Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Neutrality and dangerous alliances
Veteran journalist, Robert Fisk, has been an eyewitness to many global conflicts. In his most recent article, Fisk observed that the war in Iraq- now claiming officially 4,000 US lives and many multiples of that number of Iraqi casualties- has shown the true value of neutrality.
Chris Donnelly @ 08:07 PM
Britain is an island.
Ireland is an island.
Neither can be an isle of the other.The British isles are to the east of Ireland. Grouping them together would then correctly be the European Western isles, or the North Atlantic Archipeligo.
Posted by on Mar 26, 2008 @ 05:33 PMChris Donnelly
Cat cut your tongue?
Posted by on Mar 26, 2008 @ 05:38 PMBandon, Co.Cork.
Maybe these people sided with the enemy during an Independence war, instead of staying neutral as many of all faiths did. They picked the wrong side, Catholic & Protestant collaborators.
Posted by on Mar 26, 2008 @ 05:51 PMit seems P&J;your fond of cutting and pasting, so if you’ll oblige me.......
‘The claim has been made that the Protestant minority was alienated, humiliated and largely silenced.
This is nonsense.
With the setting up of the Irish Free State, the Protestant minority remained in as strong a position as ever and were, if anything, more secure.
They retained their land and property rights and maintained a very much over-representative position in the law and the judiciary, banking and insurance and in the professions, commerce and industry.
This was certainly very different to the treatment meted out by the winning side in the aftermath of the Elizabethan wars, the Cromwellian period, the Williamite wars and after 1798.Fourteen Protestants were elected to the Dail in 1927 and special appointments of Protestants – many of whom had been militant unionists – were made to the Seanad to ensure more substantial representation there.
Proportional representation was retained and this provided a political voice for the small minority of Protestants.
There were some 60 English peers who still held Irish titles and lands in Ireland.
In later years Protestants went on to hold the position of President of Ireland.
It’s worth pointing out ,even if it’s not mentioned here that the Ne Temere decree usually pops up at this stage in this specific debate.
This decree was issued in 1908 and – while certainly insensitive – was intended more as a control measure for Catholics rather than an attack on Protestants.It also emanated from the Vatican and not the ROI.With this rule in force,over which the ROI had no control,it was Catholic fecundity and not Catholic oppression that ate away at Protestant numbers -at least until 1960.
Insensitive it may have been, but it did not rate in the same realm of cruelty as did the Penal Laws introduced in the early 18th century after the Glorious Revolution.
I would suggest that most Protestants in the Republic perceive themselves as Irish and feel no need for the patronage of some of their extreme co-religionists in NI.This would seem to be supported by a recent survey of Protestants in Donegal where most perceive their identity as Irish Protestants.
Certainly the Irish Free State was no paradise for the first 50 years or so of its existence but arguably Protestants fared better economically than Catholics who left in their hundreds of thousands.
However the stability developed during the years following independence was almost unique in western Europe and in recent years the Republic of Ireland is emerging as a prosperous and hopefully more tolerant and mature society.
No Protestant family gets attacked here as happened in NI to a clergyman who wished a Happy Christmas to a Catholic priest and was forced to leave the country.
No Protestant family gets attacked here as happened to the family of Eddie Ervine in the north when he went to live in Dublin.
Irishmen of the Protestant denominations have not abandoned their faith and their country because they ceased to have the support of the English government.
The decline in numbers of Protestants in the south in the early years had perfectly understandable reasons and has nothing to do with any fear of hostility.
They possess almost the same amount of property which they had when the state was set up.
Though they are less than five per cent of the population they retain 30 per cent of farms over 100 acres and some well known concerns,which were Freemason bailiwicks, did not employ a Catholic in administrative positions until after the second world war, a matter which was only remedied by the emergence of the trade unions.
Two of the first presidents of the state were Protestant and I would point out that both the two ladies who became president have not had
the slightest hesitation in opposing the teaching of the Catholic Church and its practice. There have been two Protestant deputy Prime Ministers –the first being a Belfast Presbyterian –Ernest Blythe.Contrast that with the record of the Stormont regime 1921-1971.
Sophistic justification will always be found.Some unionist propagandists (who fortunately are not typical of all unionists) in general find the erroneous model of predatorial South versus victimised Protestant North addictively comfortable and tend to become quite aggressive with anyone who tries to remove this psychological crutch...’Posted by on Mar 26, 2008 @ 06:24 PM(contd)
‘In an article in the Irish Times published on 7th September 1996, Dr Garret FitzGerald explains that previously, nobody seemed to examine emigration from the south in religious terms. However he highlights a distorting factor, namely the higher rate of attrition in the early days of the state when life expectancy was not as long as it is now. The number of people dying before reaching their 30s or 40s was as high as 15%, half as great as emigration itself. It’s a lot smaller now, thanks mostly to improvements in medical care, hygeine, nutrition etc.
As for the emigration rate, there was a significantly higher level of emigration by Protestants than by Catholic young people in the pre-war period. Since 1945 this has been reversed, the Protestant emigration rate is now much lower than that of Catholics. Dr FitzGerald continues:>>"It may be recalled that in this column of November 8th last year, I reported that the latest (1991) census data for religion shows that 40 per cent of Protestants here are engaged in higher-income employments, (viz. administration, management, the major professions, or ownership of large farms) as against 20 per cent of Catholics. It might be helpful if these facts were better known to unionists in Northern Ireland. “
In other words, southern Protestants are actually prospering and doing very well for themselves. There is no evidence of any maltreatment in this day and age.
