Sinn Fein? They have gone away, you know.

[Fear Bun Na Sceilpe]

All of this is true about the north. Sinn Féin still shite though

[Look-Up!]

The escalation in violence in the 70's was not for a United Ireland. It was a breaking point in that Catholic frustration finally boiled over and knew they were never going to be treated equally by talking. There may have been some headbangers in the movement where a United Ireland was the only goal but equality was the driving force.

Saying GFA was a surrender is only half right, it was British surrender. Sunningdale in 73 would have achieved power sharing and the violence of the years that followed would never have been. What was the British response to this? Murder of 33 Irish civilians in Monaghan and Dublin in 74. Women and children deliberately targeted in a no warning attack, worst single atrocity in the whole of the Troubles. As clear a statement as ever that they would not tolerate negotiations with vermin.

Major dragged his heels on GFA, he was under political pressure at home and needed Unionist support (all through the years they always had too much influence in the House of Lords and by proxy, British Government policy). But Canary Warf and time finally caught up with them. The money men in London took the decision out of his hands, the financial cost of the IRA campaign was too much. World was changing, Europe was changing, the troubles possibly caused the ECB to not be in London or at least never to be on the negotiating table. The cost was greater than they will ever admit, same as their surrender will never be admitted. But it wasn't talking brought them to the table.

[sid waddell]

The end of the RUC didn't happen by murdering people, it happened by peaceful negotiation

Just like the RIC could have? Explain how the RUC could have been disbanded, and at what point? The Anglo-Irish Agreement didn't countenance the idea. Neither did Sunngingdale. So you'll need something more convincing than "oh it just would have magically happened if nationalists agitated for it enough or if enough peaceful nationalist protesters got shot dead in the street"

In the exact same way it eventually happened in 2000, by peaceful negotiation

You achieve this by mass political mobilisation and protest, mass sustained civil disobedience, international attention continually being drawn to the plight of Catholic civilians

And even if the RUC hadn't ended until 2000, well you would have been spared the intervening years of murder

Two situations:
i) a hypothetical - 30 years of peaceful Catholic protest and the end of the RUC in 2000
ii) the reality - 28 years of murder, societal devastation and the end of the RUC in 2000

i) is miles better than ii)

Isn't it?

You're talking about the difference between fiction and reality.

The real fiction is the fiction you believe - that a 28 year mass murder spree was necessary

[sid waddell]

By Sid's logic Mandela was a bloodthirsty psychopath because his terrorist grouping waged a 30 year violent campaign that cost hundreds of civilian lives.

But the ANC did not mount a sustained 28 year campaign of murder like the IRA, there were occasional isolated events

The ANC won by peaceful means, they had mass support, they continually mobilised mass peaceful resistance and continually drew international attention to their cause, and eventually apartheid collapsed because of its inherent absurdity

Also the apartheid system was a much more evil foe than that faced by Catholic civilians in Northern Ireland in 1968, awful as it was

Aye the Belfast pogroms weren't that bad rite enuf ...the street was a mass of brain matter and blood... bit of a mad one to wrap the head around

The apartheid system was a much more evil foe than the NI system

That isn't to say that the NI system wasn't terrible because it obviously was

But proper historical context is important and Irish nationalists tend not to understand that, or deliberately dismiss it - the title of "most oppressed people ever" is important to them

Maintaining that Irish Catholics were as oppressed as the blacks in South Africa or chattel slaves in America or indeed the Jews in Nazi Germany is unfortunately a commonly enough expressed point of view in these sorts of discussions and it displays a profoundly ignorant reading of history, again it's fake history

You're behaving like a holocaust denier now.

What holocaust took place in Northern Ireland?

Could you fill us in on this surprisingly little known "historical event"?

[Chief]

The escalation in violence in the 70's was not for a United Ireland. It was a breaking point in that Catholic frustration finally boiled over and knew they were never going to be treated equally by talking. There may have been some headbangers in the movement where a United Ireland was the only goal but equality was the driving force.

Saying GFA was a surrender is only half right, it was British surrender. Sunningdale in 73 would have achieved power sharing and the violence of the years that followed would never have been. What was the British response to this? Murder of 33 Irish civilians in Monaghan and Dublin in 74. Women and children deliberately targeted in a no warning attack, worst single atrocity in the whole of the Troubles. As clear a statement as ever that they would not tolerate negotiations with vermin.

