The Irish

all that, yes

also my habitual wariness of the full side of any story coming from just one perspective too tho, and carving out some level of justifiable position of none of any of us being born into a very idea ireland with very clear and agreed lines of history or the correct course of action to take

94 was the start of a lot of new perspectives and def agree that social media has led to another jump in perspective, and further again sf being all things to all men (for good and for ill) in the south means they will be the major political force on the island in our lifetimes (and i agree with pf that the nature of them rising on an professional-opposition basis means that this phase may well be shortlived depending on how quickly their anti-govt (any govt) vote becomes disillusioned.

FG/FF wont survive as a joint force in opposition i dont think, covid prob the best thing that could have happened to that pairing. they wont solve housing before the next GE so it will really be a question of will they do enough to swing back enough votes allied with what SF's ceiling actually is

ive moved away somewhat from the actual question, unity and what it means. agreed it means an ulster identity within an all-island nation, think that isnt that far off as is, think (informed by a good discussion about it all with a soft-nationalist catholic fella in his fifties at the weekend) that we in the south still- whether we go one way or the other about it- fetishize what it was or is to be a northern catholic, he spoke well and with great conviction about it being a part of his history, identity, experience but by far the larger part was normal ulster rural living which was no more different to what i recognise as my connacht rearing (minus the extraordinary personal parts) was to a youngfella raised strangely in farflung kerry

after unity, fg will be pulled a few ways but towards an ever bluer all island identity certainly seems likely, ff might still exist and pull quite a bit of the above softer northern nationalist vote, sf will have to govern and see how that actually goes for them but hey we've tolerated enough from the other lots til now, setting aside my misgivings as to what their actual attitude is towards the structures of the 26 county state whether they can consolidate and achieve in what youd presume would still have to be some form of coalition is an interesting question in itself

I am also thinking of the influence of legacy media and journalists towards the Republican movement and how much they have been involved in shoring up the attitude that I mention above. The Sunday Independent fired Eoghan Harris after it emerged that he had run an alt account on Twitter that was posting relentlessly attacking young republicans and nationalists and stuff like this:

So here’s the burner account for @Independent_ie columnist Eoghan Harris.
Loathes Sinn Féin, constant attacks SocDems, defends himself from the burner (big LOL at that).
If this is just one political columnist, how many others have burners since look how many are tagged by him? pic.twitter.com/2AEAiHEbKn

— Seán O’Raghallaigh 🇮🇪🇻🇳🇵🇸 (@RaghallaighJ) May 6, 2021

This account sent me sexualised messages about whether Mary Lou McDonald “turned me on”, the size of my arse and called me a terrorist from the month I started at the Examiner. Since then, I’ve had to go to counselling and the guards. https://t.co/aueLtHkg80

— aoife moore. (@aoifegracemoore) May 6, 2021

now apologies for however that all came out tbh xp

that whole thing was mental ofc

sf otoh, imo above all parties at it (and they are to various degrees) have little standing to complain about burner accounts etc carrying out attacks and othery fuckery online

i will have to start taking more care to separate sf from the entirety of the nationalist side, the youth anti-govt side, thats a personal item i know needs working on (look twas acceptable shorthand in my formative years in my defence) because i am fully behind clearing the irish political decks and a unified ireland- like a lot of my generation it will take a lot of convincing that SF are anything like an ideal vehicle for it, regardless of the many faces they present in order to sell that

Also, and sorry for the text walls, but this is very interesting to think about.

SF are obviously currently pulling in a lot of the nominal left vote since SPBP are too small/radical (subs pls check???) to appeal to voters in the bog (such as my parents lol). I think yeah the anti-establishment has a huge role in the SF polling and the continued role of the housing crisis. It’s pretty bad when you’ve got emigrants like myself actively put off returning home because of the difficulty in finding some place to live, yeah?

SF will be in government in my lifetime, to huge resistance and hysteria on this side of the Irish Sea, and good luck to them. I think they are canny enough in the South, we spoke before about how Mary Lou is pretty adept and I’d be interested to see how she fares as Taoiseach.

I take your point about the soft nationalist vote above the border however my view from talking to younger Nordies (and even the shift in my own views) is that Brexit has pushed a lot of people away from this position because the DUP and a vocal minority of the unionist vote have been pretty open about their views and it’s shocked a lot of people. The fact that the DUP are losing ground on their right to the TUV is not unnoticed either. I mean, fuck, I remember the DUP sweeping the assembly elections in 2003(?) and that was a shock then because they were the extremist party!

I think this developing shift in the unionist vote is 100% stoked by their realisation that the writing is on the wall, both in terms of political direction and the demographics. There’s a soft unionist vote as much as there is a soft Republican one, and they’re the people we need to focus on. The hardliners will never be happy.

