Sinn Fein? They have gone away, you know.

[Angelo]

The question you have to answer is if you support the current dissidents and if not, why not - because they do they exact same things the PIRA did, they have the exact same aims and the exact same methods
The deluded hypocrisy Sinn Feiners have as regards their views on the dissos is staggering

Once again displaying a mindblowing level of ignorance.The dissidents are active in an era where there is no British army on the streets, no RUC, equality for Catholics, and when we are in the midst of a lengthy and successful peace process. Is that the environment you believe the IRA operated in? If you think it is, then you're just stupid. If you realise that it's not the same environment/circumstances, then you are basing your whole argument on what you then know to be a lie.

The PIRA campaign of murder was not for civil rights or fair treatment

The PIRA campaign of murder was to get the Brits out of Ireland

There would never be civil right or fair treatment if Catholics sat on their hands.

That's the bit idiotic free staters like you can never grasp.

What happened on Bloody Sunday told us all that.

[sid waddell]

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

There's you argument boiled right down. Are you seriously arguing that the north was as easy for nationalists to live in now than it was in 1972?

Or is it that you believe the end of the RUC, British soldiers off the street, religious equality, end of unionist misrule, were all achievable in 1972 by peaceful means?

If it's the former, you're more deluded that even I ive you credit for. If it's the latter, well, once again I'll challenge you to explain how all that could have been achieved peacefully so quickly without the use of armed force?

One last question, Sid. Do you condemn the Old IRA and their campaign, given that it resulted in a higher proportion of civilians than the PIRA campaign?

They were achievable, you do it by mass peaceful political mobilisation and a massive, sustained campaign of civil disobedience and protest, you do it by drawing attention to your cause internationally

The Anglo-Irish Agreement didn't happen by murdering people, it happened by peaceful negotiation

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

A united Ireland did not happen by murdering people, it will happen by democratic vote

But the PIRA didn't fight for these things, they fought for "Brits out of Ireland" - something they never had a remote chance
of achieving - and they failed

I do not class the old IRA as heroes at all, however they had at least some democratic legitimacy, they had widespread support which the PIRA did not have, and they knew when to stop

The question you have to answer is if you support the current dissidents and if not, why not - because they do they exact same things the PIRA did, they have the exact same aims and the exact same methods

The deluded hypocrisy Sinn Feiners have as regards their views on the dissos is staggering

You're saying it was incumbent on the oppressed to mobalise peacefully in order to achieve a set of stated aims yet its clear the sectarian statelet had been systematically eradicating that population by force from its inception, and indeed before with the help of the British. So basically put yourself in the firing line as sitting ducks until what the Americans came to the rescue?

The only way to deliver peace and equality in any sort of sustained way prior to The Agreement relied on the Unionists and British rolling out equality in their administrative processes, and they refused to do that, had they listened to Terence O'Neill things might have been different, but the Unionists were set on having a brutish domineering anti-Catholic/Republican statelet, and well the Brits, it was basically shits and giggles for them, a territorial claim while the Empire crumbled, a testing ground for political gerrymandering and new forms of barbarism in an occupied land.

"It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house they will live like Protestants because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets; they will refuse to have eighteen children. But if a Roman Catholic is jobless, and lives in the most ghastly hovel he will rear eighteen children on National Assistance. If you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness they will live like Protestants in spite of the authoritative nature of their Church"

They were not systematically eradicating the Catholic population

They were systematically discriminating against the Catholic population

There is a big, big difference

Treatment of Catholics in NI was bad enough without resorting to fake history

[sid waddell]

The question you have to answer is if you support the current dissidents and if not, why not - because they do they exact same things the PIRA did, they have the exact same aims and the exact same methods
The deluded hypocrisy Sinn Feiners have as regards their views on the dissos is staggering

Once again displaying a mindblowing level of ignorance.The dissidents are active in an era where there is no British army on the streets, no RUC, equality for Catholics, and when we are in the midst of a lengthy and successful peace process. Is that the environment you believe the IRA operated in? If you think it is, then you're just stupid. If you realise that it's not the same environment/circumstances, then you are basing your whole argument on what you then know to be a lie.

The PIRA campaign of murder was not for civil rights or fair treatment

The PIRA campaign of murder was to get the Brits out of Ireland

There would never be civil right or fair treatment if Catholics sat on their hands.

That's the bit idiotic free staters like you can never grasp.

What happened on Bloody Sunday told us all that.

The PIRA provided civil rights and fair treatment for precisely nobody

It certainly took them away from a lot of people though

[Snapchap]

My attitude towards the Rising is one of shades of grey...