Major dragged his heels on GFA, he was under political pressure at home and needed Unionist support (all through the years they always had too much influence in the House of Lords and by proxy, British Government policy). But Canary Warf and time finally caught up with them. The money men in London took the decision out of his hands, the financial cost of the IRA campaign was too much. World was changing, Europe was changing, the troubles possibly caused the ECB to not be in London or at least never to be on the negotiating table. The cost was greater than they will ever admit, same as their surrender will never be admitted. But it wasn't talking brought them to the table.

Can't agree with this.

This was an PIRA negotiated surrender. They gave up their guns, disbanded, accepted the unionist veto, accepted the removal of the 26 county State's claim to the 6 counties and recognised crown forces as the legitimate enforcers of the rule of law in the 6 counties. In return they got their prisoners out, were allowed to contest elections in for a place in a mandatory coalition administration with limited powers with a petition of concern stapled to it.

To claim it was about equality is nonsense. Inequality fuelled the sense of oppression surely but the end goal was a United Ireland.

SF performed mental gymnastics to spin the surrender as a victory and executed these gymnastics very well in order to make it palatable to nationalism and ex combatants. The fact the PIRA weren't militarily wiped out is painted as a victory but it clearly wasn't by any objective standard.

The fact SF basically stole the SDLP's policies and place was painted as an electoral revolution, when all it done was spurs a Newtonian reaction in Unionism in the form of the DUP.

To be fair though - the southern parties are unbelievably hypocritical in their approach to SF. Their war was equally as morally justified or unjustified (depending on your position). Sid's point about it becoming less justified after they couldn't win is redundant - neither the old IRA, nor PIRA nor the dissidents ever had any chance of winning in any conventional understanding of the word. .

It was the old IRA's own surrender under the threat of "immediate and terrible war" (an immediate surrender in the case of FG and a slower one in the form of FF) which gave them both their positions in politics in the 26 counties. It provided the moral platform for the PIRA to pursue their campaign (Christ they even considered arming them on occasion) and allowed SF to accept the same broad terms of surrender at the end of the century.

It is beyond irony for them to criticise SF for learning the same lessons they did.

It is also beyond irony for SF to call dissidents "traitors" for doing the same things they did with the exact same electoral legitimacy they had when they were doing it.

I've watched this thread for a while now and both sides haven't a moral leg to stand on.

[sid waddell]

The end of the RUC didn't happen by murdering people, it happened by peaceful negotiation

Just like the RIC could have? Explain how the RUC could have been disbanded, and at what point? The Anglo-Irish Agreement didn't countenance the idea. Neither did Sunngingdale. So you'll need something more convincing than "oh it just would have magically happened if nationalists agitated for it enough or if enough peaceful nationalist protesters got shot dead in the street"

In the exact same way it eventually happened in 2000, by peaceful negotiation

You achieve this by mass political mobilisation and protest, mass sustained civil disobedience, international attention continually being drawn to the plight of Catholic civilians

And even if the RUC hadn't ended until 2000, well you would have been spared the intervening years of murder

Two situations:
i) a hypothetical - 30 years of peaceful Catholic protest and the end of the RUC in 2000
ii) the reality - 28 years of murder, societal devastation and the end of the RUC in 2000

i) is miles better than ii)

Isn't it?

Unlike others on here, I actually agree with some of your stuff on this board, not this thread though. This bit here I'm afraid you have no idea of what life is like up here. If plenty of the unionists had their way catholics would be living in hovels still with little chance of getting out of it. They'd quite happily slaughter catholics if they were able to. The vitriol, if you have ever experienced it which you clearly haven't it, is akin to Trump on speed!

Shouting "you have no idea what life is like up here" is a non sequitur

A cousin of mine, a Catholic, a civilian with no connections whatsoever to the Brits or the British state, was kidnapped by the PIRA for the crime of working in a bank

Firstly, I do have an idea, a very good idea, I have been extremely interested in the Northern conflict and history for my whole life and visited it more times than I'd care to remember and you don't need to have lived anywhere to know basic, easily identifiable facts about life on the ground

Secondly, the majority of the Catholic population of the North agreed with me - during the Troubles, they voted for the SDLP, not Sinn Fein

Your post effectively says that John Hume, Seamus Mallon, the rest of the SDLP, and the majority of the Catholic population of the six counties did not know what they were talking about

I will say it again - you have no idea what life is like up here. You haven't lived here, vicariously via your cousin doesn't count.

I worked in a Catholic bar around the time of the Greysteel massacre and everyone was bricking themselves but refused to be housebound. Try living in Co Antrim (all of the O6) in those times, you'd have a totally different viewpoint on it. As I said Loyalists and many Unionists would slaughter Catholics if they could and they did at times with British state collusion. A man locking up a GAA ground at night in 1997 (not the 70s) and getting brutally killed like Sean Brown in Bellaghy, these things would exist to this day if they could get away with it.

