week before the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, a reporter from an Irish radio station caught up with Nigel Farage on the campaign trail. He asked the Ukip leader if Britain’s departure from the EU would have any implications for the island of Ireland.
“Don’t worry, we’ll still buy your Guinness,” replied Farage, which chimed with the leave side’s broader dismissal of the consequences for the Good Friday agreement arising from the vote.
As it turned out, Brexit had a profound impact on Ireland – not least that it put the constitutional question firmly on the table. Before the Brexit referendum, very few people expected a border poll on Irish unity to take place within the following 25 to 50 years. Northern Ireland was settling into peaceful coexistence. Once implacable foes, the DUP and Sinn Féin ruled together in a power-sharing administration. But everything changed the day after the result was called: Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Féin deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, called for a border poll. For the first time in living memory, the main political parties in Dublin began addressing the issue of Irish unity.
Ironic that Farage and Boris Johnson have done more for a united Ireland than years of bloodshed.
… Boris Johnson gave a solemn pledge to unionists that he would never accept a border down the Irish Sea. In October 2019, he signed a deal that put a customs border down the Irish Sea. Even though Johnson had no intention of honouring this legally binding agreement, it was a profound jolt to unionism.
…and from talking to the kids of some of my Irish friends on both sides of the border, Brexit has enormously accelerated the sense of Irish unity amongst younger people who want to be able to go for study, work, and play to glorious Europe rather than ever more doggy England.
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(who is 1/8 Antrim County Norman/Scots Irish and loves the whole Isle)
American citizen who got Irish/EU citizenship more recently. I was born Irish. Born here in the US. My parents are Irish.
I have not claimed Israeli citizenship. Probably could.
My family is mostly in LA and Ireland, both sides. My father’s side Jewish all his cousins were born in Dublin. Now more of them are in LA, some in Houston and London. The Jewish side is Lithuanian and Polish. Into London in the early 1900s.
Seems many Brits don’t want any foreigners in their midst any more that the Shinier USians, so seems everyone would be a lot happier, except the members of the DUP.
The desire to emigrate from anywhere in the western half of the Republic is still strong, and even to travel or work in Belfast, Dublin or Europe ex-England. The last days of the Troubles are more than a generation - 25 years - in the past. As separation of the North from the Republic was originally an outcome of a finally-successful actual rebellion by the Republic after 500 years of subjugation by The Empire , and enforced by that Empire - I’d say it’s high time for my unknown cousins to end the false division and stand as their own. Erin Go Bragh!
YES!! It is time to finally utterly undo the ancient colonialism started under the William the Conqueror, revived by Henry VIII, and taken to murderous absurdity before the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921.
My Irish heritage is from the Norman Russells of Carrickfergus
founded by the empowered enforcing estate manager accountant (seneschal) serving under the Norman adventurer conqueror Earl John de Courcy, who founded Carrickfergus. Those Russells (I am in touch) held on to what is now the largest agricultural land holding in County Antrim, just south of suburbs of Belfast. Those there my age or older (just two left) are still classic Protestant Unionists, but my younger cousins are almost all fervently in favor of escaping arrogant “English” stupidity and uniting into Ireland.
Bill the Conqueror? Thought he was Norman (slightly civilized Viking) The character the DUP goes squishy over is William of Orange, the staunch Protestant who unhorsed a Catholic king.
I want Latinos. I think the groups have claims here.
I do not want a massive influx of Chinese or Indians. I think the high population centers can not have an extreme brain drain. I think harder right wing governments are what our brain drain leaves behind. The communists are really hard right now.
That said eradicating poverty in India matters to me. India’s culture and governance is extremely good. There has to be special ties with India.
If people could simply get on a plane for free tomorrow we’d have 800 million residents in the US within five years. Kiss minimum wage good bye. Kiss the income ladder good bye.
The Brexiters has some of those arguments. Those arguing in the US as well.
Well yeah. As an extension of the Norman conquest of the bits of the rest of the UK they could manage to tame. Here you go. A reasonable summary…
I always wonder why it’s considered the start of the English occupation when “the English” were themselves an occupied nation if you think about it…indigenous inhabitants systematically and sometimes brutally suppressed by invading hoards since the time of the Roman Invasion (my earliest recollection of studying English history with the story of Boudicca…who’d died in the vicinity of my home town)
Estonia 1943. Occupied by the soviets in 1943 followed by mass executions and deportations then by the nazis and more executions and holocaust in 1943. Wow. I bet your parents had a story to tell.