I sympathise with the Connolly view, the internationalist view, the one of fighting for the worker regardless of their background, the view that World War I was an imperial evil, and the system which perpetuated that needed to be overthrown

That the flag under which you live is essentially meaningless - that nationalism is irrelevant - that the fairness of the society you live in is what matters

Connolly believed that the only way that could achieved was separation from the British Empire

I do not sympathise with the Pearse view at all - Pearse was a nationalist psychopath who wanted a pure Gaelic Ireland and believed that blood sacrifice was glorious

In the Rising, people were murdered on the streets by the rebels and that was very wrong

The Rising had no democratic legitimacy

But the Rising lasted less than a week

The IRA campaign lasted 28 years

So your views on the Rising are "shades of grey" because it's not cool to kill civilians, but it's not that bad if you only do it for a week or so? And not bad too if you quite like one of the ringleaders? How can you not see your own hypocrisy here? It's actually astonishing!

The War Of Independence was what it was

That's just a nothing statement.

But again, it contained terrible events which absolutely are condemnable - Soloheadbeg which started the war was murder pure and simple - even Seamus Robinson who commanded the operation admitted this - the other went rogue

No s**t. Has there ever been an armed campaign by any armed group, anywhere, ever, that didn't include actions that were unjustifiable?

The difference was it had the support of the people - Sinn Fein had 73 MPs - and it always had a likelihood of success
That was never, ever the case with the PIRA campaign - it never, ever had a chance of success

Except for the small fact that The Tan War began without any democratic mandate. War was not mentioned in the SF manifesto.

A valid comparison would be if this war had continued until 1947 with zero chance of success - because that's what the PIRA did

Except that the conditions for Catholics today are infinitely better that they were before the IRA forced Britain to talk in the 1990's. Remember I asked you what sweeping concessions Britain made after the international condemnation that followed from Bloody Sunday? Remember how the answer was: none? Remember how I asked you how you then calculate that they would have just bowed to peaceful pressure from a minority community in the six counties? You haven't gotten back to me on that little head scratcher yet.

The moral cases around the Rising and the War of Independence are grey - the moral case around the 28 year PIRA campaign is not
It was a totally futile campaign of wanton murder and societal devastation which was an utter abomination

Yes, the IRA devastated what was a utopian six county statelet. You really are as deluded as a Free Stater can get about the six counties, and that really is saying something. Did the Easter Rising devastate the centre of Dublin? Was it still kinda ok though, because it took them less than a week to devastate it? Was the disappearing of 100-200 (mostly innocent) people a "grey area" in morality because they packed all that savagery into a short burst of killing?

[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

[tiempo]

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

There's you argument boiled right down. Are you seriously arguing that the north was as easy for nationalists to live in now than it was in 1972?

Or is it that you believe the end of the RUC, British soldiers off the street, religious equality, end of unionist misrule, were all achievable in 1972 by peaceful means?

If it's the former, you're more deluded that even I ive you credit for. If it's the latter, well, once again I'll challenge you to explain how all that could have been achieved peacefully so quickly without the use of armed force?

One last question, Sid. Do you condemn the Old IRA and their campaign, given that it resulted in a higher proportion of civilians than the PIRA campaign?

They were achievable, you do it by mass peaceful political mobilisation and a massive, sustained campaign of civil disobedience and protest, you do it by drawing attention to your cause internationally

The Anglo-Irish Agreement didn't happen by murdering people, it happened by peaceful negotiation

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

A united Ireland did not happen by murdering people, it will happen by democratic vote

But the PIRA didn't fight for these things, they fought for "Brits out of Ireland" - something they never had a remote chance
of achieving - and they failed

I do not class the old IRA as heroes at all, however they had at least some democratic legitimacy, they had widespread support which the PIRA did not have, and they knew when to stop

The question you have to answer is if you support the current dissidents and if not, why not - because they do they exact same things the PIRA did, they have the exact same aims and the exact same methods

The deluded hypocrisy Sinn Feiners have as regards their views on the dissos is staggering

You're saying it was incumbent on the oppressed to mobalise peacefully in order to achieve a set of stated aims yet its clear the sectarian statelet had been systematically eradicating that population by force from its inception, and indeed before with the help of the British. So basically put yourself in the firing line as sitting ducks until what the Americans came to the rescue?

The only way to deliver peace and equality in any sort of sustained way prior to The Agreement relied on the Unionists and British rolling out equality in their administrative processes, and they refused to do that, had they listened to Terence O'Neill things might have been different, but the Unionists were set on having a brutish domineering anti-Catholic/Republican statelet, and well the Brits, it was basically shits and giggles for them, a territorial claim while the Empire crumbled, a testing ground for political gerrymandering and new forms of barbarism in an occupied land.

"It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house they will live like Protestants because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets; they will refuse to have eighteen children. But if a Roman Catholic is jobless, and lives in the most ghastly hovel he will rear eighteen children on National Assistance. If you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness they will live like Protestants in spite of the authoritative nature of their Church"

They were not systematically eradicating the Catholic population

They were systematically discriminating against the Catholic population

There is a big, big difference

Treatment of Catholics in NI was bad enough without resorting to fake history

Define pogrom for us there Ted

[Angelo]

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.

