Originally posted by Toad
Note that partitioning Ireland was "unthinkable" to the Irish negotiator but that the English threat of force made them cave in.
And what choice would the 2nd Dail have but to ratify if their General, Michael Collins, told them their army could not withstand another English campaign against them.
Yes, it was ratified. With an English gun to their heads. That's a fair vote, right?
And it was so fair and well received that the Irish Civil War was the result.
You're going to have to come up with something better than an unattributed "Ireland First" article as a source for a start. Once again, you cannot separate the romantic Irish myth from reality.
In 1921 the IRA was at the verge of collapse. At the same time, Lloyd George was under pressure from domestic and world public opinion to end the conflict. Lloyd George and the King in conjunction with the South African Jan Smuts managed through fairly devious means to get the British Cabinet to agree to a reconciliation which led directly to the truce that ended the conflict. I'll reiterate that for your benefit -
Lloyd George wanted an end to the conflictThe subsequent treaty with all its provisions was approved by the House of Commons of Southern Ireland, by the Dáil Éireann and by both houses of the British Parliament. So much for your claims of illegitimacy.
And it was so fair and well received that the Irish Civil War was the result.
And the chief instigator of the civil war, Eamon de Valera later said that
the biggest regret of his career was not accepting the 1921 treaty.So it wasn't an English "landgrab"? Is that your point? It was only a "Unionist" landgrab by those in the 6 counties around Ulster?
No, it wasn't a landgrab at all, it was the legitimate choice of the majority of the population of Ulster who had lived in the region for hundreds of years.
What's really mythological is saying that an artificially introduced population has a right to have a slice of Ireland for itself because they held the land long enough, by using force, to claim what happened "before" doesn't matter "now".
You and the rest of the folks here are supporting that concept. Yep.. we stole it fair and square, held it long enough and now it's ours.
Well that's the reality of it. How do you feel about Jews taking Arab lands, or Europeans taking native american lands? Or is Ireland a special case? Please tell us why?
You haven't really impressed me with your contributions to the thread so far either. I'll let you know if I see you demonstrating notable insight in these areas.
Insight? What like citing an unattributed article from a partisan website to support your dubious claims? I'm not impressed by the total lack of context to any of your assertions, but then I'm not surprised by it either.
Yeah; Attlee was of the opinion Britain couldn't afford India. Mountbatten's marching orders were pretty much to get out ASAP.
The move towards independence and separatism for India's muslims dated to long before the Atlee government though, which you would know if you had done anything other than
skim the subject before getting back to us. For some badly needed context why don't you read up on the career of people like Allama Iqbal or Mohammad Ali Jinnah, then look at the circumstances surrounding the Lahore Resolution of 1940?