Posted by Lurker on Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:31 | #

Best not to forget that Sinn Fein had a formal alliance with Nazi Germany.

Posted by Andrew L on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:10 | #

And helped istruct Moslem Identities on Military tactics , and explosive’s,
Are they realy Celtic or did some genes go astray?

Mind you with a name like Luttrell, as in Luttrell town near Dublin, and the history behind that, safer in a cave somewhere for me.

Posted by Alexei on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:10 | #

To be honest, I can’t understand why you call the hostilities in Ulster a war of racial hatred. Are not the Irish Catholics and most Ulster Protestants of the same Celtic root, although of two different branches, Irish and Scottish?

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:40 | #

Alexei,

There are indeed some suggestions arising from genetic studies of the British Isles that such similarities obtain. 

Historically, I suppose, the Scots who migrated to Ulster were from the lowlands.  It can certainly be argued that Celtic Scotland was relegated to the Highlands and Islands by the push north of the Engles and Jutes, while the Saxons spread across Eastern, Southern and Central England.

However, the extanct studies seem to conflict too much to draw firm conclusions, and the latest suggestion is that the Friesian/North German invasion left a relatively light genetic footprint.  From that follows the, I think, unrealistic and somewhat Pee-Cee idea that the indigenes welcomed the invaders as rulers.  To my mind, the Southern Celts will have been subjugated militarily, the men killed or driven West across Offas Dyke and the women taken into slavery.

But we shall see eventually, no doubt.

In any case, there are racial differences between the Irish and Scots-Irish visible to the naked eye of most Britons, I think.  More to the point, the peoples themselves are profoundly divided in other ways.  History, culture, faith, politics and average cognitive ability separate them.  Virtually nothing ties them beyond a claim to the same piece of land.

However you view the IRA’s war, racial or religious, it was founded in hate.

Posted by stari_momak on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:33 | #

The IRA was and is fighting for its nation. It is fighting again rule by people that were imported against the general will of the populace. It is fighting for the preservation of whatever remains of a language and culture that has been decimated by Empire.  Sound familiar? It seems to me that WN’s should feel a little empathy with them, if rejecting their methods.

Same goes for the Welsh that torch English second homes in Wales. Let the English fight to preserve England, says I, instead of running to Wales to get away from the results of their imperial ambitions.

Posted by Alexei on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:40 | #

I did not realize racial differences between the two groups were so pronounced. Have they thought of solving the problem by resettling so that the patchwork of Catholic and Protestant areas would mutate into two “simply connected domains” (to use a math term) of a reasonable shape? Also, what if the UK had only retained four counties instead of six in 1921?

Posted by Delmore Macnamara on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:41 | #

stari, this is where I, a Scots/Irish/Welsh/English hybrid start to feel a very uncomfortable…

Do I have to torch my own house?

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:52 | #

Stari,

Being English and not having had a stake in the disagreements of Irishmen and Scots for generations, I would point out that Ulster was settled by a people of a superior culture and superior average cognitive ability.  They arrived to find the indigenes living in most brutish circumstances, surviving in bad times by boiling up stinging nettles for nourishment!  Ulster was the usual story of a successful people displacing an unsuccessful one, and a repeat of what occurred in the rest of Britain a thousand years earlier.

It is not without some relevance to this blog that 20th century modernity restrained the Scots of Ulster from dealing with their enemy through warfare and ethnic cleansing.  The rule of liberal laws gives a certain licence to the cognitively disadvantaged party to pursue its ends through moral brutishness.  Its victim, meanwhile, is held to a higher account.

THIS is the meaning of the Ulster conflict for nationalists in the West, Stari.  We are also held to a higher account than the minorities who are displacing us.  You need have no sympathy for the IRA, and none for the cretinous shitbags who attack the property of English retirees to Anglesey.

Posted by R J Stove on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 14:15 | #

Nothing in recent decades - let alone in recent days - has weakened my own belief that the IRA’s hoodlums could’ve been smashed like ninepins in about 1970, if the Vatican had taken a public stand against them. After all, it was Vatican disapproval which did more than anything else to weaken the Fenian terrorists in the 19th century.

Of course the real hard men and women of the IRA would’ve still continued their murderous merry prankster existences, even if the Vatican had denounced them. But, such a denunciation would probably have prevented, and would certainly have limited, the IRA’s support base among ordinary none-too-bright locals. The IRA hard men were (to use Mao’s notorious metaphor about guerrilla fighters everywhere) swimming in the ocean of popular support.

Had this popular support been denied, and had successive popes said from the start, “Championing the IRA will be regarded as valid grounds for your excommunication”, then that threat would really have frightened a lot of useful Catholic idiots who otherwise - out of steer stupidity if nothing else - would’ve been inclined to give the IRA the benefit of the doubt. But this intestinal fortitude was clearly beyond the Vatican, just as intestinal fortitude with regard to sexually rapacious clergy was clearly beyond it later on.

