Countering the republican refrain "you took our land"

The common refrain from republicans is, "you took our land".

Yet Belfast as a town and later city was only founded in the early 1600s.

It was built in a basin, situated at the foot of a rim of hills and at the the mouth of a river. It became a trading hub and the merchant community and the population grew rapidly from the 1650s onwards.

A mid-century figure of around 1,000 quickly rose to 2,000 by 1660. Hitting 3,200 by 1670, then reaching 5,000 in 1706.

The population grew to about 8,500 by 1760, grew to 13,500 in 1782, then got to 19,500 in 1791.

By 1912, the population of Belfast was nearly 400,000 compared with 174,000 in 1871. Edward Carson said in 1911:

"The men who made Belfast, which was a town of 12,000 when the Act of Union [1801] was passed, and now has something like 400,000 people, do you think they will accept notice to quit?"

Before Ne Temere, 30% of presbyterian ministers supported Home Rule, afterwards only 4%

Before Ne Temere was enacted in Ireland, 30% of Presbyterian ministers in Ireland favoured Home Rule. After the implementation of the Ne Temere decree 4% did. (See here).

Advanced republicans desire to expel or resettle Ulster's unionists

In 1987, four years into his 34-year tenure as president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams said:

"Anyone unwilling to accept a united Ireland and wishing to leave should be offered resettlement grants to permit them to move to Britain, or assist them to move to a country of their choice."

J Bowman wrote in his essay, ‘De Valera: did he entrench the partition of Ireland?’:

"On the second day of the convention de Valera returned to the theme of northern policy and put forward a suggestion which he was also to voice privately to diplomats and to a group of Irish historians in the 1960s. Perhaps in the speech he is revealing an important aspect of his attitude to the Ulster unionists. He suggested that a transfer of populations between Irish emigrants in Britain and those in Northern Irland who described themselves as British might provide a solution to Partition. De Valera’s ambivalence and inconsistency is manifest on this, as on so many other topics. Along with stating in parliament in 1951 that ‘no matter how the world goes, these people and ourselves are going to live on one island here’, he also hankered after what had been his earliest prescription, the expulsion of the Ulster Unionist from the island of Ireland. 

He had first advocated this in 1917-1818. In 1943, he confided to the American minister in Dublin David Gray that a statesmanlike settlement was available 'especially since the precedent for the exchange of populations has been established’. Gray was not impressed: the idea was 'about as practicable as expelling the New Englanders from Massachusetts’. After the war, de Valera spoke in a similar sense both in Ireland and on his American tour in 1948. He was also questioned specifically on this point by a group of historians in 1964. 

De Valera told them that a comparison with Cyprus - as it then was - would be instructive. The minority citizen be he Turk or Ulster Unionist 'must decide his priority: land or allegiance. If the former was more important, then he must accept subjection to the political will of the majority of the island; if being Turkish or British was the more important, then he sould return forthwith to the favoured country, Turkey or Britain’. 

That the proposal to expel the Ulster unionists with compensation should recur in de Valera’s thinking between 1917 and 1964 may help in answering the question raised in this article. Is this not an indication that essentially de Valera hankered after an Irish-Ireland State based on so narrow a concept of Irishness that the Ulster Unionists should be either expelled, absorbed or merely tolerated as an un-Irish minority? In fairness to de Valera we should emphasise that he was working in an Anglophobic political culture and in a period when political or religious ecumenism were not only not espoused but were not even discussed. 

Yet, that said, there remains a considerable contrast with today’s broad consensus in the south on the need for a self-critical approach to the south’s policy on unity, epitomised - despite many interparty differences - in the Report of the New Ireland Forum. Although appropriate genuflections are made in his direction, de Valera’s successors as leader of Fianna Fail have all rejected his concept of a narrow Irish-Ireland State."

