A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Queen visits Ireland today

11:13 am  Arden Forester  1 comment

Queen opening hospital wing in Londonderry 2009
Her Majesty The Queen is making a state visit to the Republic of Ireland today. This is not her first visit to Ireland, but it is her first visit to the Republic of Ireland, or Eire as my prep school Geography master from Lisburn called it. The BBC is keen to be telling us that this is "the first time a British Monarch has set foot on Irish soil since independence from British rule", which is a bit of a twist on history.

Ireland was, as a whole island, fully part of the United Kingdom from 1st January 1801 until 6th December 1922, when the south of Ireland assumed independence within the Commonwealth. It was called the Irish Free State and the King of Ireland became the King in Ireland. The Free State ended in 1937 and the Republic was formed, with no king in or out!

The BBC seems to forget that the Free State was what many Irishmen wanted. They do not mention it. They have mentioned the Irish who fought in the Great War and were inconveniently forgotten, which was a disgrace. However, the majority of the Irish people supported and voted for complete severance, and that is what seems predominant. We may be getting a similar run of political manoeuvring in Scotland, although Alex Salmond is a very much a creature of 2011 and not a back of the hay trailer tubthumper of 1911.

I hope the Queen's visit goes well. It seems most Irish people are at ease with the relationship between the Republic and the UK. We need to put enmity aside, if enmity there is and enjoy our common heritage and blood ties, for there are many of those.

Queen in Northern Ireland 2009

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1 comments:

With Channel 4 News giving air time to Sinn Fein to spout bigotry, did it not occur to any news commentator today that Her Majesty and her family suffered directly from IRA terrorism in 1979 with the brutal murder of Mountbatten, her first cousin and grandson of Queen Victoria? The yobs in Dublin demonstrating against the visit, appeared to have ignored the fact that amongst 3000 +families in Ireland, predominantly in the North, who had family members brutally killed in the 'Troubles'since 1969, HM The Queen's own family is included in the long list of grieving families. The problem we have of course is continued Irish bigotry that would rather dwell on Cromwell, The Famine (not a fungal disease of spuds but a cruel English neglect)and a failure to listen to Brendan Hughes prior to his death pin-pointing Adams for what he really was, a clever IRA terrorist.

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