[tiempo]

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

So common it has only been stated by you to downplay the plight of nationalists in the 6co's

You're the only one putting forward a hierarchy of suffering

Suppose pogroms were only perpetrated against Jews, apartheid against South Africans, what then would you classify the treatment of nationalists in the 6co's?

Just good old fashioned wholesome discrimination with a sprinkling of bullets?

Pacify yourself and it'll all be grand, sit there until International Rescue come flying in over the Black Mountain?

Is this the ending you were alluding to when you said 30 years of mass peaceful protest would inevitably have led to the disbanding of the RUC following pressure from the international community?

[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.

[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

[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?

Riddle me this... Catholics put themselves up front and centre as sitting ducks

Who from the international community comes to the rescue, and in what era and in what guise?

Seeing as you've leapt headlong into the realm of fantasy bordering on an episode of Quantum Leap you might as well finish the story off in your own inimitable style...

Saying that there are better alternatives to 28 years of murder is not a fantasy

The fantasy is to believe that there was no alternative to 28 years of murder

Do you believe there was no alternative to 28 years of murder?

What sort of a person believes that?

A psychopath, that's who

[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?

The RUC weren't disbanded by peaceful protest, you clown. They were disbanded as part of the GFA. An agreement which only came about because the British were dragged kicking and screaming by the IRA to the negotiating table.

And you keep perpetuating this "peaceful protest" crap. Again, were the bodies of 14 peaceful protesters in Derry not enough for you? With the eyes of the world on Britain after how it treated civil rights protestors, did it buckle under the pressure of the international community and bring in sweeping reforms? Did it f**k. But sure just you keep believing that they'd have done so if the taigs keep asking nicely enough, often enough 

And once again, could peaceful protest not have happened in 1916 or 1919, instead of armed republican aggression? If not, why not?

The RUC was ended by peaceful negotiation

This is a basic fact

Actually, go back to what Chris Patten said - the RUC was "not being disbanded, it was being transformed"

Just thought I'd throw that in - so Sinn Fein actually accepted a force which, straight from the horse's mouth, was not a disbandment of the RUC at all

What a victory that was, eh

For what died the sons of Roisin? A renamed RUC, apparently!

Are the bodies of 14 people Derry "not enough for me?"

"Not enough" for what?

Not enough that I should want another three thousand bodies piled on top of them?

That seems to be the lesson that you learned from Bloody Sunday - that because 14 innocent civilians were slaughtered, we should have another 25 years of that

My lesson from it would be that such slaughter is evil and futile and that the pain suffered by the families of the Bloody Sunday victims should not be suffered by others

That's the lesson pretty much everybody took from Omagh

By your rationale, the lesson we should have taken from Omagh, was "more of this, please", as long as it's themmuns who get it

That is the "lesson" you and the PIRA took from Bloody Sunday

The Abercorn restaurant bombing, the Donegall Street bombing, the Short Strand bomb, Claudy, Bloody Friday - all later in 1972, but shure, what glorious, glorious days for the oul' sod, eh

Though many if not most of those who died in those atrocities were Catholic civilians

[marty34]

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.

Best post on here in a long time Snapchat.  Excellent.

[sid waddell]

By 1998 the RUC still existed, the British Army was still in Northern Ireland

All that had changed by August 1998 from say, May 1997, was that the leadership of Sinn Fein had effectively surrendered and given up on violence

But there were still people out there who hadn't

So if you're to say that Claudy or Bloody Friday or Enniskillen or Warrington were justified, why not Omagh?

Because the cause was the exact same as any of those

The GFA Agreement was signed in April 1998. Four months before the Omagh Bombing. When the Omaagh Bombing happened, the imminent disbandment of the RUC, and the removal of the British Army were legally set in stone. If you can tell me that that was the case during the PIRA campaign, then you're a whole good one. If you can't, then you're a clueless Free Stater.

The Good Friday Agreement was effectively the PIRA's surrender and signing of terms

The PIRA lost, they were defeated, they gave up, the murder campaign had reached a complete dead end

They did not get what they wanted - they did not get a united Ireland

Therefore those who carried out the Omagh bomb, who disagreed with the PIRA's surrender and signing of terms, can quite reasonably claim the exact same justification as the PIRA claimed for all their atrocities - even if that "justification" was ludicrous - it was ludicrous in 1998 and it was ludicrous in 1972

And dissos today can still claim that ludicrous justification -  why wouldn't they - they have present day Sinn Fein telling them that that justification was valid for the PIRA 1969-1997

But the essential fact has not changed, Northern Ireland is still British - and Sinn Fein accept that

So why wouldn't the dissos - who don't accept that NI is British - claim the exact same justification for murdering people now

[blasmere]

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.