Sorry but that's more bluster

What you are saying is that if I lived in the North between 1969 and 1997, I'd have supported the IRA's campaign of murder

But the majority of the Catholic population who lived in the North did not support it

The majority wanted it to stop and to live normal lives, not lives clouded with suspicion and fear

If the IRA had not abandoned their ceasefire, Sean Brown would probably not have been murdered, he might even still be alive - because the circle of tit for tat would have been broken or at least greatly lessened - the LVF would likely never have come into being

[sid waddell]

The escalation in violence in the 70's was not for a United Ireland. It was a breaking point in that Catholic frustration finally boiled over and knew they were never going to be treated equally by talking. There may have been some headbangers in the movement where a United Ireland was the only goal but equality was the driving force.

Saying GFA was a surrender is only half right, it was British surrender. Sunningdale in 73 would have achieved power sharing and the violence of the years that followed would never have been. What was the British response to this? Murder of 33 Irish civilians in Monaghan and Dublin in 74. Women and children deliberately targeted in a no warning attack, worst single atrocity in the whole of the Troubles. As clear a statement as ever that they would not tolerate negotiations with vermin.

Major dragged his heels on GFA, he was under political pressure at home and needed Unionist support (all through the years they always had too much influence in the House of Lords and by proxy, British Government policy). But Canary Warf and time finally caught up with them. The money men in London took the decision out of his hands, the financial cost of the IRA campaign was too much. World was changing, Europe was changing, the troubles possibly caused the ECB to not be in London or at least never to be on the negotiating table. The cost was greater than they will ever admit, same as their surrender will never be admitted. But it wasn't talking brought them to the table.

To say that the PIRA's goal was not a united Ireland is a rewriting of history

At every single juncture of history, the goal of anybody who called themselves the IRA was an all island Irish Republic - the clue is in the title - the Irish Republican Army - not the Irish Equality Army or the Irish Fair Housing Army

The British did not surrender anything with the Good Friday Agreement - they won, completely, there was no downside whatsoever for them

What did the Unionists lose? Sod all, a title of a police force, that's about it

What did the victims of the Troubles lose? Justice

[Chief]

The end of the RUC didn't happen by murdering people, it happened by peaceful negotiation

Just like the RIC could have? Explain how the RUC could have been disbanded, and at what point? The Anglo-Irish Agreement didn't countenance the idea. Neither did Sunngingdale. So you'll need something more convincing than "oh it just would have magically happened if nationalists agitated for it enough or if enough peaceful nationalist protesters got shot dead in the street"

In the exact same way it eventually happened in 2000, by peaceful negotiation

You achieve this by mass political mobilisation and protest, mass sustained civil disobedience, international attention continually being drawn to the plight of Catholic civilians

And even if the RUC hadn't ended until 2000, well you would have been spared the intervening years of murder

Two situations:
i) a hypothetical - 30 years of peaceful Catholic protest and the end of the RUC in 2000
ii) the reality - 28 years of murder, societal devastation and the end of the RUC in 2000

i) is miles better than ii)

Isn't it?

Unlike others on here, I actually agree with some of your stuff on this board, not this thread though. This bit here I'm afraid you have no idea of what life is like up here. If plenty of the unionists had their way catholics would be living in hovels still with little chance of getting out of it. They'd quite happily slaughter catholics if they were able to. The vitriol, if you have ever experienced it which you clearly haven't it, is akin to Trump on speed!

Shouting "you have no idea what life is like up here" is a non sequitur

A cousin of mine, a Catholic, a civilian with no connections whatsoever to the Brits or the British state, was kidnapped by the PIRA for the crime of working in a bank

Firstly, I do have an idea, a very good idea, I have been extremely interested in the Northern conflict and history for my whole life and visited it more times than I'd care to remember and you don't need to have lived anywhere to know basic, easily identifiable facts about life on the ground

Secondly, the majority of the Catholic population of the North agreed with me - during the Troubles, they voted for the SDLP, not Sinn Fein

Your post effectively says that John Hume, Seamus Mallon, the rest of the SDLP, and the majority of the Catholic population of the six counties did not know what they were talking about

I will say it again - you have no idea what life is like up here. You haven't lived here, vicariously via your cousin doesn't count.

I worked in a Catholic bar around the time of the Greysteel massacre and everyone was bricking themselves but refused to be housebound. Try living in Co Antrim (all of the O6) in those times, you'd have a totally different viewpoint on it. As I said Loyalists and many Unionists would slaughter Catholics if they could and they did at times with British state collusion. A man locking up a GAA ground at night in 1997 (not the 70s) and getting brutally killed like Sean Brown in Bellaghy, these things would exist to this day if they could get away with it.

