The IRA were terrorists. Pretending that they’re not only really stopped in the US after 9/11, presumably because it became harder for supporters in the US to explain why targeting groups of civilians was an acceptable strategy.
I did not pretend the IRA were not terrorists. I said nothing in this regard.
People fight using the means available to them. The IRA had no tanks, bombers, frigates, etc. They fought back the only way they could. To them it was justified. To you it wasn’t. But this is true in all wars. The Americans were considered uncivilized during the American Revolutionary War since we frequently targeted officers during battles. This was contrary to how European armies fought.
EDIT: Deleted incorrect statements.
Having re-read your original comment I can see clearly that's not something you said or were in anyway implying, so again I apologize unreservedly.
I don't agree with what the IRA did. Never have. But come on. "I don't recall the British bombing blah blah blah". Selective memory.
They were not "denied the vote". Read your own link. "However, unlike the situation in Great Britain, non-ratepayers did not have a vote in local government elections." - if you did not pay rates, you couldn't vote in local elections, but could still vote for Parliament.
Furthermore, from your link:
> the Parliament of Northern Ireland voted to update the voting rules for elections to the Northern Ireland House of Commons, which were implemented for the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, and for local government elections, which was done by the Electoral Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1969, passed on 25 November 1969.
So, the IRA campaign began after the voting situation was equalised, for rate payers and non rate payers alike, in 1969. And when the Stormont Parliament was abolished in 1972, the MPs for NI were elected using UK wide rules, which again, did not "basically deny them the vote".
Thus, the IRA campaign was not about civil rights. It was about forcibly pushing NI into the Republic of Ireland, against the wishes of the majority of the population.
> in a single event 745 People were injured (154 with gunshot wounds) and a 9 year old was killed.
And which "event" was this, because given the nonsense in the rest of your post, I'm betting that this didn't happen.
The British army opened fire on a civil rights march, killing 14 people, all of whom were unarmed.
It is the most significant day of the Troubles.
The IRA (well second/third gen by this point) had an army that was being funded partly by american's "fighting the fight of the old country". They bombs, shot, and tortured anyone they thought who were dodgy.
On the other side, the Loyalist paramilitaries were kidnapping and shooting people in a similar way.
One could make the call to say the reason why the loyalists wern't so keen on bombings (they did do them) was because you could argue that the RUC(the police in NI) and the army were acting on their side.
For example the republicans rarely called the fire brigade/ambulance because more often than not, the army would be pretending to be them. There were "murder squads" of SAS/others who would go out and "stop" people based on informer intelligence.
So yes, its brilliant that we(NI, ireland, UK) have managed to stop this. If that means that people have to live with the murder next door, so be it. Its far better than another generation of killings that has poisoned NI since the 1920s.
on a side note, do you know how hard it is to forgive/live with the "other side" when you personally know a dad, uncle, relative that was murder by the state/paramilitary?
That is not a good-faith position. "British" is universally understood to mean "relating to the people of the United Kingdom". Hence "British passport", "British citizen", etc.
The people of Northern Ireland are therefore British by nationality, being citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, under UK law.
They are also Irish, in the sense that they are inhabitants of the island of Ireland; and also (prior to 2005) on the basis that everyone born on the island of Ireland was an Irish citizen by birth.
Maybe what is wanted by the majority in NO is different now - 20+ years is obviously a long time, and society can change so maybe they no longer wish the connection. The Good Friday agreement acknowledges that possibility and explicitly states that if the majority of NI wish to become part of Ireland then the UK is required to accept that choice.
Now, to the awful things that happened: Do I think that members of the RUC who killed civilians should have ended up in jail? of course. But I think the same thing about members of the IRA.
Finally: no I don't know what it is like to live with the "other side", but I am sure that there are many of the "other side" who lost friends and family, and also had to accept the Good Friday agreement despite their loss.
with respect, thats not what I said. I said they are not British. Northern Ireland is not part of the british isles. They are part of the united kingdom of great Britian and northern island. I know its semantics, but alas its important.
