Quote:
Originally Posted by Octillion
But not in the instance of Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland is in the United Kingdom by the will of the majority of its people and it will remain a division of the Kingdom and part of her Majesty's Realms while the majority of its people want it so.
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Yes, but how was this so-called majority achieved? In 1920 the island was cut into two pieces, although it hadn't been divided during the British rule over the whole of Ireland. A piece of country was cut, that was mostly inhabited by the descendants of planters, though no preceding division existed. There was no particular "legality" about that, the only support of any supposed legality being the British military might. And this kind of "legality" persists even until today. Britain is militarily and politically more powerful than Ireland and by means of its power it detains the "legal" occupation of that piece of land.
Yes, you may point at several referenda being carried out in the Northern Ireland, in which the majority was in favour of the Union with Britain, but how was that majority achieved in the first place? How "legal" was the act of partition itself?