Tag: Ireland

Ireland

What type of united Ireland do we want?

It’s easy to misinterpret what’s published in newspapers, and particularly so when the narrative appears favourable to a reader’s own point of view. However, when three pillars of the British establishment’s conservative press publish articles raising doubts about Northern Ireland’s future within the United Kingdom, and all published within the space of one week, it is at least worth reflecting on the significance of this phenomenon.

Imperialism Ireland

Brexit and national unity

After nearly half a century of membership of the EEC and then the EU, Britain finally left on 1 January 2021. The period leading up to its departure was heavily choreographed, with displays of brinkmanship, the stock in trade of the European imperial powers of Britain, France and Germany and the other old imperial states of Europe that make up the core of the EU.

The fact that the particular characteristics of Brexit arose out of an inter-imperialist conflict and were determined by the most right-wing forces in Britain may have significantly

Imperialism Ireland

Little reason to celebrate the state of Northern Ireland

The six county state of Northern Ireland will reach its hundredth birthday in May. The British government, with enthusiastic support from Northern unionists, is making preparations to celebrate the anniversary.

Though claiming to emphasise the future rather than its history, it is inevitable that the nature of the Northern state, past, present, and future, must come under scrutiny. With even the best will in the world it is …

Imperialism Ireland

Nothing to celebrate

HUNDRED years after the partition of Ireland, a survey carried out by the Nevin Economic Research Institute on the annual earnings of workers in the North has exposed the reality for workers living in this British colony.

Wages in the North are much lower than any region in Britain, as are those of workers on low pay, with a quarter of all workers earning less than the living wage.

Imperialism Ireland

Licensed to kill

ACCORDING TO the BBC, “MI5 has up to 700 staff in Northern Ireland based at regional headquarters in Holywood, County Down. It took over the lead role in intelligence gathering on ‘dissident republicans’ from the police in 2007. The operational framework was set out as part of the St Andrews Agreement a year earlier.”

Culture

The IRA and the Nazis

In July 1940, after the fall of France and with a German invasion of Britain seeming imminent, the IRA leadership explained their attitude to the war in a public statement. In it they made it clear that if German forces arrived in Ireland they would come “as friends and liberators […]