I made my attitude to nationalism, et al clear earlier on; but just in case:
"As an internationalist, I have no great interest in national boundries one way or another, but I have come to realise that others attach great importance to them and are prepared to die for them."
What we have here on this thread is a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with Ireland.
Here we have - what are you - a bunch of Brits (maybe some Americans thrown in), the same as me, (I have Irish family connections, but I was born and spent the most of my life in Britain) deciding and pontificating on what is best for the Irish, what they want, what they need, what they have done and should do...... the Empire midset writ small!
This is exactly what has caused all the trouble down the centuries, and has led to poor governance, poverty, a lethally mismanaged famine, mass emigration, massacres, a treaty forced through under threat of invasion, the partitioning of the country on religious grounds in favour of the majority religion over the minority, culminating in 80 years of conflict; mainly bloody, the need for a permanent military presence, - and what do you come up with? - the maintaining of the status quo - brilliant!!!
I still haven't had a reply to my "if the Nazis had won the war" question, yet it remains at the heart of what is happening in Ireland today - a nation conquored, colonised, poorly governed and finally partitioned under threat.
None of this is "living in the past"; these events shaped modern Ireland as surely as The Battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar made Britain what it is today.
As with many former colonies, Britain left Ireland in a mess, it has poured in money and young lives to suppress the effects of that mess, and if the source of the problem isn't tackled, it will be your children and your children's children who are killing and dying for a partitioned Ireland in the not-to-distant future.
Peter K claims a lack of support from the Republic for what is happening in the North - not my experience, having lived here for a dozen years, but that aside. In the thirty odd years I lived in London I didn't meet many people who understood or cared very much what was happening in Ireland, until the bombs started going off in their streets, and then all they wanted was for Ireland to go away. It is to the shame of those responsible that it has taken bombs on mainland Britain to get a debate on the future of Ireland going (no, I certainly don't support violence; I abhor it and those who cause it, but that's the way it is).
The partitioning of Ireland was a political act and asking a gerrrymandered population to decide the future is going to solve nothing.
There is a fragile peace here at present - so fragile that a politicians wife putting herself about very nearly brought about what had been achieved so far, crashing around our ears - that is Britain's legacy to Ireland - one to be proud of - I don't think so really - does anybody?
JIm Carroll