This is potentially a great debate, but I’m posing it more as a question, so I’ll post it here.
I don’t pretend to know all the details about the situation in Northern Ireland but what I do know is that Northern Ireland is a part of Great Britain, mostly a non catholic region.
Why doesn’t the British government just say, OK, on date X we will give up rule of Northern Ireland and re-unite it with Eire. In the time between that and now, anyone who wishes to remain a British subject will be helped to move to another part of the United Kingdom. Those who wish to stay in Ireland are free to do so also - and remain a British citizen if they wish but understand that they will come under Irish rule.
Certainly, this will cause a lot of friction and upset of a lot of loyalists, but surely this is a cheaper and better long term solution than having army patrols in the streets with a constant fear of being bombed or gunned down?
Yes… holy cow it will be expensive to do, but it’s gotta be cheaper than a permanent millitary presence.
Anywhere they want… they are not being forced to move, it’s a choice.
You are not being forced to move. Does being under Irish rule rather than British really make any difference? Elections come, policitians change. There’s a reason why Scotland & Wales have gone nationalistic recently… if anything, being under Irish control would be to the advantage of people there IMO.
British citizens moving to another part of the UK is not immigrants.
I never suggested it would be easy… just possibly a decent long term solution.
This is analogous to trying to settle the MidEast conflict by offering the Palestineans a homeland in Iowa. They don’t want a homeland. They want their homeland.
I don’t see the comparison… the idea here is simply to change the government. The option presented was for the people who simply refuse to be part of Ireland… if they wish to move simply because of a change of government, that’s there choice…
I stress that there is no forcing of people to move… it’s merely an alternative to be offered…
As someone who wants to see a united Republic, it kills me to say this, but your plan is unworkable.
It strikes me (an American who lived there for 9 months in 1993) that a lot of the conflict is over history and PERCEIVED advantages. The Unionists (pro-British people) feel that being a part of the United Kingdom has advantages over being citizens of the Republic. Whether this is true or not is unimportant–it’s the perception that counts. As Europe becomes more united, any actual differences between the Republic’s government and the UK’s government are going to become smaller and smaller, but that perception will be there. Add to that the fear that people like Paisley (who is still SHOCKINGLY popular in the North despite being a complete nutball) foment about good Protestants being subsumed into a Godless Papist State people by folks who speak a “Leprechaun Language,” and if the Brits made any sudden moves to dump the whole mess into the Republic’s lap, the UFF, UVF, RHD, RHC, Orange Volunteers, and any of the other Loyalist groups operating under various names of convenience would surely unleash the same horrors on Dublin as the IRA did to mainland Britain in the early 70s.
As much as I want to see Ireland united, and I believe it will be, it will require a vote in which a majority of the people of the North and south choose it. Which is not to say that in the meantime the British government should not completely remove its military presence from the North.
The Loyalist population was, in effect, offered these alternatives way back in 1921. It was their sustained resistance to either one (and offers of open revolt if a united Irish government were imposed on them) that led to the partition of Ireland in the first place.
We’ve recently had an extensive discussion of these issues over in GD.
Factions on both sides have demonstrated that they are willing to fight, kill, and die to stay where they are, under the government they want. Neither moving nor accepting “foreign” rule is going to be acceptable to many of them. There would be a violent minority who would accept neither of the options you offer, and the situation would remain as it is.
Well, demilitarization is a significant part of the Good Friday Agreement, but everyone involved has been pretty hit or miss about actually implementing the entire Agreement.
Actually, from what I understand, the British Army presence on the street is far smaller than it was when I lived there. They did have to bring extras in for this years Drumcree Orange protest, but when I lived in Belfast armed soldiers pointing rifles at you was not an uncommon occurrence, and apparently it is now.
