Britain Beats Irish Republicans in 1916!!!

I just pretend they are in mph. Then I can do 100 mph on main roads and 50 through town. No one seems to mind.

You'd fit in well in Montréal. :eek:

They all wave at me. Very friendly people. Always waving. They have a traditional Irish wave, instead of an open palm, they close their hand into a kind of, well fist I suppose, and then wave. Lovely. Friendliest people in the world.

That ALSO sounds Québécois - well, apart from the language. :rolleyes:

One of their special Garda cars (that's like your British Police but less oppressive of course) escorted me home the other night. Flashed his lights and everything, make sure I could get on quickly. So kind and considerate. Charming, charming man. Couldn't really tell what he was saying of course but I'm sure it was very friendly. Wanted me to pop in and see him at his wee 'station' I think, but I didn't like to impose.

You're lucky it wasn't the SQ. :eek:
 

Sissco

Banned
Of course, one of the great WIs of Irish history is what if De Valera or Michael Collins had been executed in 1916, both came very close.

Shimbo...please forgive my Ignorance but really? I need to look up my history more but was De Valera and Collins THAT close to excution? BTW My Idea of a united Ireland under British rule may not be a complete ASB. I was speaking to a catholic friend and she said that the Irish didn;t really wanna break away from Britian, they just wanted to have more control over their affairs - education being one of them! Just trying to learn more :)
 
Shimbo...please forgive my Ignorance but really? I need to look up my history more but was De Valera and Collins THAT close to excution? BTW My Idea of a united Ireland under British rule may not be a complete ASB. I was speaking to a catholic friend and she said that the Irish didn;t really wanna break away from Britian, they just wanted to have more control over their affairs - education being one of them! Just trying to learn more :)

De Valera was court martialed and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment (from which he escaped). The only thing that saved him was that he was one of the last 'ring leaders' captured and so by the time his trial was over the effect of the executions on public opinion was becoming clear. He was literally the next on the list to be shot when the order to stop the executions arrived from London.

Collins was not identified as a 'ring leader' and so was not court martialed.

So DeV could easily have very easily have been executed but Collins execution would require a bigger PoD.

A British Ireland is not ASB at all IMO but you need to find a PoD. If I was you then I'd read through that wikipedia article I linked earlier and then get some books and read up on the period.
 

Sissco

Banned
Thanks Shimbo...I hope you're not offended by the fact that I'm British or by the fact that I made this post!! I hate offending people....one stupid question....what does POD mean? Sorry!
 
BTW My Idea of a united Ireland under British rule may not be a complete ASB. I was speaking to a catholic friend and she said that the Irish didn;t really wanna break away from Britian, they just wanted to have more control over their affairs - education being one of them! Just trying to learn more :)

To derail the thread a bit, that's also the heart in Canada over the disputes between the federal government in Ottawa and the provinces, though more so outside of Ontario.
 

Sissco

Banned
WOW....First I've heard of that Dan...I though the entire of Canada was 100% united and I also though that Canada was 100% up for the creation of the North American Union?

thanks for educating me!
 
I though the entire of Canada was 100% united

If that were the case, then what would be the point of Confederation? It would be just another unitary state (which was what Sir John A. Macdonald wanted initially) instead of the federal parliamentary democracy/constitutional monarchy that it is now.

A lot of contemporary Canadian politics is pretty much a classic case of the centre (in this case, the Montréal-Toronto-Ottawa triangle that spans two provinces) vs. the periphery, as is the case with everywhere else (I'm sure it's the same in Northern Ireland, with metro Belfast as the centre and everywhere else in the periphery).

and I also though that Canada was 100% up for the creation of the North American Union?

Hardly. At this point, NAFTA is as much as Canadians can stomach (even though Canada probably benefits more than the US from NAFTA).

thanks for educating me!

You're welcome. :D
 
De Valera was court martialed and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment (from which he escaped). The only thing that saved him was that he was one of the last 'ring leaders' captured and so by the time his trial was over the effect of the executions on public opinion was becoming clear. He was literally the next on the list to be shot when the order to stop the executions arrived from London.

