This shows, what we in the north have known for many years, that you can't trust the British Government. Something the south has found out this week regarding the Brexit withdrawal treaty. But some here will find a way to blame Sinn Fein for all of it.
It's possible to recognise that the north was and to an extent still remains a cold house for Catholics, that the RUC and the British Army engaged in appalling acts, that British governments were and currently are untrustworthy, to recognise why people would have felt the desire to join the IRA, and to recognise that the IRA also committed appalling acts
It's not an either/or
You talk complete sense. But regrettably it will have no impact on the echo chambers that exist in and on Northern Ireland.
Unionism has a problem with the past. Certainly unionist politicians have a problem with the past. They feel if they admit to even one occurrence of collusion or state brutality or even general misrule then the whole house of cards will collapse. For this reason they are institutionally dishonest re the past. I don’t think this is true of the general pro union populace but it is true of most if not all unionist politicians.
But republicanism shares this same fault. We could list atrocities that were acts of outright scumbaggery and the planners and perpetrators are repellent creatures who don’t deserve to dine with the humans. Republicanism struggles to admit to that. So they revert to revisionism of their own history and amongst other things it’s popular support. There is a view that northern nationalists had 2 options:
Sit on their hands and be clubbed about the head in a pogrom or
Blow up a school bus
It’s completely bogus. And never allow the apologists for this violence delude you into thinking that the armed struggle of the 60s onwards had majority support within nationalism.