> Now, to the awful things that happened: Do I think that members of the RUC who killed civilians should have ended up in jail? of course. But I think the same thing about members of the IRA.
agreed, but it cannot come at the cost of peace. I personally dislike the fact that civilian killers are in parliament. But if that means we can have lasting peace, that is a price that must be paid.
if we take the example of germany after the war, there were committed nazis in power for many many years after 1945. However Germany is not a country riven by nazis anymore (excluding AFD)
we must work together in order to maintain peace. The alternative is just not worth contemplating
That's a fact of geography not politics, much like the UK is part of Europe but no longer part of the EU.
If you find the word British offensive then you'll need to come up with an alternative for the British Isles but it will be plainly obvious that the geographic collection of islands you are describing is still called the British Isles by everyone else.
My recollection is that the "British Isles" refers to the islands of [Great] Britain and Ireland (among other smaller ones), so that while Northern Island is not part of Great Britain, it is still part of the "British Isles."
Beause the British carefully drew the border in such a way as to take as much territory as possible while still having a majority who wanted to be British, much like the Russians in South Ossetia or Donetsk.
Churchill allowed his Black and Tans to burn entire villages to the ground and terrorise people to subdue them with fear. Terrorism is not just blowing up buses.
The MRF's own ex-members describe it as a terror group; they carried out drive-by shootings of civilians, and UVF members have claimed that they took part in the bombing of McGurk's.
The DaSilva report, Stevens inquiries etc. showed collusion between English military and intelligence and loyalist death squads, including furnishing of firearms.
So the English armed their loyalist paramilitary death squads like the Shankhill butchers and then wash their hands of it all.
Why are English soldiers in Ireland any how?
I've seen "Brits out" and I know what it means. I've known innocent businessmen have their livelihoods ruined and their lives taken, all by the hands of various republican factions, just for being "collaborators".
I'll never forget Enniskillen, Omagh, Bloody Friday, the attempt at Tullyhommon, or the various other atrocities and the party in Stormount that lauds them.
Look up Barry McElduff and his shameless mocking of the Kingsmill atrocity. This happened as recently as 2018 and he is already back in Sinn Fein. Not something anyone does in the spirit of reconciliation.
I'm glad someone at least had the nerve to defend us from clear intimidation and death wishes.
To prevent widespread sectarian murdering and ethnic cleansing of both Catholic and Protestant communities, and because there Irish state is incapable of doing this.
No one in England wants anything to do with it anymore, is a mill stone round our neck.
The Irish state isn't responsible for NI.
At one point the Irish government actually considered militarily intervening in NI, but the British would have seen that as an honest to God act of war.
If that were the reason then they wouldn't have been deployed in places like Armagh where there was no community division.
The army were sent in for the same reason that the border was drawn where it was: to serve British financial interests.
> No one in England wants anything to do with it anymore, is a mill stone round our neck.
The IRA succeeded in making it more expensive than it was worth (although the collapse of the shipbuilding industry was probably the biggest single factor).
Cutting and running when it gets hard in the colonies is more difficult when the colony is next door.
Said as someone in a former colony, with the country having all the expected post-colonial problems.
The Alliance party, the non-aligned neo-liberal party here, had a massive jump in votes in the recent election.
The idea that if the British weren’t here people would instantly devolve into sectarian murders is completely laughable to me.
In my entire life I have never interacted with anyone who was sectarian. You see the areas with union flags strung up everywhere but as I say, these communities are completely insular and run by drug dealers hiding behind the aegis of shared ethnicity.
“A mill stone around our neck”, come off it, my eyes are rolling so hard in my head I fear they may roll under the sofa
But she wasn’t just straight up murdered like you claimed. She wasn’t even targeted, it was just a wrong place, wrong time situation.
I don’t say it to excuse what happened but the way you seem to be telling that story is just not what happened.
I believe violence is only ever justified defensively and even then only as a last resort. The sooner that generation of parasitic drug barons either kill each other or die naturally the better for everyone.
I think this is more a splintering of the unionist community as the DUP has taken a hardline and self-harming pro-Brexit, anti-protocol, no compromise approach. For the US readers, the DUP's social views would make many of the US republicans look liberal. Their last leader was ousted for merely abstaining on, rather than opposing, a ban on gay conversion therapy. Now the DUP is holding the entire NI political system to ransom unless they get their way.
