Sinn Fein? They have gone away, you know.

[Franko]

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

Not really baffling at all

Paranoia and propaganda and unfounded belief in superiority is the answer, hundreds of years of belief that they were the chosen people, superior to the sub-human Catholics

When an ethnic or religious group traditionally has hegemony, any extension of rights or equality to those who have traditionally been oppressed seems like a defeat - because the group identity is based on superiority to the "other" - not equality

That's why they build ever bigger bonfires festooned with"KAT" and burning tricolours, the NI team continues to play God Save The Queen, why they continue to demand the Union Jack be flown from public buildings as a matter of priority and why they demanded Garvaghy Road to march on

The mindset of a lot of Unionists was or is very like the mindset of white racists in America

So by this logic, they lost superiority?

I say this, not as a smart arsed internet comment but 100% genuinely - your incoherence can only be explained by mental illness or drug use.

Thanks as always for the personal abuse

I don't know what is difficult for you to understand about my point

You say the unionist community lost nothing in the GFA.  Then a couple of posts later you say they no longer enjoy superiority over their neighbours?

It can't be both?

You say the IRA were not justified in taking up arms after the mid seventies... then a couple of posts later say black folks in America ARE currently justified in doing so?  In between times you agree that the British government were actively murdering catholic civilians, long after the mid seventies?

So I stand by my comment.

It's not meant as abuse, but in light of the evidence of what you've posted here in the past few hours, it's a legitimate observation.

There are no contradictions at all

Extension of rights to a traditionally marginalised community is not a loss for traditionally hegemonic community, it's simple human rights, which is the way it should be

My human rights do not depend on you being denied them

Men did not lose when women got the vote, straight people did not lose when gay people gained the right to get married, whites in America lost no rights when the Civil Rights struggle in America achieved its greatest triumphs

This is not a zero sum game

In fact the whole of society gains

An extension of human rights is a challenge to the idea of superiority in a particular ethnic group - it's a challenge to an ingrained mental pathology

But in reality the traditional hegemonic group has lost nothing at all, they just think they have - because their pathology has taught them so

Many Protestant Unionists genuinely did believe they were inherently superior to Catholics, but of course they weren't

Unionist hegemony had been decreasing by the year for many years in any case p even before the Troubles - and would have continued to do so whatever happened, the NI Civil Rights movement showed that Catholics were no longer prepared to put up with being second class citizens

Group hegemony is not a human right

I've already outlined what I think is morally justified for the black communities in America and they can do it within the law - US law allows for arming yourself publicly - but you do so without killing people

The most likely outcome to armed black mobilisation - which doesn't have to be violent in any way - is a change in the gun laws - which would actually be good for everybody - it would exploit the racist nature of white US society to make it rethink its own pathology as regards guns

In the mid 1970s in NI there was a vicious circle of murder - you clearly believe there was no alternative to continuing that

Why do you believe that?

It was not a case of there being no alternative to the worst option of all, a perpetuation of that cycle of murder

There certainly were alternatives

They absolutely did lose.

Things like employment/public housing are and were finite resources - and the unionist community no longer had the 'right' to the lions share.  They no longer have the luxury of being able to forget about 40-50% of the population when competing for decent employment.  The six counties are less prosperous now than they were pre-partition, yet the 'Catholic' section of population has never been more prosperous.  Where do you think that wealth has come from?

Also, if you think that BLM/Antifa are going to publicly arm themselves and it is not going to lead to violence, you are providing further evidence to back up my earlier assertion.  Could I ask you again to answer the questions I asked you earlier?

