: I would totally agree with you that the Ulster/ Northern Ireland question is not as simple as you think. However it is a bit naive of you to think that the British would have left long ago if they had such a 'choice'.
: Irish history is riddled with contradictions but also with state and military complicency in establishing and maintaining the Irish question. During the early part of this century the Northern protestants were armed, drilled and managed by English military personnel. Members of the British cabinet were intricately involved in the maintanence of the Union and the furtherance of a single grouping - at the cost of gauranteeing further bloodshed.
: This attitude has never really changed. Once the Irish Free State was established and later the defacto Republic it was upon gaurantees from British governments that the Unionist were able to build themselves an apartheid state - not only by being armed to the teeth, gerrymandering electoral boundaries and excluding other groups from ANY positions of power and influence, but by being allowed to establish a state in which the rights of one group (a significant minority) were at all times under threat from the state (ruled and administrated exclusively by the majority group) - it is not really surprising to find that the architects of the South African apartheid regime looked enviously at the state repression metted out and organised by the Northern Ireland government - the B-Specials for example virtually gauranteed ANY protestant the right to bear arms AGAINST his/ her catholic neighbour - a vigilante group that basically comprised some tens of thousands of hooligans.
: The British government saw no need to intervene in these developments, the British government as usual saw no need to intervene in a situation whereby a status quo was maintained which gauranteed the supremacy of a traditional and powerful ally - the unionists.
: Whilst this relationship has somewhat been transformed in recent governments - the Tory party held to ransom for example by the few votes of the Unionists, we only have hope that the overtures of the present British govt. is genuine and not the empty vaccuous promises and half promises of previous ones - from Lloyd George to Churchill to Gaistkil to Callaghan and now to Blair - the 'desire of the British Government in seeing the Northern Ireland problem resolved in genuine' could be a snip from any of these 'great' British leaders.
: The problems of the north are not intractable - but the history of British intervention means that British involvement mitigates AGAINST them being impartial and mitigates against them being able to be totally trusted (they are now in the position where NEITHER community totally trusts the British regime - perhaps never did) in their pronouncements for their desire for peace and settlement.
: The Tory party in particular is tied inextricably to the concept of Union and whilst the military may now want some sort of resolution - they have been traditional proponents of occupation and, as you said 'divide and rule'. Just because they advocate that 'the majority must decide' does not mean that they would ever accept a nationalist choice - just as they helped to gaurantee that the northern counties were exempted from the Collins/ George talks and the ultimate Treaty in the early 1920's, they are as likely to try and gaurantee a repeat performance if it ever comes to a choice again. They are the actual architects of the 'majority stance' which has itself gauranteed a political polarity between two communities seen rarely elsewhere in the world - by placing such a stark reality on an already divided community effectively MADE SURE that they remained so - divided.
: The British state moves more than just on economic reasoning - Thatcher has not totally won the war for capital - British state management still moves on British state repression, British state occupation (Falklands, Gibraltar, Belize et al - the UK only handed Hong Kong back because China holds a bigger gun than say Argentina or Spain) and British state control and influence - the Commonwealth.
So you think I'm naive comrade, well if you didn't realise the britsih especially under labour or liberal governemnts bowed out of nearly every imperial colony that they could. The only reason for occupation of the Falklands or N.I. is that their are citizens who wish to remain birtish.
you have also related to me a great deal of history that I am already aware of being from this country and I would warn you that anyone can twist history to their advantage.(I only agree with history as an expression of class struggle)
Marx wrote a great deal about Ireland and gave a non-nationalist perspective that condoned seperation.
An irish labour laeader also commented nationalists not seperatists.
