1981 remembered

[sheamy]

Myles, your analysis is based on the fact that you assume the hunger strike was about a 32 county republic. It wasn't.

It was specifically about the granting of political status to the republican prisoners and breaking Thatcher's criminalisation policy and the inhumanity of the jails. It succeeded.

Like most of what the provos were about, it was also more to do with defeating the old unionism regime of oppression and domination than running down to sit in good old leinster house where there are more criminals per square yard than were ever in the h-blocks. It also succeeded in that respect.

In doing so it has given future generations in the north the freedom to express and live their culture to the full on an equal basis. There is no going back.

No, I'm assuming that the provos were about a 32 county republic. The hunger strikers were only a small part of what was a 25 year campaign. And if the provos were about 'defeating the old unionism regime of oppression and domination', then they needn't have bothered. Having been shamed into action, the British government had already started initiating change in the early 1970s to sweep away the inequalities brought about by 50 years of 1 party rule. Electoral reform, housing reform (the Housing Executive was set up in 1971), and equality legislation were all in place within two or three years of the troubles starting. Power sharing was on offer after Sunningdale, though it was rejected by the two groups (the provos and the DUP) who run the Assembly today under a system of mandatory coalition, which is just power sharing for people who like big words. The reason the provos rejected it then was because their agenda was all about Brits out and a 32 county Ireland. The reason they accepted it after the Belfast Agreement was because they realised that their 'long war' was not going to achieve its objectives and that a leading role in the administration of the north was as much as they could hope for. Doh!

Proves my point. The hunger strike was not confined to provos. Therefore your analysis doesn't stack up. Myles, it was about political status for republican prisoners. Not just pira prisoners. It was about the right for a republican voice to be heard amongst everyone elses in the north on an equal basis. That might seem like small beer to you, but it is not. Some reform was on the way, I am dubious. I would argue the 1947 education act did more than most to change things.

Tell me this, how could any republican organisation abandoned by the majority of the so-called existing republic do anything else other than look to protect its own local people first and national blah de blah second? That's what it had to do and that's what it did.

The psychological victory of the hunger strikes has meant more to the people of the north than you or even most of them will ever realise.

[Myles Na G.]

Myles, your analysis is based on the fact that you assume the hunger strike was about a 32 county republic. It wasn't.

It was specifically about the granting of political status to the republican prisoners and breaking Thatcher's criminalisation policy and the inhumanity of the jails. It succeeded.

Like most of what the provos were about, it was also more to do with defeating the old unionism regime of oppression and domination than running down to sit in good old leinster house where there are more criminals per square yard than were ever in the h-blocks. It also succeeded in that respect.

In doing so it has given future generations in the north the freedom to express and live their culture to the full on an equal basis. There is no going back.

No, I'm assuming that the provos were about a 32 county republic. The hunger strikers were only a small part of what was a 25 year campaign. And if the provos were about 'defeating the old unionism regime of oppression and domination', then they needn't have bothered. Having been shamed into action, the British government had already started initiating change in the early 1970s to sweep away the inequalities brought about by 50 years of 1 party rule. Electoral reform, housing reform (the Housing Executive was set up in 1971), and equality legislation were all in place within two or three years of the troubles starting. Power sharing was on offer after Sunningdale, though it was rejected by the two groups (the provos and the DUP) who run the Assembly today under a system of mandatory coalition, which is just power sharing for people who like big words. The reason the provos rejected it then was because their agenda was all about Brits out and a 32 county Ireland. The reason they accepted it after the Belfast Agreement was because they realised that their 'long war' was not going to achieve its objectives and that a leading role in the administration of the north was as much as they could hope for. Doh!

Proves my point. The hunger strike was not confined to provos. Therefore your analysis doesn't stack up. Myles, it was about political status for republican prisoners. Not just pira prisoners. It was about the right for a republican voice to be heard amongst everyone elses in the north on an equal basis. That might seem like small beer to you, but it is not. Some reform was on the way, I am dubious. I would argue the 1947 education act did more than most to change things.

Tell me this, how could any republican organisation abandoned by the majority of the so-called existing republic do anything else other than look to protect its own local people first and national blah de blah second? That's what it had to do and that's what it did.

The psychological victory of the hunger strikes has meant more to the people of the north than you or even most of them will ever realise.

