So the regional political parties in the north-east of Ireland, the last administrative rump of the British colony on this island nation, were denied a presence at the UK’s recent all-party television debates in the run-up to May’s general election. The reasons offered for the exclusion were half-hearted at best as broadcasters, regulators and party managers desperately attempted to avoid stating the bleedin’ obvious: British election debates are for British political parties – not Irish political parties (even those claiming to be British). Naturally our local Unionist pols went into meltdown mode at the “snub to the people of Northern Ireland” (you’d think they’d be used to it by now following decades of gradual British disengagement, beginning with the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. Or do I mean the Irish-British Treaty of 1921?). DUP and UUP threats of legal action were all bluff an’ bluster since they knew full well the jaundiced reaction they’d receive from the British judiciary. In fact the only people in Britain to rally to their cause, besides a few cranky right-wing newspaper columnists, were David Cameron’s Conservative Party; and even that was more to do with domestic concerns than worries about the good folk of the Northern Pale.
Now we learn that the Tories are standing in sixteen of the north-east’s eighteen Westminster constituencies. However rumour has it that the Conservatives may have to fly in candidates from the mother country to contest eleven of those seats. To make matters worse some of the would-be MPs have apparently never set foot in Ireland. So there you go – an imported British colony with imported British colonial politicians. The sun never sets an’ all that…
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
if the DUP get their dearest wish of becoming Kingmakers in a new Conservative administration or even at a pinch Labour Government, what happens to UK ” impartial brokerage” of the NI peace process?https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/dup-kingmakers-or-so-theyd-like-you-to-believe/
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Prior to the Spring, 1998 GFA referendum, the “Irish” gov’t mailed a copy of that proposed agreement to every household in Ireland. My then-94-year-old father had been led by RTE to “Vote Yes For Peace.” The GFA text totaled some 87 pages. Excepting one-third page of enforceable text the GFA was comprised of aspirational posturing, mutual contradictions, and bafflegab. That one-third page, the GFA’s enforceable part, mandated the gutting of Articles 2 and 3 of Ireland’s 1937 Constitution that had laid permanent claim to the entire island and its territorial waters and islands, The people, on both sides of the partition, voted YES in a landslide; thus surrendering the till-then-disputed Six Counties to Britain. What had been so great about British rule that the people voted to perpetuate it? In any event, how can it be that the Adams/McGuinness faction of republicanism, having led the GFA’s successful campaign of surrender of the Six Counties to Britain now present themselves as leading a new campaign to reverse their earlier GFA campaign? Are the Irish really that gullible? Do they believe the lie that “The GFA brought peace?” – despite the actual homicide records? Homicides peaked (at 472) in 1972 and had dropped to 69 by 1984, fourteen years prior to the GFA. Meanwhile internment without charge, Diplock courts, and torture in Maghaberry continue as ever, as does impunity for mass murder by British forces. Under the new British mandate that criminal impunity applies to the murderers of Bloody Sunday, Dublin/Monaghan bombing, Omagh, Ballymurphy, McGurke’s pub, Loughinisland, the Miami Show Band, etc. While their murderers, all members of British armed forces, remain above the law, utter innocents like McConville and Wooton are framed and imprisoned. Will the Irish ever wake up? If they sleep through such injustice and being looted once more by the banksters via the water charges there can be no hope; they will be voluntary slaves.
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at that time my (then) 76-year-old father was living in Belfast – he voted NO – not for sectarian reasons – he objected to the ambiguity of the GFA which he said was designed to bamboozle people. he was convinced it was only a pro-tem arrangement,never a lasting settlement –
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I and some of my extended family also voted NO in 1998, principally because of the alterations to Articles 2 and 3. Most people I know – including family members – who opposed the constitutional changes simply didn’t vote.
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so – a minority of people voted NO for different, equally valid reasons and some more abstained.
the majority of people both sides of the border voted for peace and the hope of a decent set-up.
unfortunately their hopes have been stymied by the DUP/orange order rearguard action (not an inch) and the financial crisis as the GFA was brokered on the basis of prosperity
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Reblogged this on Bampots Utd.