Catholics/Nationalists embraced education from a long way back - they saw it as a route out of oppression - much of Unionism as a culture rejected education in favour of a self indulgent retreat into navel gazing

Anything the Unionists had "lost", they had lost long before the GFA - but it wasn't the IRA who took it from them, it was ordinary Catholics fed up with playing second fiddle, it was people like John Hume and Seamus Mallon who gave the Catholic population a self respect

Fair rights, fair housing, fair voting, fair education, fair employment is not a loss for the traditionally hegemonic group - it's simple extension of human rights

The problem is in the conceptualisation of such as a "loss", and that comes down to mental pathology

Unfortunately there is a section of Catholic Nationalism, both north and south, which would see any recognition of Unionist rights in a future united Ireland, or any giving up of official nationalist paraphernalia such as the Irish tricolour or Anhran na bhFiann, as a loss - and that's a mental pathology too

You didn't answer my question about whether you believe there were alternatives to mass murder in the 1970s

You can arm yourself without being a death squad, you know, and you can certainly do so if it's within the law, as it is in the US

I'll politely remind you that I asked first.

Please take the floor.

You answers to these questions will hopefully help untangle the mass of logical contradictions your recent posts have involved.

You should treat the opportunity to answer these as a win.

Also, please elaborate on the rather random statement in bold.  Please show me another example where a traditionally dominant group has been forced to relinquish that status and where they have treated it as a positive outcome.  Otherwise, it will just be disregarded as further incoherent rambling.

[sid waddell]

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

I was going to reply to a different aspect of your post but to be honest, you've just exposed yourself as a twisted little lowlife in your comments abour Sean Brown. We're now in Regina Doherty territory whereby loyalists are now absolved of responsibility for their killings and instead, in typical mental gymnastics fashion, those killings too are to now be regarded as the responsibility of the IRA.

Really? What's lowlife about them?

I specifically did not do the thing you're accusing me of, but you didn't have the decency to quote that - it might disturb your lies - as always, the Sinn Fein way - flat out lie when outpointed

Nothing I said about the murder of Sean Brown was wrong - the murder happened as part of a vicious, senseless tit for tat cycle of violence - which the IRA, after the ceasefires of 1994, took it upon themselves to restart

No resumption of that cycle of violence by the IRA, very likely no murder of Sean Brown by the sc**bag Loyalists that did it

But of course the IRA couldn't leave well alone, they had to go back and start all over again

Oh and by the way, you totally fail to get the irony that your narrative all along, and the narrative of the Shinners across this forum, has been that Unionist intransigence justified a campaign of which civilian murder was an integral part - for you the blame for the murder of the civilians at Claudy, Bloody Friday, Kingsmills, La Mon, Enniskillen and Warrington was on Unionist and British intransigence, not on the people who carried them out

On this very thread, we've had posts justifying all that on the basis of Bloody Sunday

And the narrative about Kingsmills in Republican circles has always been that if the Reaveys and O'Dowds had not been murdered, Kingsmills would not have happened

The narrative is that the Glennane Gang were to blame for Kingsmills - not the IRA

As a narrative of buck passing, defending the indefensible, and outright hypocrisy, that's gold medal stuff

The IRA, sectarian murderers of workmen and eternally innocent in the eyes of its cheerleaders, just as the Loyalist scum who murdered the Reaveys and the O'Dowds are eternally innocent in the eyes of theirs

Two sides of the same coin

[restorepride]

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

You are way out of line on this one and clearly out of your depth.  I mean WAY WAY out of line.

The above comment re Sean Brown is totally naive, inaccurate, and insulting to the Brown family and the GAA.

Disgraceful.

[Franko]

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

I was going to reply to a different aspect of your post but to be honest, you've just exposed yourself as a twisted little lowlife in your comments abour Sean Brown. We're now in Regina Doherty territory whereby loyalists are now absolved of responsibility for their killings and instead, in typical mental gymnastics fashion, those killings too are to now be regarded as the responsibility of the IRA.

Really? What's lowlife about them?

