See... yeah... you're not going to get artificial federal units because there's less than no support for it and existing units are not fit for purpose. A federal UK is a long, long way off and it could only be based on the existing national units.
See... yeah... you're not going to get artificial federal units because there's less than no support for it and existing units are not fit for purpose. A federal UK is a long, long way off and it could only be based on the existing national units.
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And if they get independent will Westminster follow in the dubious footsteps of Lloyd George by partitioning Scotland? It worked out so well in Ireland didn't it...
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A federal unit can work. Just if people realise not all units are equal if the population of two units are massive in difference. There is no reason why these entities can't exist. Just need to know that if someplace has 10% of the population it should have 10% representation in both houses of the main government.
This is just fantasy. No federation out there has based its federal units on equal population size. You'd need to rearrange the states every ten years!
Northern Ireland remained a part of the UK after the independent Ulster Volunteers Force joined the British Army wholesale in World War I and got slaughtered. Characterise it as a cynical partitioning of territory if you want but I challenge you to explain how it would have been politically feasible to hand over Northern Ireland to a foreign power, against the will of the majority of the people there, after a huge chunk of their young generation had sacrificed itself for the country they wanted to remain a part of.
Last edited by removeduser_487563287433; September 29, 2014 at 08:23 PM.
- Tens of thousands of Irish persons of a Nationalist background also fought in the British army in that conflict. The National Volunteers, which supported Home Rule (the original nationalist objective before the 1918 election when the working classes got the vote and supported the Old Sinn Fein) recruited tens of thousands. HR leader John Redmond recruited told the Irish Nationalists to join the British war effort to get Home Rule. They were treated in a discriminatory manner in the British army. Unlike the UVF they were not allowed to form a division of their own and to have their own officers. An estimated 31,000 National Volunteers signed up - which does not include the total for Irish Catholics. Perhaps if the NV had been allowed form their own division we would be talking about it suffering similar casualties. In total 180,000 Irishmen fought in the British army in WW1.
- Irish nationalists consider the island to be one country and NI to be a newly created state. It has no history as a state before 1920.
- The border was not drawn in the right place. Fermanagh and Tyrone had Catholic majorities, and that is why the Unionist government in Belfast dissolved their county councils which refused to recognise it.
- The 1920-72 regime was an Apartheid state. The documentary below details gerrymandering in Nationalist Derry which had a Unionist majority on the council despite the majority of persons voting being Nationalist.
- The arming of the UVF was conducted with connivance by the Conservative Party and elements in the British army and government. The reaction to the Howth gunrunning by Nationalists shortly afterwards demonstrates that double-standards were being applied regarding illegal armed activities.
Indeed there is some evidence British entry to WW1 was at least in part a ruse to forstall a military coup in Britain by pro-Unionists. The Curragh Mutiny in Ireland suggested they might not have agreed to enforce 32 county Home Rule. I would point out that devolution (Home Rule) was the original objective by the Irish electorate for 48 years, and partition was one of the last straws that led to separation being the demand in the 1918 elections. When Sinn Fein won those elections, the British reaction was to arrest almost all their MPs - and this was before there was an IRA which was not founded until 1919.
Last edited by Geronimo2006; September 30, 2014 at 11:38 AM.
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I do think there is an interesting debate around whether Home Rule for all of Ireland could have been accomplished within the time frame. Opposition by Unionists in Northern Ireland, and by Conservatives in Great Britain, seems to have been so strong that cross party agreement could only be reached when it was essentially too late (And even then Ireland was split into two parliaments).
Certainly there are, to some degree, strong parables and comparisons with ongoing events in Scotland, although I wonder whether devolution would ever have really fully worked in Ireland or whether it would merely have served as a stepping stone to full independence. The goal of earlier parties such as the Repeal Association under O'Connell for instance was more a reversion to that enjoyed by the Kingdom of Ireland during the time of Grattan (so essentially closer to the dominion status later achieved by other states) rather than the later model of autonomy within the UK.