Collins was not identified as a 'ring leader' and so was not court martialed.

So DeV could easily have very easily have been executed but Collins execution would require a bigger PoD.

A British Ireland is not ASB at all IMO but you need to find a PoD. If I was you then I'd read through that wikipedia article I linked earlier and then get some books and read up on the period.

Shimbo

Interesting. I thought I remembered hearing that De Valera actually escaped because he could claim, US citizenship? However could be one of those rumours that often seems to abound in such cases.

Steve
 
Shimbo

Interesting. I thought I remembered hearing that De Valera actually escaped because he could claim, US citizenship? However could be one of those rumours that often seems to abound in such cases.

Steve

I'm going off Tim Pat Coogan's book 'Long Fellow Long Shadow' which claims supporters tried to use the US angle to save DeV but they failed and in fact pure happenstance saved him.

The book quotes Evelyn Wylie, Chief Prosecutor at the court martials, as saying Sir John Maxwell, newly appointed military governor under Martial law, got a telegram from Asquith to stop the executions and asked Wylie who was next for the firing squad. The answer was James Connolly, who was one of the main leaders of the rising, so they decided to execute him anyway. Next on the list was DeV, who Maxwell had never heard of. Wylie told him DeV was an unimportant schoolmaster. So they decided to stop after Connolly.
 
Doesn't it technically belong to Scotland? :D:rolleyes:;)

Given that the Isle of Man is a self-governing protectorate of the United Kingdom and was made a dependency of the English Crown in the 14th Century, I somehow doubt even Alex Salmond's aircraft carriers will be able to enforce that...
 
I'm going off Tim Pat Coogan's book 'Long Fellow Long Shadow' which claims supporters tried to use the US angle to save DeV but they failed and in fact pure happenstance saved him.

The book quotes Evelyn Wylie, Chief Prosecutor at the court martials, as saying Sir John Maxwell, newly appointed military governor under Martial law, got a telegram from Asquith to stop the executions and asked Wylie who was next for the firing squad. The answer was James Connolly, who was one of the main leaders of the rising, so they decided to execute him anyway. Next on the list was DeV, who Maxwell had never heard of. Wylie told him DeV was an unimportant schoolmaster. So they decided to stop after Connolly.

Shimbo

Many thanks. Interesting. That close.:( Wonder if there would have been an Irish civil war after partition if he had been killed? Probably as generally someone else to fill such a role but might have less influence.

Steve
 
Shimbo

Many thanks. Interesting. That close.:( Wonder if there would have been an Irish civil war after partition if he had been killed? Probably as generally someone else to fill such a role but might have less influence.

Steve
No in Tim Pat Coogan's opinion. DeV very much knew what the treaty was likely to look like as the British preconditions for talks ruled out both a republic and the incorporation of Northern Ireland in the Free State. His protestations of outrage were a sham.

TPC lays the entire blame for the Civil War on DeV's ego and his political rivalry with Collins. He quotes someone who heard Dev's response on learning that Collin's nickname was the Big Fellow: "We'll see who the big fellow is..."

Without DeV to be a figurehead for the anti treaty forces they would have faded away in very short order IMO, especially as Collins was organising attacks on Northern Ireland to keep the hot head's minds off causing trouble in the Free State.

He also speculates that if DeV had come back from London with a treaty that Collins didn't like then there wouldn't have been a civil war.

DeV himself said in later years that violently opposing the treaty was the worst mistake he ever made IIRC.
 
See the true, brute, face of British imperialism reveal itself ladies and gentlemen! I call on you, put this mad dog down before it strikes again! :mad:

Not Wales. Anything but Wales...:(



Just as a point of interest, it is near impossible to tell where the border between County Londonderry and County Donegal is even now. The only real sign is that the speed limits change from miles to km per hour.

As it happens, I crossed that border in 1969 just before the recent lot of troubles got out of hand and my father had to go into a hut to find the Irish customs officer was was mainly concerned about cricket results
 
Top