A former fundamentalist Free Presbyterian, who used to contribute to the talkback board, once went tentatively to Dublin to examine the ‘plight’ of southern Protestants. He found no ‘plight,’ only a group of contented people who were living out their lives in peace.
Here in the Republic no oppression of the Protestant population has occurred similar to that endured by Catholics in Ni 1921-1972.. It is offensive to citizens of the State to suggest otherwise. The Republic has been based on equality from top to bottom. Hence, unlike Britain, a Catholic, Protestant, Hindu or Jew is free to seek election to the office of President. However look eastwards to Britain and a totally different state of affairs exist. Under the antiquated Act of Settlement a Catholic cannot inherit the throne. That is but one example of a state not completely purged of sectarianism.. Thankfully we here in the South can say with not just a tad of pride, that since 1920 we have established a State that has made all feel welcome and valued - something which the more extreme type of Ulster unionist never sought to do. Had they bothered to do so, they might have been able to live today without the siege mentality and Nationalists might not have been as eager for Irish unity. But the opportunity was squandered.
A standard put down for Cold War western communists was the question why,if their system was so great,there was nobody attempting to get across the Berlin wall from *west to east*.
Accordingly the $64,000 dollar question:
If the ROI is so horrendous why is there not a stream northwards of distressed southern Protestants? Since the early 1960’s the Protestant proportion of the ROI population has been rising and the Catholic proportion falling (Central Statistics Office).Looks like the South is bent on exterminating it’s Catholic population so that the Protestants can take over whatever is left .Since the early 1960’s the Protestant proportion of the ROI population has been rising and the corresponding Protestant proportion in NI falling.Looks like,if you are a Protestant in Ireland,that the ROI is the place to be.’
(Thnx to Obj)P&J;, if you still believe that the ratio of protestants declined in the south primarily due to nefarious activities.....wake up, pick the cornflakes off your face and go to school.
Posted by on Mar 26, 2008 @ 06:25 PMTo RepublicanStones - so according to your Sinn Fein PIRA manual, nothing much bad happened to Protestants in the Republic - despite the evidence posted earlier. Protestants either had to go along with whatever the state said or keep their heads down. There was no room for Unionism in the RoI - and this was ‘policed’ by violence and the threat of violence. Something you would know a lot about.
It’s clear that Sinn Fein PIRA doesn’t like the truth - as they want to keep claiming that they are the Most Oppressed People Ever.
Posted by on Mar 27, 2008 @ 12:55 PMwhat manual????
straws....clutching....LOLit seems your attempt to make a few instances seem the norm has been shown to be a falsehood. keep screaming at the evidence. and keep throwing the wild accusations about, throw enough shit against a wall and some will stick seems to be your method.....sad little man.
Posted by on Mar 27, 2008 @ 01:02 PMWhat book is that a review of? And who’s the author?
Posted by on Mar 27, 2008 @ 09:05 PMWait, never mind. P&J;was quoting from a review of a book by Peter Hart, whose work has been challenged and refuted quite well already.
Posted by on Mar 27, 2008 @ 09:12 PMWhen Protestants are murdered, tortured and driven from their homes, Pan-Nationalists want to cover it up. Yet when some Roman Catholics were shot on one particular bloody Sunday, we get endless reports of injustice, oppression, discrimination etc etc.
Pan-Nationalists on here are just showing themselves to be first class bigots who believe that no one suffered except themselves. Back to the title of Most Oppressed People Ever.
The book review I quoted from was from R B McDowell’s Crisis and Decline - The Fate of the Southern Unionists
Posted by on Mar 27, 2008 @ 10:24 PMP&J;.....pan-nationalists this, pan-nationalists that, you sound like a paisleyite from the 80s. which is where you and your version of history belong. the truth hurts, it just cause your in too much pain to see it.
Posted by on Mar 27, 2008 @ 11:19 PMPeace and Justice, why don’t you also list the atrocities meted out to Catholics in Cork and elsewhere in the South during the civil war? Why do you pick out Protestants who suffered and forget that the very same Republican gunmen murdered Catholics just as viciously in that period of Irish history?
Does that not prove to any honest person that the religion of Unionists isn’t the issue; the fact they pledge allegiance to a foreign country and not Ireland is what arouses bitterness.
The savage civil war in the South proved that whether you were Catholic or not didn’t matter, Irishmen would kill each other over Ireland’s freedom.
So why then is it so amazing to think they would kill Protestant Irishmen too? Anyone who got in the way of Ireland’s freedom was going to be in danger; Catholic, Protestant or dissenter.
Posted by on Mar 27, 2008 @ 11:36 PM“whether you were Catholic or not didn’t matter”
Alan, I remember looking at some statistics for killings in and around Cork for that era and IIRC the ‘strike rate’ against Presbyterians was about 5 times their proportion of the population.
Also, the Free State had already been established at the time of the Civil War.
Posted by on Mar 28, 2008 @ 12:06 AM
