Optimum handling of Irish nationalism

[Gordy]

By this standard there has never been a consensus on any political issue ever.

To be honest, there almost never has been a political consensus ever. But it is certainly the case that Ireland in 1916-22 was not Scotland in 2013-4. The only way that there was any kind of consensus in Ireland is if you exclude Protestants from the mix as being "foreigners" and some posters have done just that.

What do you mean the Irish were British in 1918?

What other citizenship would they have held? It's like saying that the Scottish are British in 2014. Both unionists and nationalists held the same citizenship.

 

[makif130289]

If you are not even sure how Protestantism arrived in Ireland then you probably shouldn't comment at all. There are very many statements above that just make no sense at all.

So please enlighten me if my knowledge about its arrival to Ireland is wrong. I would be glad to learn something new and change my mind.

You are naive enough that you don't realise that an Irish civil war would have been inevitable if the British had done what you wanted. One happened anyway but this one would have involved the whole island. Oh and there probably would not be very many Protestants left in Ulster. But you don't seem overly concerned about them. Or at all.

Still not British business. The British didn't really care about their fellow Protestants. As i said before, they could have taken some kind of guarantee agreement from Republians. The British was strong enough to intervene in Ireland at any point. The British divided the island on the religious basis as it benefited them.

At that time modern state meant NATION-STATE and that's more or less what has been done after WWI. So, nation-state was a norm and accepted universal standard at that time. Dividing a nation on other social-cultural differences are used only because it benefited the occupying state. In the referandum of Scotland, did it matter if some region of Scotland vote in favor of independence and the other one in favor of union ? No, because Scots were accepted as a one national identity. I only support the same for Ireland. Micro-nationalist policies always created more future problems.

 

[Gordy]

Ah, but my response would be: fine, then Ulster can do what it wants, like stay with Ireland or the UK (or go independent, but noone seemingly wanted that), and rump Ireland can do what it wants, go independent without Ulster (and Trinity college?) or stay with the UK.

Which is fine but unfortunately there is a tendency to forget that the unionists north or south were and are also Irish. It's like the old adage about "true Scotsmen" - most Scots voted to stay in the UK but "true Scotsmen" voted for independence. Only this one actually became accepted as fact and thus there are now "Britons" and "Irish" and if you are British then you can't be Irish whereas historically these things were compatible.

 

[makif130289]

Doesn't Scotland kind of prove that people CAN voluntarily associate with eachother? They got the choice to secede, they chose not to, nooone was harmed.

Yes but it took 100 years to get to that point. Many nation-states were established by a bloody independence war. This is like saying Algeria should have done nothing to gain independence from France. Afterall, France-2014 would have probably given some kind of indepence referendum to Algerians.

 

[Gordy]

So please enlighten me if my knowledge about its arrival to Ireland is wrong. I would be glad to learn something new and change my mind.

Where do I start?

Christianity arrived in Ireland because a British slave called "Patrick" brought it there. So according to your logic the Irish would still be pagans if not for the British.

This Celtic church was introduced into Britain and was fairly popular until the synod of Whitby where it was decided that England (or at least Northumbria) should be a Catholic state.

Catholicism was brought to Ireland by a Norman invasion through Wales and blessed by the one and only English pope.

Protestantism arrived in Ireland via Henry VIII who had inherited his Irish lands through the Norman kings.

So whilst you are technically right in what you said, you missed out on over a thousand years of religious inter-connectedness and that's without mentioning pagan connections between the Celtic Britons and the Celtic Irish.

And lastly your conclusion about Britain wanting to retain Northern Ireland is simply wrong. The British were not giving independence to Ireland in 1922, they were giving an equivalent to dominion status. The idea was that Ireland would be like Canada and remain within the British sphere whilst governing itself. As a result, they were genuinely annoyed with the Ulster Protestants for messing things up.

And Republican guarantees were a joke. After independence the IRA went around burning down "great houses" and carrying out minor bits of ethnic cleansing. The Protestant population of the Republic of Ireland fell dramatically. The Ulster Protestants weren't going to sit around and let the same thing happen to them and thus civil war was inevitable.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

To be honest, there almost never has been a political consensus ever. But it is certainly the case that Ireland in 1916-22 was not Scotland in 2013-4. The only way that there was any kind of consensus in Ireland is if you exclude Protestants from the mix as being "foreigners" and some posters have done just that.