If you mean that it had no popular support from the vast majority of Irish people, we're in agreement on that one.
Republican revisionists now seem to be trying to claim that their 'armed struggle' was never about forcing the British out and reuniting the country, but about bringing down the unionist dominated establishment. In reality, they're simply trying to cover up the fact that their strategy failed and - worse - that their leaders are now doing exactly what they would've killed others for in the very recent past. Do you think the hunger strikers would've starved themselves to death if they'd known that the 'long war' would end with a power sharing executive with the DUP within a 6 county assembly?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article4493964.ece

[Minder]

Myles, your analysis is based on the fact that you assume the hunger strike was about a 32 county republic. It wasn't.

It was specifically about the granting of political status to the republican prisoners and breaking Thatcher's criminalisation policy and the inhumanity of the jails. It succeeded.

Like most of what the provos were about, it was also more to do with defeating the old unionism regime of oppression and domination than running down to sit in good old leinster house where there are more criminals per square yard than were ever in the h-blocks. It also succeeded in that respect.

In doing so it has given future generations in the north the freedom to express and live their culture to the full on an equal basis. There is no going back.

No, I'm assuming that the provos were about a 32 county republic. The hunger strikers were only a small part of what was a 25 year campaign. And if the provos were about 'defeating the old unionism regime of oppression and domination', then they needn't have bothered. Having been shamed into action, the British government had already started initiating change in the early 1970s to sweep away the inequalities brought about by 50 years of 1 party rule. Electoral reform, housing reform (the Housing Executive was set up in 1971), and equality legislation were all in place within two or three years of the troubles starting. Power sharing was on offer after Sunningdale, though it was rejected by the two groups (the provos and the DUP) who run the Assembly today under a system of mandatory coalition, which is just power sharing for people who like big words. The reason the provos rejected it then was because their agenda was all about Brits out and a 32 county Ireland. The reason they accepted it after the Belfast Agreement was because they realised that their 'long war' was not going to achieve its objectives and that a leading role in the administration of the north was as much as they could hope for. Doh!

Proves my point. The hunger strike was not confined to provos. Therefore your analysis doesn't stack up. Myles, it was about political status for republican prisoners. Not just pira prisoners. It was about the right for a republican voice to be heard amongst everyone elses in the north on an equal basis. That might seem like small beer to you, but it is not. Some reform was on the way, I am dubious. I would argue the 1947 education act did more than most to change things.

Tell me this, how could any republican organisation abandoned by the majority of the so-called existing republic do anything else other than look to protect its own local people first and national blah de blah second? That's what it had to do and that's what it did.

The psychological victory of the hunger strikes has meant more to the people of the north than you or even most of them will ever realise.

If you mean that it had no popular support from the vast majority of Irish people, we're in agreement on that one.
Republican revisionists now seem to be trying to claim that their 'armed struggle' was never about forcing the British out and reuniting the country, but about bringing down the unionist dominated establishment. In reality, they're simply trying to cover up the fact that their strategy failed and - worse - that their leaders are now doing exactly what they would've killed others for in the very recent past. Do you think the hunger strikers would've starved themselves to death if they'd known that the 'long war' would end with a power sharing executive with the DUP within a 6 county assembly?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article4493964.ece

The article will be ignored and Clarke will be called all sorts of traitors to Ireland.

[Minder]

This was in the Sunday Times today by Clarke.



Tragic detour that ended in compromise

'If that is the case, it's a pity they asked so many people to go out and die for a united Ireland," said Anthony McIntyre as we discussed a recent book, The Provisional IRA, written by his fellow inmate, the former republican prisoner Tommy McKearney.

Brutally simplified, McKearney's conclusion was that the IRA succeeded in dismantling the "Orange state", the system built around unionist majority rule, and reforming Northern Ireland. This may be "the end of the journey", as he suggests, even though the terminus was not the socialist republic they originally intended.

McKearney dismisses dissident republicans as making a "fetish of the use of arms". He accuses them of having no policy "apart from repeating mantras about betrayal and the right of the Irish people". They are, he reckons, "doomed to obscurity".

