In January of 2022, the Cambridge University Students' Union hosted a debate on the motion 'That This House Believes Northern Ireland ought to remain part of the United Kingdom'.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4T2Var1zdY&list=PL8u8FA1GH7TH-Qkf28jEZDucogHTXyAXW&index=1&t=338s)

The speeches were fairly interesting if predictable, and the motion was lost with a large number of abstentions.

However, one of the more engaging contributions came from Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, who went to great lengths to defend his claim that he is Irish.

Now, Jeffrey Donaldson is a Unionist, an Empire Loyalist. I am an Irish Nationalist, and we have something in common; we were both Planters.

And there our paths diverge.

My people were from Scotland and arrived in Ireland many generations ago. And somewhere along the road, we decided to shoulder the Irishman's burden and go native. Whether that was a profitable thing to do at the time, I do not know. 

But we adopted their customs, language, sports, music, their history, their outlook, their trials and tribulations, their mythology, and in time, with the zeal of the converted, I suppose, we became Níos Gaelaí ná na Gaeil féin - 'more Irish than the Irish themselves'.

And after a further time, after we had paid our dues - for there are dues to be paid - we became, with many other people, the very epitome of what it is to be Irish. So that people would look at us - or listen to us - and say 'He's Irish' or 'She's Irish'.

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It is said that if the great heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali was dropped out of an aeroplane anywhere in the world, the People would come out to meet him, and the People would smile. This despite the fact that he was a racist, a religious crank, and black. Such was the force of his personality, and the fundamental truth of his cause, that people were driven to overlook his human frailty and hail him as a hero.

The Irish are a bit like that; now we can travel all over the world, and are generally met with a smile.

Such a reception is hard-won, and not to be surrendered cheaply. Just look at the world-wide social media response to our sportspeople, our dancers, our writers, our horsey people, our singers and musicians; Great admiration, and a little envy, perhaps...

In marketing terms, Ireland and the Irish are one of the strongest brands you will find anywhere. This tiny country - We are respected and applauded for our humour, our success, and our resistance to tyranny and oppression. 

Addressing the Houses of the Oireachtas on 28 June 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy said that "no small country has done more to advance the cause of liberty throughout the world, than the Irish". 

And in the aftermath of the First World War, when many countries were in the early awakening of their independent spirit, they looked to Ireland for an example of how to kick off the shackles of an oppressor.

So it is not surprising that Jeffrey Donaldson would like to claim to be Irish. 

In fact, he says if there were a United Ireland, he could not leave because 'his blood is in the soil'.

But, of course, Jeffrey Donaldson whatever he is, he is not Irish at all!

His loyalty and his allegiance is to a foreign monarch. Think of how ridiculous that is; he claims that his family has been on this island for 400 years, that's ten generations, yet he never integrated with the Irish People. Why?!

He never assumed the Irishman's burden. In fact, he took up arms against the very people he claims to be one of by joining the Ulster Defence Regiment, and his father before him!

He might live upon the soil of Ireland, his blood might be in that soil, as he claims, but he is not OFF the soil. He remains a Stranger.

So, contrast now, if you will, the reputation of the Irish and the reputation of the Planter who never integrated, who never threw in his lot with the People, who never helped this small island to take its rightful place as a beacon of freedom and hope for the world.

For years, they tried to do down the nationalist/catholic/Irish natives. But they were caught out by the international community, by television, by free commentators in the 1960s and '70s, and they have never recovered. 

Ignored in America, laughed at in Europe, despised in London, Northern Ireland Unionists are friendless. And if you are not convinced of that, read their own literature; read the Unionist Voice in which they bemoan the antipathy of the media towards them and ask 'Why does nobody love us?'

The answer is simple; 'Northern Ireland', their experiment in oppression and gerrymandering, has failed. Like the Boers in South Africa, their time is up.

Whatever war they were fighting, they have lost.

Northern Ireland is now dying; that is evident. The English are 'taking back control' as Johnson and others would have it, and going Nationalist; their United Kingdom is obsolescent and breaking up; the Irish are in the ascendant on their own island. The Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Good Friday Agreement and 'The Windsor Framework' have done their work well.

So what are we to do with these people who are so rigid, so bigoted and so isolated that, after all this time, they will still not integrate with the Irish People on this island? The answer is We will ignore them, and leave them to fester as they cower behind their siege walls and hurl their truculent, antediluvian attitudes at the world. And we will go on to take back our island and our rightful place in the world.

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The 17th of May 2011 is one of the most important days in recent Irish history. For on that day, the Queen of England went to the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin and bowed her head to the men and women who had defied her armies for centuries. An unscripted intervention for which she deserves respect. 

And that event taught us two things; one, that the war had ended; a no-score draw after all these years of death and misery.

And the second thing, that the tide had now turned, that the Irish people were now in the ascendant and were free to walk their own land without fear. 

That the Irish people were now ready to take back their own land - all of it. And that they would do this without war, without violence, but with their votes, their sports, their language, their humour, their patriotism, the justice of their cause, and all this with the applause of the international community of nations!

If Mr. Donaldson wants to become truly Irish, to honestly assume the mantle he so badly wants, let him accept the Irishman's burden, the burden of history, and the Victory of the Irish over adversity. For only then can he become truly Irish.

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Transition Ireland is a non-party organisation whose single objective is the abolition of the false state of 'Northern Ireland' and the unity of the Irish People and National Territory.