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Comment by ptah | Hacker News Reader

I think the UK will have to give up N.I. to Ireland at some point to avoid an all out war. EU is good at keeping peace the last few decades, but Europe has always been at war internally before that so it looks like it will be back to BAU

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It's not really for the UK to "give up" NI - under the Good Friday Agreement the island of Ireland can be unified at any time if the populations of the North and South consent to it.

> EU is good at keeping peace the last few decades

The Bosnians would beg to differ on this point [1]. It was not so long ago, and yet it all started on very similar terms as Brexit: the breaking of Yugoslavia into multiple parts who wanted different things (Serbia vs the others) via referendums reminds me a lot on how Brexit started.

I don't think we're at the point where entire factions of people hate each other enough to start, support and sustain an all-out war, but then again with MPs getting daily death threats (some even actually getting murdered [2]) and the political dialog shifting towards low-levels of populism, it's tempting to think that the scales might tip at some point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jo_Cox

I suppose to those (including myself) who haven't really experienced most of the religious and other sectarian violence first-hand, the tenuousness of peace between two supposedly civilized Western European countries is a bit hard to appreciate. (Even if there are some analogs in the US with the former Confederacy and related racial tensions.)

The Northern Irish who identify as British would not be very happy there. Pretty sure they would not accept this.

So are they ready to trash the Good Friday agreement and go back to The Troubles? Because that's the alternative.

Why should they have to trash the good friday agreement in the first place? NI voted to remain.

Because neither Northern Ireland nor Scotland have the power to decide unilaterally to stay in the EU as independent countries even if that were the desire of 100% of their respective populations (which of course it is not).

They have to trash the Good Friday agreement because it requires a customs-free border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. This isn't possible with Brexit: having a customs-free border means anyone can just import anything into or out of the UK through NI.

Maybe one solution would be to have a county-by-county referendum, where each county in NI gets to decide whether it wants to stay in NI or instead join Ireland. This would make NI smaller, but would concentrate the UK loyalists in it, and the number of Republicans (the ones who want to rejoin Ireland) would decrease a lot (many would be in the counties that would leave, which are probably mostly right on the border, and some might even move), so maybe re-establishing a hard border would be more palatable then.

That amounts to repartioning Ireland. The original partition in 22 was traumatic, and we're still living with the consequences today. The partitioning of India in 47, and the British Mandate of Palestine in 48 were also traumatic and bloody events. Partition generally causes forced population transfer, which tends to lead to bloodshed.

Well, they're going to have bloodshed anyway, so wouldn't it be better to minimize it? The IRA isn't going to stand for going back to the way things were before the GF agreement.

there's already increased IRA activity https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17891935.londonderry-bom...

Giving Northern Ireland to Ireland against the will of the people living there does trash the Good Friday Agreement. The press and the EU haven't been talking about that side of it because it doesn't fit their narrative, but it's rather important. One of the key reasons why the Troubles happened the way they did and why Britain hasn't given Northern Ireland away already is that a large faction of the population are violently opposed to that, with emphasis on the violence part, and are willing to use all of the same tactics as the other side to get their way. That's why peace in Northern Ireland was so hard to achieve.

but right now NI belongs to UK against the will of a lot of Northern Ireland. All the border counties e.g. have voted for Sinn Fein for UK parliament. Possibly those counties need to join the republic?

Is repatriation to mainland UK not a possibility?

Unionist Northern Irish people feel Northern Irish. Not mainland British. They don't feel English, Welsh, or Scottish. They're not in some sort of newly-established colony from whence they could be plucked and re-settled. This kind of comment screams of ignorance of the entire damn situation that's caused the Troubles and much more besides.

From an outside point of view, it seems crazy to split off and annex a part of an island. The shoreline very clearly marks the border. Obviously I understand the Brits who have lived in Northern Ireland for generations might feel differently about this and it's a complex issue for sure.

It's the Catholic-Protestant history. Not Brits living in NI.

The Northern Irish 6 counties did not want to unify with Ireland when Ireland was born in 1919. Those 6 were the protestant majority counties, who wished to stay with the UK.

Changing demographics and birth rates over the following century, increasing secularisation in the Republic, and increasing numbers who simply don't care about religion makes that far less of the issue.

Catholic/Protestant history and the British colonisation of Ireland are inextricably linked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_of_Ulster

Yes of course, but there comes a point where they see themselves as indigenous Northern Irish, or Irish, not British or colonists.

Just as those ruling in London no longer see themselves as Norman French, or in my UK county Danish.

Welcome to colonism. Have a look at africa, the borders there are a bit more arbitary.

But in ireland it is not only about the english living in north ireland, but more about the irish living there. It was more about catholic vs. protestant.

Not so easy to dissolve, but I hope the last blood happened long ago enougj for both sides to forget and move on, even if england messes up the deal amd the border becomes an issue again.

This is one of the conversations where the difference between English and British actually matters. I don't think you're talking about the small number of English people living in Northern Ireland here are you? And I'm pretty sure the UK is the one that might mess up the deal rather than England (don't forget Wales voted to leave too).

> don't forget Wales voted to leave too

This is debatable. It was very close and the large numbers of English retirees in parts of Wales that made it seem that Wales voted to leave. Brexit is very much an English project.

maybe england should just leave the UK and let the rest stay in EU.

I would be very interested to see what a vote for 'English independence' would return. It'd be fascinating considering the benefit we gain from it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a large majority vote to go it alone.

Wow you're totally right, it looks like it was down to English people in Wales; TIL and all that.

Citation: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/22/english-peop...

I did, because the parent I refered to, did talk about them ..

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