What other citizenship would they have held? It's like saying that the Scottish are British in 2014. Both unionists and nationalists held the same citizenship.

Indeed, that's why, broadly speaking, we allow the majority to decide on these issues. Not every Norwegian voted to leave Sweden, but if your side loses, its tough luck. That's how it works.

The Irish weren't British ever. We were part of the British Empire, that's nit the same thing. You'd hardly say the Burmese, Nigerians and Belizeans were British would you? Were the Czechs and Bosnians Austrian in 1917?

 

[Gordy]

Indeed, that's why, broadly speaking, we allow the majority to decide on these issues. Not every Norwegian voted to leave Sweden, but if your side loses, its tough luck. That's how it works.

Agreed. However no side in 1916-1922 was going to play by modern rules. If it was done today then it would be different.

The Irish weren't British ever. We were part of the British Empire, that's nit the same thing. You'd hardly say the Burmese, Nigerians and Belizeans were British would you? Were the Czechs and Bosnians Austrian in 1917?

Burma, Nigeria etc were colonies. Ireland was part of the UK.

Czechs etc were Austro-Hungarian as were Austrians.

 

[LordTempest]

Indeed, that's why, broadly speaking, we allow the majority to decide on these issues. Not every Norwegian voted to leave Sweden, but if your side loses, its tough luck. That's how it works.

The Irish weren't British ever. We were part of the British Empire, that's nit the same thing. You'd hardly say the Burmese, Nigerians and Belizeans were British would you? Were the Czechs and Bosnians Austrian in 1917?

Ralph, if you want to have a non-partisan, non-chauvinistic discussion on an issue, you can't set up arbitrary rules, boundaries and definitions on the fly. You can't say that 1918 was a referendum on Irish Independence when it wasn't, you can't say that Ireland was not a part of Britain or British when it was (that is to say, if you were living in Dublin in 1918 you'd likely be a British citizen and Ireland was not a Dominion in any sense of the word - Dominions and Colonies did not have seats at Westminster, hence the American Revolution. Ireland did.) and you can't arbitrarily state who you think is worthy of the right of self-determination and who you think is not.

I get that you're not into logical consistency, but you simply can't have a non-partisan discussion on any issue without accepting the facts as they were and arguing from the basis of logical consistency. When you distort the facts or act arbitrarily, then by definition you're arguing from a partisan standpoint, which is precisely what you've said you don't want people in this thread to do.

 

[marty99]

You can't say that 1918 was a referendum on Irish Independence when it wasn't

Ah it may as well have been. Arguing otherwise is just semantics. People weren't voting Sinn Fein on economic policy.


EDIT: I mean obviously it wasn't in the sense of the British agreeing to implement whatever the outcome was, but Ralph never suggested that they did.

 

[Avernite]

Yes but it took 100 years to get to that point. Many nation-states were established by a bloody independence war. This is like saying Algeria should have done nothing to gain independence from France. Afterall, France-2014 would have probably given some kind of indepence referendum to Algerians.

Uh, no? I am saying FRANCE should not have opposed Algerian attempts to vote for independence, because who knows, if they were nice about it the Algeria-living French coupled with more 'native' people liking the status quo might just have voted to stay with France.

Which is fine but unfortunately there is a tendency to forget that the unionists north or south were and are also Irish. It's like the old adage about "true Scotsmen" - most Scots voted to stay in the UK but "true Scotsmen" voted for independence. Only this one actually became accepted as fact and thus there are now "Britons" and "Irish" and if you are British then you can't be Irish whereas historically these things were compatible.

I don't see how this relates to my point... but anyway, so what? Irish is an arbitrary label which, unsurprisingly, got attached to the majority of the island held by the independent republic of Ireland while the British part of the island got renamed Northern Ireland (with locals being Northern Irish and British, at least in Dutch).

 

[LordTempest]

Ah it may as well have been. Arguing otherwise is just semantics. People weren't voting Sinn Fein on economic policy.

Again, it was a General Election. Sinn Fein won the most seats in Ireland, but the Coalition won the election. Not every Briton voted for the Coalition, but if your side loses, its tough luck. That's how it works.

 

[LYNCHY]

Agreed. However no side in 1916-1922 was going to play by modern rules. If it was done today then it would be different.



Burma, Nigeria etc were colonies. Ireland was part of the UK.

Czechs etc were Austro-Hungarian as were Austrians.

