Im not even going tobother with you rob because you cannot see your own contradictions e.g. "Ireland was settled by the British* first 8,000 years ago." "When the British invaded 800 years ago Ireland wasn't a country" *Britain didn't exist 8,000 years ago, therefore by your own logic your arguement is null. I don't know where you have sprung from or what singular piece of tripe you have been reading but it is obvious you have ringfenced your way into an attitude you will not be talked out of no matter how spurious the evidence or arguements upon which you have based your opinion.
Fair play to you,stick to your guns and ignore everyone else and grind everyone down with the same old mantra.As you being au fait with Irish history then you are well aware with Parnell and his obstruction tactics then would you would agree that it's somewhat ironic that you are taking the same path!
Apologies, Im not going to trawl through 12 pages of your tripe but I do remember you saying Sinn Fein intimidated the population into voting its way. If the British administration at the time allowed such a small and unsupported party, by your reckoning, to intimidate them to that extent then they were even more useless than I first thought
the same old mantra ? the same old mantra, is the kind of rubbish that the irish come out with like that general election map someone just posted. the observations I've made are not the same old mantra at all, they are the truth which has been swept under the carpet in the name of political convenience.
Also by your logic, why werent half of Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh and Down allowed to join the Republic and not the partitioned enclave as they were voting for independence
You don't understand the basics of your own country's history. i'll answer your previous comment, then come back to this one.
I'll bullet point it for you, to make it more digestable. -1918 was a general election in which there was a protest vote against the threat of conscription during the war (britain and Ireland had just come out of the greatest war in history against Germany). -the general election in Ireland was a farce with widespread intimidation of the population by republicans which led to many seats being unopposed because no one dared to stand against sinn fein. -genuine sinn fein voters later bragged of voting up to 20 times each (as documented by kee) -the vote wasn't a refuerdnum on independence. everyone knew that there was no legal right to independence (this didn't stop sinn fein declaring independence on winning the most seats in Ireland, but the declaration received no international recognition) -in spite of the above, less than 50% of the votes recorded were for sinn feinn. -the only vote for independence was in 1927 when less than 1/6 of the island voted for independence. -when sinn fein asked the pope to endorse sinn fein's claim to independence after the referendum he declined -in 1931 William Cosgrave wrote to the british prime minister assuring him of Ireland's loyalty to the king, and that Ireland recognised that it could not declare independence from the british empire and that its people had no will to -In 1980? when the british government declared a refurndum in northern Ireland, republicans threatened to blow up the voting stations, and 98% returned in favour of remaining part of the UK.
I'm not sure he read it. In fact I am certain he hasn't. Nobody could read that book and come away with such a poor understanding of Irish history. It is deeply and fundamentally flawed and consistently wrong......yet presented in such an earnest fashion, I am convinced he's taking the piss. I tried to point him in the right direction. He's ignored it. That's fine.
why are you trying to engage in a discussion about irish history when you don't know the answer to this question ? it's ridiculous. there was no republic. it was a free state. the north was a part of it, but they had a right to vote on whether to remain part of it, or opt out. they overwhelmingly voted to opt out. there was another referendum in around 1980 and 98% voted to remain in the uk.
It's you who hasn't got a clue pal. I asked you to challenge any of my points, and when you did I demonstrated from that very book that you were wrong.
by the way, if the northern irish had voted in the 1927 election, it's inevitable that far less than the 38% which was returned in favour of independence, would have been returned. I haven't done a calulcation, but based on the referndums that have taken place in northern Ireland, I would guess that there would have been less than 25% in favour of independence. that's your mandate for an irish republic ! about 25%. no wonder the pope refused to endorse it.