Ever see the film version of “Ivanhoe”? Ivanhoe is a Saxon, 'oppressed" by the Normans. As you said, the Saxons were invaders too.
Bill the Conqueror showed up near Hastings in 1066, so the Normans had been rulers in England for 100 years by the time they got around to invading Ireland. So, the Anglo-Normans were English by then, but still had holdings in France. The English holdings in France caused friction with the French King, which lead to the 100 Years War.
But we did get a nice bit of drama out of all that.
A century or so isn’t that long at all in terms of assimilation or acquiring “Englishness”, whatever that was. Remember, a good many USian families with a history dating back a fair bit longer than that self identify as something other than American.
And, as for that William of Orange…kinda hard to really call him English, either.
On 14 June 1940, while the world’s attention was focused on the fall of Paris to “Natsi” Germany a day earlier, the Soviet military blockade of Estonia went into effect, and two Soviet bombers downed Finnish passenger airplane Kaleva flying from Tallinn to Helsinki carrying three diplomatic pouches from the U.S. legations in Tallinn, Riga and Helsinki. US Foreign Service employee Henry W. Antheil Jr. was killed in the crash
On 16 June 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Estonia. Molotov accused the Baltic states of conspiracy against the Soviet Union and delivered an ultimatum to Estonia for the establishment of a government approved of by the Soviets.
The Estonian government decided, given the overwhelming Soviet force both on the borders and inside the country, not to resist, to avoid bloodshed and open war. Estonia accepted the ultimatum, and the statehood of Estonia de facto ceased to exist as the Red Army exited from their military bases in Estonia on 17 June. The following day, some 90,000 additional troops entered the country. The military occupation of the Republic of Estonia was rendered official by a communist coup d’état supported by the Soviet troops, followed by parliamentary elections where all but pro-Communist candidates were outlawed. The newly elected parliament proclaimed Estonia a Socialist Republic on 21 July 1940 and unanimously requested Estonia to be accepted into the Soviet Union. Those who had fallen short of the “political duty” of voting Estonia into the USSR, who had failed to have their passports stamped for so voting, were allowed to be shot in the back of the head by Soviet tribunals.(History of Estonia - Wikipedia) Estonia was formally annexed into the Soviet Union on 6 August and renamed the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.(History of Estonia - Wikipedia)
The Soviet authorities, having gained control over Estonia, immediately imposed a regime of terror. During the first year of Soviet occupation (1940–1941) over 8,000 people, including most of the country’s leading politicians and military officers, were arrested. About 2,200 of the arrested were executed in Estonia, while most of the others were moved to Gulag prison camps in Russia, from where very few were later able to return alive. On 14 June 1941, when mass deportations took place simultaneously in all three Baltic countries, about 10,000 Estonian civilians were deported to Siberia and other remote areas of the Soviet Union, where nearly half of them later perished. Of the 32,100 Estonian men who were forcibly relocated to Russia under the pretext of mobilisation into the Soviet army after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, nearly 40 percent died within the next year in the so-called “labour battalions” of hunger, cold and overworking. During the first Soviet occupation of 1940–41 about 500 Jews were deported to Siberia.
Estonian graveyards and monuments were destroyed. Among others, the Tallinn Military Cemetery had the majority of gravestones from 1918 to 1944 destroyed by the Soviet authorities, and this graveyard became reused by the Red Army.(History of Estonia - Wikipedia) Other cemeteries destroyed by the authorities during the Soviet era in Estonia.
Many countries including the United States did not recognize the seizure of Estonia by the USSR. Such countries recognized Estonian diplomats and consuls who still functioned in many countries in the name of their former governments. These aging diplomats persisted in this anomalous situation until the ultimate restoration of Baltic independence.