There are many unionists who are done with that shit but are still pro-UK, and this is the group that flocked to alliance in large numbers last election.
Seconded.
To see such a plainly factual statement being down voted on HN is deeply worrying.......
I suspect the Americans doing the down voting have never been cought up in a terrorist attack and are happy being keyboard warriors about something they know so little.
Thank fuck for the peace process and the hard work that has gone into it.
They even had a very clear policy of trying to minimise civilian casualties in a way that loyalist groups absolutely did not, in fact they made a point to intentionally target civilians repeatedly.
So to make the claim that the OP did like it was some black and white scenario where violence against civilians was only going in one direction is objectively wrong.
Nobody is upset with the claim that the IRA were a terrorist group. They were. They did a lot of bad shit, including killing civilians but that was never any kind of policy and it never made sense for their objectives. It was correctly considered to be “bad for the cause” to piss off the support network that enabled them to operate at all.
Agreed with about about thank fuck for the peace process though.
I'm sorry I screwed up, it was a polytechnic I was thinking of rather than a library: http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/lbc/index.php/segment/00168003...
I'm also unsure how they were minimizing civilian casualties when the blew up multiple pubs and apartment stores in the UK.
That said I'll cop to being unreasonable and biased in my first comment, I did disregard the violence committed by the RUC. I was reflexively responding to what came across as a minimization of the IRA and ended up doing what I was accusing the person I was replying to of doing.
I'll update the original comment if HN still allows it.
Regarding that second link though, I thought that was INLA which were a totally different group?
They tried to bomb a bus load of Protestant children on a church trip before fleeing across the border. On the same day as the Enniskillen bomb with a device nearly four times the one used for that atrocity.
Thank heavens it failed, but the intention was there.
It’s quite hard to find information on this one and I have to say the Wikipedia article [1] tells a much more plausible version of the story than an unsourced version written by someone who’s brother was killed by the IRA.
“the IRA called a radio station and said it had abandoned a 150-pound (68 kg) bomb in Tullyhommon, 20 miles (32 km) away, after it failed to detonate. That morning, a Remembrance Sunday parade (which included many members of the Boys' and Girls' Brigades) had unwittingly gathered near the Tullyhommon bomb. Soldiers and RUC officers had also been there, and the IRA said it attempted to trigger the bomb when soldiers were standing beside it. It was defused by security forces and was found to have a command wire leading to a firing point across the border.”
Nobody in this story was setting out to actively target civilians let alone children.
There is also this section in the article which may or may not be relevant but this particular theme came up on multiple occasions and I believe was proven to have happened at least once but I have to double check the sourcing on this.
“Under the thirty-year rule, a letter sent after the bombing was released by the Irish Government. The author was anonymous but claimed to be working for MI5, and the letter was sent to then Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan. Without providing any evidence, it claimed that MI5 had advance knowledge of the Remembrance Day bombing but allowed it to go ahead, so that the public could turn against the Provisional IRA and new security measures could be justified.”
At the same time, I’d say this entire story is actually a great example of why trying to wage a Guerilla campaign amongst a civilian population is an actively terrible idea. These things are going to end up happening regardless of if you meant for it to happen or not unfortunately.
So that’s all to say, none of this is in anyway justified but again, nobody was trying to actively target a bus full of children here because again, it’s hard to think of ANYTHING that could be more counter productive to their aims as you can see from the rest of the article.
We will never know the truth about the black ops that the English security agencies were involved in. Some things are never declassified. There are even theories that they deliberately allowed some of the IRA attacks to go through in order to sway the English public opinion. They had their informants all over the place.
There are three options:
1. Force one side to capitulate
2. Eliminate the opposing side
3. Call a cease fire and everyone walks
Both 1 and 2 failed after many years. So they went with number 3. It appears to have worked.
Instead the British had to oppress the Catholics for generations creating the civil war that inevitably flared up. The IRA was the British fault.
the “other side restarting it” doesn’t make sense because from the perspective of the other side it was already restarted.
