Comments by "80s Music" (@eightiesmusic1984) on "Sinn Fein becomes largest party in Northern Ireland after historic win" video.

It is Lloyd George's fault that the Anglo Irish Treaty 1921 was signed, after he threatened to restart the war against the Irish Nationalists. Atrocities were committed on both sides and violence solves nothing but the British establishment created a settlement that resulted in a civil war and set the stage for the Troubles of the 1960s- 1990s. Lloyd George was privately sympathetic to the nationalist cause but the minimum the Conservative and Unionist Party ( still its official name, which they reverted to for expediency in the referendum over Scottish independence in 2014) would accept was the six counties remaining part of the United Kingdom, hence partition. LG was a Prime Minister without a party at the head of a coalition dominated by the Conservatives, having split his own Liberal Party ( again at the behest of the Conservatives) in 1916 when he replaced Asquith as Prime Minister. Time and again, the Conservatives have been on the wrong side of history yet it is an abiding mystery why they have been allowed by working people to subjugate them in every conceivable manner for over 120 years largely uninterrupted. A united Ireland is inevitable and I hope all sides can live in peace and build a future together.
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@colloquialsoliloquy6391 Two wrongs do not make a right. Some would cite the saying that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, although it is not something I am endorsing in these remarks. The oppression of the British state was unacceptable for certain, and the actions of the Black and Tans were condemned by the Liberal and Labour parties. Asquith compared the actions of the British state to despots elsewhere. The Conservatives wanted Ireland to remain in the empire ideally and approved of the repression as long as they thought they were going to have their way. The ceasefire of July 1921 changed the dynamic and LG outmanoeuvred Collins and Griffiths in the talks in London. De Valera sent Collins because he knew he could not return with a deal for independence and the British would insist on the oath of allegiance to the Crown. That is why de Valera did not go himself.
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