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Comment by bearmode | Hacker News Reader

NI is no more a colony than the US or Australia are today.

Personally I'm all about self-determination. If the people of NI want to return the land to Eire, then nobody should stand in their way. But that doesn't seem to be the case right now, even though support for reunification has been increasing in recent years.

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NI was explicitly created as a hack to an all-Ireland independence referendum at the start of 20th century. It was a landslide victory for a one-Ireland state and the UK created this never-seen-before entity as a response.

I'm not even Irish and certainly have no skin in this game but what the UK did to Ireland over the centuries is disgraceful, and it clearly is struggling to come to terms with it.

As a recent tourist, NI seemed far less developed than the Republic of Ireland to me, as if everyone there had moved to England for jobs and now that region only survives thanks to life support from London.

Much of the infrastructure there reminded me more of post-communist Eastern European countries than western Europe, but then so do many parts of England (no offense).

I wonder if NI wouldn't be better off part of the Republic and the EU, now with Brexit and everything?

As someone who grew up and lives in NI, I'm suspicious that the awful state of the place is because the UK knows NI will rejoin Ireland in the nearish future, so why would they invest in infrastructure here?

It used to be the case that the roads would get noticeably worse as you crossed the border into the republic, now the situation is reversed.

>I'm suspicious that the awful state of the place is because the UK knows NI will rejoin Ireland in the nearish future, so why would they invest in infrastructure here?

NI receives a disproportionately large amount of money from the UK gov compared to other UK nations.

And that money still isn't enough, because NI is still suffering the effects of the troubles and a governance situation which is not fit for purpose. Everything here is in a state of disrepair, the NHS isn't functioning, the far-right Christian-fundamentalist party which is the second biggest party refuses to do anything for reasons that exist only in their own heads, etc. etc.

The place needs to be actively developed, not repeatedly patched up and sent on its way to hobble along.

I agree with you, I'm just pointing out that the lack of investment in infrastructure isn't a NI-specific issue; rather it's part of central gov policy for the whole of the UK. And has been for decades. Every part of the UK is crumbling through lack of investment.

NI is a little better-off than much of England in that regard, outside of Tory towns and villages. My home town never recovered after Thatcher.

Probably not, in the sense that it's a backwater anyway - but at least it's currently a backwater enjoying significant subsidies from the UK government, money they likely wouldn't get from Dublin.

Unification will happen when the advantage of receiving such money will be clearly be offset by the disadvantage of having a broken political system (NI regional government is boycotted by unionists, while the national government is boycotted by republicans). As money reduces further and further while annoyances get bigger and bigger (because of an entrenched "England-first" government pursuing policies like Brexit), that threshold gets closer and closer.

>enjoying significant subsidies from the UK government

Those subsidies don't seem to be enough to save it when the infrastructure is crumbling and everyone is moving abroad for jobs. Also, many countries don't need subsidies, they need opportunities. Subsidies are like paying a crackehead to buy more drugs instead of getting him a home, warm meal, a shower and schooling for job applications.

>money they likely wouldn't get from Dublin

They would get it from the EU then, and probably a lot more, as the UK gov is now struggling financially to stay solvent. The EU can very generous if you can play the game right. Just look at Poland 20 years ago and Poland today, the difference EU funds and the EU open market made, is night and day. It has also benefiter the Republic of Ireland. I doubt they would have been in the same state today without EU membership. For all its faults, the EU has been a force for good many times. Another English speaking region joining the EU could be a mutual benefit.

> NI was explicitly created as a hack to an all-Ireland independence referendum at the start of 20th century. It was a landslide victory for a one-Ireland state and the UK created this never-seen-before entity as a response.

The UK government didn't have a lot of choice, the Ulster Protestants would almost certainly have fought a civil war if the full island was granted domininion status.

The boundary commission was problematic, but the real issue post partition was the removal of PR by the NI government. I think that if the ballot box hadn't essentially been stacked against Catholics we might not have seen the Troubles.

> The boundary commission was problematic

India, Pakistan, I am seeing a pattern.

Even if you get independace from england, you won't leave in one piece.

The same 'know what's best for em' attitude that was used by the US nationals funding IRA terrorism.

> all-Ireland independence referendum at the start of 20th century

So which one was that then? Was this before the Representation of the people act or were women and working class men still banned?

> It was a landslide victory for a one-Ireland state and the UK created this never-seen-before entity as a response.

In the 1918 election in Ulster 66% voted for unionist parties.

The US and Australia don't have the British military as the ultimate enforcer of state power. They each have their own local armies, accepted as legitimate by Britain. Northern Ireland's army was never accepted as legitimate by the British state, they were even fought directly for decades.

The only reason for that is NI never voted/fought for secession from the UK - just relatively small groups without popular support in NI, but with the support of Ireland.

Actually, they did, back when Ireland as a whole voted for independence. That that particular part of the country may have chosen to remain does not, under democratic rules, allow for it to be separated from the main country, much like Scotland and Wales could not have argue to remain in the EU because their respective populations were overwhelmingly in favour of remain.

When Ireland voted for independence, it was officially part of the UK. The UK as a whole would have voted against independence for Ireland. Does that mean under democratic rules Ireland was not allowed for it to be separated from the main country? We'd be better off asking why unionist don't want to join rather than telling them they have no choice.

I don't think anyone is telling them that: in fact their concerns are absurdly well catered for, though you wouldn't know it listening to the constant complaints.

We can split hairs about what is and is not democratic until the end of time, but the debate takes place in a historical vacuum: the creation of Northern Ireland was a response to a very specific set of circumstances, and I don't think yak-shaving about democratic niceties casts any light.

It is moot anyway, because there is no prospect of changing Northern Ireland's status without democratic sanction. Which vote of course takes place at the pleasure of His Majesty's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

It is not quite at the pleasure of His Majesty's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. It is defined in law that if there are grounds to believe it would pass they would be required to hold a border poll. This could be decided in court, as in if say opinion polling was at 70% and nationalist parts were winning 70% of the votes, and the Secretary of State refused to hold the poll. They could be brought to court and a judge could rule the secretary has no grounds to refuse.

> Actually, they did, back when Ireland as a whole voted for independence.

Can you point to a vote by the Irish people in favour of independence?

I'm pretty sure you can't given that no such vote has ever taken place.

There's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_Irish_general_election

The IRA derived their 'legitimacy' from it.

The one where the votes for unionists in Ulster outweighed nationalists 2:1?

Ulster didn't exist as a polity at the time.

That's an election, not a referendum.

And to be quite frank, you are probably thinking of the Provisional IRA when you put legitimacy in quotes, where as this was the original IRA, who basically have nothing in common with the Provos (as they were called when I were a lad) except the name.

That's an interesting debate to have, definitely.

The levels of support for the small groups that fought primarily against small groups on the other side were never really gauged. However the political successors to the only one of those groups that really counted is currently the largest party in Northern Ireland.

The Brits left split polities in quite a few places as they decolonized. Almost as if it was policy.

Northern Ireland is not a colony according to the common and widely understood meaning of the word colony (or in the opinion of the UN). If you make up your own definition based on "local armies" (whatever relevance or meaning that has, not sure)... then yes you can personally call anything anything you like... but it has no meaning to the rest of us and doesn't really make any sense.

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