The Political History of Northern Ireland

[red hander]

I think the fact that people can't even agree on the name of the place sums it up perfectly.

The only thing that annoyed me, is referring to Britain as the 'Mainland'. I mean, Unionist or not, get over your inferiority complex!

Yeah, and try rowing to your f**king 'mainland' in a wee boat while you're at it, see how far you get!

[charlieTully]

i thrive on my hatred of unionism and hunnery and make no apologies for it. get yourselves down to ardoyne on tuesday, all hands on deck. T.A.L

[Evil Genius]

I think the fact that people can't even agree on the name of the place sums it up perfectly.

The only thing that annoyed me, is referring to Britain as the 'Mainland'. I mean, Unionist or not, get over your inferiority complex!

Yeah, and try rowing to your f**king 'mainland' in a wee boat while you're at it, see how far you get!

Actually, people have been doing just that for thousands of years...

"The prehistoric builders of the promontory fort at Knockdhu (which means 'black hill' in Gaelic) shared a common culture and traded regularly with their neighbours across the sea in Scotland, as archaeological finds in both areas clearly indicate. Indeed, Alison Sheridan brought along photographs of a hoard of flint tools found in 1990 by a schoolboy at Campbelltown, in Argyllshire, which had been made from the high-quality Antrim flint"
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/2009/knock/knock-found.html

[delboy]

I think the fact that people can't even agree on the name of the place sums it up perfectly.

The only thing that annoyed me, is referring to Britain as the 'Mainland'. I mean, Unionist or not, get over your inferiority complex!

I think its you that has the complex, its the mainland and smaller islands of which there are many which are part of the UK but are not physically attached to it are not the mainland, easy really, hardly some conspiracy theory brought about to mildly annoy amazingly thin skinned nationalists 

[delboy]

I think the fact that people can't even agree on the name of the place sums it up perfectly.

The only thing that annoyed me, is referring to Britain as the 'Mainland'. I mean, Unionist or not, get over your inferiority complex!

Yeah, and try rowing to your f**king 'mainland' in a wee boat while you're at it, see how far you get!

I've been over to the mainland a number of times on a small rib.

[red hander]

I think the fact that people can't even agree on the name of the place sums it up perfectly.

The only thing that annoyed me, is referring to Britain as the 'Mainland'. I mean, Unionist or not, get over your inferiority complex!

Yeah, and try rowing to your f**king 'mainland' in a wee boat while you're at it, see how far you get!

Actually, people have been doing just that for thousands of years...

"The prehistoric builders of the promontory fort at Knockdhu (which means 'black hill' in Gaelic) shared a common culture and traded regularly with their neighbours across the sea in Scotland, as archaeological finds in both areas clearly indicate. Indeed, Alison Sheridan brought along photographs of a hoard of flint tools found in 1990 by a schoolboy at Campbelltown, in Argyllshire, which had been made from the high-quality Antrim flint"
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/2009/knock/knock-found.html

I'm sure these traders didn't physically 'row', but used some sort of sail ... all I said was try rowing to the 'mainland' ... you'd be banjaxed

[red hander]

I think the fact that people can't even agree on the name of the place sums it up perfectly.

The only thing that annoyed me, is referring to Britain as the 'Mainland'. I mean, Unionist or not, get over your inferiority complex!

Yeah, and try rowing to your f**king 'mainland' in a wee boat while you're at it, see how far you get!

I've been over to the mainland a number of times on a small rib.

I take it you mean an inflatable engine-powered (as opposed to oar-powered) boat rather than a particularly buoyant chest bone designed to protect the internal organs?

[Hereiam]

Run the whole lot of them into the bloody sea and let them swim back to their mainland 

[Hurler on the Bitch]

Can we change this to 'The Political History of that part of the island of Ireland still held under the undemocratic Jackboot of foreign Imperialism i.e. the Six Counties of the North Eastern part of the island that do not spend the Euro" ..

