"Nope not all is opinion quite a bit of fact in there too."
Doubt it - you would have linked us to it otherwise.
Where on earth did you get this nonsense of Ireland's pedigree as a nation being in question - The Normans, the Italians, the Spanish, Uncle Tom Cobley and all that shit - total new one on me.
Now that surely is all your own work or can you link us to tat one?
Please do - haven't had a really good Irish belly-laugh since 'The Ginger Man'!!
Won't hold my Breath though - I've given trying to find how your claimed support for Irish nationhood and Irish independence squares up.
Likewise how a State artificially created by a foreign power at gunpoint and made up of settlers who were forcibly implanted a few centuries earlier by that same power can possibly be regarded as valid - do tell?

Anyway - away from La-La Land and back to the real world.

The Home Rule Bill, after being solidly opposed was finally agreed on in principle only, at the Buckingham Palace meeting in July 1914, with the proviso that the question of partition would be decided later after further consultation with the Redmondites and the Unionists.
That was scuppered by Lloyd George, but not by him alone apparently.

From 'The Irish Question; 1840-1921, Nicholas Mansergh, (1965)'
"Irish Nationalist opinion credits neither Carson nor Craig with responsibility for Partition. That is attributed personally to Lloyd George and collectively to the British Government. They have created for the first time in history' protested Joe Devlin, leader of the Ulster Nationalists, 'two Irelands. Providence arranged the geography of Ireland and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr Lloyd George) has changed it.'** But in respect of individuals there are in fact other British claimants to such responsibility. Chief among them stands the Canadian, Andrew Bonar Law. He declared that until War came in 1914 he had cared for only two things in politics, Ulster and Tariff Reform. 'Over Ulster', writes his biographer Robert Blake, 'his success was indisputable, and her survival as an autonomous province wholly independent of the Irish Republic is in no small measure the achievement of Bonar Law/ Blake recognises the greater popular appeal of Carson's theatrical leadership, and Craig's contribution in building up a solid backbone of indigenous resistance, but he nonetheless concludes that without the uncompromising support of Bonar Law, without his much criti¬cized decision to pledge the whole of the English Conservative Party the Ulster cause, it is very unlikely that Ulster would stand where ut stands today".
* * House of Commons Debates.

The position of the Unionists had not altered one iota, total opposition to Home Rule for the whole of Ireland up to the tentative agreement on the Home Rule Bill – which was to be put on 'the long finger' till after the war to dot the i's and cross the t's. and then implement it.

From The Making of Ireland, James Lydon, 1998
"Earlier, Asquith had informed Redmond that in proceeding with his gov¬ernment of Ireland bill the position of Ulster would have to be considered before it became operative. If necessary, parliament must be given the opportunity to introduce amending legislation. An amendment to the home rule bill was, in fact, moved by a Liberal MP in June 1912, that four counties (Armagh, Down. Derry and Antrim) should be excluded. It was defeated by 320 votes to 251. 'I have never heard that orange bitters will mix with Irish whiskey' was how the proposer put it in his speech to the house.
Much more seriously, the cabinet had already decided in February of that year that the government must make whatever concessions were necessary to Ulster if circumstances seemed to warrant them and had told Redmond of its decision. At the end of July a mass demonstration in London protested against home rule and Andrew Bonar Law, the Canadian-born leader, with Ulster ancestry, of the Conservative party, told the crowd that what he called 'a corrupt parliamentary bargain' must not be allowed to deprive the Protestants of Ulster of what he insisted was their 'birthright'. There were, he said, 'things stronger than parliamentary majorities' and if parliament forced through home rule 'I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I should not be prepared to support them' and which would not be 'supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people'. He had, in fact, already publicly given a pledge to a mass meeting at Balmoral in early April that Ulster resistance to home rule would be supported by British unionists. More than 100,000 attended that meeting, the surest sign that the Protestants of Ulster, supported by unionists outside the province, would never accept home rule".