Sorry but that's more bluster

What you are saying is that if I lived in the North between 1969 and 1997, I'd have supported the IRA's campaign of murder

But the majority of the Catholic population who lived in the North did not support it

The majority wanted it to stop and to live normal lives, not lives clouded with suspicion and fear

If the IRA had not abandoned their ceasefire, Sean Brown would probably not have been murdered, he might even still be alive - because the circle of tit for tat would have been broken or at least greatly lessened - the LVF would likely never have come into being

No - that last paragraph is out of order.

The people who killed Sean Brown take responsibility for it alone - they don't get to drag any other protagonists into it to share responsibility.

The same goes for any other killing of civilians by any other protagonist.

[sid waddell]

But murdering civilians was a central, integral component of the PIRA's campaign, that's just a fact

And therein lies the central lie upon which you base your entire hypocrisy. The overwhelmimg majority of PIRA operations were directed against British security force personnel/infrastructure and against commercial targets where no life was lost. The sort of small scale daily attacks that didn't make headlines in the Free State. It's already been pointed out here that the Old IRA actually killed a higher proportion of civilians. Just consider the absolute savagery with which the Old IRA pursued a campaign of disappearing victims (most of whom were innocent). Somewhere between 100 and 200 people. Numbers that absolutely dwarf the number disappeared by the Provos in a fraction of the time. So like I say, hypocritical bull. The savagery of the Old IRA campaign is excusable to you. It doesn't matter to you how many civilians they killed or disappeared. When presented with the reality of what they did, the best you can do is come out with "yeah but it was a shorter war". Gold medal standard mental gymnastics.

The other key lie in your waffle is that the PIRA campaign stopped being justified "some time in the seventies". But of course, it's very easy for a sanctimonious Free State p***k to believe such when he/she wasn't getting harrased and abused on the roadsides on literally a daily basis by the British State, well into the 90s. You never experienced the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you saw the red torch of UDR patrol wagging your car to stop on a quiet road at night and not knowing if you would still be alive on the other side of it. To Free Staters, that is probably (to borrow a phrase) "just another northerner sob story" but to people like me it was the psycologically traumatic reality of going about daily life in this part of the world, well into the 1990's. No doubt your reality of living through the conflict was hearing what your Section 31 state censored media decided it was OK to tell you about; and now, years later, you are just unable to countenance the possibility that your notion of truth in relation to the conflict could be compromised having been informed about it by said censored media. Your argument also patently ignores the reality that were it not for the IRA campaign, the level of peace and equality we have today simply wouldn't exist and was not available to achieve "sometime in the seventies". It's often been said that the Brits had to be bombed to the negotiating table but that's not just something people say glibly. The fact is that the bombing of Canary Wharf literally only happened because the John Major government was refusing to take attempts at talks in any way seriously.John Major wasn't PM in the seventies.

This is true.

Derry won the All Ireland in 1993.  As thousands of supporters made their way home late on the Sunday night from Dublin, they happened upon a traffic jam in the middle of Cookstown.

A British Army checkpoint had backed the cars up the whole way along the (very long) main street.  This was targeted harassment on it's own but the kicker is that this traffic jam conveniently allowed mobs of drunken Loyalists to stone the supporter's cars, loaded with families - jubilant men, women and children.

The Army continued to stop the cars and left the people in the firing line.  They pretended not to notice the Loyalists.

Things like this cause things like Canary Wharf.

Reminder to Sid - this was 1993.

Edit:  You would not have heard mention of this on RTE that night.  Hypothetically, had Kerry supporters been stoned by angry Dublin fans at Newlands Cross, it would have been plastered all over your news.

I got stopped by the Brits coming out of Clones when Dublin played Derry in 2003, just over the border on the Cavan road, about a mile from the Diamond

Big guns hanging around their necks

By this rationale I could then justify a future 28 year bombing, shooting and maiming campaign from 2003 on

We can all play that game

Given the quoted passage here relates to something that happened in September 1993, it would appear to imply regret that the first ceasefire happened less than a year later

Because if its a justification for why the 28 year PIRA campaign happened, it's also a justification for continuing it

I presented the story as it showed (in one small way) why the IRA were still active into the nineties, when you reckoned there was no justification for their existence after "some point in the seventies".

I was in one of those cars with my aunt that night.  A more pacifist woman you could not meet.  She idolised John Hume.  Her response sticks in my mind because it was so unbelievably out of character for her - "Is it any wonder they shoot those bastards".