I specifically did not do the thing you're accusing me of, but you didn't have the decency to quote that - it might disturb your lies - as always, the Sinn Fein way - flat out lie when outpointed

Nothing I said about the murder of Sean Brown was wrong - the murder happened as part of a vicious, senseless tit for tat cycle of violence - which the IRA, after the ceasefires of 1994, took it upon themselves to restart

No resumption of that cycle of violence by the IRA, very likely no murder of Sean Brown by the sc**bag Loyalists that did it

But of course the IRA couldn't leave well alone, they had to go back and start all over again

Oh and by the way, you totally fail to get the irony that your narrative all along, and the narrative of the Shinners across this forum, has been that Unionist intransigence justified a campaign of which civilian murder was an integral part - for you the blame for the murder of the civilians at Claudy, Bloody Friday, Kingsmills, La Mon, Enniskillen and Warrington was on Unionist and British intransigence, not on the people who carried them out

On this very thread, we've had posts justifying all that on the basis of Bloody Sunday

And the narrative about Kingsmills in Republican circles has always been that if the Reaveys and O'Dowds had not been murdered, Kingsmills would not have happened

The narrative is that the Glennane Gang were to blame for Kingsmills - not the IRA

As a narrative of buck passing, defending the indefensible, and outright hypocrisy, that's gold medal stuff

The IRA, sectarian murderers of workmen and eternally innocent in the eyes of its cheerleaders, just as the Loyalist scum who murdered the Reaveys and the O'Dowds are eternally innocent in the eyes of theirs

Two sides of the same coin

Do those, like yourself, who celebrate/justify the sectarian murders carried out by the Old IRA have a position on this coin at all?

[restorepride]

https://www.patfinucanecentre.org/cases/sean-brown

[sid waddell]

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

I was going to reply to a different aspect of your post but to be honest, you've just exposed yourself as a twisted little lowlife in your comments abour Sean Brown. We're now in Regina Doherty territory whereby loyalists are now absolved of responsibility for their killings and instead, in typical mental gymnastics fashion, those killings too are to now be regarded as the responsibility of the IRA.

Really? What's lowlife about them?

I specifically did not do the thing you're accusing me of, but you didn't have the decency to quote that - it might disturb your lies - as always, the Sinn Fein way - flat out lie when outpointed

Nothing I said about the murder of Sean Brown was wrong - the murder happened as part of a vicious, senseless tit for tat cycle of violence - which the IRA, after the ceasefires of 1994, took it upon themselves to restart

No resumption of that cycle of violence by the IRA, very likely no murder of Sean Brown by the sc**bag Loyalists that did it

But of course the IRA couldn't leave well alone, they had to go back and start all over again

Oh and by the way, you totally fail to get the irony that your narrative all along, and the narrative of the Shinners across this forum, has been that Unionist intransigence justified a campaign of which civilian murder was an integral part - for you the blame for the murder of the civilians at Claudy, Bloody Friday, Kingsmills, La Mon, Enniskillen and Warrington was on Unionist and British intransigence, not on the people who carried them out

On this very thread, we've had posts justifying all that on the basis of Bloody Sunday

And the narrative about Kingsmills in Republican circles has always been that if the Reaveys and O'Dowds had not been murdered, Kingsmills would not have happened

The narrative is that the Glennane Gang were to blame for Kingsmills - not the IRA

As a narrative of buck passing, defending the indefensible, and outright hypocrisy, that's gold medal stuff

The IRA, sectarian murderers of workmen and eternally innocent in the eyes of its cheerleaders, just as the Loyalist scum who murdered the Reaveys and the O'Dowds are eternally innocent in the eyes of theirs

Two sides of the same coin

Do those, like yourself, who celebrate/justify the sectarian murders carried out by the Old IRA have a position on this coin at all?

