Thursday 21 October 2010

A Couple of Interesting Articles on Southern Unionism

The Reform Group website has a number of articles on it pertaining to Unionism in the Irish south. I've linked to a couple below, but do check out their site. You can also contact Reform - if anyone does, let me know if they respond, I've not got hold of them yet.



Edit: Also found this interesting take on Sinn Féin's development. From the look of the guy's blog it doesn't look like I'd agree with him on too much else, but his analysis is nonetheless interesting and he's a fellow integrationist, so no harm in linking.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, a lot of southern unionists took the rap for their political views. And their ancestry. I believe that many protestant unionists were referred to as "English" to justify attacks on them. To justify the attacks on them as the spawn of invaders. Which some were - descedents of Cromwell's army, the Tudor-Stuart settlements.

    To be fair the South officially did its best to accomodate southern unionists/protestants (sometimes exclusive). When the first Free State Senate was appointed 16 of the 60 members were protestants including the last Lord Chancellor of Ireland Lord Glenravy (who became the first speaker of the Irish Senate) and Southern Unionist leader Logan. Protestants of the nationalist persuasion such as Oliver St-John Grogarty and W B Yeats joined them. Of course not all Cork protestants were burned out and they continue to exist. My sister-in-law is proof of that as well as Graham Walker (Graham Norton).

    They were unfortunate victims of history and politics. Like the 40% "pure Russian" population of Latvia who were stripped of their civic rights on independence. I doubt as a British Tory you cry many tears for Mother Russia's "devil children". Certainly your party does not.

    The Latvian citizenship law on independence barred those not formerly citizens of the inter-war republic or descended from becoming citizens of the newly independent Latvia. This meant those who moved to Latvia during Soviet times or their descdenents with no interwar ancestry had no rights.

    When I visited the Ukraine in 2005, my driver who took me to the hotel turned out to be Latvian. His father was a Russian who moved to Latvia with the Red Army and met and married a Latvian girl and produced a family.

    My driver followed his father into the military and served all over the USSR. He married a Ukrainian girl and they had children who were raised in Belarus, Georgia, Kalingrad. His happiest year was in the DDR when he was based in Dresden.

    After the USSR collapsed, he could get Latvian citizenship but his wife could not. He however could get Ukrainian citizenship easily. However Ukraine and Latvia forbade dual nationality so he now needed a visa to visit his homeland. Which upset him.

    As I say, the UK Tories probably do not cry too much over such incidents in which there were many.

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  2. Um... I'm not entirely sure what the 'UK Tory' theme appears to be here, some kind of attack by the looks of it. Quite simply, I think that the examples you gives are examples of nationalist reaction, and are wrong. If the Conservative Party doesn't shed too many tears, it is probably because it is a long way outside our sphere of influence or experience and nobody can with equal sincerity bewail atrocities of which they have little knowledge and no experience. You make it sound like we all know about this stuff and find it acceptable, which is untrue.

    As per your other point, I would be very grateful if you could provide me with more information (either weblinks or first hand) on the continued presence of unionism in Cork.

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