The Unionists were fully armed and drilled and they had the promise of non-intervention from officers of the British Army, and the full support of Conservatives in Parliament.
It can't be emphasized enough that the Unionists were the first to import arms into Ireland for political purposes, and were fully prepared to use them to prevent Independence, even to the point of starting a Civil War.
So far, we've had only the Rebels as being baddies, prepared to take up arms – they had to run to catch up with the Ulstermen.
The Repbublicans were fully aware of the threat from the Northern fanatics and the support they were getting from Britain, and they were extremely dubious of even the Home Rule Bill, with all its limitations, being honoured.
They would have been of their chumps not to prepare to defend the country.

From 'A History of Ireland in 250 episodes. Jonathon Bardon 2008
"The Republican Brotherhood, almost defunct at the beginning of the century, recruited a new generation of activists. The Irish Party leader, John Redmond suspected that republican militants were in control of the Irish Volunteers. He insisted on taking over control of the Volunteers in June 1914, but the IRB were not so easily pushed aside.
If the UVF could arm themselves without retribution, then why not the Irish Volunteers? Erskine Childers, a former clerk of the House of Commons who had written the first modern thriller, The Riddle of the Sands, passionate!' supported Home Rule. An expert sailor, he and the journalist Darrell Figgis took the yacht Asgard to Hamburg. There he bought a consignment of 1,500 Mauser rifles; almost antiques, these single-shot weapons, loaded with black powder cartridges, were nevertheless deadly.
On 26 July 1914, in a blaze of publicity, the Asgard steered into Howth harbour, just north of Dublin. Some Volunteers openly shouldered rifles on the road. Soldiers made ineffective attempts to disarm them.
Returning to Dublin, the troops responded to taunts and stones from a hostile crowd at Bachelor's Walk by opening fire. Four people were killed and thirty-eight wounded. The impression that nationalists and unionists were being treated differently had been viciously reinforced.
Meanwhile Prime Minister Herbert Asquith faced a bewildering array of problems: suffragettes on hunger strike in prison; a threatened general strike- and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. But Ireland, Asquith was certain, was the most intractable problem.
Asquith might refer to his own 'masterly inactivity' and the merits of his policy of 'wait and see', but actually he did not know what to do. Then King George v stepped in. He called an all-party conference on Asquith's Home Rule Bill at Buckingham Palace on 21 July. In his opening address he said:
"For months we have watched with deep misgivings the course of events in Ireland ... and today the cry of civil war is on the lips of the most responsi¬ble and sober-minded of my people.... To me it is unthinkable ... that we should be brought to the brink of fratricidal strife upon issues apparently so capable of adjustment... if handled in a spirit of generous compromise."
According to Winston Churchill, the conference 'toiled round the muddy byways of Fermanagh and Tyrone', but there was no spirit of generous compromise, and the talks broke down. Sir Edward Carson certainly thought that civil war was unavoidable: 'I see no hopes of peace. I see nothing at present but darkness and shadows.... We shall have once more to assert the manhood
of our race.'"

You will note that the Bachelors Walk Massacre (four killed, 38 wounded) came about by troops opening fire on demonstrators in support of the arms being shipped in - so much for the Rebels having no support.
The Rebels had no alternative to do what they did if Ireland was to get independence and retain it's Parliamentary freedom, and what better time to do it while there was a war on?
Apart from this, had they not armed themselves, The Unionists would have been able to march in unopposed had the Home Rule decision not gone their way – supported by officers in the British Army and the Conservatives in the Government.
And to add to this, the W.W.1 Sword of Damocles was hanging over the heads of Ireland's youth.
They were Patriotic Heroes, not "murderers" and that is what they are known as in Ireland today and have now been celebrated as such since the beginning of the year.
If either of you two Imperialist reminiscers are going to respond to this – I would prefer accredited facts – rather than the old usual denials – it really does make these things much more interesting.
Jim Carroll