McIntyre is a prime illustration of the waste involved in the IRA campaign. Witty, intelligent and with a high degree of self-knowledge, he gained a doctorate after leaving prison. He is an able man, determined and of strong character, and you can imagine him going far in many careers. He is also a former IRA commander, who spent long years in jail for the murder of two loyalists. That still hangs over him. For instance, he is unable to enter the US, though he has worked for Boston College as a researcher on its oral archive of Troubles participants. He describes McKearney as "a seasoned volunteer with considerable military and political experience".

In a concluding chapter, McKearney charts out his vision for a "New Republic and a Relevant Republicanism", urging republicans to work with the border and postpone its removal. "Partition matters," he writes, "but the urgency of its elimination is less important than the ability we now possess, impossible during the era of the Orange state, to develop crosssectarian, working-class solidarities while putting differences on the national question to one side."

He also says the once all-important "national question" was "defused" by the Good Friday agreement.

McIntyre, who broadly endorses McKearney's analysis, can be forgiven for wishing that someone had told him this a few years earlier. If the Provisional IRA had originally announced that its intention was to defuse the national question and democratise Northern Ireland, rather than remove the border, fewer people would have been prepared to kill and die for it. It is impossible to imagine 10 men starving themselves to death for power-sharing, equal opportunity and cross-border bodies.

There were clearly quicker ways to reach the IRA's final destination. Not only that, there are persuasive arguments that the IRA's terrorist campaign held back rather than hastened its achievements. The old Stormont, the embodiment of what McKearney calls the Orange state, fell after Bloody Sunday. Its removal preceded a period of heavy IRA recruitment and escalating violence. But the collapse wasn't primarily caused by IRA pressure. It occurred when the British state intervened to take security powers away from the unionist government in an attempt to stabilise the situation.

The IRA campaign peaked in that year of 1972. After that, it fought for the removal of British troops as a precursor to the ending of British rule. But it was obvious that the troops were there to contain the terrorist campaign and, as in fact happened, would leave once it was over. Attempts at reform on a similar scale to the Good Friday agreement were stymied by IRA violence, and the unionist extremism which it fed. The broad terms on which the conflict ended were rejected at earlier stages by the IRA. For most of its campaign it insisted on a British withdrawal, preferably within the lifetime of a parliament.

So although, as McKearney argues, the IRA did shape events to some extent, they were moulded by events to a far greater degree. It had to modify ideology to match what was feasible. McKearney quotes Marx as saying: "We develop new principles for the world out of the world's own principles." It doesn't have the same dialectical ring, but essentially Marx was urging the revolutionaries of 1843 to be flexible and not shut themselves off from reality.

In the end, the IRA did face reality and show flexibility, though a lot of blood was shed as it navigated a long learning curve. Some of its surviving early leaders, people who joined in the earliest days when its demands were highest, now sit in Stormont and in the Dail. Former bombers are members of the Northern Ireland policing board. These people bowed to necessity, wiped the blood from their hands, and accepted that their long journey through physical force brought them to a quite different destination than they had intended.

It's undeniable that 30 years of death, imprisonment and suffering was not the shortest route to this outcome, but rather a tragic detour.

At the same time, though, the present compromise may be the softest possible landing and the best available terminus for the decades, even centuries, of violence which went before.

Similar struggles to that of physical force Irish republicanism resulted in total victory. One example is Crete, which endured centuries of guerrilla warfare against the Venetians and then the Turks. The Turkish occupation lasted 250 years.

"Freedom or Death" was the slogan of the Crete rebels, who had a Pádraig Pearse-like ideology of blood sacrifice. Nikos Kazantzakis, a Cretan writer best known as the author of Zorba the Greek, twisted the slogan for the title of his novel to Freedom and Death.

About half of the population were Muslim. The Turkish pashas lived like the Anglo-Irish gentry. Ordinary Muslims and Christians found any attempt at accommodation stymied by a conflict sanctified by religious hatred.

One example from history, not fiction, is Crete's Arkadi monastery, a centre of the resistance during the uprising of 1866. It was packed with 325 men and 639 women and children when Gabriel Marinakis, the abbot and leader of the local resistance committee, decided it was preferable to sacrifice the population rather than accede to Turkish demands for surrender. All of the gunpowder and explosives in the monastery were gathered in a wine cellar and, as the Turks advanced in overwhelming force, the people retreated into the powder store. At the last moment, Konstantine Giaboudakis, a hero to this day, detonated the store. Some 864 Greeks and 1,500 Turks died in the battle and explosion.