I don't celebrate any murders carried out by the old IRA, never mind sectarian ones

Murder is not a thing to be celebrated

It must be great to live in a straw man version of reality

When you feel outpointed, just lie about the person you're debating with

Over and over and over we see it from SF supporters

I have sod all time for Fine Gael but their supporters can at least mostly debate honestly

SF supporters just throw the toys out of the pram and lie flat out, no compunction about doing so, it's pure Trump

And that's the way they've been conditioned by the party, which operates along the lines of a cult

[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

Not really baffling at all

Paranoia and propaganda and unfounded belief in superiority is the answer, hundreds of years of belief that they were the chosen people, superior to the sub-human Catholics

When an ethnic or religious group traditionally has hegemony, any extension of rights or equality to those who have traditionally been oppressed seems like a defeat - because the group identity is based on superiority to the "other" - not equality

It's a collective pathology

That's why they build ever bigger bonfires festooned with"KAT" and burning tricolours, the NI team continues to play God Save The Queen, why they continue to demand the Union Jack be flown from public buildings as a matter of priority and why they demanded Garvaghy Road to march on

The mindset of a lot of Unionists was or is very like the mindset of white racists in America

I see you edited your post to include a Ruth Dudley Edwards reference - thanks for the personal abuse - it's always welcome

Ruth Dudley Edwards is an example of that pathology of mind

But so is calling anybody who says the IRA's mass murder spree was wrong "Ruth Dudley Edwards" also a pathology of the mind

Right, apologies for the RDE ammendment. That was uncalled for. She definitely wouldn't have written the above which would likely see you expelled from the 1922 committee!
       That being said,  i think your stated views on the gfa(that was all i commented on) are simplistic and deliberately provocative to get a rise out of another poster. 
         The GFA was a peace agreement with all sides negotiating and compromising(except DUP). Sure there were fudges and inconsistencies but it was enough that all sides could say they came away with something.
     The fact that the majority of the unionist population voted against it, would lead me to believe anectodotally, that they believed the DUP hype that nationalists got a slightly better deal rather than the whole lot of them being  sectarian bigots(undoubtedly there is a  proportion that are, as you said).
       
           

[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

You are way out of line on this one and clearly out of your depth.  I mean WAY WAY out of line.

The above comment re Sean Brown is totally naive, inaccurate, and insulting to the Brown family and the GAA.

Disgraceful.

It's not in any way inaccurate, it's exactly right

You made zero effort to say why you think my post is disgraceful, zero effort to engage

And therefore your post has zero merit or credibility

You've no right to stop people voicing opinions and facts and truths you don't like

[Snapchap]

A quick summation of Sid and his position:

- Insists that the PIRA campaign was "a mass murder campaign" but the Old IRA campaign, which involved a higher proportion of civilian killings, was not.

- Claims that the Old IRA campaign had a mandate despite the SF manifesto in 1918 not making any reference to starting a war.

- Argues that the PIRA campaign was about murdering civlians even though it's been spelled out to him that the overwhelming majority of IRA operations were directed against security forces and commerical targets.

- Believes that dissidents today are operating in the same societal conditions for Catholics/nationalists as the PIRA did.

- Believes that the British Government wiillingly and enthusiastically engaged in peace negotiations without having been forced into it and that the RUC was disbanded apparently just thanks to the generosity of spirit of British negotiators when nationalists peacefully asked for the force to be discontinued.

- Maintains he understands the reality of day-to-day life in the north throughout the conflict because he was once (Yip. Once.) stopped by a british army patrol. An event which by his own admission, took place years after the end of the conflict.

- Believes that all that nationalists had to do to achieve what we have today was to have engaged in peaceful protest. He even suggests that this could all have been achieved by 1972. Seemingly blissfully unaware that that was the very same year that Britain shot dead 14 peaceful protesters in Derry. How easy must it be for someone sitting in the comfort and safety of the Free State to insist that more northern Catholics should have risked sacrificing themselves in front of British guns by continuing to rely on peaceful protesting. Maybe Sid thinks Bloody Sunday was a flash in the pan. But a year before Bloody Sunday, a Civil Rights march was attacked by the police and loyalists at Burntollet Bridge. Despite this, they DID do what Sid suggested: they persisted with peaceful protest. A year later 14 of them lay dead.

