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Given the current levels of immigration to the Island of Ireland, isn’t the question of reunification superfluous?
Will Ireland still be the country where the historic Republican and Loyalist aspirations even matter?
Will a large immigrant population care sufficiently about Irish history and culture?
Will Ireland be just another economic unit in a globalist run world?
Based on current levels of immigration and the birth levels of the ‘idigenous’irish compared to the birth levels of….whoever the ‘irish’ people will in the next 2 generations will be a minority in their own country and Eire will be Eirasia.
Do you think the new ‘irish’ (assuming they regard themselves as irish) could care less about reunification. Go figure.
You guys crack me up with all your concerns about the indigenous (not idigenous!) people.
Where is all the concern for the indigenous people of Australia or North America who have suffered far more grievously than any indigenous European peoples?
Many of these replacement theories emanate from the USA and the UK which have a history in North America and Australasia of not only displacing but killing the indigenous inhabitants.
The sheer hypocrisy of people propagating these theories is beyond belief.
Yeah, they never talk about the ‘great replacement’ of native Americans or Australians, or possibly worst of all, the natives of New Zealand who were hunted down like wild animals. Neither do they talk about the forced replacement of native peoples by enslaved peoples shipped from elsewhere, like in Jamaica (and indeed, the US).
And what are we actually talking about in the here and now is migration due to worldwide strife, and subsequent demographic change. You do not have to like this and have every right to defend and try and preserve what you value in a culture via its people, but I mean the hypocrisy is through the fucking roof when it comes to simply sitting about complaining about ‘foreigners’ when you consider the wealth and relative success of countries we live in is partly founded on the peoples we literally forced onto indigenous populations elsewhere, often wiping out those people and cultures in the process.
Niemand – perhaps Stevie H and John L should consider advocating the return to the UK and Ireland of those who have emigrated to USA, Australia and New Zealand to overcome the demographic challenges that they are so worked up about! This may also help redress the problem of the culture of indigenous Australians, Americans etc being destroyed by the immigrants from our countries.
Aye. It’s utterly absurd.
If a united Ireland comes first Scotland will have no chance of independence. The UK govt will launch a massive housebuilding project in Scotland and NI loyalists will be given generous relocation packages to move to Scotland, ensuring a unionist majority for all time (remember, these clowns are still celebrating a victory in 1690). Get ready to welcome your new neighbours.
I’be heard this before but I don’t think this is what would happen. I don’t think the Scottish government would let this happen with the idea of importing widespread social disorder as an inevitable consequence. A United Ireland would, i think, be an important catalyst to Scottish independence as the UK would be ‘cracked’ on (at least) two fronts.
They could (maybe) block the housebuilding but they couldn’t stop the relocation packages or stop them coming.
Tom – you are worrying about hypotheticals and scaremongering here. There may be a few Uber unionists who could not thole living in a United Ireland but I am sure the vast majority would not want to uproot their jobs and families from their home.
In addition, please correct me if I am wrong, but all polling shows that support for reunification, both in North & South is running below the support for independence in Scotland.
Reunification will also require both parts of Ireland to agree to reunification which is an additional hurdle.
A lot more than a few John and of the worst type. How long did it take for YES in Scotland to get from 28% to looking likely to win?
I do not know if this would happen but if it did would there not be a kind of historical ‘justice’ to it? Discussion of demographic change on the left is often couched with a fairly sensible attitude that though it needs managing, it is inevitable, has always happened and culture is not static anyway, but when it comes to even the more enlightened nationalists’ worries about demographic shifts making independence less likely . . . suddenly that liberal approach starts to crumble – ‘keep ’em out!’
I’d rather we got independence first so they could then move to the actual country they’ve clung to and exalted since birth. Surely the King would welcome such loyal subjects to one of his estates?
The country they came from was Scotland.
It’s the English they worship. What is your point caller?
The point is obvious – they would come back to Scotland where they originated and yet you would somehow deny them that. They do not worship the English, but if you want to put it like that, they worship the UK of which they see Scotland as a continuing important part of.
What is your actual plan here? Ireland becomes united, so lots of NI Unionists decide to leave, then you what, close the Scottish borders to them (even if that were possible, which with the current set up it is not)?
I thought what I said was obvious. If they want to continue to be British then an independent Scotland is no use to them. Also, if Scotland was independent, there would be no relocation packages on offer as neither Scotland or Britain would want them so the choice would be uprooting from an independent country to an independent country. If Scotland isn’t independent on the other hand, like I said, get ready to welcome your new neighbour, hide your unused pallets and holiday abroad during the marching season.