[Rossfan]

. the Six Counties of the North Eastern part of the island that do not spend the Euro" ..

They're not great at spending anything else either. 

[delboy]

I think the fact that people can't even agree on the name of the place sums it up perfectly.

The only thing that annoyed me, is referring to Britain as the 'Mainland'. I mean, Unionist or not, get over your inferiority complex!

Yeah, and try rowing to your f**king 'mainland' in a wee boat while you're at it, see how far you get!

I've been over to the mainland a number of times on a small rib.

I take it you mean an inflatable engine-powered (as opposed to oar-powered) boat rather than a particularly buoyant chest bone designed to protect the internal organs?

I do indeed mean an an inflatable engine-powered (as opposed to oar-powered) boat rather than a particularly buoyant chest bone designed to protect the internal organs.

[Harps 21]

The political history/present/future of Northern Ireland is pretty simple in actual fact.  Its status as part of the UK won't change in our lifetimes at least, for better or worse.  It will be a while before Catholics outnumber Protestants in NI, and even after that, a substantial proportion of these will be soft unionists with a small U.  Even if eventually Nationalists somehow obtain a 50%+1 majority in a referendum, we can be sure that the hard-core loyalist population will not take this lying down, and will unleash a campaign of the most violent, thuggish and sectarian barbarism, making any nascent 32 county Republic impossible to govern and putting the lives of the Northern Catholic population in general at severe risk.  The 50.1% may triumph, but what of the 49.9% left behind?

The lesson?  A United Ireland is certainly impossible in our lifetimes and in our childrens' lifetimes.  As part of the UK, we enjoy more or less all the freedoms that we could hope for in a free society.  Pretending Northern Ireland does not exist, avoiding the use of the term, and indulging in crass rhetoric such as "a United Ireland by 2016" is a blind strategy that takes no account of political realities as they really stand.

Let's face it, the SDLP and SF are sitting up in Stormont helping to administer the rule of the United Kingdom as part of a devolved government with few real competences.  With little prospect of change on the constitutional front, surely it's about time we grew up and engaged with the real left-right, liberal-conservative, Keynsian v Monetarist politics of the age.  I am of course conscious of how much easier that is to state than to inculcate.  In conclusion, the lessons that I've learned as a young GAA-playing man from the Catholic community having studied and worked abroad lead me to the conclusion that when John Hume once spoke of entering a post-Nationalist era, people like myself back then should not have mocked him so.

[Myles Na G.]

'careful, pointing out what actually happened will send the apologists and excuse brigade into overdrive as has already started !!
you could include more as in the teatment of nationalists, the oppressive antics of the establishment, the persecution enforced by ruc and b 'specials' etc.
But mention this behavious as having caused civil rights marches and you will have some fools denying that these people were looking for a solution to the regieme modeled or at least giving a nod to the wonderful south african system!
by denying this is a further insult to those killed on bloody sunday and the hundreds of thousands persecuted - let alone the hundreds of thousands more whose lives were destroyed by it...(but others still seek to say that nationalists/republicans caused more damage than the oppressors ?!!! ~)'

If they modelled NI on SA, they didn't do a very good job, did they? What happened to the NI equivalent of the Bantustans, the homelands set aside for the poor oppressed Catholics? Could've done a better job stamping out the Catholic maintained education sector - surely it was a mistake to educate and create all those Catholic teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc? And as for welfare benefits, well. As my mother used to say, if she hadn't had the Family Allowance, she wouldn't have been able to raise 9 kids. As it was, the Catholic proportion of the population rose from 33% at partition to nearly 40% at the start of the 1970's. Hardly an indicator of the oppression of hundreds of thousands, eh? Your tired old republican myths and conscience-salves are boring in the extreme.

[Farrandeelin]

I don't get Unionism at all. If they're British, they should live in Britain. The occupied 6 counties is not part of Britain.

[ardmhachaabu]

Harps21, very well said