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Uniting Ireland and the role that the United States can play in achieving this

Partition has not worked and it is time for a completely new structure

LEANNE PEACOCK,

IrishCentral Contributing Writer

Published Friday, August 3, 2012, 4:41 AM

Updated Friday, August 3, 2012, 10:09 AM

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American march in support of a United Ireland

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It has been noted that many Protestant Unionists fear revenge may be sought from Catholic nationalists if they partake in such a venture. To counter that I quote Bobby Sands a forward thinking man who has views that were well ahead of his time, he said that ‘Our revenge will be the laughter of our children’ this statement sets out clearly the aims of nationalist/republicans- a prosperous society based on equality and rights where children no longer live in fear.

The United States has no doubt got a role to play in building this bright future that I describe. The most important role that the United States can play in this debate is as a facilitator of discussion. Nothing will ever be achieved by maintaining the status quo and refraining from discussion. The topic must be promoted and discussed both by politicians north, south and worldwide but also in communities in people’s homes and in educational facilities.

The United States can use its position to promote this discussion in the British and Irish Governments, the northern executive and within society worldwide. The United States holds the influence required to maintain this discussion and have the difficult questions asked and answered, the pro’s and con’s debated and negotiations held. Just as it did throughout the peace process the United States can provide support and encouragement to politicians and institutions and ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.

We have the chance now in a time of peace to further the growth and prosperity of the small island of Ireland free from the baggage of its past, let us hear the laughter of its children as they grow up free from fear and discrimination together as unified but diverse people in a stable and democratic country. As with the Peace process the United States of America can play a key role in this, I urge you to further this debate.

(Leanne Peacock is a young Sinn Fein member who interned in Washington this summer as part of the Washington Ireland Program. The views expressed are those of the author.)

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DanOLoingsigh | Sep 07, 2012, 03:45 AM EDT

CurtisJ..so you claim to have read ALL the contemporary sources? I don't think so...

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curtisjohnson | Sep 05, 2012, 09:39 PM EDT

Daniel O'Connell was at least a contemporary figure and Arthur Young was the most direct and primary source we have for the conditions under which the indigenous population suffered. You're making some ridiculous extrapolation to impute moral culpability on a people who were shattered and oppressed in an extreme sense based upon all of the contemporary BRITISH sources. Moreover, tithing was a religous obligation and the Irish people clung to Catholicism as the last vestige of an independent identity.

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DanOLoingsigh | Sep 05, 2012, 08:15 PM EDT

Danielle O'Connell?? Sums it up really...I have quoted an author and his sources...sadly you seem unable to accept anything that does not fit wth your Anglophobic take on 19th century Ireland...

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curtisjohnson | Sep 04, 2012, 10:06 PM EDT

You haven't established any foundation for your silly premise, including the timeframe over which funding for these structures was established as well as excluding the possiblity of external fundings. Moreover, an upper echelon of Catholic landowners held on to their wealth and could have provided the funding (for instance, Danielle O'Connell). Furthermore, the attempt at character assassination falls flat in light of the fact that Irish morale, culture, and unity had been destroyed by centuries of occupation (even education was a felony). That post colonial self hatred is still successfully exploited today by the Dublin establishment evidences the level of oppression. It is not unreasonable to conclude that tithing was one of the if not the only communable obligation which remained cognizable to the population at large.

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DanOLoingsigh | Sep 02, 2012, 07:56 AM EDT

Though strangely for such a 'small' group, they managed to raise plenty of funds for many churches, cathedrals, and religious buildings??? While their countrymen starved??? And that's hardly irrelevant...

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curtisjohnson | Sep 01, 2012, 08:26 PM EDT

The "middle class," whatever this ill defined terms means in the context of penal Ireland, was so small as to make the point largely irrelevant.

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DanOLoingsigh | Sep 01, 2012, 10:11 AM EDT

My point remains that the Irish, or indigenous Irish, Catholic middle classes preferred putting their spare cash into building churches and cathedrals, while many of their countrymen starved...this is the nub of the authors article...

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curtisjohnson | Aug 31, 2012, 09:45 PM EDT

I'm referring to primary sources such as eyewitness accounts and data - the best example being Arthur Young who provides an unbiased eyewitness account based upon his travels all over penal Ireland.

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 31, 2012, 04:38 AM EDT

I am NOT quote mining, as you call it. I am citing this article, and the conclusions drawn…The author cites his sources, here are some more that he cites; Famine, Land and Politics by Peter Gray - Modern Ireland 1600-1972 by Roy Foster - The Great Irish Famine by Cormac O Grada - Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland by W.E. Black ’47: Britain and the Famine Irish by Frank Neal - Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790 by Seamus Deane - Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy 1800-50 by Joel Mokyr - This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52 by Christine Kinealy Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Migration to Australia by David Fitzpatrick - The End of the Hidden Ireland: Rebellion, Famine and Emigration by Robert James - Irish Hunger: Personal Reflections on the Legacy of the Famine, edited by Tom Annals of the Famine in Ireland by Asenath Nicholson - The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy, edited by George Boyce and Alan O’Day.

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curtisjohnson | Aug 30, 2012, 11:40 PM EDT

In order to master a subject you must rigorously study the primary sources rather than gratuitously quote mine (see, for instance, Arthur Young, an Englishmen who travelled througout Ireland for agrarian studies but incidentally documented the widespread abuse and subjugation of the indigenous population). Even the quote does not establish that the vast majority of Irish people did not live in squalor and subjugation during penal Ireland.

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 29, 2012, 03:38 AM EDT

I don't have a deinition...I am merely quoting the well-researched opinion of the author...as to how the population of NI lived...where both sides lived in similar standard housing...you're giving a very partial opinion, without evidence...and you need to compare with eg Dublin, where slum housing was also much in evidence...

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curtisjohnson | Aug 28, 2012, 07:53 PM EDT

I'm not debating the author but asking you what your definition was of "middle class" in the context in which you used it. Even taking the quotes at face value, they do not refute that the vast majority of the indigenous population, on balance, lived under appalling conditions throughout the penal period - based upon the accounts of the british themselves. Incidentally, many lived in hovels after 1916-1920. I had friends that visited the occupied statelet as late as the 1960s and observed that the usual standard of living for the indigenous population was below the worst American ghetto.

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 27, 2012, 04:09 AM EDT

CurtisJ; I’ve quoted both the article, the author and some of his sources…now you can either do some legwork and enlighten yourself on the real facts of the nuanced, complex society that was 19th century Ireland, or carry on with your stereotypical Irish-American take where all the Catholics lived in mud-floored hovels up until 1916-1920 …it’s up to you?

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curtisjohnson | Aug 26, 2012, 11:09 PM EDT

What then do you mean by "middle class"? What does "substantial" group mean - there are always collaborators in every major historical occupation, particularly when they're as savage and deadly as the british occupation. Moreoever, the fabric of Irish society had long since been shattered.

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 26, 2012, 04:15 AM EDT

The author, Colm Tóibín, does not contend that the majority were middle class, and this is never stated, either by him or me…so I don’t know where that came from? Accusations of ‘post-colonial pro-British revisionism’ about someone you seem to know little about, smacks of a typical Pavlovian response to unwelcome assertions…His grandfather, Patrick Tobin (and his grand-uncle Michael Tobin) were IRA men (interned in Wales after the rising)…his contention is that a substantial group of ‘indigenous Irish’ as you call them, were culpable by omission in the suffering of their co-religionists…and that uncomfortable fact has been conveniently ‘air brushed’ out of the historical record…he quotes many sources…the piece is called ‘Erasures’, I suggest you read it, note the sources, and then come back and comment…

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