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Did Irish Republican violence ever achieve anything?

Not "reality" Stonker, an error encouraged by Republican propaganda of the mid 1960's.
All businesses whether Jew, Catholic,, Hindu, Protestant, or Agnostic, had a local government vote for each LG district in which they paid rates for premises - to a maximum of two votes I believe. This was a system just recently (early 1960's?) discontinued in the rest of the UK and due to be ended in NI as well. It seemed fair when introduced a century before - if you pay taxes you have a vote.
Every adult had one vote in local, NI Government, and Westminster elections regardless of religion and whether employed or not (what a silly notion by the way- or perhaps not - should we adopt such a system today?)
 
Basically it turned the British Army into the finest COIN urban trained force in the world.Then the politicos sent them to fight the Falklands War. :cry: No yellow card,no training :cry: So lots of bodies,achieved by DS & government-useless barstewards all.
 
flamingo said:
rickshaw-major said:
flamingo said:
jagman said:
If I read that right, he is trying to insinute that the dastardly British encouraged "the troubles" to continue for some unknown purpose and could have put an end to it pretty much at any time?

Am interesting and somewhat bizarre notion.

My reading of it is more the c***-up than conspiracy theory, in that there was a lack of co-operation between agencies, and a failure to look at the big picture. The wish for short-term results by individual's & small-unit internal politics may have had the opposite effect than was wished for or required.

It's an idea. :?

Why do you assume there was a lack of cooperation between agencies? Penetration there was but exploiting it is difficult because of the insistence that we treated the terrorists as criminals with the associated legals rights, burden of proof etc.

Sounds easy but is very difficult in practice.

I'm not saying anything. I was posting an article that says that from a journalist that has in the past been very anti-PIRA, and was wondering if other ARRSERS who might have experience of the situation as it was, would agree or disagree with his premise. It seemed an interesting argument, and the first time I have seen it put so forcefully and succinctly. The example he gives, (if true) concerning a hit-squad all of whom were in the employ of British agencies, none of who knew the others were, is hardly an example of the insistence of giving criminals their rights.

Anyway, to reiterate, I'm personally not agreeing or disagreeing with him, I just was wondering what comments other ARRSERS might have on the subject.

Hmmm - how would they have known each other were touts? They were hardly going to introduce themselves to each other now were they. :twisted:

If we had treated the situation differently e.g. taken the Terrorist Grouping Summary and topped the lot can you imagine the screams if righteous indignation? Particularly with bodies turning up in Donegal :police:
 
Been an excellent thread with lots to think about. From the perspective of someone who has read widely about NI I think that there is some truth in the article posted by flamingo.

In the end the British won the intelligence war and it convinced the PIRA that to continue with violence was a loosing game. There was more to be gained by the political process.

As an aside, I met Peter Wright a few years before he published "Spycatcher". When the British Government tried to stop the publication I had several long conversations with him about the book.

One of the things he was accused of was of being disloyal. Something he took very hard as he didn't think the book was anything of the kind. He mentioned that he had been with MI5 in NI and that if he had wanted to be disloyal or bring the government down, he would have written about that.

He never did write about that or tell me what he did apart from saying that their activities were way outside of any legal process. Shortly after he had a stroke and died not long afterwards.
 
BaronBoy said:
Been an excellent thread with lots to think about. From the perspective of someone who has read widely about NI I think that there is some truth in the article posted by flamingo.

In the end the British won the intelligence war and it convinced the PIRA that to continue with violence was a loosing game. There was more to be gained by the political process.

As an aside, I met Peter Wright a few years before he published "Spycatcher". When the British Government tried to stop the publication I had several long conversations with him about the book.

One of the things he was accused of was of being disloyal. Something he took very hard as he didn't think the book was anything of the kind. He mentioned that he had been with MI5 in NI and that if he had wanted to be disloyal or bring the government down, he would have written about that.

He never did write about that or tell me what he did apart from saying that their activities were way outside of any legal process. Shortly after he had a stroke and died not long afterwards.
I agree, BaronBoy, in fact I believe that there's a whole lot more to the story than in Flamingo's post. But of course, we'll never know, will we?

Now, what you wrote about Peter Wright is also very interesting indeed. So he had a stroke and died shortly afterwards, eh?. Hmmmm.

I feel a conspiracy theory coming on.

MsG
 
irlsgt said:
Of course it wasn't limited to Brit -v- paddy... there was also Free State -v- Republician violence, for example ....

Ballyseedy - Free State troops tied 9 republician prisoners to a landmine, detonated it and then machine gunned the survivors

And there was the infamous incident in West Cork when the Free Staters stole all the chickens. That hasn't been forgiven or forgotten either...

Bugsy said:
I believe to this day that if the British Army had banned the RUC from the streets, disbanded the B Specials and enforced emergency powers, while at the same time installing a temporary military gobment to examine and improve the human rights position of the Catholics, and at the same time, sidelining Stormont completely, the whole thing would've/could've been done and dusted by (at the latest) 1973. But that's not what happened.