It's the same reason that BLM and Antifa movements in America exist.  It wasn't that these people just developed a sudden bloodlust (or a penchant for riotous behaviour in the case of BLM/Antifa).  It was a direct response to the circumstances of the time.  IMO this response was absolutely inevitable.

The rest of what you've said is so far into the realms of straw man stuff that it doesn't warrant replying to.  When this is the line you are forced to go down it only demonstrates the weakness of your argument.

The response from 1969 on was inevitable

Of course it was inevitable

But that doesn't mean a campaign of murder which stretched all the way up to 1997 was right, does it?

You talk about straw men, yet you create straw men yourself

Unlike others on this board, my position is nuanced

I understand the reasons why the PIRA happened and why there was violence

I believe you can make a very plausible moral case for a proportionate armed resistance from 1969 to some point in the early 1970s, as a strategy it was deeply flawed but in moral terms the case was probably there, the moral case was to defend your community

There is currently a similar moral case for a proportionate armed resistance by black communities in America

But what you cannot do is make a plausible moral case for a sustained campaign of murder which continued all the way up to 1997

Nobody has ever done it, and nobody ever will

And if one attempts to, well, then they're making the moral case for the murder of Ronan Kerr, Lyra McKee and the attempted murder of Peadar Heffron - because these were the same exact same sort of things which were justified up to 1997

This campaign of violence devastated Northern Ireland, and ruined many lives outside Northern Ireland

And at the end of it, it produced nothing

Any advances came from peaceful means and NI could have been a hell of lot further down the road of a peaceful society than it is now without that campaign of murder

The story you tell of intimidation by the Brits in 1993, and of which there are probably millions of such small stories over the years, is presented as a rationalisation for continuing the PIRA's campaign up to 1994 and then 1997

Yet the first ceasefire happened less than a year later, in 1994

But if these sorts of stories are to be offered as a rationalisation for the campaign of murder up to 1994 and then 1997, you could offer up the same justifications for continuing the campaign of violence beyond 1997, you could attempt to rationalise why it should continue up to the present day, 2020

And these rationalisations or justifications would be wrong

It would have been better had it stopped in 1974 rather than 1994, or 1997

It would have been better had it stopped in 1972, or indeed 1969

As it was, we just got an extra quarter century of a mass murder spree - for nothing

You say that armed resistance is CURRENTLY justified in America.

In February 1989, the British government murdered a solicitor in the North.

But at this point you say that armed resistance from the nationalist community was NOT justified, and had not been so for over a decade - as things had somehow improved, I assume?

There are some serious mental hoops to jump through to paint this as a consistent position.

In March 1999, a solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, was murdered, quite possibly by people who had worked for the British government, certainly by Loyalist terrorists

By your rationale, this was the basis for a continuation of the IRA's mass murder spree

A proportionate armed resistance by the black community is probably morally justified currently in the US

This certainly doesn't have to take the form of a mass murder spree, it doesn't even have to take the form of a single shot, but if the black community mobilised and armed itself in the same way that the pro-Trump lunatics have done - and as the Black Panthers did back in the 60s, ie. that would be perfectly legitimate indeed

If they formed their own armed patrols to police and protect black communities and boycotted the police, that would be legitimate

What I don't propose is booby trap bombs under the cars of random police officers or the shooting dead of people who work as cleaners at police stations

[Angelo]

The end of the RUC didn't happen by murdering people, it happened by peaceful negotiation

Just like the RIC could have? Explain how the RUC could have been disbanded, and at what point? The Anglo-Irish Agreement didn't countenance the idea. Neither did Sunngingdale. So you'll need something more convincing than "oh it just would have magically happened if nationalists agitated for it enough or if enough peaceful nationalist protesters got shot dead in the street"

In the exact same way it eventually happened in 2000, by peaceful negotiation

You achieve this by mass political mobilisation and protest, mass sustained civil disobedience, international attention continually being drawn to the plight of Catholic civilians

And even if the RUC hadn't ended until 2000, well you would have been spared the intervening years of murder

Two situations:
i) a hypothetical - 30 years of peaceful Catholic protest and the end of the RUC in 2000
ii) the reality - 28 years of murder, societal devastation and the end of the RUC in 2000

i) is miles better than ii)

Isn't it?

You're talking about the difference between fiction and reality.

The real fiction is the fiction you believe - that a 28 year mass murder spree was necessary

Ah yes, the expert of everything from behind a computer screen. You are utterly ignorant of brutal sectarian regime Catholics were subjected to throughout the entirety of the troubles.

The troubles was a creation of loyalism, a facilitating British state and a apathetic Free State who turned their back on northern nationalists. It's sickening to hear the sanctimonious and ignorant opinions from people like you know nothing about it.

