This thread – “Why isn’t the IRA considered a Terrorist Group?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=312254&page=1&pp=50 – got me to thinking. What are the chances the IRA/Sinn Fein will ever get what they want? What they want, as I understand it, is for Northern Ireland to be annexed to the Irish Republic. I doubt the non-Irish Brits, at this point, would object very much at all – what to they get out of hanging on to Ulster? Isn’t it more trouble than it’s worth? The days when Britain was ruled by a gentry class of absentee landlords whose incomes depended on their Irish estates shipping corn to Britain at artificially inflated prices are long gone. (Aren’t they?) It’s the Ulster Protestants who would object. Possibly to the point of a new wave of secessionist terrorism. But why? Would it really be all that bad for them to be ruled from Dublin instead of London? It’s hard to imagine how they would come in for any form of persecution. Just in terms of numbers (Republic of Ireland, pop. 4 million; Northern Ireland, pop. 1.6 million; UK-minus-NI, pop. 58.4 million), the Ulster Protestants would have a much stronger voice in the Dail Eireann than they currently have in the Westminster Parliament. And wouldn’t Ireland as a whole be more prosperous, if the partition issue left over from 1921 were finally resolved, and people didn’t have to worry about even the threat of terrorist violence, and if the (I believe) more industrialized North and the (I think) largely agrarian South were brought under the management of a single government?
Footnote: My mother visited the Republic of Ireland in the early '90s and found that most people she met there couldn’t give a damn whether they ever get the North back. Ulster is apparently the only place where people really care passionately about Ulster’s political status. Well, and maybe Boston.
Oh, and yes, I’m perfectly aware that “Northern Ireland” and “Ulster” are not the same thing, the Republic contains six counties of the traditional province of Ulster; but one sometimes is inclined to use the name as a shorthand.
In Northern Ireland today there are more school-aged Catholics than Protestants, so if people continue to vote along sectarian lines unification seems inevitable. If NI ever votes for unification it will due to this demographic change rather than Protestants changing their views of the Southern Irish.
I am (mainland) British, and don’t really care if NI choose to leave the UK.
It will happen eventually but not in the way that any of the parties currently envisage. The “demographic bomb” threat that the Catholics will overwhelm the Protestant has been around for sometime. Given that a fairly high proportion of Catholics vote Unionist I can’t see a mass defection to Sinn Fein of the SDLP anytime soon. Moreover, the developement of the EU will create a “federalized” Europe which will allow both sides some wiggle room in creating a federal-Ireland.
The North will become some sort of statlet within Ireland. The EU has focused peoples attentions on the idea of a greater European state such the conflict in Ireland seems even more redundant. Put another way, there really isn’t a groundswell for a united Ireland so I can see another solution being put forward.
Part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement concerned the Republic which dropped its constitutional claim to the six counties in Northern Ireland (Articles 2 and 3…kinda high up on the list of the 50 or so made out in 1937).
I think the problem with the OP is that even if some day a vote was taken amongst the people of the North and they decided to leave the UK to join Ireland, the republic wouldn’t actually welcome them with open arms, if it meant tax increases and security problems all around.
I personally have never cared less.The farther from the border the more ‘the troubles’ seemed like another world. Something you watched on the TV.
My dad was an MP in the Irish Army for 26 years and was posted often to border patrols. The thought of hundreds of Irish families having to send their sons and daughters to take charge of the security already ensured by the British for a lump of land where 49.9 % of the poeple aren’t all that happy doesn’t bode well with me.
There are two possible answers for this question “what are the prospects for a united Ireland”?
THe first is to answer the question “how likely is a united Ireland” which I would say is a racing certainty in some form or other. Britain (the rest of it) doesn’t want N Ireland - it’s a terrible burden and we’d get rid of it at a shot if we could.
Also a lot of people in the North have come around to the idea as a lot of the purely practical and self-interested reasons for want ing to stay in the UK have changed. ROI is no longer a peasant country which exported it’s brightest and best people, nor is it half as religiously dominated as it was. So the economic arguements have dissipated.
As to what the future of a united ireland would be - God alone knows , but it will be interesting to watch.
absolutely right owl. The flip-side is that because of economic prosperity in the south, people now are more interested in their home improvements and new car than they are in a united ireland.
My Irish relatives say that the drive to Donegal shows how the troubles have harmed the north’s economy, compared to the south. In the 1950s, they’d pass through Eniskillen, Armagh, Derry, and drool at the comparitive wealth and opulence. Now, the reverse is true.
Minor nitpit; Northern Ireland contains (consists of) 6 counties of Ulster, the remaining three of the nine Ulster counties are in the Republic of Ireland. But I’m sure you knew that really.
All on the way to Donegal? Geez, man, buy the poor souls a map. That’s some crazy detours wherever you start from!
I have been to N. Ireland and Republic of Ireland and there is little discernable difference in standard of living. One of my best friends is from Northern Ireland and is Catholic and she is not convinced that a united Ireland is what would be best for the six counties, but she definitely wants autonomy from London
It wasn’t always this way. There was a time, not very long ago, when the standard of living was considerably lower in the south. Now it is probably higher in the south, particularly in dublin. The roads are still better up north.
In response to the OP, i wouldn’t be surprised if a united ireland occurs sometime in my life time (i’m in my twenties btw), but it’s not a foregone conclusion. For most people in the south, it isn’t even an issue… most people probably voice some vague aspiration (not me, but many would) but really they don’t give a damn. Most southerners don’t even go north of the border.
I recently visited belfast for the first time in many years… the thing that struck me was that the border is practically an irrelevance. no border, not even any sign to say you were leaving one country and entering another, the only thing that changed was the road signs (and the road surface is smoother).
How recent? If you were coming up from Dublin to Belfast, you’d now find the opposite to be true - the main roads in the South (with all the EU money thrown at Ireland in the past while) are now fantastic and new (esp. the Drogheda bypass), whereas the major weak link between Befast/Dublin commute is now the Newry - Loughbrickland stretch (before you get on the A1) in the North.
Quite striking in irrelevance with regard to the OP, that.
Unless you mean “most Southerners” as in people from Cork or Limerick.
I take it you’ve never taken a stroll round the car park at Sainsbury’s in Newry on a Saturday, then? Every car in the place is from here and I know that’s not my imagination, seeing as the trolleys take a pound coin or a euro coin.
ok, fair point. i don’t go shopping in newry. I have no doubt that many from dundalk, drogheda or whatever do. I have to say that i don’t know anybodywho regularly go up north, usual disclaimers apply, plural of anecdote isn’t data etc.
I’ll grant that i’m talking out my hole on this one, sorry.
Ok, got me again, it’s a fair cop.
I went to belfast in december, and what you say is true, the dublin-belfast road is now better (on average) south of the border for the first time in living memory. It is, however, the best road in the republic. (along with stretches of the N7)
what i meant was the roads are better maintained in general. the roads in dublin are often in a shocking state. Many of the national primary routes in the republic are still a shambles.
anyway, the roads are rapidly improving, just had a lot of catching up to do.
This’ll teach me to make generalisations based on limitied experience. sorry folks.
Yeah, I was really just countering the point that there was significant difference. I think the standard of living in the north and south is not really that different. AS for the roads I couldn’t say. I drove from Dublin to Inniskillen on some pretty crap roads and then I drove from Inniskillen to Bushmill’s on some pretty crap roads…and everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road.
You mean, what, Ireland as a federation of counties, or of the four provinces? What’s the EU got to do with that?
