Serious talk that collapsing Fianna Fáil, the British-sponsored secession from Sinn Féin (as Sinn Féin have always been the first to point out) in order to hang the IRA, might merge with Fine Gael, the British-sponsored merger of anti-Republican forces. More than a third of people in the Irish Republic want to revert to sterling, with support highest among the young and rising to 43 per cent among Sinn Féin supporters.
Seize the opportunity. Make the 26 Counties what they always should have been: the powerful witness to Catholic morality and to Catholic Social Teaching (itself expressed as the British social democracy from which they have hitherto been unable to benefit) within the single economic, strategic and cultural entity that this archipelago has never ceased to be, nor can it ever cease to be.
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We all have our dreams.
ReplyDeleteIrish independence, for example. You will of course retain the trappings. But they are already all that there is left.
ReplyDeleteHistory may well judge that they were all that there ever was. In what economic, strategic or cultural way have the 26 Counties ever been independent, or even shown the slightest desire to be?
David does have dreams because the reality is a nightmare. British independence does not exist either.
ReplyDeleteLets look at British foriegn and defence policy. It has to be in line with American policy.
Hibernia is Uncle Sam's special friend. Britannia does "tricks" to remain his. Then again the model on the coinage for Britannia was one of Charles II's "ladies of easy virtue". A waning power acting as a courtesan.
And what of Britannia's children. All of them supplicants to Uncle Sam, militarily, economically and in foreign policy. Goodness, two British territories even use the Greenback as their official currency and the Bahamian dollar is pegged to the Greenback.
"Lets look at British foriegn and defence policy. It has to be in line with American policy."
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't have to be. It just is, more is the pity. Whereas insofar as Ireland has ever had a foreign policy, it has always had to be in line with Britain's, and it always has been. Just ask Sinn Fein if you don't believe me.
But with heading for half of their voters in the Republic wanting to rejoin sterling, even they cannot mind too much these days. After all, they are now overly on the British payroll, in several cases several times over.
"Hibernia is Uncle Sam's special friend."
Really? Where is he now?
"the Bahamian dollar is pegged to the Greenback"
An independent country which happens to share a Head of State with Britain and a good many others. And the Irish punt was pegged to the pound sterling until 1979. As it will be again from 2011/12 onwards. At least if the Irish Republic's young and Sinn Fein voters have anything to do with it.
90 years, or thereabouts, is not very long in the great scheme of things. But at the same time, you gave it a good go. You will always retain the trappings, if you want them. And since they were all that you ever really had, what have you lost? It was never an economic, strategic or cultural reality. It never could have been, and it never could be.
Uncle Sam is her friend. During the War of Independence Dev addressed Congress and several state legislatures - good for embarressing Britannia.
ReplyDeleteIt was Uncle Sam who waded in and forced the ceasefire on all sides and made Britannia let out convicted killers in the north. Do you see Uncle Sam bending over backwards to help out in Spain vis a vis ETA?
Uncle Sam looks after Britannia's Carribean children's defence - including the Bahamas. Not Britannia. They are supplicants becuase their ma is a "ho".
Australia does what she is told. And the South Pacific nations who still have Queenie as head of state do what the Ozzies tell them. Vietnam anyone? Gulf War Two anyone?
"It doesn't have to be. It just is, more is the pity. Whereas insofar as Ireland has ever had a foreign policy, it has always had to be in line with Britain's, and it always has been"
Not what Thatch said over the Falklands. Solidarity with the land of Che "Lynch" Guevera on that one.
And the punt broke its link with Sterling years ago.
Keep up the fantasies.
And where is Uncle Sam now, in your hour of need? For that matter, what has he ever really done for you? About as much as you have ever really done for him, at least under your own name rather than in British uniforms.
ReplyDeleteYou are either a good age, or from Northern Ireland, or both. You are the one keeping up fantasies. What has to happen for you to snap out of them? Perhaps, either at your age or with your background (if not both), you never will. But everyone else has. If, deep down, or even not so deep down, they ever really laboured under those fantasies in the first place.
Who do you vote for? Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, multiply salaried employees of Her Majesty's Treasury? Or parties that that pair would be the first to tell you have never been anything more the British intelligence front organisations?
Quite apart from how far back Paddy Pascagula wants to go, Dev was an American, a Latino American at that. He was scarcely Irish and Paddy must be too young to remember what his Ireland was like, with the last capital city in Western Europe to have children running barefoot in the streets.
ReplyDeleteThe rate of emigration was as high as ever under Dev, long after independence. People could not wait to get out of his leprachaun fantasy, much loved by Irish Americans who did not have to live in it. There must have been as many people entitled to Irish passports living in Britain as in Ireland. The rules being as they are, maybe that is still the case.
You are right, what have the Americans ever done for Ireland, and what has Ireland ever done for them? And you are right, Paddy is an obvious Northern Nationalist, a very strange breed.
Beneficiaries of the post-War British social democracy that was itself a fruit of Catholic Social Teaching through Irish Catholic participation in the Labour Movement, but from which the 26 Counties had excluded themselves, and continue to exclude themselves.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I expect that there are at least as many people entitled to Irish passports in Great Britain as in the Irish Republic. No doubt, there always will be. We wouldn't rescue just anyone in Euroland, you know. Now, over to you to get out of it and back where you belong.