Political Crossfire Forums

[BLHutch]

thundertaker wrote:
Did you try spouting off about the 'glorious IRA?'

No. I was a guest in the country and consequently had no business entering into any political discussions. I have feelings on the issue of partition, naturally, but since I do not live there, it is not my place to spout off anything, especially not while I was a guest.

Brady

[Seabird]

Quote: Sounds like Clarity is suffering from the numerous losses Britain has suffered after trying to forcefully impose a British government on an unwilling people. Ireland and the United States are the most extreme of the examples, but let's not forget India, Hong Kong, etc.

If a state, for example California, wanted to separate from the United States they have a legal way to do it. As has been stated 3/4 approval from the remaining 49 states. This was a part of the American Constitution that was agreed upon by the original 13 states. Any state that wished entrance to the republic needed to agree to the terms within the constitution. They did, and are thus bound. Had they not wished to agree to the Constitution, they would have not been allowed admittance to the republic.

Ireland, on the other hand, never came to Britain and asked for admittance to the UK. They were being forcibly assimilated against their will.

Sorry, Clarity, your comparison is not a logical one.

Bravo, take your bow for an excellent post.

[Erin]

Daily Ireland
Danny Morrison
12-04-2006

By any objective standards there was more cause for an armed struggle in the North post-1969 than there was for the 1916 Rising.

For if 1916 was about the denial of freedom and British misrule in Ireland, the armed struggle in the North was about the denial of the same freedom and a more egregious form of British misrule in the form of partition with its ‘Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’.

In Ireland’s major cities in the early part of the twentieth century there was extreme poverty and high unemployment. There had been two deaths in baton charges during the Dublin lock-out in 1913, which preceded and helped define the radical nature of the Proclamation. There had been three deaths at the hands of the British army after the Irish Volunteers’ Howth gun-running incident in July 1914. By 1916 it was obvious to the prescient that Home Rule – as proposed in the suspended statute – had been thwarted by the Unionist/Conservative threat of violence, but that a dramatic, violent assertion of Irish independence might inspire and embolden the general population (or, at a minimum, strengthen Ireland’s demands in post-war negotiations).

But compare the conditions in 1916 to the conditions which nationalists suffered: fifty years of humiliation; the physical persecution of any outward expression of their identity; discrimination in housing, employment and investment; its minority position entrenched; a people denied access to government or power to change government; deaths at the hands of the RUC, B-Specials, loyalists and the British army long before the IRA re-organised and launched its armed struggle.

To justify or to sympathise or, at the minimum, to understand, 1916, is to justify, sympathise or understand the IRA’s armed struggle in the North. It is inescapable, regardless of what casuistry is employed to argue otherwise.

The founders of Fianna Fail trace their lineage back to those who resisted and fought against the Treaty in the civil war, to those who waged guerrilla war for independence, to those who occupied the GPO and declared a Republic.

Let’s put it in starker terms.

Say Cumainn na nGaedheal, which was formed in 1923 from the pro-Treaty element of Sinn Fein and which took power as Free Staters, had remained in power for fifty years with the support of the British government. That during those years it financially, economically and politically discriminated against and gerrymandered those areas which supported Fianna Fail. That the police force, comprised only of its supporters, oppressed Fianna Fail supporters, batoned them off the streets, killed some of them when they demanded their rights and burnt thousands of them out of their homes, before killing more of them at barricades or at street protests. Wouldn’t Fianna Fail and its grassroots have a sympathetic view of a physical-force struggle against single-party rule, and the British army coming in to defend that rule? Of course, they would.

And so, republicans welcome the decision by the Dublin government and establishment to celebrate and commemorate the Rising.

Yeats worried: “Did that play of mine send out /Certain men the English shot?”

Dublin worries, “Does this commemoration of ours/Justify the men who shot the English?”

The answer is, yes, it does. But no one, not the IRA, not Sinn Fein, not Fianna Fail or any party or organisation owns the Rising or its legacy.

Celebrating it, however, triggers certain imperatives, primarily an examination of the malignity of British rule in Ireland, the divisions it caused between brothers and sisters, families, communities, political parties. It should encourage a revision of what really happened to the North and an analysis of the forces at play. It can only lead to conclusions which will not harm but explain the Republican Movement, its motivation, its history, and how it survived and thrived.

It is a debate which frightens the major political parties in the twenty-six counties, in the same way as they fear the truth about collusion emerging which would trigger other imperatives – that is, dealing with the reality of British government involvement in bombings and assassinations and probable infiltration of the state itself.

Such discomfiting truths would leave the populace more open to understanding and sympathising with republicans on the issue of the North. Such truths could impact on contemporary politics to the advantage of Sinn Fein. And so such truths must be avoided, must be minimised, hidden, denied or distorted.

The ‘defence’ of the Republic declared from the steps of the GPO, or the re-establishment of that Republic, and the quest for a united Ireland all became synonymous, was taken as a given as the ultimate solution to Ireland’s English problem.

There is a maxim by a famous German Field Marshal that, ‘No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.’ Well, that political plan of reunification has survived contact with ‘the enemy’s’ propaganda, with the arguments of unionism and Free Statism.

Were the dream pursued just for the sake of sentimentality it would be madness and pointless. But a united Ireland would make social and economic sense. The successes of the Celtic Tiger have reduced unionists to the argument of opposing it solely on political/cultural grounds. Within my lifetime a united Ireland is unlikely to be configured as a unitary state, but united it will become and it will be a better place than a land disfigured by British rule.

www.dailyireland.ie


Honour Ireland's Fallen Patriots

Wear an Easter Lily

[mendosan]

Irish should be free to rule over themselves silly thread really home althought most of in England are in some way related to the Irish, Irish born in england outstriped Irishborn in Ireland from the C18th till he end of the 1970s which is funny.

[The Séamus]

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Im just shocked someone would imply such an idea after all of the years of bloodshed......