Witness accounts of 1916 Rising and War of Independence unveiled

curtisjohnson - The 'blame' is not all one-way...Nationalist abstentionism, Free State/Brit disinterest, DeVs sectarian 1937 constitution, Free State kow-towing to Rome, various Republican campaigns...none of this helped...too easy to paint it all with a green republican gloss...a bit more complex than that, imo.

YoungPike - yes I am "serious" - even in the face of your hysterical reference to Nazi Germany. ancavker - excellent post and irrefutable from an historical perspective - it was a dishonest landgrab. DanOLoingsigh - we can certainly blame them for creating a supremacist and gerrymandered statelet.

ancavker - Nationalists who found themselves on the wrong side of the border were quite entitled to feel aggrieved and let down…unionists acted in what they saw as their own best interests when they opted to remain in the union with GB…just as nationalists acted in theirs by leaving…it’s hard to blame anyone for doing so, it’s simple human nature… it was obvious that partition would happen, choices made subsequently, on both sides, did absolutely nothing to bring it to an end, or move the two sides closer together…

Dan: Round and round we go with you. But lets go again, if the boundary commission had done what Collins mistakenly was led to believe it would do, than there would have been no six county statelet. It would have been 4 counties, and perhaps less as south Armagh was overwhelmingly nationalist too, in addition to Fermanagh and Tyrone. The fact that you won't even acknowledge this fact says a lot.

curtisjohnson: British international larceny? Are you serious? I suppose you think the British Empire was worse than Nazi Germany! The fact that you refer to the Falkland islands as the Malvinas indicates that you don't appreciate the islanders right to self-determination. If the close proximity of the islands to Argentina means they belong to the Argentinians, then what are white Europeans doing in North America and Australia?

The creation of the supremacist statelet in the occupied 6 (through the threat of unrestrained terrorism against Irish non-combatants) was a classic example of british international larceny. We can still see the residuals of their pattern of conduct all over the world - Iraq, Iran, Pakistan/Afghanistan, Israel,the Malvinas, etc.

You mean the artificially created six counties.

How Wee was Robbed !

Have a copy of an interesting 1922 letter from Samuel David Babington (1861-1931)of the Coolderry Post Office, Feahoe, Magheracloone, Co. Monaghan to a cousin George Babington (1869-1929)in America. Samuel David describes a 1921 raid of the Coolderry Post Office by lads with blackened faces looking for guns. These lads tried but could not open the safe at post office or could not find guns in the post office.

The majority in what became NI had made it clear for a number of years that they wanted to stay in the union with GB...maybe they were as noble and brave as anyone else involved, only nobody thought to listen to their side of things...many still don't...

During Easter week, 1956,as a child I listened to nightly programs on Raidio Éireann as participants in and witnesses to the Easter Rebellion spoke of their personal experiences in that event. In those days the media often referred to the North as the Six-Counties - seldom by it offical British name. The so-called War of Independence was fought to obtain full independence for "the whole Irish nation and all its parts". To uphold Partition, which was imposed by Westministerin the summer of 1920, was never the goal of the brave men and women who fought that war. When those true patriots spoke of Ireland they meant the whole country, not merely the part over which the Dáil now has jurisdiction. It seems unlikely that the actual aims of struggle will be mentioned, much less emphasized, by official channels of today's Paritionist government in Dublin.