Young politicians in Sinn Fein no different from the past

Just to be clear. This is what the Sinn Féin cllr said was 'misinterpreted'. pic.twitter.com/mdA74xqr1L

— Úna-Minh (is my first name) Caomhánach (@unakavanagh) January 16, 2020

Sinn Fein councillor Paddy Holohan said on the No Shame Podcast:

"It bugs me to death to understand that he leads this country and that he's so separated not even from society now but he's so separated from the history of this country. Leo Varadkar’s blood obviously runs to India so his great grandfather is not part of the history of this country ... Now Leo, obviously he’s an Irish citizen, but his passion doesn’t go back to the times when our passion goes back to. So we’re in a situation where we have a leader that’s not only separated from the history of the country but separated from the classes in the country now."

Dean Van Nguyen, an Irish-Vietnamese writer, responded:

"Putting value in antique blood links is a cornerstone of racism."

What about the Good Friday Agreement?

Alex Kane wrote:

"The GFA which was endorsed by 71% in 1998 exists almost in name only today."

The catholic church's colonialism

As recent social media activity has shown, Irish republicans see it as crazy that a catholic priest would accept an honour from the British (becoming 'Members of the British Empire'). As exampled above, Andree and Patricia don't see how Catholic priests could associate themselves with the British Empire and imperialism.

The stereotype of the Irish Protestant

The banker from the film Calvary who personifies vulgar excess and the lingering ascendency in Ireland

For the the outsider, every one from Ireland is Irish, Green and Orange and every shade in between. (Except perhaps in the United States, as noted here and here.) The natives suffer from and indulge in the vanity and narcissism of small differences. Irish people all have a notion of "the other". The person who is "the other" is the confessional and constitutional counterpart, the person in the house next door or in the adjoining community. I wrote here about the bias and prejudgement that the protestants of Ireland experience.

Two ways to view the republican movement...

And in contrast a News Letter editorial wrote:

"The Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald said yesterday that the UK and Irish governments must “intervene” if the Northern Ireland talks to restore Stormont fail. 

“The current stalemate cannot continue, the current position is simply not sustainable,” she said. 

Ireland's "up the 'RA" problem

Recently Declan Rice caused huge controversy after it emerged that in 2015 he wrote "up the ‘RA" on Instagram. Only a few days earlier Michael Conlon entered the ring in New York to chants of "ooh ah up the RA".

Ray Davey on the Civil Rights campaign in Northern Ireland

Ray Davey wrote in his book ‘Take Away This Hate’ (pp. 90-92):

"It was, as far as I could see, a time of creativity and optimism among the students that I knew best. The result was that when in the Autumn term of 1968 the whole situation suddenly changed and the academic calm was rudely shattered by protest marches and confrontation, the vast majority of students were deeply shocked and completely taken by surprise. 

Ireland was never united

It was written in 1913:

"The Celtic Church no doubt had its golden age. It produced saints and men of learning. It sent out its missionaries to the heathen beyond the seas. So famous were its schools that students came to them from distant lands. But centuries before the Normans appeared in Ireland the salt had lost its savour. The Celtic Church had sunk into being a mere appendage of the wild tribes it had once tried to tame. The chiefs of one tribe would sack the colleges and shrines of another tribe as freely as they would sack any of their other possessions. For instance, the annals tell us that in the year 1100 the men of the south made a raid into Connaught and burned many churches; in 1113 Munster tribe burned many churches in Meath, one of them being full of people; in 1128 the septs of Leitrim and Cavan plundered and slew the retinue of the Bishop of Armagh; in the same year the men of Tyrone raided Down and a great number of people suffered martyrdom; four years later Kildare was invaded by raiders from Wexford, the church was burnt and many men slain; and so on with dreary monotony. Bishops and abbots fought in the incessant tribal wars as keenly as laymen. Worse still, it was not infrequent for one band of clergy to make war on another. In the ninth century, Phelim, who claimed to be both Bishop and King of Leinster, ravaged Ulster and murdered its monks and clergy. In the eleventh century the annals give an account of a fierce battle between the Bishop of Armagh and the Bishop of Clonard. Nor did time work any improvement; we read of bloody conflicts between abbots and bishops as late as the middle of the fifteenth century. What influence for good could such a church have had upon the mass of the people?"

"Look to Belfast and be a repealer if you can..."

Illustration depicting Cooke’s Challenge to O’Connell within the context of the Union.