It almost was "done and dusted" by 1973, does anyone remember the abortive Sunningdale Agreement? This was stymied by the Ulster Workers' Council strike. However it was so similar to the eventual Good Friday agreement of the 90s that one SDLP politician (Seamus Mallon afair) referred to the later agreement as "Sunningdale for slow learners".
 
As an aside, I met Peter Wright a few years before he published "Spycatcher". When the British Government tried to stop the publication I had several long conversations with him about the book.

One of the things he was accused of was of being disloyal. Something he took very hard as he didn't think the book was anything of the kind. He mentioned that he had been with MI5 in NI and that if he had wanted to be disloyal or bring the government down, he would have written about that.

He never did write about that or tell me what he did apart from saying that their activities were way outside of any legal process. Shortly after he had a stroke and died not long afterwards.[/quote]

Peter Wright joined MI5 in 1955 after working part time for some time and retired in 1976, at a time when the security service did not even have a counter terrorism branch and only one liason officer in the province stationed at Knock road. Even though MI5 operated against the IRA outside Ulster, inteligence in the province was carried out by the RUC SB and the military.In fact the service did not take a lead role in Northern Ireland inteligence gathering until October 2007, so I think Mr Wright,s memories may be a little wrong,

Ref "Defence of the Realm"
 
Bugsy, the stroke came after the huge pressure he was put under during the trial to prevent the publication of the book. I am sure the conspiracy theorists can have a field day with it but there was nothing in the book to justify such a reaction from the government. Wright maintained that everything in the book had already been published in one form or another.

Tropper, you may be right. All I remember of it was that he was quite vehement about the role he had played in NI. I can recall in one book about the place that there had been quite a turf war between the intelligence services in the early years. Perhaps MI5 had something there under the counter, who knows?
 
rickshaw-major said:
Hmmm - how would they have known each other were touts? They were hardly going to introduce themselves to each other now were they. :twisted:

If we had treated the situation differently e.g. taken the Terrorist Grouping Summary and topped the lot can you imagine the screams if righteous indignation? Particularly with bodies turning up in Donegal :police:

Isn't that what their liaison officers / oversight were for? I'm an amateur in this, I'm just wondering 1. If it was happening again have any lessons been learnt? and 2. In hindsight, did everybody whose job it was to lessen the impact of the terrorists do their job to the best of their ability?

edited to correct typing after several pints watching the rugby.
 
flamingo said:
rickshaw-major said:
Hmmm - how would they have known each other were touts? They were hardly going to introduce themselves to each other now were they. :twisted:

If we had treated the situation differently e.g. taken the Terrorist Grouping Summary and topped the lot can you imagine the screams if righteous indignation? Particularly with bodies turning up in Donegal :police:

Isn't that what their liaison officers / oversight were for? I'm an amateur in this, I'm just wondering 1. If it was happening again have any lessons been learnt? and 2. In hindsight, did everybody whose job it was to lessen the impact of the terrorists do their job to the best of their ability?

edited to correct typing after several pints watching the rugby.

I meant how would the terrorists know each other were touts :roll:

Of course nobody ever thought to have a single control point to process all of the information - no really nobody ever did. Not even the people in the TCG, SB and Army.

Nobody.

Ever

Or the author of the piece could be talking a load of bollox 8)

www.serve.com/~pfc/fru/fru12022k1d.html

Edited one for a local brandy haye
 
"Did Irish Republican violence ever achieve anything?"

i'd say it probably improved my wanking techniques whilst beating the meat in sangars all over Northern Ireland.
 
rickshaw-major said:
flamingo said:
rickshaw-major said:
Hmmm - how would they have known each other were touts? They were hardly going to introduce themselves to each other now were they. :twisted:

If we had treated the situation differently e.g. taken the Terrorist Grouping Summary and topped the lot can you imagine the screams if righteous indignation? Particularly with bodies turning up in Donegal :police:

Isn't that what their liaison officers / oversight were for? I'm an amateur in this, I'm just wondering 1. If it was happening again have any lessons been learnt? and 2. In hindsight, did everybody whose job it was to lessen the impact of the terrorists do their job to the best of their ability?

edited to correct typing after several pints watching the rugby.

I meant how would the terrorists know each other were touts :roll:

Of course nobody ever thought to have a single control point to process all of the information - no really nobody ever did. Not even the people in the TCG, SB and Army.

Nobody.

Ever

Or the author of the piece could be talking a load of bollox 8)

www.serve.com/~pfc/fru/fru12022k1d.html

Edited one for a local brandy haye

Most of the writings on this period which are available to us the proletariat, are a mixture of truth (very limited generally), fiction, exaggeration, ego-trips, dis-information, deliberate malice, and commercial enterprise. Most of the "truth" will never be known. We can of course speculate to our hearts content - it keeps we older people occupied in the evenings after all!

Our individual little parts in the period are of course known and real to us - but we will never know the detail of the larger picture.
 
scanmanski said:
"Did Irish Republican violence ever achieve anything?"

i'd say it probably improved my wanking techniques whilst beating the meat in sangars all over Northern Ireland.

Hard work on cov's :oops: ,but attainable only at night :safe:
 
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