And this same party heaps endless praise on those who ordered and orchestrated sectarian murder of the other side.
There are alternative nationalist parties with no such bad blood, but they are never first choice from the other community, it seems.
It is regretful but the message is understood.
I really don't think this is true.
It's widely believed that some former high ranking IRA members still are involved in the party leadership, but nowhere near the extent that they could be said to "control" the party
> Sinn Fein is the Provisional IRA,
The ceasefire was 25 years ago, there is a whole generation of SF members who have never been in the IRA, so no, they are not the same organisation
> and proud of it
Yeah, there's pride at having held off the British Army for decades, but also a lot of very mixed feelings
There is good evidence to indicate that the IRA Army Council is still heavily involved in running Sinn Fein. And it is no wonder, because the links between the two organisations are pretty tight and always have been. The party still calls itself "the political wing of the Provisional IRA". In response to an audience member shouting "Up the 'RA", Gerry Adams famously replied with glee "They haven't gone away you know".
Sinn Fein to this day praises and commemorates former IRA murderers. Michelle O'Neill comes from a family of proud IRA members. I could go on.
Endorsing the organisation now is endorsing its history and aims, which haven't diverged despite the young faces and heavy layers of PR gloss.
> pride at having held off the British Army
And a lot of civilians who guarded prisons, happened to be going to work, were 'suspected' touts, were buying fish and chips, or were watching military parades to commemorate real sacrifice like that made in WWII.
Real reconciliation would be possible with moderate nationalists, not people who call Unionists "bastards" in private, or say "equality is a trojan horse for Nationalism".
You're talking as if this happened recently and not nearly 30 years ago
>Sinn Fein to this day praises and commemorates former IRA murderers.
So what? How often do unionists have a bad word to say about the British forces that have spent centuries terrorizing and murdering Irish people? How are nationalists supposed to reconcile with people who by and large vote for political parties that do not support the GFA (presumably they would prefer to go back to armed conflict? perhaps the protestant supremacist state formed in 1921?) or turn up en masse to prance about in July with the deeply unpleasant orange order?
All the evidence points to the aims having changed - the aim of violent overthrow of British rule seems to have been abandoned, as evidence by the last 25 years.
But look... If you think no reconciliation is possible then there's no real point in saying any of this to you
What would be good enough grounds, in your view?
> If you think no reconciliation is possible then there's no real point in saying any of this to you
If you think I mean reconciliation with nationalists is impossible, that is not the case at all. If you think reconciliation is possible with a party that has admitted in private that its public friendly persona is a trojan horse, I won't be taken for a fool.
That's getting a bit hypothetical. I'm just working with the evidence available to me right now. If strong enough evidence appears to the contrary then I will change my mind
And look... If you think that whatever off the cuff comments are actually the defining statement of the party's essence then ok, go with that.
Would you at least agree that choosing an alternative party without these connections and connotations would be a better gesture from the Nationalist community to Unionists?
> off the cuff comments
I would say that an address to a party audience by the party founder addressing party strategy gives the comments significant weight, yes. If Jeffery Donaldson made comments remotely like these they would make headlines for weeks.
> party's essence
Sinn Fein - Ourselves Alone.
> reliable intelligence that indicates that the IRA Army Council directs both PIRA and Sinn Fein strategy
Again, I _think_ I'm aware of most of the relevant evidence and to me it indicates that some former high ranking IRA members still are involved in the party leadership, but nowhere near the extent that they could be said to "control" the party
> Would you at least agree that choosing an alternative party without these connections and connotations would be a better gesture from the Nationalist community to Unionists?
Yeah I see your point. But, let's face it, neither community has been all that good with gestures. I could go on about speeches made by the founding member of the DUP, but, you know what, that shit is in the past, I'd rather just move on.
> Sinn Fein - Ourselves Alone.
Ouch... That's not the literal meaning... Not easy to explain. Irish is a tricky bitch of a language, best just leave it out.
That's not an issue unique to one side of the conflict though. The DUP are hardly moderates, and were always suspected to have links to the UVF.