Also, the census results are going to stir up a lot of shit.

sf otoh, imo above all parties at it (and they are to various degrees) have little standing to complain about burner accounts etc carrying out attacks and othery fuckery online

yeah that's very true about the myth of soft unionism somewhat having its veil whipped away and will ofc have a reaction with that presumed "im actually not mad on SF but ..." northern vote

its an extraordinarily interesting time

i think mary lou has massive potential as a pragmatic taoiseach and a stable term for a majority SF who were able to focus on the issues of the day would be a reassuring thing for even diehard ABSF cohorts

which i might well be in tbh but at least im open to them being better than FG dripfeeding subsistence at market prices to the bare minimum of voters outside the D2 wealth engines and lord help us shoot me first rather than i ever wish for FG back

labour and the SD's ofc have essentially retired from politics afaict, and idk if it makes me a hibernian melt or not to wish that they were a viable alternative to even influence a sf majority govt but notwithstanding strange bedfellows i think that that strand of leftism has a more virulent hatred of sf end than any grouping bar the fg bruton wing, for whom distaste is ofc worse than murderous rage

xp yeah absolutely granted as i say thats a thing i know ive to improve my own scattergun thoughts on

that i ever vote for FF back, should read

if they exist!

There's still plenty of Loyalist headbangers to deal with btw.

i think we're both acknowledging that (and i mean explicitly as a "we've been well reminded that it's mainstream" way) above tbf tom?

SF running a republican island with a concerted UVF campaign against is a very likely scenario in the next fifteen years, right?

Lol yeah Irish Labour afaict have basically disavowed the Northern Question and ofc their time is coalition has decimated their standing as a left party, I couldn’t ever conceive of voting for them myself. I always bang on about Connolly but his writing addresses the need for Irish nationalism to be entwined with socialism as we would be under the boot of the landlords and well, we see how that turned out. Tl;dr, this fella’s Connolly strips:

pic.twitter.com/s5WbJrWg7n

— Jason (@jaseomcn) October 6, 2021

SF running a republican island with a concerted UVF campaign against is a very likely scenario in the next fifteen years, right?

SF in government, first day announce an enquiry into the Dublin/Monaghan bombing…oof…

well i mean....youd have to

odds on fg/ff doing it in the next year to grab the marks like?

No chance, what was stopping them before? Micheaaaaaaaal is really not leaning on the FF being the Republican party at all.

i think doherty is a bigger problem for sf than they realise. hes remarkably unconvincing in his brief and bolsters the "they arent ready" thoughts every time he opens his mouth

now tbh that group is small enough that it wont matter and he is prob grand to bring a majority of "fuck the current lot" with him either way.

o broin is interesting because i know little of his views on the national question (havent looked but) and he dresses like a 1917 cosplayer but hes one that convinces almost everyone bar the professionally unconvinceable because his vision for his brief is so strong and convincing, genuinely think if we voted for ministers hed be runaway candidate for the most pressing issue we have.

as a group i think irish voters have a large element of elasticity individually and as a running central cohort as a result of all the fuckery of the past ah lets say century, i think o broin might show that we are still open to merit convincing us ahead of many other factors nb this is not polled nor tested ofc

xp desperation rising over time.

I'm grateful to posters gyac and darraghmac for contributing their thoughts following my briefer post on a united Ireland.

My thinking very much has been: in Britain, I think the idea about 'resistance to a united Ireland' often somehow centres on Britain, as though London / England / Britain / et al is desperate to hang on to NI, and the ROI wants to take it away.

Whereas: This is probably the wrong way to look at it: the UK government stated in the 1990s that it had 'no strategic interest' in NI; most English people (outside eg Lancashire?) frankly don't know much about NI and are if anything embarrassed or troubled by it -- the truth is that the people in Britain who DO most have an investment in NI are ... Scots. Unionists / Loyalists / Rangers fans obviously, and, in a different way, their Celtic other also.

So the question really should be: does the ROI want NI? Is continued aspiration to unification (eg by FF) mainly a rhetorical pretence? (I don't think it's merely a pretence by southern SF.) And again, what would the demographic effects on the ROI be of a massive influx of ... Protestants, Unionists, however you want to define them - totally changing the psephology of the nation and also, as noted above, suddenly providing a massive cultural counterweight as Ulster becomes, in a newly concrete way, part of the culture of (the Republic of) Ireland again.

OTOH my feeling that there is a cultural gulf to be leapt might be overestimate given that since the Good Friday Agreement, large amounts of cross-border work and trade take place -- the very stuff threatened by the notorious 'Brexit return of a hard border'? Maybe all this has made the North-South difference less than I think?

Nonetheless I think it is true that 'assimilation' (if that's a fair word) of the 6 counties would be a big deal and cause a lot of ructions and 'interesting times'. Which Gyac and Darraghmac have illuminated with their more precise expertise.