- Refuses to say why peaceful protest would have worked in 1972 but was not an option in 1919.

- Maintains that the British would have buckled under the pressure of Catholic peaceful protests despite the fact that Britain didn't even buckle under the worldwide condemnation it was faced with after Bloody Sunday. Despite having been asked repeatedly, he has yet to explain how he can believe such a downright stupid notion.

- Seemingly believes that if you murder civilians in a long war then you are morally repugnant, but if you murder a higher proportion of civilians but over a short, intensly savage campaign, well that's at worst just "a grey area" morally.

- Seemingly believes that if you regard an armed campaign as having been justifiable, that you then must therefor believe every action within that campaign was morally acceptable and justifiable. For this reason, he played the favourite game of many Free Staters - victim bingo - and pulled the names of a few IRA murder victims out of the air and proclaimed that because I believe the IRA campaign itself was morally justifiable, that I must by extension, believe those murders were justified. Curiously, though, he refuses to condemn the Old IRA campaign. By his own twisted logic, surely that would mean he too must believe their murders of civilians were all justified too? Can you have it both ways?

- Attacks posters disagreeing with him for making straw man arguments and being "dishonest posters" despite going so far as to repeatedly accuse me of supporting the murdering of civilians and refusing to post any evidence whatsoever to substantiate this outrageous and sick lie.

- Most pathetically and shamefully of all, blames the IRA for the loyalist murder of Sean Brown, thereby absolving the loyalists/ states agents who did it, from responsibility.

[red hander]

A quick summation of Sid and his position:

- Insists that the PIRA campaign was "a mass murder campaign" but the Old IRA campaign, which involved a higher proportion of civilian killings, was not.

- Claims that the Old IRA campaign had a mandate despite the SF manifesto in 1918 not making any reference to starting a war.

- Argues that the PIRA campaign was about murdering civlians even though it's been spelled out to him that the overwhelming majority of IRA operations were directed against security forces and commerical targets.

- Believes that dissidents today are operating in the same societal conditions for Catholics/nationalists as the PIRA did.

- Believes that the British Government wiillingly and enthusiastically engaged in peace negotiations without having been forced into it and that the RUC was disbanded apparently just thanks to the generosity of spirit of British negotiators when nationalists peacefully asked for the force to be discontinued.

- Maintains he understands the reality of day-to-day life in the north throughout the conflict because he was once (Yip. Once.) stopped by a british army patrol. An event which by his own admission, took place years after the end of the conflict.

- Believes that all that nationalists had to do to achieve what we have today was to have engaged in peaceful protest. He even suggests that this could all have been achieved by 1972. Seemingly blissfully unaware that that was the very same year that Britain shot dead 14 peaceful protesters in Derry. How easy must it be for someone sitting in the comfort and safety of the Free State to insist that more northern Catholics should have risked sacrificing themselves in front of British guns by continuing to rely on peaceful protesting. Maybe Sid thinks Bloody Sunday was a flash in the pan. But a year before Bloody Sunday, a Civil Rights march was attacked by the police and loyalists at Burntollet Bridge. Despite this, they DID do what Sid suggested: they persisted with peaceful protest. A year later 14 of them lay dead.

- Refuses to say why peaceful protest would have worked in 1972 but was not an option in 1919.

- Maintains that the British would have buckled under the pressure of Catholic peaceful protests despite the fact that Britain didn't even buckle under the worldwide condemnation it was faced with after Bloody Sunday. Despite having been asked repeatedly, he has yet to explain how he can believe such a downright stupid notion.

- Seemingly believes that if you murder civilians in a long war then you are morally repugnant, but if you murder a higher proportion of civilians but over a short, intensly savage campaign, well that's at worst just "a grey area" morally.