The North has a HUGE police force (which is unrepresentative and not trusted by many, but that’s a different matter), and they have taken up much of day-to-day security. apparently in Crossmaglen and other places with HUGE British Army bases, the soldiers mostly stay inside. However, they have been known to make incursions into the Republic, low-flying Army helicopters have startled livestock to death, their bases are serious polluters, and they use surveillance techniques that you or I would consider terrible privacy violations. It is not backed up by evidence that they have prevented any terrorist attack from either side. Removing the British Army and their installations would be a good first step that could be presented in such a way to the Unionists that it would not look like a first step to a Republic.
There is no historical precedent for an independant Ireland, the only time it ahs been under one government was when it was ruled entirely by the Great Britain.
It may look neat and tidy geographically but this does not reflect the reality of nearly half a milennium of history.
It seems an unusual thing to suggest, that the majority population moves out, perhaps this could be tried in trouble spots around the world.
To unite, for reunification is completely the wrong word, Ireland would be to saddle Eire with a massive financial burden which it would have difficulty meeting.
This would result in cutbacks in Eire govenrment spending and the resulting recession would be a serious breeding ground for those wishing to rabble-rouse.
I have to ask myself why is it that the British and Eire governments can agree on the way to take the peace process further, with the inevitable differances that ahve to be irnoned out, but that the groups representing terrorists on both sides do not.
I would have sid that without these groups there would have been an accomodation long ago, discord is the currency of the IRA, UVF and all the others, it enables them to carry out thier other illegal activities from drug dealing, counterfeit godds, smuggling alchohol and tobacco to avoid taxes, swindling EU funds by moving livestock around to claim subsidies several times over, extortion and most recently exporting their murderous ways to other countries in South America.
Ignoring all the various ideological objections to the proposal, since this is GQ and not GD:
It is highly unlikely that the Loyalists of Northern Ireland – still the majority of the population, don’t forget – would simply clamly up and relocate to other parts of the UK. It is far more likely that the boot would end up on the other foot, with Republican terrorists blowing up shopping centres in London being replaced by Loyalist terrorists blowing up shopping centres in Dublin, and Irish Army patrols on the streets of Belfast.
In fact, what you are describing is in some sense the mirror-image of the current situation in which NI residents can claim RoI citizenship and re-locate to the Republic if they choose to do so (or for that matter, any other EU country), though without any specific financial assistance.
A further problem is one of the ones suggested by Mangetout. Although British Citizens from Northern Ireland moving to Great Britain would not technically be “immigrants”, that does not mean that they could easily be rehoused, found jobs and so on on the mainland. The population of NI is about 1.7 million (IIRC). If you assume for the sake of argument that one third of those people would want to relocate to other parts of the UK, that makes over half a million people: roughly equivalent to the population of a large to medium-sized city such as Sheffield, Bristol or Newcastle upon Tyne. It is very difficult to see how that number of people could be accommodated virtually overnight in an area as densely-populated as Great Britain.
FWIW, this is true of military bases in other parts of the UK as well, the difference being that many of the military bases in England are American.
why do the unionists have to move back to the UK or out of Northern Ireland? Why can’t you have the people that want to unite with Ireland move to the west side of northern ireland, and those that dont move to the east (or south or where ever).
Presumably the only people that don’t like this idea are
people that want ALL of NI to reunite with Ireland.
People who want ALL of NI to be part of UK.
People who object that moving from one part of NI to another (east to west or vice versa) is a big imposition.
People in groups 1 and 2 are never going to be satified, so we don’t worry about pleasing them. The difference between this plan and the OP’s plan is that now people in group 3 just move to a different part of NI instead of some other country which ought to be an improvement
You will still be displacing people. Ireland was partitioned. Yet still there is conflict. Although Ireland may pay lip-service to wanting N. Ireland, they are in no hurry. Ireland is experiencing economic prosperity, which has a way of giving people stuff to do instead of fight, which may help things.
This is correct WRT Belfast. However, there’s still a significant military presence in Armagh.
Look face it folks, any attempt to solve the problem by having people move is not going to work. Both sides see the land as theirs and you’re never going to convince either side otherwise. Believe me, it’s been tried.
