IRA Disarm

[ShadesPanther]

The population at the time of the famine was about 8 million (which is overpopulated) Now If i remeber correctly is about 5 1/2 million (just over 4 million in ROI and 1.6 in Northern Ireland)

Also about the famine Queen Victoria gave money out of her own pocket to help the Irish and many people did as well (although some found a way to discriminate for instance soup kitchens only serving meat on Fridays)

EDIT: also found this survey that gives a rough indication of the amount of unionists and nationalists
http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2004/Polit.../NIRELAND.html
according to it 59% and 22% respectivly
although an interesting point is to look at religions 24% of catholics are unionist compared to only 5% protestant nationalists

although i can't see how many people were asked and such

[Crazed Rabbit]

But I get a little annoyed when a Yank, who thinks his nation is whiter than white starts to lecture us on something he they know nothing about.

I've never said the USA is whiter than white. God knows we've done some bad things in the past. But mistreatment of the Indians pales in camparison to what the English did, and only lasted a few decades. And you can't blame the USA for all the decline in the Indian population, but rather the explorers who brought new diseases, which are responsible for a lot more.

My point was that it is somewhat absurd to claim Northern Ireland as your own, just because the English have, over the centuries, killed off the Irish.

Incidentally, you say I know nothing about it. What would you recommend to learn more about the history, then?

Crazed Rabbit

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

You know, it's like one of my Irish history lecturers said: Ireland at the time of the famine was overpopulated but now it's underpopulated (by N.W. European standards).

Also, Catholic unionists and protestant nationalists: I've met a few people(Catholics) from the republic who don't want a united Ireland because of the hastles of integrating the loyalist working class without serious problems flaring up.

[econ21]

My point was that it is somewhat absurd to claim Northern Ireland as your own, just because the English have, over the centuries, killed off the Irish.

Incidentally, you say I know nothing about it. What would you recommend to learn more about the history, then?

Crazed Rabbit

Perhaps the key point that outsiders don't understand is that most people on the mainland don't want to "claim" Northern Ireland as its own. [1] Maybe that's because the terrorists have been successful in making it too costly to hold on to, I don't know. But I also suspect there's a lack of empathy with the Unionist community, which can appear strident, traditionalist and narrow-minded. I suspect people on the British mainland would find more in common with the people of Eire rather than the Unionists.

The problem is not so much that the mainland wants to keep N. Ireland, but rather the majority of people there want to keep the union. It would have been possible to pull troops out, but then the Unionists would have successfully fought to control the province in a bitter civil war (unless Eire intervened). In the late 1960s, troops were originally moved in to try to "peace keep" and if anything protect the Catholics. That soon changed, of course, as the Catholics became alienated.

[1] That's now the official British government position, as the key concession it made in the Good Friday agreement was to say it had no "strategic interest" in the province - ie if the majority wants to leave the union, it can. The IRA signed up to this hoping the demographics would change the majority in their favour.

[Tribesman]

In the late 1960s, troops were originally moved in to try to "peace keep" and if anything protect the Catholics. That soon changed, of course, as the Catholics became alienated.
Aye , a primary lesson in how not to alienate the people you are supposed to be trying to help , instead turning lots of them into terrorists .
I wonder where that lesson could be applied today

The problem is not so much that the mainland wants to keep N. Ireland, but rather the majority of people there want to keep the union.
And the majority in the Republic wish that a great geographic divide could happen along the border and the whole six counties could just drift off around the ocean until they learned to live together or all killed each other .

[Slyspy]

Thats true.

I don't trust the IRA any more than I trust the UDF etc. Their politicians may say the words but the people on the ground are just criminal gangsters. Of course so are many of the politicians, but these days they wear suits. If the majority of NI wants to be part of Eire then so be it. At least then the Troubles and their legacy would belong to someone else. In the meantime we are stuck with them (the Troubles that is, not the Northern Irish themselves).