You're the free state equivalent of a holocaust denier.

[Angelo]

Sid is the only person on here trying to justify the killings of civilians.

[sid waddell]

The end of the RUC didn't happen by murdering people, it happened by peaceful negotiation

Just like the RIC could have? Explain how the RUC could have been disbanded, and at what point? The Anglo-Irish Agreement didn't countenance the idea. Neither did Sunngingdale. So you'll need something more convincing than "oh it just would have magically happened if nationalists agitated for it enough or if enough peaceful nationalist protesters got shot dead in the street"

In the exact same way it eventually happened in 2000, by peaceful negotiation

You achieve this by mass political mobilisation and protest, mass sustained civil disobedience, international attention continually being drawn to the plight of Catholic civilians

And even if the RUC hadn't ended until 2000, well you would have been spared the intervening years of murder

Two situations:
i) a hypothetical - 30 years of peaceful Catholic protest and the end of the RUC in 2000
ii) the reality - 28 years of murder, societal devastation and the end of the RUC in 2000

i) is miles better than ii)

Isn't it?

Unlike others on here, I actually agree with some of your stuff on this board, not this thread though. This bit here I'm afraid you have no idea of what life is like up here. If plenty of the unionists had their way catholics would be living in hovels still with little chance of getting out of it. They'd quite happily slaughter catholics if they were able to. The vitriol, if you have ever experienced it which you clearly haven't it, is akin to Trump on speed!

Shouting "you have no idea what life is like up here" is a non sequitur

A cousin of mine, a Catholic, a civilian with no connections whatsoever to the Brits or the British state, was kidnapped by the PIRA for the crime of working in a bank

Firstly, I do have an idea, a very good idea, I have been extremely interested in the Northern conflict and history for my whole life and visited it more times than I'd care to remember and you don't need to have lived anywhere to know basic, easily identifiable facts about life on the ground

Secondly, the majority of the Catholic population of the North agreed with me - during the Troubles, they voted for the SDLP, not Sinn Fein

Your post effectively says that John Hume, Seamus Mallon, the rest of the SDLP, and the majority of the Catholic population of the six counties did not know what they were talking about

I will say it again - you have no idea what life is like up here. You haven't lived here, vicariously via your cousin doesn't count.

I worked in a Catholic bar around the time of the Greysteel massacre and everyone was bricking themselves but refused to be housebound. Try living in Co Antrim (all of the O6) in those times, you'd have a totally different viewpoint on it. As I said Loyalists and many Unionists would slaughter Catholics if they could and they did at times with British state collusion. A man locking up a GAA ground at night in 1997 (not the 70s) and getting brutally killed like Sean Brown in Bellaghy, these things would exist to this day if they could get away with it.

Sorry but that's more bluster

What you are saying is that if I lived in the North between 1969 and 1997, I'd have supported the IRA's campaign of murder

But the majority of the Catholic population who lived in the North did not support it

The majority wanted it to stop and to live normal lives, not lives clouded with suspicion and fear

If the IRA had not abandoned their ceasefire, Sean Brown would probably not have been murdered, he might even still be alive - because the circle of tit for tat would have been broken or at least greatly lessened - the LVF would likely never have come into being

No - that last paragraph is out of order.

The people who killed Sean Brown take responsibility for it alone - they don't get to drag any other protagonists into it to share responsibility.

The same goes for any other killing of civilians by any other protagonist.

The Loyalist terrorists who killed Sean Brown - not the IRA - were the people who killed Sean Brown

That is true

But the people who killed civilians at Claudy and on Bloody Friday killed those civilians - and that was the IRA and nobody else - it wasn't the Brits, it wasn't the RUC or the B-Specials or Paisley

But if NI had not been a cold house for Catholics, Claudy and Bloody Friday would almost certainly not have happened

One reaction begets another, begets another, begets another, begets another

And so on

Violence is a circle, and if the circle is not ended, it continues

So the best thing to do is to break the circle

And it was people like Sean Brown, innocent civilians, who suffered needlessly from the non-breaking of that circle

[grounded]

The escalation in violence in the 70's was not for a United Ireland. It was a breaking point in that Catholic frustration finally boiled over and knew they were never going to be treated equally by talking. There may have been some headbangers in the movement where a United Ireland was the only goal but equality was the driving force.

Saying GFA was a surrender is only half right, it was British surrender. Sunningdale in 73 would have achieved power sharing and the violence of the years that followed would never have been. What was the British response to this? Murder of 33 Irish civilians in Monaghan and Dublin in 74. Women and children deliberately targeted in a no warning attack, worst single atrocity in the whole of the Troubles. As clear a statement as ever that they would not tolerate negotiations with vermin.