SF running a republican island with a concerted UVF campaign against is a very likely scenario in the next fifteen years, right?
― Ár an broc a mhic (darraghmac), Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Yes I also wondered about something like this. The establishment of a political settlement (like NI itself) doesn't mean that everyone accepts it. (cf Remainers also!) It seems quite logical to imagine a rearguard loyalist campaign of sabotage even after reunification. But a political party (like the DUP) then running on a 'let's get go British' again platform would not seem to have much credibility.

it would be endgame stuff but drag on forever, that new phase

i thought on what steps ulster (using the term consideredly) would need to

take? i dont want to suggest it's a "you're on your own here until" but an element of getting the house in order is certainly imo implicit

and likewise what further moves and norms and policies from south would need to happen in order for the most seamless possible transition to unified island to occur

i usually fail to get beyond "everything from 1994 til brexit, but longer" because the cross border policies initiatives and simply practical lived experience were imo working exactly as far as could be hoped.

SF rising to govt added to brexit as a provocation of the slow progress isnt ofc similar in character or anything but is nonetheless i think not a step back, but a step nonetheless that makes wary the population youd most want to be driving the question of what comes next

three generations of piece, a standalone ulster that finds out what works without london intervention, subvention, prevention, a slow melding of tourism roads agriconomy and eventually theyd pop in one day and never leave, like a scandalous widower/widow coupling and really arent we too old for all the fuss, have ye nothing better for doing than looking at us

Yes.

Does your 'standalone ulster' imply actual independence for Ulster, as a temporary step between UK and united Ireland?

SF running a republican island with a concerted UVF campaign against is a very likely scenario in the next fifteen years, right?
― Ár an broc a mhic (darraghmac), Wednesday, February 23, 2022

I reflect now that this putative Neo-Loyalist movement would ultimately be much weaker than the IRA ever were. It would have limited local community support ('soft Unionists'? wouldn't support it), it would have no hinterland in Britain (except, again Rangers fans) as Republicanism has had in the ROI, it would have no realistic political goal (as Republicanism had and has), and it would have no great source of finance from 'our greater Ulster beyond the sea'. It would surely become extremely marginalised, to a much greater extent than the Republican movement in NI has ever been.

I am responding purely to pf as just reading in between bits of work. Dmac alludes to it above but the south has always had a cohort who are either implicitly or explicitly “we can’t rule ourselves, should have left the Brits in charge” who will be put in an interesting position by extreme responses to unification. Can’t imagine John Bruton, for example, being comfortable seeing Irish flags burned, but there are certain columnists (I will not name them but if you know, you know) whose positions have been out of step with 99% of the Irish public and who have had endless space to spout their rhetoric for pay who might - I stress might - be more sympathetic to unionist concerns.

yes it would be a true isolated group of extremists, very unlike an otherwise equivalent nationalist group in situ within a wider nationalist group notwithstanding the treaty looming large over that latter population

to the xp, i dont think theres a question of donegal for instance joining a formal splintered north as an entity politically. the smart play, if a unified political will were there, would imo be to rather downplay official structures and simply start to fund ulster initiatives, cross border initiatives, normalise the province as a shared space and see what better ways of living arise from such an approach

the three counties of ulster are liminal spaces politically and every impression i have of my old home county of donegal is that alienation from the current irish govt usuals has never been stronger felt. other posters on the boards would know better tbh but from this negative you could at least mine some good by appealing to an existing alternative that already functions in many practical ways i think.

sf in govt may have v different appeal to these counties, in any case

xp

gyac: I think I've met one or two of those people! (ordinary people not columnists - let alone ... fifth columnists)

I think it can’t be understated though that a militant loyalist movement would have support from the international far right, as they always have. When they searched Thomas Mair’s house, they found anti-Irish stuff in with the rest of the more obvious Nazi stuff. I wish it were more limited as you think pf, but the blatant supremacist of planters attracts a lot of the far right.

they are a legitimate opinion ofc

just massively overrepresented as an opinion where such opinions (used to?) matter

xp again if you say understated and i say merelybtaken as a given i dont think we disagree!

we should prob meet somewhere around underreported/implicit

As per poster Darraghmac's comments about the difficulty of transition, etc etc -

I maintain the idea that the political power of Belfast, within the same state, would be difficult for Dublin to cope with (and / or vice versa), and one could posit a 'devolved administration' in Belfast all over again - NI being a ... proud province or ... statelet within the ROI as it has been within the UK?

Perhaps the 'standalone Ulster' is a step toward this or a step toward avoiding it?

Perhaps this would be an opportune time for Cork to demand more autonomy?

