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),
Oh, I'll happily concede that!
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.
It would be chauvinistic to assume that there was no such thing as an Irish culture, but likewise to assume that there was no such thing as an Ulster culture or a Leinster culture or a Dublin culture or even a Trinity College culture. British culture likewise is a composite of English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh cultures, each of which are themselves composites of many different regional cultures.
In the end, one cannot arbitrarily put a value or weight on any particular culture without illustrating some kind of bias. For example, Spartanlemur might see my omission of Cornish culture in the above sentence as evidence of bias, and he'd be right to. Likewise one may see the inclusion of Cornish culture as evidence of a different kind of bias. Hence, if one is to argue objectively, one has to avoid any notion of "Well, so and so has the right to secede because of their culture but not such and such, because their culture isn't as
strong or as
prominent. In other words, you have to ignore cultural considerations altogether.
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?
Given the fact that the Liberal Party had in effect fought a political civil war over the issue of Home Rule for thirty years, had tried no fewer than three times to implement the Irish Parliament which their longtime coalition partners (the IPP) advocated, only to have each proposal scuppered by the Tories in the Lords, until finally succeeding to pass a Home Rule bill after the neutering of the Lords in 1912 which would have been phased in by November 1914 were it not for the Great War? No. I genuinely believe that just as an Irish Parliament was possible through the post-1912 constitutional framework, achieving Irish independence was also possible through the post-1912 constitutional framework. I have already stated (but will happily state again if I wasn't entirely clear) that I can totally understand why some people in Ireland may not have thought so back in 1916 and why they chose to resort to resort to extra-parliamentary action. This does not mean for a second that I believe that extra-parliamentary action was the optimal way of handling Irish nationalism, which is the question asked in this thread. Understanding why some Irish nationalists may have been impatient with British promises of Home Rule is not the same as accepting that violence was the optimal way of achieving Irish independence.
Also, how would you have viewed France keeping the parts of Algeria with large French populations in the 60s?
If I recall correctly, Algeria had an
actual referendum on the issue, as Norway did.
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.
I'm merely taking that argument to its logical conclusion. I think mentioning Fascist or Marxist-held councils is more realistic than mentioning Marxist or Fascist-held constituencies, but the argument applies to the latter also. For instance, if a hypothetical Welsh Fascist Party won the majority of seats in Wales, would said party have the moral right to persecute non-Welshmen in Wales?
Wait, Tanzhang. Are you saying 1918 was a referendum, or it wasn't one? I'm getting mixed signals here.
That it absolutely, positively wasn't one, and that it's frankly silly to think that it was.
But how can you just ignore the fact that most Irish people voted for a party who was explicitly pro-independence in a situation when independence was the only issue (no one in the UK would seriously have denied that)? Tanzhang just for one moment could you stop with the legal approach and admit that the overwhelming SF was a very good indication of a general will for independence in Ireland?
I do not believe that simply voting for a separatist party gives a certain region carte blance to unilaterally declare independence. If I believed that then I'd also have to believe that Ian Smith was completely justified in his UDI, for instance. I don't, so I don't.
If the majority of the people desires for socialism, then why not ?
So in your view everything Hitler did was justified because "the people desired it"? Opposing Hitler makes you a fascist now, does it?