- Seemingly believes that if you regard an armed campaign as having been justifiable, that you then must therefor believe every action within that campaign was morally acceptable and justifiable. For this reason, he played the favourite game of many Free Staters - victim bingo - and pulled the names of a few IRA murder victims out of the air and proclaimed that because I believe the IRA campaign itself was morally justifiable, that I must by extension, believe those murders were justified. Curiously, though, he refuses to condemn the Old IRA campaign. By his own twisted logic, surely that would mean he too must believe their murders of civilians were all justified too?

- Attacks posters disagreeing with him for making straw man arguments and being "dishonest posters" despite going so far as to repeatedly accuse me of supporting the murdering of civilians and refusing to post any evidence whatsoever to substantiate this outrageous and sick lie.

- Most pathetically and shamefully of all, blames the IRA for the loyalist murder of Sean Brown, thereby absolving the loyalists/ states agents who did it, from responsibility.

Encapsulates the deluded tosser perfectly.

[trileacman]

Pretty much all revolutionary movements based on violence since the 60s were a failure with the exception of some war torn shiteholes in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan. Civil rights in America, Polish Solidarity, ANC in south Africa were all examples of non-violent political action could effect real change. Violent paramilitarism whether it be Red-Army faction, FARC, ETA were all failures.

It was the provisional IRA and militant republicanism that were "slow learners".

That's not true. Plenty of examples to counter that.

like what

[Snapchap]

Encapsulates the deluded tosser perfectly.

Well you say that, Red Hand, but apparently it was actually me who made you post that (using mind control I assume).

After all, Sid (the fella who is adamant that he dislikes dishonest posters and straw man arguments) this morning posted an accusation that when anyone leaves a post agreeing with something I've written, that I somehow made them do it.

Seems straw men only upset him when they are built by others.

[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

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

Not really baffling at all

Paranoia and propaganda and unfounded belief in superiority is the answer, hundreds of years of belief that they were the chosen people, superior to the sub-human Catholics

When an ethnic or religious group traditionally has hegemony, any extension of rights or equality to those who have traditionally been oppressed seems like a defeat - because the group identity is based on superiority to the "other" - not equality

It's a collective pathology

That's why they build ever bigger bonfires festooned with"KAT" and burning tricolours, the NI team continues to play God Save The Queen, why they continue to demand the Union Jack be flown from public buildings as a matter of priority and why they demanded Garvaghy Road to march on

The mindset of a lot of Unionists was or is very like the mindset of white racists in America

I see you edited your post to include a Ruth Dudley Edwards reference - thanks for the personal abuse - it's always welcome

Ruth Dudley Edwards is an example of that pathology of mind

But so is calling anybody who says the IRA's mass murder spree was wrong "Ruth Dudley Edwards" also a pathology of the mind

Right, apologies for the RDE ammendment. That was uncalled for. She definitely wouldn't have written the above which would likely see you expelled from the 1922 committee!
       That being said,  i think your stated views on the gfa(that was all i commented on) are simplistic and deliberately provocative to get a rise out of another poster. 
         The GFA was a peace agreement with all sides negotiating and compromising(except DUP). Sure there were fudges and inconsistencies but it was enough that all sides could say they came away with something.
     The fact that the majority of the unionist population voted against it, would lead me to believe anectodotally, that they believed the DUP hype that nationalists got a slightly better deal rather than the whole lot of them being  sectarian bigots(undoubtedly there is a  proportion that are, as you said).
       

Not provocative at all

The PIRA armed campaign was unquestionably a failure and the PIRA failed unquestionably in their one central, all consuming goal, which was to get a united Ireland

What Sinn Fein did "win" was the release of PIRA prisoners which was a bitter pill for Unionists to swallow, but this undoubtedly was for the greater good

Sinn Fein "won" admittance to the political process, they had already done this with the second ceasefire, but this was very much a consolation prize for the failure of the armed campaign

Decommisioning and "the war is over" followed later, these were the rotten cherry on top of the cake of defeat

Who really lost though were the families of the victims on all sides, who saw their murderers let out, some of them reluctantly accepted that this was for the greater good, many more remained very bitter, understandably so

A somewhat functioning, non-sectarian or at least much less sectarian police force, something which had the potential to be built up into a widely respected societal institution if it functioned as intended, was a victory for everybody, for society

But this was not what the PIRA fought for, and indeed for eight years Sinn Fein remained firmly on the fence about this police force

Neither was Stormont what they had fought for, Stormont was one of their problems at the start of the Troubles

What the Sinn Fein side was left with was a route into democratic politics, one that had already been available to them three decades earlier

Three decades of fighting for that?

