Originally Posted by
Burney
To be fair, though, the idea behind partition was simply to keep Ulster Unionists from losing their shįt and beating the crap out of the rest of Ireland. There was no particular interest in retaining the province of Ulster for its own sake.
The big mistake everyone makes when thinking about the Troubles is thinking that it was solely about managing the republican problem. It wasn't. It was about the Brits managing the republican problem rather than the loyalists doing so, which would have been much, much uglier.