Well now it was just after the Scottish Independence Referendum and they got a vote on independence and yet they have been talking about a border poll in Ireland for far longer than they have been talking about independence in Scotland. And people in Ireland, they didn’t seem to be saying “We demand a vote on independence now” or “We want to have a border poll” and it’s the case that was NOT what I was hearing it was NOT what I was hearing at all after it. So are the majority of people there not that bothered about getting a border poll then so I was just wondering what’s going on here? Or Why do they not care? Just wondering if anyone can tell me what the Straight Dope on this is then.
I am not Irish, so I can only report on what I have heard from Irish people.
But a Northern Irish Catholic friend I have (who is equally contemptuous of Sinn Fein and the DUP) says that the South recognises generally that incorporating the North would be a disaster. It’s less of an economic mess than it used to be, but the politics of the place is so delicate that it’s better for everyone to let sleeping dogs lie and let the British have it. The moment the North is governed by Dublin, there’s a high risk the Troubles could start all over again.
I think that’s part of the attitude of Northern Irish people, too, by and large. Sinn Fein appear to be electorally declining of late, so you’ve got either firm Unionists or a large group who don’t care who is ultimately in charge as long as there is peace and prosperity. Wounds are too sore for people to want to pick scabs.
I’ll have a go.
The Republic of Ireland is a separate country from the UK. It has its political and economic independence already.
Scotland does not presently enjoy this kind of independence. Had the referendum been in favour it would now be moving towards political and economic independence.
The Republic can have a referendum about the border but the UK government is unlikely to take much notice of the outcome.
The Republic may aspire to a united Ireland but it won’t be achieved by a referendum.
The people of the republic voted in 1998 to remove the claim to Northern Ireland from the Irish constitution (it was replaced with some flowery language about how it would be nice if unification happened peacefully one day maybe), so if they want immediate unification they’re going about it strangely.
So let’s assume that the Irish government (i. e. the Republic of Ireland) doesn’t push the issue. But if there were indeed a referendum to be held in Northern Ireland (with the consent of the UK government) and a majority in Northern Ireland/Ulster opted for a United Ireland, the government in Dublin certainly wouldn’t stand in the way and they would accept their lost brothers and sisters back, wouldn’t they?
This, really. It’s one thing for a part of the UK to decide they would like to secede peacefully from the Union. It’s quite another for a foreign country to hold a vote on whether they are going to incorporate part of another country into themselves. The other country is likely to have something to say about it.
We can argue the rights and wrongs of Irish partition all we like - that’s a whole other question. The point is that the situation is very different to the Scottish one.
Do most Americans care deeply about the necessity of incorporating Canada and Mexico into a united North America merely because they share the same land and history on a continent ? They are separate countries.
And mostly opposing cultures and peoples. Lloyd George’s Partition was not done because the British Government were longing to hold on to part of Ireland or millions of Orangemen; it was because there was no way to force Ulster people into the maw of the South Irish state.
Oh, the Irish do want a unified Ireland, but they are sick and tiered of paramilitary groups (on both sides) killing people for this.
Ireland fought violently for its freedom and then violently between themselves to decide if they want to continue the war for a whole Ireland.
This did cost a lot of lives and even more during the coming decades with The Troubles gaining momentum again in the 60’s with another 3530 deaths and 47.500 injured.
People are still remembering that and don’t want anymore senseless violence.
Only a few (idiots) want to fight with violence, which is frowned upon nowadays, for a united Ireland these days.
Economically and politically Ireland and the UK work very closely together.
Where as Scotland didn’t have the troubles that Ireland had, since Scotland is trying to do it for the most part politically.
All parties involved are members of the EU these days. While the UK still holds on to their beloved £, they are at the same time a FULL member of the EU.
It would be the same as the Confederate Army starting up attacking the US Army within the USA.
Americans are rather projective about their own view on national territory, and assume that every other people on earth have the same hopes and dreams Americans have about their national identity. But the fact is, many people in the world are accustomed to shifting borders and amorphous statehood, and their culture has learned to live with it. I was in Ukraine this summer, and people I talked to there don’t have strong feelings at all about whether the Russian or Ukrainian flag waves over their post office. They’ve lived part of their lives with both, with equanimity. Conversely, South Americans are very shrill about their national identity.
Not sure, if Switzerland est. 1291AD would feel the same as the Ukraine, who’s been a passed around many times in recent history.
People in Northern Ireland are generally VERY projective about whether they are Irish or British. That’s the entire reason Northern Ireland exists and isn’t part of the Republic in the first place.
Scotland held a referendum because the Scottish National Party, the political party that exists to campaign for independence from the UK, was voted into power in the Scottish Parliament. With this political mandate they requested, and were granted, the right to a referendum by the British Government. The British Government maintains a policy of ‘self determination’ with regard to its territories and former colonies in this regard.
Should a similar party in Northern Ireland gain a controlling power in the Northern Ireland Assembly, I imagine they could request the same. That has not yet happened.
The Republic of Ireland can merely stand and watch, as they are a foreign power outside the UK. Unless they want to start a war. Which they don’t. The UK and the Republic happen to get on very well these days.
What the people of the Republic of Ireland want regarding a united Ireland would be secondary to what the people of Northern Ireland want. If the Northern Irish people don’t want to be part of a united Ireland, the British government aren’t going to just give them away.
Here are the results of a 2013 BBC poll of Northern Irish people.
There was a time when a country where the people were overwhelmingly ethnic Irish had a leader who sold them on the idea that they should help themselves to parts of neighbouring countries that were also ethnically Irish, although the neighbouring countries largely disagreed as to the fairness of this. The powers that be were for a time persuaded that Irish unity was a reasonable thing, or at any rate not worth going to war to prevent, although in the end it all went horribly wrong and lots of blood got spilled.
Well, not “Irish”, but you know what I mean. Now I must go, Mr Godwin’s at the door.
Huh. That’s interesting. 40% of Northern Ireland is Catholic, so mathematically, there can’t even be a majority of Catholics who want to unite.
A genuine question: why wouldn’t an Northern Irish Catholic not want to be “joined with the Republic of Ireland outside of the UK”?
From the same source: “38% of Catholics also favoured remaining within the UK - three percentage points more than the number who backed a United Ireland”
Where were you and to whom did you talk? IME, Western Ukrainians are, as a group, more invested in the idea of an independent Ukraine than those from Eastern Ukraine. There is also a largish population of ethnic Russians who find the idea of Ukraine as a Russian territory not unattractive.
I was in Odessa, and whom I talked to was pretty much random people, as far as I could tell. What I found was less of a sense of national fervor than one would expect in the USA under similar circumstances, which is why expressed my point the way I did. It is not about Ukraine, but about predominantly Americans discussing national issues of other countries and projecting American zeal into the rationalization.
It’s complicated, really. I’m sure many would, but they know that a) to do so would reignite a lot of violence, and b) London has, in an attempt to keep Northern Ireland peaceful, thrown heaps of cash at the province to develop institutions and industry (well off people tend not to get violent). I imagine many otherwise Nationalist people know they like having kneecaps and know they’ll get a more generous investment level from London than from relatively tiny Dublin.