I also re-posit my one, I think, slightly original hypothesis here amid the better informed statements of others, namely a conservative coalition of southern conservatism (eg FG) and northern (ex-)unionists - as a 'shared repository of sensible conservative values' (why not even ... 'Christian values'? for 'we are of different traditions on this island, yes, but we come together now in a recognition of what is best in our two traditions and of what, being un-Irish, will not stand' -- the latter being ... socialism, for instance).

The Irexit crowd are ofc very much in line with what I suggested above, Richard Chambers reported on them a few years back (search his tweets for Irexit as some of the threads are separate).

What we learned:
✅ #irexit political movement contesting elections planned
✅ "Quisling", "immigrants have no affinity or allegiance and we should demand it" in speeches.
✅ Farage will be back and more meetings planned.
✅ Media framed as the enemy of #irexit

— Richard Chambers (@newschambers) February 3, 2018

✅ "Ireland is not a foreign country" #Irexit

— Richard Chambers (@newschambers) February 3, 2018

xp lol your last sentence, you need to read about the Mother and Child Scheme if you haven’t heard of it before.

I don’t see a future back for the church in public life, though, regardless of an unlikely alliance around the idea.

PF- its difficult to argue for any such approach as follows when the trend is to predict absolute certainty in selling any idea at the levels in question, but I'd say that it would need to be an approach towards not a standalone province, but a 9 county province in itself with the very formally-tied structures of state left as they are but more and more functions and resources funnelled into activities that were less controversial and generally agreeable- sports, tourism, regional transport links across border and suchlike.

if this had to be categorised as either of your options i suppose id be selling it as the standalone option with several asterisked caveats, and certainly id be telling any smaller conference room informally that it was ofc *hoped for* that a period of stabilised (this can ofc be read politically literal or as the equivalent cycling tutelage stage, either would be correct) existence without such constant reference to the region as six counties turned towards the UK question nor forced to think of itself as necessarily in transition towards dublin would lead to the question longer term being considered in a more peacable light and with concrete gains for many who could be sold on a future as ulster within the four provinces of ireland if the wider political situation were calmer.

unity delayed is ofc unity denied for many, and any move towards even the goal of unity is viewed as presumed aggression by others.

the belfast question has been raised as ive seen it a few times. did m bourke or an other of this thread suggest or post a suggestion that belfast should be considered as a candidate for the 32 county capital?

i know mcwilliams, and ive little use for him mind, has written in his usual fabulously casual "will this do?" style of the development of a new superdock between dublin and belfast for several reasons, one being the bringing about of a new focus on the question of the dublin/belfast relationship as a pair of cities in a relatively small economic zone as opposed to the usual historical balancing act. to his credit i guess such attention is welcome regardless of the merits or otherwise of his concepts.

regional capitals are the ideal and as you say it wouldnt/shouldnt/neednt stop at the north east but the idea of regional hubs was established practice in the mid 90s and its a pity that not even working from home has made it a more pressing political issue again, altho the health boards being reproposed and wfh and belfast demanding some status and dublin being a housing disaster would all seem to be a mounting suite of pressures that argue for exactly such an approach.

quick return to the catholic right as an all ireland force- it would imo take politicians and votes from all three of the major players in the republic and the actual breakdown of that would be fascinating to see, id guess it would hurt ff and sf more than fg tbh

I’m no expert™️ but wouldn’t the ulster goodwill be massively improved by, oh, say, having trains?

Idk I’m going for a walk will think more on this

donegal yeah for sure that kind of thing is what im getting at

if putin is allowed to do this in the ukraine, will johnson in london be looking at the four ports and be licking his lips?

Don’t make me visualise that this dark morning pls

Thanks Darraghmac for your substantial post.

I had never heard talk of

a new superdock between dublin and belfast

This stuff tends to go into Flann O'Brien territory - if only, in my mind, because the early Flann c.1934 demanded a deep water harbour in Bettystown. Which would be a good proposal here except that, as we know, Bettystown is only 48km from Dublin and would hardly bring the spatial equality sought.

For the above reasons I was excited to actually see, or actually to see, Bettystown for the first time, in 2006; though more engaged still by Skerries.

i doubt very much that you couldnt dig into any one caper dreamt up by the same man that didnt have a lot more than a seed in either a white paper hed read or a meeting he had attended that week tbh

Pf I sincerely think you might be the first and perhaps only person in history to be engaged by Skerries.

If Pyutin will go after Keev, who’s to say Cobh isn’t next Joe?

joe would be out with the red flag ten mins after joe knows his pitch

We're still waiting for Boris' bridge from the Shankhill Road to Ibrox Park to get the go ahead.

alan kelly gone as labour leader

professional politician since school, professional shouter since, always had fuck-all time for him tbh and whatever labour needed after govt and collapse it was never him.

we wish him well in future endeavours

"Duncan Smith takes himself out of race for Labour leadership" might some of us a double-take.