Pink Ball wrote:I'll try to explain this as slowly and crudely but fairly accurately as I can.
Many, many years ago, there was an island called Ireland. None of it was British at this point, and everyone was happy.
Britain invaded Ireland. Many British people moved to Ireland but found the Irish to be...unfriendly. They couldn't get the upperhand anywhere and keep the Irish down, bar one corner in the north east of the island.
Eventually, the British gave up trying to convince most of us. That area, about three quarters of the island, became the Republic of Ireland. People born there are Irish. It's not up for discussion.
I'm afraid this isn't fairly accurate.
Ireland has twice been invaded by armies who hold allegiance to the crown of England.
The first time, way, way, way back before even England was considered a fully unified country, we're talking not long after the Norman Conquests. And the reason for this was because of Papal pressure.
It was the objective of the Pope in Rome to encourage its good Kings to go forth and convert the heathens. Ireland was a heathen land populated by heathen Celts, ergo the Pope marked it for invasion. The conquesting Normans, duly obliged.
However, due to the feudal nature of life back then, all this did was install some Lords into big houses and enrich the villages with concrete temples to Rome.
As the centuries passed those nobles gradually became naturalised, as you do. To the point where, even without any form of revolutions or conflict, the island of Ireland simply became a different cultural and political entity to England once again. A bit like how Australia just slowly and gradually became a different entity to England in the modern era, no revolutions needed.
Therein steps Henry the VIII, some many hundreds of years later, who then winds up conquering Ireland all over again. Because of the balance of power politics of the time, and usually at the bequest of an Irish noble who was having grief with another Irish noble.
Many centuries pass once again. Ireland gradually becomes a different place again. All the flunkies posted there gradually become more Irish than English there once again. Tick-tock, time moves on, the gradual changes and differences mount year on year.
Then the potato famine kicks in combined with the chaos caused by mass immigration to the Americas. In this chaotic environment an independence movement finds strength. This is then compounded by the First World War
In the 1920s this movement uses violence to usurp power for itself, regardless of the wishes of individual people. It was not a democratic process in the eyes of this movement. Violent movements, if you'll excuse the pun, were all the rage between the wars.
However, independence was permitted by the crown of England as long as it was democratically founded. A large proportion of the island did not, in fact, wish to be independent and were as violently determined to remain a part of the English socio-political structure.
In order to prevent civil war, the country was divided.
The Irish Nationalist movement, a purely political movement, in order to stay relevant in a post-independence Ireland, merely used the obvious peace solution as a means to continue justifying their violence, and a civil war was forced upon the Ireland anyway.
As for whether the Northern Irish are 'true' Irish or not, well, ironically, how many of the Southern Irish are even 'true' Irish? And not Spanish, English, Viking and whatever else in origin.
Much like England itself, Irish stopped meaning Celt centuries if not thousands of years ago, what we see today is merely the usual modern phenonium of ego-led power politics that uses heritage as a means to fool people into thinking they have a stake in someone else's power games.