Major dragged his heels on GFA, he was under political pressure at home and needed Unionist support (all through the years they always had too much influence in the House of Lords and by proxy, British Government policy). But Canary Warf and time finally caught up with them. The money men in London took the decision out of his hands, the financial cost of the IRA campaign was too much. World was changing, Europe was changing, the troubles possibly caused the ECB to not be in London or at least never to be on the negotiating table. The cost was greater than they will ever admit, same as their surrender will never be admitted. But it wasn't talking brought them to the table.

To say that the PIRA's goal was not a united Ireland is a rewriting of history

At every single juncture of history, the goal of anybody who called themselves the IRA was an all island Irish Republic - the clue is in the title - the Irish Republican Army - not the Irish Equality Army or the Irish Fair Housing Army

The British did not surrender anything with the Good Friday Agreement - they won, completely, there was no downside whatsoever for them

What did the Unionists lose? Sod all, a title of a police force, that's about it

What did the victims of the Troubles lose? Justice

if the british government (won entirely) and the unionists lost( sod all) as part of the GFA why did the majority of the unionist population vote against it?   Baffling

For a minute i thought it was Ruth Dudley Edwards posting

[sid waddell]

You're out of your depth in this discussion, Angelo

[Franko]

But murdering civilians was a central, integral component of the PIRA's campaign, that's just a fact

And therein lies the central lie upon which you base your entire hypocrisy. The overwhelmimg majority of PIRA operations were directed against British security force personnel/infrastructure and against commercial targets where no life was lost. The sort of small scale daily attacks that didn't make headlines in the Free State. It's already been pointed out here that the Old IRA actually killed a higher proportion of civilians. Just consider the absolute savagery with which the Old IRA pursued a campaign of disappearing victims (most of whom were innocent). Somewhere between 100 and 200 people. Numbers that absolutely dwarf the number disappeared by the Provos in a fraction of the time. So like I say, hypocritical bull. The savagery of the Old IRA campaign is excusable to you. It doesn't matter to you how many civilians they killed or disappeared. When presented with the reality of what they did, the best you can do is come out with "yeah but it was a shorter war". Gold medal standard mental gymnastics.

The other key lie in your waffle is that the PIRA campaign stopped being justified "some time in the seventies". But of course, it's very easy for a sanctimonious Free State p***k to believe such when he/she wasn't getting harrased and abused on the roadsides on literally a daily basis by the British State, well into the 90s. You never experienced the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you saw the red torch of UDR patrol wagging your car to stop on a quiet road at night and not knowing if you would still be alive on the other side of it. To Free Staters, that is probably (to borrow a phrase) "just another northerner sob story" but to people like me it was the psycologically traumatic reality of going about daily life in this part of the world, well into the 1990's. No doubt your reality of living through the conflict was hearing what your Section 31 state censored media decided it was OK to tell you about; and now, years later, you are just unable to countenance the possibility that your notion of truth in relation to the conflict could be compromised having been informed about it by said censored media. Your argument also patently ignores the reality that were it not for the IRA campaign, the level of peace and equality we have today simply wouldn't exist and was not available to achieve "sometime in the seventies". It's often been said that the Brits had to be bombed to the negotiating table but that's not just something people say glibly. The fact is that the bombing of Canary Wharf literally only happened because the John Major government was refusing to take attempts at talks in any way seriously.John Major wasn't PM in the seventies.

This is true.

Derry won the All Ireland in 1993.  As thousands of supporters made their way home late on the Sunday night from Dublin, they happened upon a traffic jam in the middle of Cookstown.

A British Army checkpoint had backed the cars up the whole way along the (very long) main street.  This was targeted harassment on it's own but the kicker is that this traffic jam conveniently allowed mobs of drunken Loyalists to stone the supporter's cars, loaded with families - jubilant men, women and children.

The Army continued to stop the cars and left the people in the firing line.  They pretended not to notice the Loyalists.

Things like this cause things like Canary Wharf.

Reminder to Sid - this was 1993.

Edit:  You would not have heard mention of this on RTE that night.  Hypothetically, had Kerry supporters been stoned by angry Dublin fans at Newlands Cross, it would have been plastered all over your news.

