"There has been a hell of a lot of collusion from the people native to the island of Ireland perpetuating partition."
Go read your history books Al
Partition was forced on Ireland at gunpoint - "sign in three days or go to war" - the result was a brutal year-long civil war - not a lot of "collusion" there.
The country was divided by gerrymandering - first it was to be the whole of the nine counties, then Britain did the math and realised that that would give the Catholics a majority, so they lopped three counties off to give the Unionists power - that's how "democrat" a Unionist Ulster was reached (sort of like deciding the nature of Britain's Govenment by only including the wealthy South East soft underbelly.
From the word "go", the division was unequal - voting rights were based on property ownership - the property owners were predominantly Protestant.
Regular Anti-Catholic riots, employment boycotts, inability to purchase land..... and a whole mass of laws and practices, became permanent features of life for a third of the population
Members of my family were forced to flee Derry - including two young cousins and a babe in arms - when their house was burned down by a protestant mob.
When the Catholics protested in the late sixties, their peaceful marches were navigated though screaming mobs o stone- throwing Loyalists, despite this, the first sectarian murders of 'The Troubles' were carried out by Protestant terrorists led by Gusty Spence - a pub bombing.
As I said - go read a history book
I'm putting this up for you - it's been dealt with ad-nauseum on other threads and justified (or ignored) by out two resident anti- Irish racists
I have no intention of covering it again with two people who have made clear trheir hatred for the Irih - one who thinks all Irish children were brainwashed to hate Britain, the other who claims the Irish were stupid enough to not want independence for themselves but were "conned into it by foreigners" and both who claim that last years dignified and critical commemoration of the Easter Uprising was "celebrating mass murder" - which makes every other nation who has taken up arms to obtain independence from Britain - The United States, Israel, India, Kenya, Cyprus..... "mass murderers"
It is a grotesque hangover of Empire that Britain should still dominate the life and politics of Six Counties in Northern Ireland - the shadow of a system that brought misery, slavery and death to generations throughout the world for many centuries in order that Britain should grow and remain rich and powerful (while, of course, the ordinary British people remained as poor and oppressed as their colonial counterparts)
Ireland is now, hopefully, closing the book on eight centuries of outside interference - not before time.
Jim Carroll