Comments by "Taint ABird" (@taintabird23) on "The Guardian"
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'What I find fascinating is the fact that Sothern Ireland considers itself to be a country.'
What I find fascinating is the fact that you think there is a country called Southern Ireland. There is a country called Ireland, which is a Republic, and it fits the description of 'a country' better than the peculiar constitutional arrangement that is the UK, as you will see
'Having thrown off the yoke of British Imperialism it has given up it's Soverignty to the European state.'
Ireland has not 'given up its sovereignty to the EU state'. In the context of the recent 1916 centenary commemorations, it is wryly amusing that the British seem to think that they alone value the importance of sovereignty. For us in Ireland our hard-won freedom and sovereignty are things to be shared judiciously and to be deployed intelligently rather than jealously horded away in a tower. It means, for example, that we are NOT forced out of the EU because of the insecurities of the English.
'In fact there is a reasonable argument that the average Irish citizen would have a greater say in his or her destiny if they were now part of the UK.'
What a prize gobshite you are. There is precisely no argument that Irish people would have a greater say in his or her destiny if they were now part of the UK - you only have to look at Scotland and NI to see that. Both are leaving because of 15.1 million insecure English people. We Irish look across the Irish Sea at a partial democracy with theocratic leanings: an unelected Head of State who is the Head of the Church of England, an archaic undemocratic First Past the Post electoral system, an unelected House of Lords with seats for Bishops (!) in it, no regional assembly for the English, no written Constitution that anybody ever voted on and where Parliament and not the People are sovereign. You have a public school system that produces your political class and maintains the existing feudal system. This is the UK the Irish left a century ago...
'I wonder what those early heroes in the struggle for independence would think of Irelands position now.'
Let me enlighten you. It was a rebel of 1916 who signed Ireland accession documents in 1962. That man was Seán Lemass, who fought in the 1916 Rising, took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War, built the Fianna Fáil Party and could never be thought of as anything other than an Irish nationalist. He was speaking in Brussels in January 1962 on Ireland’s hopes of joining what was then the European Economic Community when he said this:
“Ireland belongs to Europe by history, tradition and sentiment no less than by geography. Our destiny is bound up with that of Europe . . . Our people have always tended to look to Europe for inspiration, guidance and encouragement”.
He stressed that he fully understood that Ireland was seeking to be part of a project that was about much more than economics and that he spoke “in full awareness” of the EEC’s underlying aim of “ever-closer union”.
Apparently, the Irish were aware of this but the British claim they were unaware of it, even though they tried to join the EEC at the same time.
Please accept these lines as a response to your arrogance and deeply rooted ignorance.
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It is national exceptionalism, a kind of primitive form of nationalism.
Nobody re-writes history - history is all about perspectives.
I'm Irish. For the Irish, the experience of British rule was largely a negative one, same for the Indians. For the British, their empire was a great thing, nicer than other empires, and the world was a better place when the English were telling everybody else what to do.
Different perspectives.
Nationalism is normal, and moderate nationalism is a good thing. It becomes problematic when you start to see your nation in exceptional terms. This exceptionalism, fueled in part by a failure to come to terms with the complexities of an imperial past, has contributed to the hubris behind Brexit.
In short, Brexit is an example of a people (the English) experiencing an national identity crisis, with its own logic and politics of self-pity and oppression.
In this case, the oppression is imagined.
That seems to be how others see it.
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'I have no idea whether Ireland was overall better or worse under British rule - I wasn't there. You weren't either.'
Not a problem, I'm a historian and read widely. I take it you don't as you are not comfortable with it.
'Some people in Ireland supported independence, some didn't and so many views.'
In 1921 when Ireland became independent it was because most people supported the idea. How else could it have happened? In 7 years Ireland went from being a country that wanted devolution like you have in Holyrood today, to seeking full independence outside the Empire. People were fed up of a government in another country standing in the way of the democratic wishes of the majority in Ireland.
'I'm from scotland - low land scotland. We have a nationalist government. They want to make us believe that Gaelic was our national language.'
I was unaware of that development.
Perhaps an independent Scotland will have both as national languages, just like Ireland. I understand though that Lowland Scotland was anglicised early and quickly spoke Lallans, I think you call it. Forcing the language on people who don't want to speak it won't work.
In any case, nationalism is more than just language: it is about how a group of people view their place in the world, their values, their cultural expression and the symbols of identity that mark them out.
It can also be about being from a particular place - though Irish nationalism has evolved away from being about the national territory and more about the people. It is quite different from the nationalism that underpins Brexit in that respect.
In that context, I I have a question.