(Oh and BTW, in case some thought-police-person is reading this blog and wants to shop me to the “religious vilification” authorities for my remarks above, I’m Catholic myself.)

Posted by Lurker on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 16:14 | #

There is a tribal element to the conflict but if one lives in the island of Ireland one’s side is determined by religion.

There are Loyalists with names of Irish origin, so somewhere along the line their ancestors converted/married into Protestantsm. On the other side: Gerry Adams - Adams is a Scottish name, so one can imagine a similar story but this time becoming Catholic.

Posted by Matra on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 16:44 | #

On the issue of race and Ulster. In the 1980s when the largest Protestant paramilitary organisation was talking about Ulster independence and intellectual called Ian Adamson came up with a new non-sectarian theory about Ulster Protestants and our homeland.

In short, using University of Aberdeen sociologist Steve Bruce’s synopsis of this theory, the Gaels were not the first inhabitants of the island of Ireland. They displaced the Pictish ‘Cruithin’ who moved on to present-day Argyll. During the Plantation many of these people (who’d since become Scots and Protestants) returned to Ulster as colonists. This is mostly true - though quite a few English and French Huguenots also mixed with the Scottish settlers - but it doesn’t really matter as most Ulstermen have no interest in their ancient history. Adamson’s history is too Celtic and, unfortunately, Irish Catholic nationalist propaganda has succeeded in claiming the Celtic heritage as theirs exclusively to such an extent that even Celtic Ulster-Scots are suspicious of anything to do with the word ‘Celtic’. It’s silly, especially when you consider how many of today’s Irish Catholics have some English ancestry. But in Ireland as in the American West legends are often more important than the truth.

Posted by Matra on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:24 | #

Lurker is correct. It is religion that determines one’s identity in Ireland even if, like me, you haven’t been to a church in decades. Despite all the ancient Celtic mythology national identity in Ireland is based on modern history. It was the English who united the Gaelic tribes who spoke different dialects and had no love for one another. No English language = no Irish nationalism.

RJ Stove - the IRA’s hoodlums could’ve been smashed like ninepins in about 1970, if the Vatican had taken a public stand against them.

Interesting. The IRA would have been crushed if the English politicians hadn’t got involved. Previous rebellions were easily snuffed out by the mostly Protestant security forces leaving the Republicans defeated and demoralised. The Catholic population knew that the Prods wouldn’t mess around and would use maximimun force if necessary. After all, to Prods a ‘united Irealnd’ is as welcome as a German conquest was to the English in WW2. Unfortunately the arrival of the British army at the request of the Catholics protected the Republicans and bought them time to organise a more sophisticated guerilla and propaganda campaign. 

Watching the news reports yesterday I was reminded of the poor job Protetants have done making our case to the world. On both US and European TV they talked about ‘English’ rule, as if being British and English were one and the same. Most of the help Protestant paramilitaries have received from mainland Britain during the Troubles has come from southwest Scotland, not England. On the rare occasion that Ulster Protestants are mentioned in foreign media we are invariably referred to as ‘pro-British’.

The Plantation began in 1609, long before most whites arrived on American soil. Protestants built Belfast and most of Northern Ireland. A lot of the Catholics lived south of the Mourne mountains until jobs were created in places like Belfast thanks to membership of the British Empire - sort of like Mexicans today crossing the Rio Grande. That we are still considered mere colonists is testament to our PR failures and the Republicans’ skill in that department.

Posted by Matra on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:38 | #

The IRA see Ulster Protestants as an ‘outpost people’ like the Krajina Serbs. Republicans gloated when Serbs were cleansed from Krajina and based on my own personal conversations with Northern Irish Catholics many took great delight in seeing the whites of Zimbabwe dispossessed. IRA literature - look up An Phoblacht on Google - has in the past referred to Ulster Protestants as Afrikaners and Serbs but, of course, now they claim we are their fellow Irish and that really they love us and we can trust them in the all-Ireland Socialist Republic they dream of.

Anyway…here’s a typical Ulster Protestant view of yesterday’s Sinn Fein/IRA statement:

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/story/21688

Posted by stari_momak on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:40 | #

GW,

They arrived to find the indigenes living in most brutish circumstances, surviving in bad times by boiling up stinging nettles for nourishment

You might not want to visit the link below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/essex/features/food/clive_nettlesoup.shtml

Essex!

But a serious question—who has done more damage in the long run to the English nation, the ethnonationalist IRA or the imperialists who have given you the ‘blowback’ you are presently experiencing. In general the choice is between the two mindsets, and it seems clear that the former is better.

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 18:11 | #

Stari,

Nice link.  I live in the Sussex countryside where nettle soup is also an occasional delicacy for folk who don’t count every brain cell - especially if they think they are discovering how things used to be done in the country.  That’s OK, I suppose.  But as a staple diet nettles will remove you from reality or from the genepool.  They are poisonous.

As for the comparative pleasures of being smithereened by Irish shitbags or Moslem ones, I find it difficult to choose.  But assuming one has no corneal diseases I would prefer Moslem shitbags as my enemy.  It’s so much easier to spot them, get up from one’s seat on the train and follow everybody else several carriages further on.