What’s being mooted in some quarters is the idea of re-partition, i.e. dividing N.I. again in such a way as to allow the nationalist areas to join the Republic while the unionist areas remain in the U.K. This is, in fact, what should have happened decades ago under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, but the British wouldn’t allow it. Between the growing nationalist population and the geographical clustering of the unionist population, the result would most likely be that just about all of the North save County Antrim, north Down and parts of north Armagh would join the Republic.
This is probably the fairest solution, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it. Nationalists are against it because it would pretty much kill the idea of a united Ireland forever. Unionists are against it because they don’t want to give up their land, or to see any of their people to have to live under Irish rule. And I think TomH’s scenario of loyalist bombs would be very, very likely to happen.
So what is the likely outcome … I dunno. More of the same for the next 200 years, probably.
Oh, and sorry to be pedantic, but can we call the country I live in by its proper name please? There is no such country called “Eire” and it is silly to call it “Éire” either unless you’re speaking in Irish. You don’t speak in English about “Deutschland” or “Italia” or “España” do you?
You’re forgetting that “these groups” would not exist, or at least would not be strong enough to cause trouble, if they didn’t represent the views of a sufficient percentage of the population. Bear in mind that the nationalist share of the vote is now 44% and Sinn Féin are now the largest nationalist party. Surely you don’t think all those people are voting for the Provos’ political wing just to protect their racketeering industry?
These groups nowadays represent a small minority of opinion in NI as proven by the various votes and opinion polls on the GFI.
Since Sinn Fein has such effective electoral representation and the IRA claims to have the interests of the Nationalist community at heart then why do they need to hang on to their arsenal ?
Same goes for the UVF too, they use those weapons as a threat, to give themselves some leverage at the negotiating table because without weapons they would be ignored and the real, elected, representatives could get on with keeping the peace process going.
Its not in the interest of any of the armed groups to give up their power, too many among them have too good a living to be made from their illegal activities.
I am not aware that Sinn Fein is regarded as being an organisation that is directly involved with racketeering, which is why, I would hazard a guess, they are now looked upon as being a valid political party rather than just a bunch of terrorists.
Certainly Sinn Fein have denied links with the IRA, unless of course this is not quite the truth.
Opinion polls are a complete joke in the North. Nobody takes opinion polls seriously there. What matters are votes and while it’s true that a majority voted for the GFA, it was a fairly substantial, not small minority that didn’t (at least on the unionist side) - and many people think it would be a majority unionist no if the vote were held again today.
I don’t think your comment makes much sense WRT the nationalist side seeing as Sinn Féin also supported the GFA.
They would argue that they are holding onto their arsenal precisely because they have their community at heart - and don’t want to turn them into sitting ducks for the loyalist mobs.
I think you’ve more of a point there where the loyalists are concerned. Neither the PUP nor the UDP have ever had much electoral support and the loyalist paramilitaries have always had that element of being simply glorified gangs of steroid-pumping lager-louts.
They’ve never denied links with the IRA. They’ve denied being the IRA. An important distinction.
{b]wooba** the way I understand it, Ireland is/was part of Great Britian. Some Irish wanted to be independent. The British allowed a county by county vote. The counties where the majority voted to be separate were allowed to be separate. There are obviously minorities in each county who are not happy. They have had well over 50 years to move. They don’t want to. No one can make them move. Since the Brithish can’t control the minority, they certainly can’t kick out the majority.
Note that there is nothing to re-unite unless it is to all be back under Britian where it started.
starfish, Ireland was never part of Great Britain. Great Britain is just England + Scotland + Wales. Ireland was, and Northern Ireland remains, part of the United Kingdom.
And there was no county-by-county vote. The six counties were excluded because that was as much land as the unionists could keep and still have a Protestant majority. Nobody asked the individual counties what they wanted. If they had, Fermanagh and Tyrone would have joined the Free State. In fact shortly after partition one (and possibly both - can’t remember at the moment) of these County Councils voted to recognise the Dublin government rather than Stormont.
In fact all counties but Antrim and Down now have Catholic, and presumably nationalist, majorities.