What was it all for?

Paisley realised towards the end that the DUP had won despite not even taking part in the GFA negotiations and NI's place in the UK was safe as long as the majority of the people of NI wanted that - which was always going to be the case anyway, no matter what happened, fighting or no fighting

That was the central truth about NI from 1922 on

[sid waddell]

A quick summation of Sid and his position:

- Insists that the PIRA campaign was "a mass murder campaign" but the Old IRA campaign, which involved a higher proportion of civilian killings, was not.

- Claims that the Old IRA campaign had a mandate despite the SF manifesto in 1918 not making any reference to starting a war.

- Argues that the PIRA campaign was about murdering civlians even though it's been spelled out to him that the overwhelming majority of IRA operations were directed against security forces and commerical targets.

- Believes that dissidents today are operating in the same societal conditions for Catholics/nationalists as the PIRA did.

- Believes that the British Government wiillingly and enthusiastically engaged in peace negotiations without having been forced into it and that the RUC was disbanded apparently just thanks to the generosity of spirit of British negotiators when nationalists peacefully asked for the force to be discontinued.

- Maintains he understands the reality of day-to-day life in the north throughout the conflict because he was once (Yip. Once.) stopped by a british army patrol. An event which by his own admission, took place years after the end of the conflict.

- Believes that all that nationalists had to do to achieve what we have today was to have engaged in peaceful protest. He even suggests that this could all have been achieved by 1972. Seemingly blissfully unaware that that was the very same year that Britain shot dead 14 peaceful protesters in Derry. How easy must it be for someone sitting in the comfort and safety of the Free State to insist that more northern Catholics should have risked sacrificing themselves in front of British guns by continuing to rely on peaceful protesting. Maybe Sid thinks Bloody Sunday was a flash in the pan. But a year before Bloody Sunday, a Civil Rights march was attacked by the police and loyalists at Burntollet Bridge. Despite this, they DID do what Sid suggested: they persisted with peaceful protest. A year later 14 of them lay dead.

- Refuses to say why peaceful protest would have worked in 1972 but was not an option in 1919.

- Maintains that the British would have buckled under the pressure of Catholic peaceful protests despite the fact that Britain didn't even buckle under the worldwide condemnation it was faced with after Bloody Sunday. Despite having been asked repeatedly, he has yet to explain how he can believe such a downright stupid notion.

- Seemingly believes that if you murder civilians in a long war then you are morally repugnant, but if you murder a higher proportion of civilians but over a short, intensly savage campaign, well that's at worst just "a grey area" morally.

- Seemingly believes that if you regard an armed campaign as having been justifiable, that you then must therefor believe every action within that campaign was morally acceptable and justifiable. For this reason, he played the favourite game of many Free Staters - victim bingo - and pulled the names of a few IRA murder victims out of the air and proclaimed that because I believe the IRA campaign itself was morally justifiable, that I must by extension, believe those murders were justified. Curiously, though, he refuses to condemn the Old IRA campaign. By his own twisted logic, surely that would mean he too must believe their murders of civilians were all justified too? Can you have it both ways?

- Attacks posters disagreeing with him for making straw man arguments and being "dishonest posters" despite going so far as to repeatedly accuse me of supporting the murdering of civilians and refusing to post any evidence whatsoever to substantiate this outrageous and sick lie.

