FORMATION OF NORTHERN IRELAND
The Irish people effectively voted for independence from Britain at the British General Election of 1918.
A majority were in favour of remaining within the United Kingdom in Ulster, the most northerly province of Ireland. This majority were concentrated in and around the Belfast region of Ulster, and were mainly the descendants of Planters who had arrived in Ireland over the course of the previous three hundred years.
There were economic, cultural and social reasons for their desire to remain within the UK. There were also sectarian, religious–based objections to the plan for an independent Ireland.
My argument is that the British government owed no allegiance to the unionists and that their support for the union was born of a misplaced guilt that they were somehow responsible for the unionists for having encouraged their forefathers to come to Ireland. Capitalism, like imperialism, its forerunner, has no conscience and is only of the moment, and thus the British can have no eternal responsibility for the unionists.
Equally well, the unionists themselves may feel British, but the British identity is a throwback to the British Empire and there is weak empirical evidence for it existing in areas of Britain outside the home counties of southern England. To be British is to be an extension of southern England.
It is an unnatural identity, and not easily understood by those outside its remit.
The unionists threatened to make war against those who would oppose their remaining within the UK, including the Irish citizen majority and the British government, from 1912, when they began to import arms, to 1920, when an agreement reached gave them a separate state in Northern Ireland, with limited autonomy from Britain.
