You had far more independence when sterling was your currency, even if you did get the Royal Mint to run up your own barely distinguishable version for appearances' sake, than you can possibly dream of having under the euro and the European Central Bank.
And the United Kingdom has never extended the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland; had there still been 100 Irish MPs at Westminster, then that Act, like the 1969 Divorce Reform Act, would never have been passed. But the European Courts have no such scruples.
Ninety years is not a long time. Come home. No one can ever come home on the terms in place before they left. Nor, if they have any sense, can those to whom they are coming home wish them to. But it can always be done. A way can always be found. Let's find it. Do it. Come home. It's Christmas.
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Yeah, and while we are at it, India can submit to British rule again and the Queen will be re-established as head of a united English-speaking North America.
ReplyDeleteAlso in Algiers they will swear allegience to Sarko and execute the remaining FLN veterans.
Meanwhile Juan Carlos has been proclaimed king from Bueanos Aires to Mexico City.
And Europe, Northern Africa and the Miidle East are bowing down and crying "Silvio, be our Caesaer, ruler of the font of our civilisation!"
Isn't it sad when a dream dies? But grown up people get over it.
ReplyDeleteMore than a third want to go back to sterling. Highest support among the young. 43% among Sinn Féin voters. Say it again, 43% among Sinn Féin voters. Does the phrase "lost cause" mean anything to you, Paddy Pascagula?
ReplyDeleteAnd Indonesia is clamouring for Queen Beatrix.
ReplyDeleteNot that she will have a house in the Hague any longer as all right-thinking Dutch along with the Belgians want Juan Carlos as their head of state.
Already the Turkish army is ready to return to its rightful territories, the Balkans. Balkan is a Turkish word. They eat Turkish food there. The Greeks and Serbs will be scattering rose petals in front of the glorious unifying army in the name of the most esteemed son of the Balkans - the great Ataturk!
And as the "Duke of Normandy" - according to the Channel Islanders, your Queen must submit to her feudal overlord, Sarko. Maybe he should demand a kowtow outside Versailles-----
You can't answer either me or Anonymous, can you?
ReplyDeleteYou never really left: sterling still your currency until as late as 1979, more people from the Free State than from Northern Ireland in the British Armed Forces during the War, easily as many people entitled to Irish passports over here as in the 26 Counties at the time of the declaration of the Republic, probably as many even now, not a street in Britain without a family tie to the 26 Counties, essentially a single economy, a completely integrated popular culture (especially among the young and the increasingly dominant urban).
It was essentially a fiction. A fiction which it is now massively in your interest to stop pretending is real. Just ask 43% of Sinn Féin supporters in the 26 Counties.
Now, for the details of the formal homecoming arrangement. The principle is no longer in dispute. It never really was.
David, I don't think Paddy Pascagula is from the Irish Republic, people with views like his very rarely are, for the reasons that you give. They want there to be a certain sort of Ireland that suits them, even though they will never live there.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I think he is serious about the Duchy of Normandy, he knows absolutely nothing.
Your point about the number of Southern Irish in Britain when the Republic was set up is very important. They had moved from one part of the UK to another, not from an Empire country but within the UK, yet they suddenly found themselves foreigners without their consent. All to please the Paddy Pascagulas of the world.
They dominated numerous trade union branches and local Labour Parties at the time, but when the Attlee Government responded with legislation entrenching the principle of consent with regard to Northern Ireland (as well as giving Irish citizens, as they now were, the vote, because there were simply so many of them over here), the only Commons opposition came from a handful of Soviet agents and sympathisers, and there appears to have been absolutely no local comeback against any MP for supporting the Ireland Act.
ReplyDeleteNo one had asked as many Irish people as there were in the Free State if, so soon after the denaturalisations on the Continent during the War, they, too, wanted to be denaturalised. They did not.