- Most pathetically and shamefully of all, blames the IRA for the loyalist murder of Sean Brown, thereby absolving the loyalists/ states agents who did it, from responsibility.

To call that a poorly written pile of shit, full of lies would be a gross understatement

The rantings of a madman

And that, sadly, sums up the pro-PIRA position on this board

[Franko]

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

I was going to reply to a different aspect of your post but to be honest, you've just exposed yourself as a twisted little lowlife in your comments abour Sean Brown. We're now in Regina Doherty territory whereby loyalists are now absolved of responsibility for their killings and instead, in typical mental gymnastics fashion, those killings too are to now be regarded as the responsibility of the IRA.

Really? What's lowlife about them?

I specifically did not do the thing you're accusing me of, but you didn't have the decency to quote that - it might disturb your lies - as always, the Sinn Fein way - flat out lie when outpointed

Nothing I said about the murder of Sean Brown was wrong - the murder happened as part of a vicious, senseless tit for tat cycle of violence - which the IRA, after the ceasefires of 1994, took it upon themselves to restart

No resumption of that cycle of violence by the IRA, very likely no murder of Sean Brown by the sc**bag Loyalists that did it

But of course the IRA couldn't leave well alone, they had to go back and start all over again

Oh and by the way, you totally fail to get the irony that your narrative all along, and the narrative of the Shinners across this forum, has been that Unionist intransigence justified a campaign of which civilian murder was an integral part - for you the blame for the murder of the civilians at Claudy, Bloody Friday, Kingsmills, La Mon, Enniskillen and Warrington was on Unionist and British intransigence, not on the people who carried them out

On this very thread, we've had posts justifying all that on the basis of Bloody Sunday

And the narrative about Kingsmills in Republican circles has always been that if the Reaveys and O'Dowds had not been murdered, Kingsmills would not have happened

The narrative is that the Glennane Gang were to blame for Kingsmills - not the IRA

As a narrative of buck passing, defending the indefensible, and outright hypocrisy, that's gold medal stuff

The IRA, sectarian murderers of workmen and eternally innocent in the eyes of its cheerleaders, just as the Loyalist scum who murdered the Reaveys and the O'Dowds are eternally innocent in the eyes of theirs

Two sides of the same coin

Do those, like yourself, who celebrate/justify the sectarian murders carried out by the Old IRA have a position on this coin at all?

I don't celebrate any murders carried out by the old IRA, never mind sectarian ones

Murder is not a thing to be celebrated

It must be great to live in a straw man version of reality

When you feel outpointed, just lie about the person you're debating with

Over and over and over we see it from SF supporters

I have sod all time for Fine Gael but their supporters can at least mostly debate honestly

SF supporters just throw the toys out of the pram and lie flat out, no compunction about doing so, it's pure Trump

And that's the way they've been conditioned by the party, which operates along the lines of a cult

The only person throwing toys out and creating straw men is yourself.

You've tried multiple times in the past few hours alone - and that is only in your interactions with me.

But it easily seen through.

And then we have the inevitable Sinn Fein claptrap.

This is where you (and so many 'outside' experts) give yourself away as having no understanding of the mindset of the northern nationalist.  Your automatic assumption is that anyone who will not condemn the entire PIRA campaign is a staunch SF supporter and by extension, a party crony.  Which is so far from the truth in reality.  But you and your ilk cannot help but see these things in black and white... you don't grasp the intricacies of it whatsoever.  You can regurgitate as many lines as you want from books you've read about North, but once you come out with that line, I immediately know that you have no grasp of what you are talking about, despite the regard in which you may hold your own opinion.

But it is easy to see how someone fed on a childhood diet of state censored news would believe that this is how things are here.

I have voted SF in the past, but I have also given 1st preference votes to SDLP, Alliance and various Independents.

But I don't condemn entirely the actions of the PIRA.

Just as you have refused to condemn the actions of the old IRA and indeed have offered many justifications/mitigations for such actions.

I can re-post these for you if you need reminding.