It's an interesting debate, and essentially the same one seen in Scotland - whether competing nationalisms within a state can ever be fully and successfully accommodated.
As far as I can tell, your entire enterprise is little more than a solitary man with a messy apartment which may or may not contain a chicken.
It's all fun and games until people start getting eaten
Ulster Volunteers wasn't allowed either. They disbanded and joined a new regular army unit.
Nationalist support for Britain in WWI is irrelevant to the fact it would have been politically impossible for Westminster to abandon Ulster after what happened at The Somme. Just as it would have been politically impossible to deny Home Rule in the rest of Ireland.
That's not strictly true, nor is it relevant. NI is not a state, it is a part of the UK.- Irish nationalists consider the island to be one country and NI to be a newly created state. It has no history as a state before 1920.
Again irrelevant to the fact that Westminster couldn't hand over Ulster to Dublin. What happened after this isn't relevant to my statement.- The border was not drawn in the right place. Fermanagh and Tyrone had Catholic majorities, and that is why the Unionist government in Belfast dissolved their county councils which refused to recognise it.
Again irrelevant to my statement.- The 1920-72 regime was an Apartheid state. The documentary below details gerrymandering in Nationalist Derry which had a Unionist majority on the council despite the majority of persons voting being Nationalist.
The later UVF is not the same as the Ulster Volunteer Force of 1910, a group explicitly set up to resist the British Government's attempts to impose Home Rule on Ulster. Although the Conservatives supported their policy of resisting Home Rule, you are wrong to say they armed them, and the Government at the time was not the Conservatives but the Liberal Party of Asquith, who were actively trying to give Ulster to Dublin. The UVF was actually armed by Germany. When the British Army was ordered into Ulster potentially to combat the UVF approx. 50 of 70 officers resigned rather than march. I don't think you understand how serious a threat the UVF was to the British Government - they threatened a civil war.- The arming of the UVF was conducted with connivance by the Conservative Party and elements in the British army and government. The reaction to the Howth gunrunning by Nationalists shortly afterwards demonstrates that double-standards were being applied regarding illegal armed activities.
Well that's just witted conspiracy theory, and ridiculously self-involved. You'd have to be grossly ignorant about the history of WWI to seriously believe this.Indeed there is some evidence British entry to WW1 was at least in part a ruse to forstall a military coup in Britain by pro-Unionists.
The UVF was actually founded in 1912.Originally Posted by Ferrets54
Underlying the undemocratic nature of the partition was that the Unionists rejected a proposal from Home Rule leader John Redmond for a referendum to allow each of the 6 countries decide whether to go to the North or the South. A UVF leader in Fermanagh threatened ethnic cleansing if it was handed to the South.
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This is mildly amusing:
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/sco...endum-1.603332
I know someone who intentionally didn't register to hide from Council Debt. She lied and said she 'forgot', then changed her story post-Referendum to being 'so undecided' that she decided she wasn't going to be able to fairly vote, despite posting vast volumes of pro-SNP and pro-Yes crap on Facebook. Generally a terrible person.
I'm actually glad the Councils are doing this. Even more amusing to me than Bobz' statement is that some of them, as per the article, went off the register to avoid paying the poll tax: it stands to reason people that are so anti-Thatcher they'd commit fraud to avoid her policies were likely registering to vote Yes. I can only imagine the double whammy of losing the election and getting a bill for it.
Or we don't have it equal in size. Just have the current county (or regional) federal parliaments. And at Westminster the representation is based on Size of population. So if London has 10% it gets 10% representation while some low county with only couple tens of thousands gets 1-2 representatives. A federation doesn't need federal entities to have equal representation.
It is relevant to the question of whether the border was drawn in the right place and whether Fermanagh and Tyrone (among other Catholic border areas) should have been separated from Southern Ireland. As a result of such short-termism, NI and Mainland UK were saddled with a disgruntled population and this (in part because the Unionists feared their majority was insecure) led to the Troubles and IRA campaigns later on. That in turn meant noone would invest in NI, forcing the UK taxpayer to bail it out ever since.
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