Speaking yesterday at a packed conference hall of 25 upstairs in an O'Neill's bar in Dublin, the Chairman of Better Back Together, Ulster Dara Lean (who uses his first name to illustrate how he believes the province of Ulster got it spot on when they decided to stick with the British, otherwise he's just called Dara) got the campaign under way as he spoke of the enormous pride he had in being asked to lead the fight to reunite Ireland with Britain. Here is his speech in full:
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Comrades. I am privileged to be addressing you here in the great city of Dublin, once the second city of the Empire, to talk to you about my vision for a strong Ireland in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. I don't want it to just be 'Northern Ireland', I want it to be all of Ireland in the United Kingdom. We have performed dreadfully as a separate nation. We would far better with the City of London as our economic hub and with the brightest and the best politicians at Westminster governing our affairs.
You can still be proudly Irish. We can still celebrate St Patrick's Day with great gusto. But Alex Codd and his band of Nats will have you believe otherwise. He wants you to think that staying independent is a good idea because he thinks it's a lot better than what the British Empire delivered for Ireland. But we know just what Britain meant to Ireland in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. It meant being aprt of a wonderful family of nations. Every time I look at pictures of the city of my birth London, I think "What a shame it's in a foreign country. What a shame I a foreigner by birth."
Well comrades. While we struggle here in Ireland to have a good relationship with our family in England as a consequence of not feeling like we live in the same country as them, the Scots have shown you exactly how to do good relationships - by being in the same country as them!
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And now I would like to show you a video we made of some ordinary and real Irish people who we DID NOT bribe, contrary to claims made by the Nats. These real Irish people would like to tell you what it will mean to them to be part of a strong and successful partnership of British Isles nations.
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