Crete is pock-marked with such massacre sites, creating a blood debt which made compromise impossible. Turks who had lived in Crete for generations eventually left as part of an exchange of population and, like the Greeks who were shipped out of Turkey to replace them, often pined for their homeland. Greek families who had converted to Islam reverted to Christianity, and nobody mentions it now. One of the last Turkish villages was turned into a leper colony.

Upon consideration, our awkward compromise, in which nobody achieved quite what they initially wanted, does not seem so bad by comparison.

[lynchbhoy]

If that's an article by Liam Clarke, then don't waste 10 mins of your life and ignore the crass innacura ies that this idiot continually pukes up!

As for Myles assertions that the HS wouldnt have wanted things to turn out this way - well again you are wrong as this is the kind of status ( freedom of choice with no oppression and persecution a la yesteryear) that they wanted , not just re-unification ( they saw re-unification as the short cut to destroying the oppression and persecution in the 6 county failed statelet) , this came from a few ex prisoner / Hunger Strikers that I knew.... Ya can't really argue against that mylsey, no matter how much this truth hurts you and your attempts at distorting truth and yer revisionism !!!

[sheamy]

Myles, your analysis is based on the fact that you assume the hunger strike was about a 32 county republic. It wasn't.

It was specifically about the granting of political status to the republican prisoners and breaking Thatcher's criminalisation policy and the inhumanity of the jails. It succeeded.

Like most of what the provos were about, it was also more to do with defeating the old unionism regime of oppression and domination than running down to sit in good old leinster house where there are more criminals per square yard than were ever in the h-blocks. It also succeeded in that respect.

In doing so it has given future generations in the north the freedom to express and live their culture to the full on an equal basis. There is no going back.

No, I'm assuming that the provos were about a 32 county republic. The hunger strikers were only a small part of what was a 25 year campaign. And if the provos were about 'defeating the old unionism regime of oppression and domination', then they needn't have bothered. Having been shamed into action, the British government had already started initiating change in the early 1970s to sweep away the inequalities brought about by 50 years of 1 party rule. Electoral reform, housing reform (the Housing Executive was set up in 1971), and equality legislation were all in place within two or three years of the troubles starting. Power sharing was on offer after Sunningdale, though it was rejected by the two groups (the provos and the DUP) who run the Assembly today under a system of mandatory coalition, which is just power sharing for people who like big words. The reason the provos rejected it then was because their agenda was all about Brits out and a 32 county Ireland. The reason they accepted it after the Belfast Agreement was because they realised that their 'long war' was not going to achieve its objectives and that a leading role in the administration of the north was as much as they could hope for. Doh!

Proves my point. The hunger strike was not confined to provos. Therefore your analysis doesn't stack up. Myles, it was about political status for republican prisoners. Not just pira prisoners. It was about the right for a republican voice to be heard amongst everyone elses in the north on an equal basis. That might seem like small beer to you, but it is not. Some reform was on the way, I am dubious. I would argue the 1947 education act did more than most to change things.

Tell me this, how could any republican organisation abandoned by the majority of the so-called existing republic do anything else other than look to protect its own local people first and national blah de blah second? That's what it had to do and that's what it did.

The psychological victory of the hunger strikes has meant more to the people of the north than you or even most of them will ever realise.

If you mean that it had no popular support from the vast majority of Irish people, we're in agreement on that one.
Republican revisionists now seem to be trying to claim that their 'armed struggle' was never about forcing the British out and reuniting the country, but about bringing down the unionist dominated establishment. In reality, they're simply trying to cover up the fact that their strategy failed and - worse - that their leaders are now doing exactly what they would've killed others for in the very recent past. Do you think the hunger strikers would've starved themselves to death if they'd known that the 'long war' would end with a power sharing executive with the DUP within a 6 county assembly?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article4493964.ece

Could have phrased that better but no, that's not what I meant at all. I meant that it was the nationalist people of the north whose plight was blissfully and willingly neglected. My point was that with such a regime and history to overcome that in many people's eyes the primary target was to defeat the unionist dominated regime.