Henry Cooke issued this challenged to Daniel O’Connell when the latter came to Belfast in January 1841:

"Look at Belfast, a glorious sight, the masted groves in the harbour, the mighty warehouse, the giant manufactories, the rapidly growing streets, all owed to the Union. Look to Belfast and be a repealer if you can."

"This everlasting teaching of hatred of England..."

Edna Longley observed:

"Irish Catholics and Ulster protestants not only tend to remember different things, but remember them in different ways."

Fiona Kennedy wrote in the Irish Times:

"When I was a child I learned from my grandmother that the Protestant heathens who lived next door had plundered and tortured us, ruined our language and culture and divided our country."

American independence was England's second civil war

Poor old England endeavoring to reclaim his wicked american children. And therefore is England maimed & forc'd to go with a staff

Christopher Hitchens wrote:

"I would like to claim the American Revolution as part of an English revolution all the same, it was basically a revolution of highly educated English people against a German monarchy and its German surrogate forces in America. The sad thing to me is that the German monarchy still remains in England."

Neither in Welsh nor in Irish did a word exist for ‘republic’

‘David Lloyd George blessing James Craig’, by Shemus

Kenneth O Morgan in the No 10 guest historian series, 'Prime Ministers and No. 10', wrote:

"He held a series of talks with the Sinn Fein leader, Eamon De Valera, at Downing Street in July 1921, at which key issues in Ireland’s proposed new relationship with the UK, were discussed. Lloyd George, who made a point of speaking in Welsh to his Secretary, Thomas Jones, in the presence of De Valera, successfully argued that neither in Welsh nor in Irish did a word exist for ‘republic’."

Britain and Ireland, archipelagic peoples

The one characteristic that has marked Ireland and Britain from time immemorial is proximity and propinquity. During the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago, the British Isles were one island (see here), yet for many, to this day they remain one. 

Ed Moloney - The IRA set out in Spring and early Summer of 1971 to exploit circumstances and to force the British into a premature and ill-prepared internment swoop

Operation Demetrius involved the location, arrest and internment of 342 people in three days. These arrests sparked protests and riots in several Catholic areas across Northern Ireland. The worst of the rioting broke out in Ballymurphy in west Belfast. Only hours into Operation Demetrius British paratroopers went into Ballymurphy to arrest suspected IRA volunteers. On their entry into the estate the soldiers opened fire, claiming later that they had come under attack from IRA snipers. Six civilians were shot and killed that day.

Fintan O'Toole wrote:

"This belief encouraged the IRA republicans to adopt in the 1970s a classic terrorist position that violence would produce a reaction which would display the state in its true, fascistic colors. Instead of trying to alleviate the suffering of ordinary Catholics, the IRA was intent on destroying rational reform and provoking repression... A defense of the IRA’s bombing campaign written in 1976 and published in its own newspaper was entirely explicit about this."

Ed Moloney wrote in 2015:

George Bernard Shaw wrote - Am I not a protestant to the very narrow of my bones?

George Bernard Shaw wrote, "Am I not a protestant to the very narrow of my bones?" And he also said: "My own family and antecedents are ultra-Protestant; and I am a bit to the left of Protestantism myself."

George Bernard Shaw wrote elsewhere:

"Ulster children still repeat the derisive doggerel, "Sleether slaughter, holy wather”; and the adults are determined as ever that ‘the Protestant boys shall carry the drum’. As a Protestant myself (and a little to spare), I am highly susceptible to the spirit these war cries express."

Sinn Fein abstained from the vote on the Good Friday Agreement

David Trimble said to Alex Kane:

"Sinn Fein were heavily opposed to a Northern Ireland Assembly. In December 1997 it was proving almost impossible to get them to even agree to put an Assembly on the agenda. The SDLP wanted it on the agenda but they weren’t prepared to face down Sinn Fein at that stage."

The Scots Irish

Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said on St Patrick's Day 2018:

"Ulster-Scots Protestants are as much a part of the history of the Irish in America as the Irish Catholics are. In the same way, they are an integral, respected and valued part of the history - and the future - of the island of Ireland."

John Hume wrote in 1989: