Happy Ulster Day
Haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else, but today was quite an important day in 1912 and for a lot of families in Ulster, including mine, it is possible to have a look at what ancestors were doing on this day in history.
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Books
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A Political History of the Two Irelands competition…
It’s not often we get free things to give away to our readers, but courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan we have a nice paperback copy of Brian M Walker’s excellent history of partition of the island and how identities shifted in both the north east and the south and west: as most of the territory that [...] read our review »
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Eamon Nancarrow’s misadventures in Rock…
It’s the quiet ones you have to watch, they say. When I last saw Eamonn Namcarrow, back in the mid 1980s he was a congenial, good-natured and highly sociable young lad. The next time was 26 years later, in Lavery’s Gin Palace in Bradbury Place. He’d just brought out his first book, Holywood Star about [...] read our review »
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The lost art of reading (or drowning in too much information)…
Here’s a great review of a fascinating book (H/T reader Rory) on how the Internet is destroying our capacity for intelligent, focused and critical thought. It opens thus: …here is the news that Ulin brings in this slim, meandering book: that reading is “an act of contemplation”; that such an act becomes more difficult in [...] read our review »
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páid @ 05:30 PM:
Is that from MáirtÃn Mansergh’s collection of essays, published by Mercier? I’ll have to read it.
Nicholas Mansergh (the Da’) would seem to push the inevitability thing a bit further back:
… in the long unhappy history of Anglo-Irish relations only one event [the War of Independence] is more truly tragic than the rejection of Home Rule in 1886. The opportunity of settlement had come, perhaps the greatest of English statesmen was ready to grasp it and yet the unique chance was destroyed by a failure in perception whose consequence not even time can wholly repair.
By the way, I’m surprised to get away with my repeated use of “the War of Independence”. I thought I was pushing political correctness there.
Hey ho, back to Emmylou Harris and some real work.
“..I’m surprised to get away with my repeated use of ‘the War of Independence’”
Were you referring to the First or Second War of Independence?
lib2016 @ 05:56 PM:
By “first”, do you imply the one that Brian Borúma concluded? If so, it’s a longer count than that…
You so-and-sos keep distracting me: give over!
lib 2016,
“As for me I’ll mourn all the dead equally.”
Except of course that republican paramilitaries were morally superior to loyalist ones in our book.
Except of course that Enniskillen was non sectarian and of course it was a case of the nationalist community “fighting back” and that was sad but so what in your book. Tel me lib 2016 which of those who died that day were oppressing the nationalist community?
“they really can’t expect too much sympathy on a forum where their unfortunate deaths are seen merely as fodder for unionist propaganda. Though you show no respect for your dead don’t expect others to sink to that level.”
So that is the level of your sympathy for those murdered by your morally superior friends “not too much” and all you can manage is that the deaths were “unfortunate”.
As to “And of course the War Memorials and the rituals associated with them are the perfect excuse for unionists to pose as being more British than the British.”
No as I said we go because my late father in law spent three and a half years in a Japanese POW camp. I go because my and my wife’s relatives fought in two world wars. I can assure you my attendance is not “posing”. Still one can begin to understand the mentality of your pathetic attempts to justify your morally superior friends actions’ by accusing us of having “the perfect excuse for unionists to pose as being more British than the British.”
Keep spinning lib. I do not think many will take your “mourning” too seriously.
Lib2016 – was the Enniskillen bombing right or wrong ?
páid, I understood that 6 was a compromise between the Unionist 9 and the Nationalist offer of 4. Also, IIRC partition was officially recognised in a tripartite agreement in December 1925 but it didn’t stop Dev reneging.
MM was also reported in a history lecture down in the south-west IIRC that he and Alex Reid drafted the IRA cessation document in 1994.
What’s with the fada? I have an email from the great man which ends:
“With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Martin Mansergh”
Nevin @ 08:12 PM:
In my case it was:
part irony (he is one of the few TDs and other worthies not dignified bilingually on wikipedia and the like) and
part a gesture of solidarity with another posh southern Protestant who provides a rotten role model for any young Protestant Irishman. Let us also remember As the scion of an Anglo-Irish family, Dr Mansergh was educated in a British public school, speaks with a posh English accent, and has the air of an English gentleman.
Anyone who gets up the nose of Eoghan Harris like that (Sunday Independent, October 9th and 23rd, 2005) can’t be all bad.
Still, Malcolm, it was very decent of him to reply to me with the confirmation that I sought.
Hey guys maybe ulster day was just an example of the Protestant work ethic, you know found the time between three jobs to to self mutilate and sign a petition(did they have all night garages in them days).
The clue’s in the name: Ulster Volunteer Force.
That mean While ultimately unionists would have preferred the whole of Ireland to remain in the Union as was, in practice the moves in Ulster were towards Ulster exclusion, cf. plans for provisional Ulster government, etc. (And the UVF wasn’t formed until 1913.),
That means nothing. The historical record is quite clear. By raising Cain in one part of the island the covenanters were trying to stymie Home Rule for the *whole* island. To suggest otherwise is to deny historical realities. This was particularly true of their leader the Dubliner Carson who in fact knew little and had no emotional connection with Ulster. He wanted to use Ulster to make sure his beloved Dublin stayed in the U.K..
Please note how matters progressed – the whole island ( in terms of surface area) – 80% nationalist, a 9 county Ulster – 70% nationalist, the 6 co area – 50% nationalist. In other words the largest amount of nationalist territory that they could feasibly hang onto.A classical use of armed threat to maximise the tribal hegemony. Yes, the PIRA had excellent teachers.
Malcolm R,
I was sure he wrote that partition was inevitable from 1911 but when I checked the Irish Times archive I found that he wrote on June 17 2006…
“From 1914 on, when partition became virtually inevitable, and especially from 1921 to 1968, the two parts of the island did have separate histories”
So I have been misquoting him, mea culpa. Though from what I have read (not as much as many) I suspect that inevitability came to be over a number of years. Indeed my trawling came up with a book I have never read – Michael Laffan, The Partition of Ireland, 1911–1925 (Dundalk, 1983).
There is a point when differences between population groups, based on ethnicity, religion, language et cetera become so great that they form a basis for separate nations, depending of course on the conduciveness of the external environment.
For good or evil, early in the twentieth century, this point was passed in Ireland. My own opinion is that these differences between North and South have passed the HW mark, but in regard to the next 50 years……where we goes, I don’t knows.
And my use of MáirtÃn is just playfulness, cod familiarity.
Dewi,
The murder of innocent people is always wrong. In the case of the Enniskillen massacre it was not only wrong but also harmful to the republican cause. In my view there are no possible grounds for justifying it.
To explain why (in my opinion) it happened is no more a justification of murder than saying that because of their extreme racism the Nazis persecuted the Jews is a justification of Nazism.
Unfortunately any attempt to explain why that murder and others happened is viewed in some quarters as a defence of those murders. It is, of course, no such thing.