Is it o.k. for the Irish people to attain freedom from England in the same manner as America?
They already have, did it years ago.
Oh…you mean Northern Ireland, well it’s like this, there is still a substantial percentage of the population who wish to remain British and there is a serious threat of violence, think along the lines of ethnic cleansing in the Balkan region, should they be threatened with the ‘freedom’ you imply.
Myself, I think it would be nice if everyone just got along, don’t you ?
Do you seriously think that living in Britain has any similarities at all to the situation that pertained in revolutionary America ?
Think about how that freedom was, your choice of word, attained in America. Now I would doubt that a civil war is a good way to go about things these days.
FYI the UK is a democratic nation whose standards of personal freedom are equal to the most developed countries of the world, indeed, up until recently the dead hand of the RC church on the Eire constitution and its institutions could arguably be described as being less democratic than the UK.
In answer to your question then no, absolutely not, however agreement, negotiation, compromise and creating trust between groups with extremely polarised postions would be o.k
O.K ?
What-you mean stage a rebellion, like the American Revolutionary War? They tried it-look up Easter Uprising of 1916.
Britain didn’t take too kindly to this, as I recall.
For someone in Ireland (according to your profile) I’d have hoped you’d know the difference between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and between England and Britain!
Anyway, as casdave says, the current situation is not comparable to the American situation. That’s not to apportion or deny blame on any party involved, but to reject the idea that an armed uprising is (a) going to gain any popular support, (b) feasible in any sense and © a particularly ‘good’ idea (given that the Northern Irish are not a people with one united idea, and that it’d likely end in massive amounts of violence within the Northern Irish community).
You mean “less liberal” (in the formal sense of the word), not “less democratic.” If constraints on personal freedom are enacted democratically, the existence of those constraints does not make that nation any less democratic.
Sua
The only thing that makes an insurrection against your own country right is winning. This is unlikely in Northern Ireland, as a significant portion of the country likes being part of the UK.
I’m not sure what you mean by “free from England” either. Northern Ireland is not a colony of England, but a part of the UK whose residents enjoy the same rights and privileges as the English, Welsh, Scottish, and, IIRC, Falkland Islanders (there might be some differences with this last one). Gibraltar and St. Helena on the other hand might have a case to make. You may as well ask whether Hawaii should be free from the US.
Nope, at the risk of getting myself into a territory where I might well be out of my depth, I don’t just mean less liberal and I do mean less democratic.
The anti-abortion laws whilst being illiberal are also not democratic, that state has decided to interfere in the personal life choices of individuals and, even if the majority of the population agree with that governmental position, all that is then left is the tyranny of the majority.
Democracy is not just about the vote of the majority, (though strictly speaking I suppose the word definition is exactly that), but it has come to mean individual freedoms and personal rights. Democracy loses its virtue if a majority can strip away the personal freedoms of individuals when they pose no threat to society.
This issue along with the long standing one on gay rights have been anathema to the RC position to the extent that Priests and Bishops have at times exorted their congregations to vote against liberalising laws under subtle and less subtle threats of eternal damnation or just responsibility to the moral fibre of the country. Who voted for the church ?
Why then should it consider that it has a moral mandate to bend people to its values in a system that it fails to operate within its own structure ?
I know that the age of gay consent has been changed in recent times but as I say, much of the opposition to it has come from the undemocratic posturings of the church.
casdave, you are aware that abortion is illegal in the North of Ireland as well as in the south, right?
And you’re all aware that most historians agree that the percentage of colonial Americans who wanted independence from Britain was well below 50%, in fact probably well below the percentage of Northern Irish who want to be part of Ireland, right? (Though OTOH, it’s probably also true that the percentage of unionist Northern Irish is higher than the percentage of unionist colonial Americans.)
All that said, I think a significant difference is that America didn’t have a Good Friday Agreement. As long as there is still the possibility of democratic change, I don’t think violence is justified.
(and Matt, I’m sure our Volunteer knows the difference between “Ireland” and “Northern Ireland”, “England” and “Britain”. And I’m sure he chose his words quite deliberately.)
If that’s the case, it’s not too far from the definition of trolling, is it?
Caveat: I’m not here to defend the RCC - on all of the issues you mention, I oppose their position.
That being said, bollocks. While you are probably right that a democracy that is not a liberal democracy (again in the formal sense) doesn’t have a great deal of value, it still is a democracy - indeed, more so than a liberal democracy with protections of minority POVs enshrined in law, immune from the will of the majority.
Who voted for the ACLU? The NAACP? The ASPCA? If Congress passes a law because of pressure from these groups, is the law “undemocratic”? And what gives them the moral mandate to bend people to their own values?
The RCC is simply another pressure group. Granted, in Ireland, they are an effective one, but hey, that’s democracy for ya. I despise the Christian Coalition, but I don’t deny them the right to try to influence policy.
One final note - Ireland isn’t alone in denying personal freedoms in defense of its ideology/view of morality. In France, the birthplace of liberty, approximately 80 muslim schoolgirls have been expelled from public schools for having the audacity to wear headscarves in class.