Posted by stari_momak on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 19:14 | #

[Nettles] are poisonous

The BBC claims they are good for asthma, neuralgia (sp?) , skin irritations &tc;. &tc;. Is this just part of its fiendish plot to dumb down the British populace? ; )

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 19:18 | #

The BBC is also poisonous.  So yes.

Posted by Lurker on Sat, 30 Jul 2005 02:15 | #

I still think a redrawing of the border plus bribing people to move would have sorted it all out. A smaller but totally protestant Ulster - job done.

Most discussions on Ulster always seem to breakdown to either handing it to the Republic or waiting until sometime/maybe/never the catholics are a majority and vote to do that anyway. In fact that is the party line for most mainstream politicians. Really? Are they the only options? What an unimaginative world we live in!

If a Scot nationalist complains that he is Scottish not British we are supposed to say quite right sir, well said. If a loyalist says he is British not Irish an army of naysaying lefties will roundly condemn him, you are suffering from that false consciousness old chap, dont you know you are Irish?

So, many British lefties are more than happy to cast out loyalists as not really being British. Whereas those cheerful muslims, Nigerians who arrived last week etc hey theyre as British as you and me and dont you forget it you racist. Something of a contradiction there I feel.

For card carrying Guardian readers their repudiation of unionists, Ian Paisley etc is proof to the world of their sensitivty and compassion. I suspect the wider world sees things more crudely. It sees a class who will sell out their own grandmother, Ulster has been British longer than most nation states on earth have existed. Make any demand on us couched in the correct form of victimology and there is nothing we wont surrender.

Posted by R J Stove on Sat, 30 Jul 2005 06:18 | #

Matra makes good points. One remark among these points particularly struck me: “Watching the news reports yesterday I was reminded of the poor job Protetants have done making our case to the world.”

Well, the IRA (quite apart from the Gaddafi connection etc) has always benefited from a steady conduit of funding from Americans; whereas no foreign power has found it in its interest, so far as I know, to subsidise Ulster Protestants.

Perhaps my original post was unduly optimistic in citing 1970 as a year when a firm Vatican condemnation of the IRA would have done good. Possibly 1972, the year of the Claudy Massacre, would have been better for me to mention. Nevertheless I remain convinced (not least by reading other Majority Rights blog comments) that my original allegation still stands: sharp Vatican disapproval would have fightened away the IRA’s Catholic enablers. In the early 1970s Vatican global prestige still counted for something, not least among non-Catholics. It hadn’t been entirely dissipated by years of Koran-kissing (literal as well as metaphorical), indulgence towards liberation “theologians”, and coddling sacerdotal sodomites.

Posted by John O'Rourke on Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:09 | #

If we’re talking about indigenous people fighting against those who have stolen their land, is there a case for Native Americans rising up with a vicious bombing campaign against modern Americans? Many Americans who fund the IRA today, through the conscience-easing guise of Sinn Fein, believe Ireland to be Irish simply because history taken far enough back will inevitably uncover a time when the only people living in Ireland were natives bred and born. The Irish claim to be proud to be Celtic, yet they conveniently forget those indigenous tribes, already in residence, when the Celts invaded, and who are happily resigned to myth. Imagine if Protestants had put all the Catholics out of Ulster, and blithely covered up the facts with a fairy story ending: “and they all went to the land of Tir Na Nog where no one ever grows old and no-one ever dies…”.
People should realise that Northern Ireland although formally partitioned in the 1920s existed for hundreds of years before that as a Protestant-dominated region, with allegience to the UK. This was the very reason for its’ creation as a six-county Province - there were irreconcilable differences with Dublin even in those days. Generations have grown up looking to the UK as their country, not this foreign land across the border. Geography has nothing to do with it - French do not see themselves as German even though they share the same land-mass - should we force them to be? If you want to demand an all-Ireland island based on who was there first then surely we should throw the Turks out of Cyprus, or even the Albanians out of Kosovo? Maybe even the Irish out of America?
There has always been a tendency to portray the Catholic community in Northern Ireland as a minority fighting for survival. Actual census figures are not short of 50 - 50, with the Protestants almost certain to be in the minority within the next twenty years. We hear of Protestants forcing Orange marches through Catholic areas, claiming traditional routes - if the Protestants are so bigoted, how have Catholic families been able to settle in these areas in the first place? It’s easy to champion the Catholic minority, living in an overwhelmingly Protestant area, yet conveniently forget areas like Newry, Londonderry, Lurgan, Dungiven and many many others where Protestants no longer live or walk the streets in safety. In Dungiven, the Church of England Minister was spat on in the street.
Looking at what happened to the Protestant community in The Republic after partition, I don’t envy the Northern Protestants in a united Ireland. Please stop looking at them as an oppressive majority, but look at them in terms of an oppressed minority facing the might of Irish, American and World Irish republicanism and propaganda.