »

Yes, before Sean Lemass.

Before Sean Lemass changed his policies in 1959, I think you mean.  He first entered government in 1932 as Minister for Industry and Commerce, and at that time and for long afterwards he was closely associated with de Valera's vision of economic autonomy, self-sufficiency, tariff barriers, and an economy dominated by state-owned effective monopolies.  

To be fair to Lemass, he recognised from the early 1950s that this wasn't working and a change was needed, but couldn't persuade de Valera.  It wasn't until Dev decided to leave government and go to the Park that Lemass could actually implement a new policy.  

But, yes, this was the turning point.  Since the late 1950s, the economic performance of the Republic has consistently outperformed that of Northern Ireland.  I'm not sure at what point we might say that the Republic caught up with, and then overtook, NI; I think the answer probably depend on which measurement you use - Gross domestic product?  Household income?  Something else?  But, whatever measurement you pick, the answer is likely to be that the Republic overtook NI some decades ago, and is now ahead by a wide margin.

If one wasn't a member of the clergy (I think he preferred the opinions of Bishops) it was all efforts taken in vain to persuade Dev of anything that didn't get the approval by the representatives of the RCC in Ireland. I always think that it certainly had been better if Dev didn't abandon his path to become a priest himself in his youth. That is because deep down in his heart and thinking, he was always a clergy man.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Thomas_IV wrote: »

If one wasn't a member of the clergy (I think he preferred the opinions of Bishops) it was all efforts taken in vain to persuade Dev of anything that didn't get the approval by the representatives of the RCC in Ireland. I always think that it certainly had been better if Dev didn't abandon his path to become a priest himself in his youth. That is because deep down in his heart and thinking, he was always a clergy man.

A lot of Dev's errors can be ascribed to his fondness for clerical thinkers but, in fairness, I don't think we can ascribe his economic vision to this.  His fondness for economic independence, self-sufficiency, tariff barriers, etc would have been absolutely standard in the nationalist and anti-colonial circles in which he came to political maturity, not just in Ireland but also elsewhere.  And in the 1920s it was pretty much the dominant economic thinking.  

This didn't start to change until the 1930s, when the contribution it had made to worsening the Great Depression began to be recognised.  And this change didn't really begin to influence government policies in other countries until the postwar settlement of the late 1940s.  

Dev didn't join in this shift in intellectual opinion on economic matters but not, I think, because of clerical influence - econcomic policy generally wasn't a big deal for clerical thinkers, so long as you steered clear of communism.  They were fine with free trade, globalisation, Keynesian fiscal policy, etc, if that was your thing.  If Dev had been open to these influences, there would have been few clerical voices to discourage him and, when Lemass did adopt them, there was no clerical resistance (as there was on social matters at the time, e.g. the Mother and Child Scheme).  

Ronan Fanning suggests that Dev's late political career was dominated by the desire to defend and vindicate the choices he made in his earlier political career.  This made it very difficult for him to change his mind about anything.  Having grown up with the idea that true national independence required economic autonomy, it was simply very difficult for him to let go of that idea.

Some very interesting points in your post. Well, I admit that I am very biased in my view on Dev and that is because there isn't any other politician in Irish history of the 20th C. that I so much dislike as him. That is for various reasons, of which the two main reasons are that he was hesitating to play his porper part in the 1916 Rising and thus letting down the others. Whether in hindsight he did the right thing to spare the lives of the Volunteers under his command is a matter I see myself to have some difficulties with because it is questionable whether it had helped the cause had he sent them in as reinforcements when needed. The second one is that just around six years later when he and his followers split on the Anglo-Irish-Treaty, he became the figurehead of the Anti-Treatyits and although there were much more hardliners supporting the fight for a Republic against the provisional government of the Irish Free State (to just mention Cathal Brugha) he did quite the opposite and some say that he might had had enough influence on the hardliners to stop the Civil War which has cost more lives of Irish people than in the years of the War of Independence and the Black & Tans Terror put together.

You know, in the end of it, anogher ten years later when the Civil War has commenced, in 1932 he was elected to form a government of his own with his founded FF Party. What followed was an economic war with the UK which didn't work well for Ireland because unemployment was on a high scale, that of course also due to the Depression from 1929 onwards, but the hight of that economic war with the UK was in 1938. At a time when those who didn't look with blinkers at what was unfolding in the centre of Europe by Hitler's Regime the upcoming war had led its shadow ahead.

The perception and the picture of Dev's economy for Ireland was more of a rural nature, a small economy, rather ignoring the industrial developments abroad. This is where Dev and Lemass differ considerably in their thinking and their visions. To add something in which they also differed is that the RCC in Ireland knew who's rather on their side and who's not. Lemass was well known for his disaffection to the Church (to put it that way). Therefore when he succeeded Dev in 1959, Lemass had more of a free hand to bring on his reformation plans as Taoiseach, while Dev was President. It is well known that both, Dev and Lemass were on the Anti-Treaty side in 1922 to 1924 but no one is so much associated with them as their leading figure like Dev is. I know that this was some thing which troubled him very often later in life. I think that the estimations of Dev by others in all the periods of his life and political career wrong. He wasn't often the courageous leader himself, he was more the administrator implementing the way of politics and policies on the pressure of the hardliners in the 1920s and later by the authority give to him by his old comerades as leader of FF. Where Dev was too much 'conservative' and anti-progressive, Lemass was quite the opposite and that in many various ways.