But I thought your point was about Irish unification *before* Scottish independence?
If it were after do you really think any new Scottish regime would simply close the door?
As for England and Wales, I would have thought any negotiation about a united Ireland would involve an agreement with the UK about re-settlement there and think it highly unlikely England / Wales would simply revoke any right to live in the UK for ex NI citizens given Irish citizens have it already.
That was my original point, it was you who moved the goalposts. To clarify
If a united Ireland comes first then there’s nothing Scotland could do (whether they wanted to or not) to stop them relocating to Scotland.
If Scotland became independent before a united Ireland, the UK govt could hardly offer the NI loyalists compensation to move to Scotland and why would they want to move from a country that wasn’t in the UK to a country not in the UK in any case? They could offer them packages to relocate to England / Wales (i.e. the UK) but they wouldn’t in case the loyalists took them up on it.
They wouldn’t need to offer them packages as they would become Irish citizens, who can already move to and live in the UK by very long standing agreement. If that were to change it would have to for all Irish citizens (and I assume would also have implications for UK people wanting to move to Ireland).
It is true an independent Scotland in theory could simply bar them but again I suspect any negotiations with the rUk after independence would very much include one about movement and settlement of current UK citizens (in both directions). I think it highly unlikely that would be that restrictive given the familial interconnections and so on. The prospect of a new Scottish regime shutting the door to all immigrants from Ireland (because that is what it would have to be) is untenable and I think it very possible some NI people might want to return to their Scottish roots on Irish unification.
What is clear is that you have a serious problem with NI Protestant people (no doubt of Scottish descent) and want to keep them out of Scotland, or at least any more of them. That’s how divisive nationalism can be, to put it politely.
You’re moving goalposts again and talking nonsense. Nowhere have I said an independent Scotland would bar migration from anywhere in Ireland. Neither do I have a problem with Protestants. Had I been around in the time of Luther and the Catholic Church refused to translate the bible / mass into English then I would’ve been one, but what has that to do with NI loyalists?
Why would NI loyalists who want to be British (it’s “their culture”) move to an independent Scotland?
This is my original post. Please refer to it before you reply again.
[If a united Ireland comes first Scotland will have no chance of independence. The UK govt will launch a massive housebuilding project in Scotland and NI loyalists will be given generous relocation packages to move to Scotland, ensuring a unionist majority for all time (remember, these clowns are still celebrating a victory in 1690). Get ready to welcome your new neighbours.]
Admittedly, the offer of relocation packages would (probably) have to apply to all in NI and would include moving to anywhere in the UK but
a) what reason would republicans have to move and
b) any loyalists wishing to move would favour the motherland where their football club resides, a plethora of backslappers would welcome them and they’d be orgasmic at the thought of shoring up the unionist vote.
The concerns of the pseudonymous Tom Ultous, which on the evidence of this comment string do not seem to be generally shared, somehow become those of ‘even the more enlightened nationalists’. How did that happen?
Call it Scottish National Project Fear.
Very interesting. Essential listening for anyone involved in issues around Scottish independence. “We must try to dig ourselves out of the binaries”…
Yeah – I thought so too Paddy, lots of insights for us here
Retaining British ‘citizenship’/(subjecthood) after Irish reunification would presumably maintain that once-Northern-Irish person’s lifelong legal obligations to the British Official Secrets omerta, something of considerable importance to Ireland, considering the drastic, clandestine and illegal efforts the British imperial state has made to keep aspects of that shared history suppressed. Would renouncing British ‘citizenship’/(subjecthood) free the new Irish citizen from this shadow? And would the British state try something similar on Scottish independence (carrot/stick)? If such secrets spilt, it could be the end of the British Empire, which has built a bureaucracy over a mountain of corpses, literal and figurative.
Another question that arises from this debate is finding a healthy political role for minorities, in the sense described by Vera Brittain (honourable and productive dissent, and so on) that for example Protestants or British unionists might want to take on (as an uplifting public duty) in a United Ireland. So, not assimilation, but supplying a key critical function that might reduce the kinds of corruption associated with a monoculture (roughly speaking, for a generation or more). Being in a majority is sometimes like living life on an easier level, but not everyone prefers that to having a greater purpose, having to master greater skills, deciding on your own active role rather than simply be someone else’s prop for the status quo.