Ernst Jaakson, the longest-serving foreign diplomatic representative to the United States, served as vice-consul from 1934, and as consul general in charge of the Estonian legation in the United States from 1965 until reestablishment of Estonia’s independence. On 25 November 1991, he presented credentials as Estonian ambassador to the United States.(History of Estonia - Wikipedia)
Occupation of Estonia by “Natsi” Germany (1941–1944)
After “Natsi” Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and the Wehrmacht reached Estonia in July 1941, most Estonians greeted the Germans with relatively open arms and hoped to restore independence. But it soon(Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers - Wikipedia)*] became clear that sovereignty was out of the question. Estonia became a part of the German-occupied “Ostland”. A Sicherheitspolizei was established for internal security under the leadership of Ain-Ervin Mere. The initial enthusiasm that accompanied the liberation from Soviet occupation quickly waned as a result, and the Germans had limited success in recruiting volunteers. The draft was introduced in 1942, resulting in some 3,400 men fleeing to Finland to fight in the Finnish Army rather than join the Germans. Finnish Infantry Regiment 200 (Estonian: soomepoisid) was formed out of Estonian volunteers in Finland. With the Allied victory over Germany becoming certain in 1944, the only option to save Estonia’s independence was to stave off a new Soviet invasion of Estonia until Germany’s capitulation.
By January 1944, the front was pushed back by the Soviet Army almost all the way to the former Estonian border. Narva was evacuated. Jüri Uluots, the last legitimate prime minister of the Republic of Estonia (according to the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia) prior to its fall to the Soviet Union in 1940, delivered a radio address that implored all able-bodied men born from 1904 through 1923 to report for military service. (Before this, Uluots had opposed Estonian mobilization.) The call drew support from all across the country: 38,000 volunteers jammed registration centers.(History of Estonia - Wikipedia) Several thousand Estonians who had joined the Finnish army came back across the Gulf of Finland to join the newly formed Territorial Defense Force, assigned to defend Estonia against the Soviet advance. It was hoped that by engaging in such a war Estonia would be able to attract Western support for the cause of Estonia’s independence from the USSR and thus ultimately succeed in achieving independence.(History of Estonia - Wikipedia)
The initial formation of the volunteer SS Estonian legion created in 1942 was eventually expanded to become a full-sized conscript division of the Waffen-SS in 1944, the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. The Estonian units saw action defending the Narva line throughout 1944.
As the Germans started to retreat on 18 September 1944, Jüri Uluots, the last Prime Minister of the Estonian Republic prior to Soviet occupation, assumed the responsibilities of president (as dictated in the Constitution) and appointed a new government while seeking recognition from the Allies. On 22 September 1944, as the last German units pulled out of Tallinn, the city was re-occupied by the Soviet Red Army. The new Estonian government fled to Stockholm, Sweden, and operated in exile from 1944 until 1992, when Heinrich Mark, the prime minister of the Estonian government in exile acting as president, presented his credentials to incoming president Lennart Meri.
The Holocaust in Estonia
The process of Jewish settlement in Estonia began in the 19th century, when in 1865 Russian Tsar Alexander II granted them the right to enter the region. The creation of the Republic of Estonia in 1918 marked the beginning of a new era for the Jews. Approximately 200 Jews fought in combat for the creation of the Republic of Estonia, and 70 of these men were volunteers. From the very first days of its existence as a state, Estonia showed tolerance towards all the peoples inhabiting its territories.
On 12 February 1925, the Estonian government passed a law pertaining to the cultural autonomy of minority peoples. The Jewish community quickly prepared its application for cultural autonomy. Statistics on Jewish citizens were compiled. They totaled 3,045, fulfilling the minimum requirement of 3,000. In June 1926 the Jewish Cultural Council was elected and Jewish cultural autonomy was declared. Jewish cultural autonomy was of great interest to the global Jewish community. The Jewish National Endowment presented the Government of the Republic of Estonia with a certificate of gratitude for this achievement.(History of Estonia - Wikipedia)
There were, at the time of Soviet occupation in 1940, approximately 2,000 Estonian Jews. Many Jewish people were deported to Siberia along with other Estonians by the Soviets. It is estimated that 500 Jews suffered this fate. With the invasion of the Baltics, it was the intention of the “Natsi” government to use the Baltic countries as their main area of mass genocide. Consequently, Jews from countries outside the Baltics were shipped there to be exterminated. Out of the approximately 4,300 Jews in Estonia prior to the war, between 1,500 and 2,000 were entrapped by the “Natsis”,(History of Estonia - Wikipedia) and an estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having been deported to camps there from Eastern Europe.(History of Estonia - Wikipedia)