One of the saddest parts about the post Good Friday/Belfast settlement was how it ended up with the more extreme parts of each community splitting power between them.
The unionist party run by the UVF is the PUP and it is barely a rounding error in the polls.
Sinn Fein has many members of senior IRA rank and calls itself "the political wing of the PIRA".
The two are not identical.
Name one. I don't disagree that this definitely used to be the case (Martin McGuiness as the classic example), but I can't imagine Mary Lou McDonald as a member of the PIRA.
Like, I'm kinda disgusted with myself to be defending Sinn Fein, but one could argue that the necessity of political/violence co-operation was larger for the nationalists, given where they started. It was certainly the perception that the organs of the state were not religion-blind. How many Catholics were in the RUC, for instance?
Michelle O'Neill had no personal involvement, but her father was in the Provisional IRA. It's not uncommon for republican families to split duties in that way.
But even if I couldn't name any, it is very clear that the two organisations are deeply and inextricably linked.
> How many Catholics were in the RUC, for instance?
I get what you're saying. We should note that some of the low numbers was down to anti-policing attitudes in their own community. Indeed there are still areas run by republican paramilitary factions today where you don't call the police, or you'll have two problems.
I would need to consider the pre-1973 history in better depth, but I would agree that I wish there was better accommodation with the nationalist community in the predominantly unionist state, if it would've helped avoid what happened. But consider that the unionist attitudes were driven by fear of the other side too, this would've affected their decisions. The Northern state was intended as a compromise for Unionists, who looked South and saw their population in the ROI drop from 15% to around 1%.
Even with that said, I can never sympathise with people who bombed, intimidated and targeted civilians in the way that the various IRAs did. There is no cause for pride or celebration here, even if one accepts it as necessary. I don't see mournful regret when I see Sinn Fein members reflect on the names of those tied to that aspect of the past.
The level of violence and its many knock on effects took a tremendous toll on the unionist population, and we cannot forget who was responsible.
Ah now, Gerry was never a member of the IRA ;)
> Michelle O'Neill had no personal involvement, but her father was in the Provisional IRA. It's not uncommon for republican families to split duties in that way.
Sins of the father, eh?
> I would need to consider the pre-1973 history in better depth, but I would agree that I wish there was better accommodation with the nationalist community in the predominantly unionist state, if it would've helped avoid what happened. But consider that the unionist attitudes were driven by fear of the other side too, this would've affected their decisions. The Northern state was intended as a compromise for Unionists, who looked South and saw their population in the ROI drop from 15% to around 1%.
I'm definitely not disputing that at all, the Free State was a deeply hostile place to Protestants post-independence, for a bunch of reasons, most of which are pretty bad. Like, almost every village/town in the Republic has decaying Protestant churches, which shows you how much changed when partition happened.
That being said, there were real civil rights issues for Catholics in the North and that's the context for how Provisional SF/IRA got started.
> en with that said, I can never sympathise with people who bombed, intimidated and targeted civilians in the way that the various IRAs did. There is no cause for pride or celebration here, even if one accepts it as necessary. I don't see mournful regret when I see Sinn Fein members reflect on the names of those tied to that aspect of the past.
Neither do I. Do I possibly understand what drove some of those people? Yes. Do I agree with their actions? Hell no, in fact a hundred times no. Not in my name (speaking as a citizen of the Republic). I've felt this way for a really long time, back in the 1990s when stuff was still happening.
That being said, it definitely wasn't one-sided, and remember that SF were not the only organisation killing people for no good reasons, and indeed any state sponsored violence would typically not even be counted in the "terrorism" figures.
>The level of violence and its many knock on effects took a tremendous toll on the unionist population, and we cannot forget who was responsible.
The violence fucked up everyone, that's what violence does. Like both sides suffered a whole bunch of trauma, and should Catholics never forget the UVF/UDA et al? Should they never forget the irredentist Paisley who shut down the original power-sharing plans which could have prevented thousands of deaths?
Like, ultimately it needs to end, and hanging onto grudges rarely works out well for anyone.
Ideally everyone does get brought to justice, of course, but pragmatics will usually overrule that.