Many many people joined the republican movement so that their children and children's children wouldn't have to grow up in the same oppressive second class citizen society. The question of how is open to question. Call that revisionist if you want. I'd call it revolutionary political struggle based on realism. Fact is it worked and is working.

Do I think Bobby Sands would have agreed to the current situation if offered in 1981? Of course I don't. I also reiterate again that the hunger strikes were solely about political demands in prisons, not about getting to the point where you could paint red post boxes green, maintain a corrupt elite, and end up taking orders from German financiers, a fact which you seem determined to ignore.

Would he be supportive of the current track? We'll never know but what we do know is that many of his closest colleagues did and do. Of course, some don't. That's the nature of people.

[Pangurban]

Perhaps Myles might like to inform us if he thinks the men of 1916, the war of independence, or the civil war would have settled for what they eventually ended up with.  A statelet run by gombeen men, in financial thrall to England, which eventually gained a measure of independence as members of the European Community, but through greed and corruption ended up as the pawn of German Financiers

[Myles Na G.]

Perhaps Myles might like to inform us if he thinks the men of 1916, the war of independence, or the civil war would have settled for what they eventually ended up with.  A statelet run by gombeen men, in financial thrall to England, which eventually gained a measure of independence as members of the European Community, but through greed and corruption ended up as the pawn of German Financiers

I think that particular group of physical force republicans were wrong too and history has proven that to be the case. They set us on the course which resulted in Ireland being partitioned: how was that any sort of praiseworthy achievement? Political violence has never been the answer to the 'Irish question'. It took the provos 25 years to realise that. There are still some republicans who have yet to grasp the fact.

[lynchbhoy]

Perhaps Myles might like to inform us if he thinks the men of 1916, the war of independence, or the civil war would have settled for what they eventually ended up with.  A statelet run by gombeen men, in financial thrall to England, which eventually gained a measure of independence as members of the European Community, but through greed and corruption ended up as the pawn of German Financiers

I think that particular group of physical force republicans were wrong too and history has proven that to be the case. They set us on the course which resulted in Ireland being partitioned: how was that any sort of praiseworthy achievement? Political violence has never been the answer to the 'Irish question'. It took the provos 25 years to realise that. There are still some republicans who have yet to grasp the fact.

whoosh- its straight over your head.
though you dont want to acknowledge the truth.
Those chaps achieved what they were looking for. That young Rois hasnt a notion of what went before and she is only worried about money, work, boys, a dodgy car and Tyrone being sihte too often this summer proves that our people are living in a 'normal' world now, noe that was not afforded to them pre GFA and indeed pre 1968.

While it obv galls you to admit this, you know its the truth of the matter. your squirming shows this !

[Rois]

Those chaps achieved what they were looking for. That young Rois hasnt a notion of what went before and she is only worried about money, work, boys, a dodgy car and Tyrone being sihte too often this summer proves that our people are living in a 'normal' world now, noe that was not afforded to them pre GFA and indeed pre 1968.

While it obv galls you to admit this, you know its the truth of the matter. your squirming shows this !

[Gaaboardmod3]

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Thanks

[Nally Stand]

http://youtu.be/CVP0GcjXxaA

Video highlights of Camlough. Unbelievable crowds.

[Rois]

I watched through a good bit of that video there Nally Stand, to educate myself a bit better about who would attend that type of event.  Now I half wish I was at it!  Those re-enactments were a very good idea.  People there of all ages and from all walks of life.  There appeared to be an awful lot of organisation involved, and whilst Sinn Fein had an obvious footprint on it, I can see why people would argue that it isn't an SF event but rather a historical commemoration that belongs to everyone.     

[glens abu]

 The IRSP organisied one yesterday on the Falls Rd,also attended by those who would not go to the one in Camlough because of Sinn Fein involvement.I am sure Trout and his mates were at it.

[Nally Stand]

I watched through a good bit of that video there Nally Stand, to educate myself a bit better about who would attend that type of event.  Now I half wish I was at it!  Those re-enactments were a very good idea.  People there of all ages and from all walks of life.  There appeared to be an awful lot of organisation involved, and whilst Sinn Fein had an obvious footprint on it, I can see why people would argue that it isn't an SF event but rather a historical commemoration that belongs to everyone.     

Always next year Rois! lol Aye the re-enactments were definitely a very good idea (the acting on the other hand ...lol)