I got stopped by the Brits coming out of Clones when Dublin played Derry in 2003, just over the border on the Cavan road, about a mile from the Diamond

Big guns hanging around their necks

By this rationale I could then justify a future 28 year bombing, shooting and maiming campaign from 2003 on

We can all play that game

Given the quoted passage here relates to something that happened in September 1993, it would appear to imply regret that the first ceasefire happened less than a year later

Because if its a justification for why the 28 year PIRA campaign happened, it's also a justification for continuing it

I presented the story as it showed (in one small way) why the IRA were still active into the nineties, when you reckoned there was no justification for their existence after "some point in the seventies".

I was in one of those cars with my aunt that night.  A more pacifist woman you could not meet.  She idolised John Hume.  Her response sticks in my mind because it was so unbelievably out of character for her - "Is it any wonder they shoot those bastards".

It's the same reason that BLM and Antifa movements in America exist.  It wasn't that these people just developed a sudden bloodlust (or a penchant for riotous behaviour in the case of BLM/Antifa).  It was a direct response to the circumstances of the time.  IMO this response was absolutely inevitable.

The rest of what you've said is so far into the realms of straw man stuff that it doesn't warrant replying to.  When this is the line you are forced to go down it only demonstrates the weakness of your argument.

The response from 1969 on was inevitable

Of course it was inevitable

But that doesn't mean a campaign of murder which stretched all the way up to 1997 was right, does it?

You talk about straw men, yet you create straw men yourself

Unlike others on this board, my position is nuanced

I understand the reasons why the PIRA happened and why there was violence

I believe you can make a very plausible moral case for a proportionate armed resistance from 1969 to some point in the early 1970s, as a strategy it was deeply flawed but in moral terms the case was probably there, the moral case was to defend your community

There is currently a similar moral case for a proportionate armed resistance by black communities in America

But what you cannot do is make a plausible moral case for a sustained campaign of murder which continued all the way up to 1997

Nobody has ever done it, and nobody ever will

And if one attempts to, well, then they're making the moral case for the murder of Ronan Kerr, Lyra McKee and the attempted murder of Peadar Heffron - because these were the same exact same sort of things which were justified up to 1997

This campaign of violence devastated Northern Ireland, and ruined many lives outside Northern Ireland

And at the end of it, it produced nothing

Any advances came from peaceful means and NI could have been a hell of lot further down the road of a peaceful society than it is now without that campaign of murder

The story you tell of intimidation by the Brits in 1993, and of which there are probably millions of such small stories over the years, is presented as a rationalisation for continuing the PIRA's campaign up to 1994 and then 1997

Yet the first ceasefire happened less than a year later, in 1994

But if these sorts of stories are to be offered as a rationalisation for the campaign of murder up to 1994 and then 1997, you could offer up the same justifications for continuing the campaign of violence beyond 1997, you could attempt to rationalise why it should continue up to the present day, 2020

And these rationalisations or justifications would be wrong

It would have been better had it stopped in 1974 rather than 1994, or 1997

It would have been better had it stopped in 1972, or indeed 1969

As it was, we just got an extra quarter century of a mass murder spree - for nothing

You say that armed resistance is CURRENTLY justified in America.

In February 1989, the British government murdered a solicitor in the North.

But at this point you say that armed resistance from the nationalist community was NOT justified, and had not been so for over a decade - as things had somehow improved, I assume?

There are some serious mental hoops to jump through to paint this as a consistent position.

In March 1999, a solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, was murdered, quite possibly by people who had worked for the British government, certainly by Loyalist terrorists

By your rationale, this was the basis for a continuation of the IRA's mass murder spree

A proportionate armed resistance by the black community is probably morally justified currently in the US

This certainly doesn't have to take the form of a mass murder spree, it doesn't even have to take the form of a single shot, but if the black community mobilised and armed itself in the same way that the pro-Trump lunatics have done - and as the Black Panthers did back in the 60s, ie. that would be perfectly legitimate indeed

If they formed their own armed patrols to police and protect black communities and boycotted the police, that would be legitimate

What I don't propose is booby trap bombs under the cars of random police officers or the shooting dead of people who work as cleaners at police stations

This is a little ludicrous.  Please answer the questions below.

What is their democratic mandate for taking up arms?
What is the purpose of the arms?
How exactly would they "protect" black communities?
What if they were attacked by the forces of the state who were upholding the law?
If they boycott the police, how is justice administered in these communities - who decides?
Is there a reasonable prospect of victory for these folks in military combat with US armed forces?
What happens if some of these elements go rogue with their arms?
If the police were then to start interning black people randomly what is the next step?
If the US Government then brought the army onto the street to defend the 'law abiding white folk' what would happen?
What if that US army then shot 14 unarmed black people dead in an afternoon - but told the world it was justified because they were armed?
What if the US government censored the spokespersons of these armed black people so that their grievances could not be aired beyond their own networks?