With the killing of Michael Collins on 22nd August 1922, the Pro-Treaty side and Ireland as a whole lost a leader which was never replaced on an equal scale. What followed after the Civil War was the hard work of consolidating the new Irish State and Dev, who always opposed it until 1932 when he re-joined politics took over after this consolidation has been achieved. He was enough duty bound in his senses to follow the path laid out to him by W.T. Cosgrave which government had to deal with the damages the Civil War has caused and also the still real threat of the IRA which was not ceased her Anti-Treaty attitude.

I admit also that I am more a man of the Big Fellow. I have read more books about Michael Collins than about any other Irish Person in history. Lemass is among those others who have my admiration too. Characters of that nature do more apply to my own character and that might be the reason for my sense of admiration although I don't condone everything they did in their livetime but given the circumstances in which they lived, the choices they took were no easy ones to take. But they both emerged as the progressive powers in modern Irish history, the characters Ireland needed to become her own Nation once again, even for the price of partition.

I have highlighted the passages in your quoted post on which I agree with you in general. How much influence Dev was willing to give to the clergy in many aspects is debatable and for getting a more precise picture (if that can be obtained anyway) one would had to know more than is published in literature about him. I could go on with this topic but I think that I have written enough already. To continue with this would mean to go beyond the topic of this thread.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Thomas_IV wrote: »

Some very interesting points in your post. Well, I admit that I am very biased in my view on Dev and that is because there isn't any other politician in Irish history of the 20th C. that I so much dislike as him . . .

Let me introduce you to Charlie Haughey, so.

I know the man and I know how controversial his perception and judgement among Irish people is. Like many politicians, he had his faults, his alleged corruption didn't lead to conviction. His moral compass was - let me put it that way - 'not quite good adjusted - and worked not always well. He was a man who didn't give much on ideologies (if that is to believe and I think that it is in regards of the way he handled things, apart from being a Republican which was indeed his ideology). He was partly progressive, but partly too much 'the Boss'. His legacy remains controversial and I think that it will remain so.

I know that not everything Dev did was bad. The 1937 Irish constitution that abolished the oath to the King of the UK was something where he grabbed the chance during the abdication crisis of King Edward VIII. Eleven years later the Republic of Ireland bill which was placed right in time when the UK had a Labour govt under Attlee and India, the crown jewel of the BE, was released into Independence in 1948. There were three stepping Stones towards Irish Independence. As one can hardly take the Easter Rising of 1916 as the first, but more as the ignition momentum that triggered further developments, the Anglo-Irish-Treaty was the first, the 1937 Constitution the second, the 1948 Irish Republic Bill the third by which Ireland was leaving the CoN, which came into effect on 18th April 1949. Although Dev wasn't in power in 1949 when the implementation of that bill took place, he was part of working on it and bringing it on the way.

I just mention this that I also recognise the good things one has done beyond my own sympathies and antipathies. I am not quite that settled in regards of Haughey, I rather remain neutral to this man and his legacy.

The real scapegoat in the whole history of FF is imo Brian Cowen who had to take up the pieces of the failings of his predecessors. Enda Kenny did his bit to bring Ireland back on track, but as often, many people are never satisfied with their political leaders at the helm of the state, so Kenny got the blame for many things, even those he wasn't responsible for in the first place cos he wasn't the one who created the mess.

The present Taoiseach isn't quite that long in office yet as to talk about achievements and failures. I think that he'll be judged in future depending on the result of the Brexit negotiations in regards of protecting the interests of the Republic of Ireland within the EU but one shouldn't just have the focus on him alone. The frame in which the Irish Taoiseach can act within the EU is limited because the other EU member states have their say in any agreement with Brexit UK (if there will be one at all). That is a matter of fact one shouldn't overlook any time. The least I can say is that I wish him good luck in all that cos that border issue with NI is a very tricky and sensitive matter.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

A hard brexit means it's inevitable Scotland will quit the UK within a couple of years, leaving NI even more isolated.

Then the Tory right will start questioning why they are spending £10bn a year on "ungrateful Paddies".

Unionists might even fancy the idea of a union with Scotland, back inside the EU...

They can fancy what they ever dream of, but the reality in a post-Brexit UK will be a broken Union with an Independent Scotland and NI left with no other rational choice as to agree on unification with the Republic of Ireland. It is the only and also natural choice to take cos NI cannot sustain itself economically and financially. Scotland doesn't want them as this would be just some burden to overload herself with in the period of consolidating their Independence and apply for EU Membership.

Deleted User wrote: »

Thomas_IV wrote: »

If one wasn't a member of the clergy (I think he preferred the opinions of Bishops) it was all efforts taken in vain to persuade Dev of anything that didn't get the approval by the representatives of the RCC in Ireland.

This is ahistorical drivel, albeit popular among people on Boards.ie who enjoy all that right-on ahistorical drivel where de Valera is equivalent to the Great Satan.

Well, I regard your response as the same drivel cos you clearly misinterpreted my post, but it doesn't matter at all, cos these were your words, not mine. I never made such a comparison like it is stated in your misinterpretation.