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The current situation is as follows:
1. The majority of NI’s population wants to remain in the UK.
2. The Brits have said that they’ll hand NI over to Ireland only if the majority of NI’s population wishes so.
So – to achieve united Ireland you have to either convince the majority of NI’s population to vote for reunification.
Or you have to somehow convince the rest of the UK to hand NI over without listening to its population.
(Of course there’s also a very unrealistic option – to invade NI and annex it by force)
So – do you have any realistic ideas how to achieve any of those options?
As I said before – I support the reunification, but I have no idea how that could be achieved.
Also it doesn’t help that the rest of the world considers NI to be a rightful part of the UK.
No country considers it to be a disputed territory or recognises it as part of the Republic of Ireland.
It’s not like Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea or Kosovo.
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Fair points, Jānis. Of course I would argue that reunification should not be dependent on a separatist minority in the north-east of the country who have achieved and maintained their territorial status through violence and the threat of violence but that is another argument. One that has perhaps been lost. The unwillingness of Dublin governments to press our anti-colonial case since the 1970s has lost us much international support so that we have, as you say, not the profile in relation to the Occupied North that Occupied Palestine would have or Crimea, etc. Of course the latter is now a de facto part of the Russian Federation and unofficially acknowledged as such by the world. Which of course prove the hollowness of international views and international law in such situations.
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So that leaves us with the 2nd option.
How are you going to convince the rest of the UK to hand NI over without listening to its population?
I don’t see that happening unless the UK collapses like the USSR – but that isn’t likely in the near future.
When the USSR collapsed it abandoned its citizens in the countries that formed after the collapse and allowed them to do whatever they pleased.
That’s why we were able to repeal the soviet language laws and assign the soviet migrants non-citizen status that allowed them to stay in Latvia but didn’t allow them to vote and work in certain jobs.
(In Central-Asian countries they outright lynched the Russians and threw them out of their homes)
The unionists would scream bloody murder if you offered them anything like that.
And the rest of the world can’t force Russia to give Crimea back, unfortunately and it’s not worth the risk to invade Russia and try to retake it militarily.
But Crimea and the rest of Russian land grabs still are subjects to various sanctions – Northern Ireland is not.
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As usual Janis cuts through all the crap and wishful thinking and gets down to the nub of the matter, a United Ireland can only be achieved through logical argument and persuasion, the production of a detailed blueprint for such a U.I. would help, but I doubt if such a document will ever be produced, too many difficult questions would have to be answered.
Another of your contributors alleges that all the perpetrators of a number of atrocities (Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, Dublin/Monaghan, Loughinisland, Miami Showband, McGurks, Omagh) were members of the British security forces. In the first two he is right, as they were carried out by the parachute regiment : Dublin/Monaghan, Loughinisland and McGurks were all carried out by the U.V.F. ; the Miami Showband was a joint enterprise between the U.V.F. and members of the U.D.R. . Omagh was, of course, carried out by dissident Republicans, who I’m sure would be astonished to find themselves rebranded as part of the British security forces,.
The murderers in some of these cases certainly didn’t remain above the law : a U.V.F. man received 15 life sentences in 1978 for the McGurk’s bombing : two U.V.F. men were killed by their own bomb in the Miami incident, while two U.D.R. men received 35 year sentences for their part in that atrocity. Perhaps a better grasp of the facts might be in order.
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Ginger, the British Unionist minority in “North-East Ulster” have been offered the same deal since de Valera met Carson in 1921: regional self-governance in Belfast under the authority of a national government in Dublin. Which is pretty much going to be the end-point of the next two or three decades.
The UVF/Glenanne Gang were the “security forces” for all intents and purposes.
The arrest and imprisonment of British terrorists does not disprove the general belief, held not just by dyed-in-the-wool republicans but by past and current government ministers in Ireland (and of all parties), that the UDA-UFF/UVF-RHC/LVF were integral to Britain’s counter-insurgency operations.
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It doesn’t make sense for the UK to give orders to its agents and then imprison them for following those orders.
Why would anyone else want to work for them after that?
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We have been over this already, yawn.
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