The Irish were not British, aren't British and never will be British

 

[LordTempest]

The Irish were not British, aren't British and never will be British

Oh my. Is that what you say at your DUP get-togethers, Lynchy?

 

[marty99]

Again, it was a General Election. Sinn Fein won the most seats in Ireland, but the Coalition won the election. Not every Briton voted for the Coalition, but if your side loses, its tough luck. That's how it works.

I don't think anyone's disputing that. I don't think Ralph said that constitutionally Sinn Fein had a right to secede, but I think he was talking more in moral and pragmatic terms. Unless you can point me to a post where he said Sinn Fein should have been given the right to form a Wesminster government?

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

Ralph, if you want to have a non-partisan, non-chauvinistic discussion on an issue, you can't set up arbitrary rules, boundaries and definitions on the fly. You can't say that 1918 was a referendum on Irish Independence when it wasn't, you can't say that Ireland was not a part of Britain or British when it was (that is to say, if you were living in Dublin in 1918 you'd likely be a British citizen and Ireland was not a Dominion in any sense of the word - Dominions and Colonies did not have seats at Westminster, hence the American Revolution. Ireland did.) and you can't arbitrarily state who you think is worthy of the right of self-determination and who you think is not.

I get that you're not into logical consistency, but you simply can't have a non-partisan discussion on any issue without accepting the facts as they were and arguing from the basis of logical consistency. When you distort the facts or act arbitrarily, then by definition you're arguing from a partisan standpoint, which is precisely what you've said you don't want people in this thread to do.

Citizenship and nationality are two different things. There is no doubt Ireland was part of the UK (not Britain, as you state, as that is a geographic impossibility), but that doesn't mean we were British people. If we had been, this entire thread wouldn't have been possible. That is not partisan at all, it's a simple statement of fact.

Gordy, when dealing with the topic of nationality I think it's not very useful to pretend that legal status of a people matter more than how they self-identify. The Czech people were part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but their nationality was demonstrably not Austrian or Hungarian.

I don't think anyone's disputing that. I don't think Ralph said that constitutionally Sinn Fein had a right to secede, but I think he was talking more in moral and pragmatic terms. Unless you can point me to a post where he said Sinn Fein should have been given the right to form a Wesminster government?

Exactly.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

Tanzhang, if you stop and try your absolute hardest to be objective, can you see how in a general sense it is very difficult to say that in that era, a nationalist movement had a moral obligation to play by the legal rules of the country it wanted to break free from? As Gordy points out, Scotland 2014 is totally incomparable to Ireland 1918. Surely you can concede that the legal framework of the British Empire could not possibly have given Ireland true self-determination in the way the UK did to Scotland earlier this year?

Also, how would you have viewed France keeping the parts of Algeria with large French populations in the 60s?

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

Which is fine but unfortunately there is a tendency to forget that the unionists north or south were and are also Irish.

Hang on - the Irish were British but the Unionists were Irish? You can't have it both ways.

 

[makif130289]

Tanzhang, if you stop and try your absolute hardest to be objective, can you see how in a general sense it is very difficult to say that in that era, a nationalist movement had a moral obligation to play by the legal rules of the country it wanted to break free from? As Gordy points out, Scotland 2014 is totally incomparable to Ireland 1918. Surely you can concede that the legal framework of the British Empire could not possibly have given Ireland true self-determination in the way the UK did to Scotland earlier this year?

Also, how would you have viewed France keeping the parts of Algeria with large French populations in the 60s?

Maybe they should have kept small enclaves within Algeria where they achieve some majority.

 

[LordTempest]

I mean obviously it wasn't in the sense of the British agreeing to implement whatever the outcome was, but Ralph never suggested that they did.

He has nevertheless suggested that they should have. The problem with this argument is that the 1918 GE wasn't a referendum. If you argue that the people of Southern Ireland had the moral right to resort to extra-parliamentary action in order to see the policies they voted for implemented, they you are in effect saying that any constituency who votes for any party has the moral right to resort extra-parliamentary action in order to see the policies they voted for implemented: Marxist councils have the moral right to forcibly seize the means of production, Fascist councils have the moral right to forcibly repatriate individuals because of their skin colour, etc.

 

[marty99]

Wait, Tanzhang. Are you saying 1918 was a referendum, or it wasn't one? I'm getting mixed signals here.

The rest of your post is nonsense. It is generally accepted in the international community that nationwide ethnicities have more rights to do things (the extent of which is up for debate) than villages or local councils.