Sua
Nah, I don’t think so. It’s just that people on different sides of the NI conflict have different vocabularies (a fact I’m sure you’re aware of). If a unionist came on here and started posting about “Ulster”, meaning the Six Counties rather than the nine-county province to which that term properly refers, I wouldn’t think he either didn’t know the difference between the two or was trolling. I’d just think, that’s the way unionists speak. It’s the same in this case. From a nationalist/republican perspective, Northern Ireland is still Ireland, and England is the country pulling the strings up there.
To quote that awful, but moderately entertaining movie Crocodile Dundee:
“Like fleas arguing over who owns the dog they live on”
ok, i’m abut 20 miles from belfast as we speak.
and no, we’ve had 30 years of civil war (the “troubles”, that’s euphemisitc to say the least)and we f***ing welll don’t need more. thank you.
you want to know what it’s like here at the moment?
well:
pipe bombs through windows,
houses being petrol bombed,
a young protestant boy was shot dead on sunday by loyalists as he stood outside a GAA club with his catholic friends,
the politicians are stirring trouble,
the orange men are pissed off about drumcree,
the IRA won’t de-commission…
and you know what?
we’re grateful it’s not as bad as it used to be.
sure, i’d love to be irish in more than just inclination.
i go to college in dublin, i feel more at home there than anywhere else in the world.
but you know what?
it’s not worth killing and dying for.
Waterj2:
I’m not sure what you mean by “free from England” either. Northern Ireland is not a colony of England…
I suppose that really sums up the amount of knowledge on the subject contained in " Most " of the responses to my question.
Ireland is NOT a colony of England…
30,000 armed members of the crown forces on our streets suggest otherwise. Young men and Women from unemployment blackspots in Britain walking around our streets with the most sophisicated weaponry on the planet.
The " So called " Police have been directly involved in the killing of non-combatants, Human rights lawyers and obstruction of external investigations into their activities.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, one of the reasons I brought this up is the blatant hypocricy of some people who were either glad to fight for their freedom or bleed off the wounds of others and gain their freedom and then have the balls to tell us not to fight.
America, like people all over the World, gained her freedom through the use of force, lets not forget that.
I salute the present leadership of the Republican movement in Ireland in the way they are going about things despite the provocation from the crown forces and their allies in the ranks of the Unionist murdergangs.
The British know how to fight alright, they just don’t seem to understand peace and are struggling with the thought that they are loosing their largest " Training ground " for their army.
The game is up for these people, Ireland will be free.
Freedom for all, regardless of Nationality, Religion or colour.
Volunteer:Oh good Lord.
So tell me again how planting bombs in underground stations fits in with your idea of freedom for all? The ends are never worth the means. Because there is no end, there’s only people trying to live one day at a time.
You know damn well that the situation is a lot more complicated than you are making it out to be. My own housemate spent the first 21 years of his 24 year old life in Northern Ireland but most certainly does not want to see it reunited with Eire. He does not represent an insignificant proportion of the populace.
I’m pretty sure that the British government would like nothing better than to pull out of NI altogether - it is nothing but a massive drain of tax resources and source of trouble. But it isn’t that easy. So rather than talking of violence being necessary to rid yourselves of the “oppresors”, why don’t you support those who are actually trying to find a solution that will work. Talking.
pan
Some things to bear in mind…
Although it’s in the interests of both the Republicans and the Loyalists to claim that the latter are British and on the same side as the security forces and the British Government, this viewpoint is not entirely shared in the rest of the UK. In 1993, the Sunday Telegraph published a poll which showed that 56% of the population of England no longer wanted to retain Northern Ireland as part of the UK. This was before the recent steps forward in the peace process, which have (arguably) made the unification of Ireland more achievable. Clearly, the idea that the Loyalists enjoy broad popular support in the UK is not tenable; nor is the idea that Britons in general have an irrational attachment to the province and will never give it up.
Ireland was partitioned in 1921 because the largely Protestant population of what is now Northern Ireland emphatically did not want to be part of a united, largely Catholic, Ireland, and were prepared to fight rather than submit to this. And they still are; the Loyalist paramilitaries comfortably outnumber the IRA and other Republican groups. It is generally believed in the UK that the withdrawal of British security forces from Northern Ireland would result in immediate armed conflict between Republican and Loyalist forces, leading to bloodshed on a much greater scale than currently exists.
Basically, if a majority of the population of Northern Ireland wanted to be united with the Republic, the rest of the UK would let them go, possibly with a huge sigh of relief. Very few in the UK have any problem with the political idea of Irish unification; indeed, the politicians of the SDLP (an avowedly nationalist party, but committed to change through constitutional means) are widely respected for their efforts at peace-making (and the extreme Unionists, such as the DUP under Ian Paisley, as widely condemned). And, since moves towards Irish unification by peaceful means would receive considerable popular support in the UK, it follows that there is no justification for violence in that cause.
(My opinions are my own. Some facts, however, have been gathered from this site, which contains a lot of useful information on the topic.)
Odd definition of freedom you have there, mate. As demonstrated by the election results, the majority of those in N. Ireland wish to remain part of the U.K.
Sua
Steve Wright, an excellent post. I was trying to find that opinion poll, but couldn’t remember which paper it came from.
Won’t it be more sensible for the ‘Irish people’ to attain freedom from ‘England’ in the same manner as India?
In what ?