You are a Scot, but you are clearly not a Scottish nationalist.
What makes YOU Scottish? And why are you not a nationalist?
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All nationalism is based on a romantic notion of how we see ourselves a Nation – the Nation being a collection of people who share the same cultural values and identify as being part of that group - whether moderate or advanced nationalists.
The difference between the moderates and the advanced nationalists are usually the methods and strategies favoured to achieve nationhood or to maintain or express it.
Scottish nationalism, like Irish nationalism, seems to be very comfortable with itself and has the capacity to integrate others. In that respect, I feel that multi-culturalism will be less of an issue in Scotland than it is in England.
There was no mandate for the 1916 Rising, but the failure to implement Home Rule because of the war, and the endless concessions to unionists made by the Irish Party to have it implemented, left a vacuum that was gradually filled by Sinn Fein.
The vote for Irish Independence is generally taken to be the 1918 general election. Sinn Fein won 47% of the seats with an expectation that Ireland would negotiate its independence from the UK and the Empire – something it is hard to believe the British establishment could ever have tolerated.
Unionists only won about 25% of the vote, while the previously dominant moderates, the Irish Party, won about the same percentage, but with fewer seats than unionists.
It was arguably the most democratic election ever held in Ireland up to that point, with women and certain classes of men voting for the first time. However, the first past the post system is a less democratic voting system than the single transferrable vote used in Ireland today.
The war of independence came afterwards, but it was clear that the majority of people in Ireland had voted for Independence from Britain as this was Sinn Feins agenda.
The IRA started the war of independence without any mandate and perhaps about 3000 died. But support for the military campaign came quickly as the Crown Forces alienated the population further with their reprisals and atrocities.
While the Irish War of Independence did not have a democratic mandate, it is also the case that it came about because of the democratic deficit in the country - the failure to implement Home Rule.
Also the government's determination to partition the country and not to respect the democratic will of the majority was a significant contribution alongside the attempt to force conscription on a population that was against it in 1918.
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@ Jonathan E
'In that regards, how does she resolve the contradiction between unified decision making on the island with the shared/diluted decision making as part of the EU.'
Personally, I don't see any problem with this. I don't believe Irish people see any contradiction in this scenario - this binary notion of nationalism behind Brexit is outdated in Ireland. Problems within the EU are problems for all the members and it is likely now that reform will follow in the coming years. This is because of Brexit, the migration issue and because we are close to the limits of deeper EU integration.
''All are aware that the GFA does not commit the UK and ROI are part of the EU political union. She must also be aware of the strange situation where she, as a republican who supports the separation of NI from the UK political union, whilst proposing the NI rejoin a different political union (the EU).'
Sinn Féin were a euroskeptic party on the island of Ireland until after the Second Lisbon referendum when it finally accepted that if it were to be make any a progress in the Republic, it would need to change its attitude towards the European Union.
Irish Nationalism sees no comparison between membership of the UK and the EU - they are quite different in the Irish experience. Irish Nationalism is a much broader church than it was 50 or 60 years ago and many of the English nationalist rhetorical arguments for leaving the EU simply don't wash in Ireland. Irish nationalism has evolved to a point where it is no possible to Irish and European, in the same way as it is possible to be Irish and British, Irish and Protestant, Irish and gay, or Irish and Black. We understand in Ireland that the EU is not replacing our identity with a European identity, it is asking us to add a common EU identity to our distinct national identity. In that context - and SF were slow to cop on to this - there is no difficulty for Irish nationalism and a United, shared Ireland, to be part of European Union. After all, a new united Ireland who have its Britishness and its Irishness side-by-side too.
'The UK is attempting what the Republicans called for themselves (except the UK are attempting it with a clear mandate)...separation from a rejected political union. I would have thought the Irish would understand that instinctively.'
The Irish know the limitations of 'independence', but apparently the British, or should I say the English, don't feel the Irish experience is worthy of consideration. You really think the UK is leaving the EU with a clear mandate? What was that mandate? And where is the evidence of it?
Indeed, the referendum has highlighted the crisis in the UK Demos: both the Scots and Northern Irish must leave the EU because of what is clearly seen outside the UK bubble as a crisis in the heart of English identity and English nationalism. England is behind Brexit - and yet English nationalism still cannot admit that England is its own country, and still conceals itself behind 'Britishness'. This is what we see from an Irish perspective, in no small part because of our history with English nationalism as part of the UK.
Irish nationalism was and is coherent. What is coherent about the English nationalism underpinning the UKs departure from the EU?
Brexit is utterly fascinating to watch, it is a pity there is so much at stake.
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