Originally Posted by Onetap

Originally Posted by Punch

Perhaps you know of another incident?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1920)

Thanks for that One Tap (1920, not 1921 as Irl Sgt says - significance is that there were so many atrocities on all sides that they all seem to blend somehow into one confusing dung-heap that is interpreted by every 100 people into 150 different perceptions).

So it seems that there was oppression. Some people fought back, and were killed/saw their houses burned down/otherwise repressed. This "radicalised" more people who were previously neutral or uninterested. Repeat this cycle for 200 years and you end up with majority support for a change in the status quo. Each individual act of violence achieved nothing. The subsequent suppression creates an atmosphere in which support for the violent becomes more and more normal.

As I heard someone say once, "In the days before the Revolution, the Revolutionaries are a minority". How convenient it must be if your enemies help you by creating more and more revolutionaries.

Originally Posted by Onetap

I knew people who lived there. The PIRA was around, but it was just the extremist fanatics. After Bloody Sunday there were queues to join it. The adherents of non-violence had lost all credibility.

I'm not going to argue with anything in your post but I would like to say that a lot of Catholics didn't actually want to be involved with the IRA but genuinely felt their choices were so limited there wasn't really any other options.
In some areas recruitment wasn't particularly voluntary either.

Originally Posted by irlsgt

Spot the differences between the massacres we both put forward....

the ones I posted where carried out by soldiers in uniform on unarmed civilians

the ones you posted where carried out by terrorists

That wasn't the point of my post.
I am interested to know, and am very unlikely to find out, if the atrocities I mentioned had any effect on recruitment for the groups responsible.

But to pick up on your comment, weren't the attacks carried out by members of organisations who considered themselves 'soldiers' working as part of an 'army' ?

Also, as per your post, these bombings targeted unarmed civilians.

Originally Posted by Onetap

Originally Posted by rickshaw-major

First bold - correct. You haven't a clue.

Second bold. The IRA had never gone away since and this showed itself in various attacks and campaigns e.g the Border Campaign. The Officials called a ceasefire in 1972. PIRA already existed and the wiki piece you read on the thirty year campaign is about 70% correct and 30% bollox. PIRA were militarily defeated by 1975 but the Gobment did not have the cojones to terminate every fecker on the Terrorist Grouping Summary.

The Border Campaign had less effect than a bubbly fart and fizzled out sometime.

Re Wikipedia, you are right; every unemployed moron edits the bits they are emotionally involved in (American War of Independence, Israel, etc).
The bits I referred to have some uncontroversial facts. I haven't read anything in Wikipedia or elsewhere about the 'thirty year campaign'. I write only of what I know.

I knew people who lived there. The PIRA was around, but it was just the extremist fanatics. After Bloody Sunday there were queues to join it. The adherents of non-violence had lost all credibility.

Any idea why? I'll give you a hint - the Southern Irish Gobment has always been more afraid of Sinn Fein than the British Gobment. They interned the entire leadership without trial!

PS - there are a lot of people on here who were there and understand quite a bit about the situation so here is a sweetener for you. The British Army opposed Op Demetrius and viewed it as counter productive.

Most of the Catholic Population did not support the Officials because they were becoming Marxists and the Church was not that keen on Marxists in Catholic Ireland. The Officials also realised that an armed campaign was going nowhere.

I think the relationship between Ireland and England has always been strained (historically).

Most Irish always saw the English as the invader. Generation after generation started rebellions against English/British rule. (I use English as it was us who ruled Ireland until the act of Union) This did not happen to the same extent in Scotland or Wales. This Irish always, as they continue to do, see themselves as different to us.

The more recent (historically speaking: past 120 years or so) Irish rebellions for independence are not a recent phenomena.

To give you an example of how frequent the Irish organised military rebellions against British rule, I did a little research. This only includes the struggles for independence from 1534 onwards:

1534 - Silken Thomas Rebellion
1569-73 - First Desmond Rebellion
1579-83 – Second Desmond Rebellion
1594-1603 – Nine Years War
1641 - Rebellion
1642-52 – Confederate War
1798 – United Irish Rebellion
1803 – Dublin Rebellion
1804 –Castle Hill Rebellion, Canada
1848 - Ballingarry
1866-71 – Fenian Rising. Raids, Canada
1867 – Fenian Rising, Ireland and Britain
1916 – Easter Rising, Dublin
1919-22 – War of Independence

The Easter rebellion in 1916 was just following a line of previous rebellions to rid Ireland of us, the foreigner. Even today Irish people when heading to the UK (excl NI) for shopping, holiday, business or whatever, refer to it as ‘going abroad’. This is not meant cynically, it’s just the way they see it.

Now that we have no influence over Irish affairs, the relationship between the UK and Ireland has never been better in the history between both countries. While the Irish enjoy to dish us, and we them, there is a bond, as a result of our bloody history, that binds us. Look at the 250,000 plus Irishmen that helped us out during the First World War, albeit doing so to secure ‘Home Rule.

And in the Second World War over 80,000 southern Irishmen, having secured full independance, joined up to help fight Gerry. More then joined up from 'loyal' Ulster!

I think what one old farmer said in the south of Ireland when asked at the height of WW2 who he would like to see win, sums up Irish attitudes to the UK, more so at this time, 20 odd years after the War of Independance.

He answered: Oh Britain of course... but I’d like to see them almost beat’.

Originally Posted by Cabbage_man

I think the relationship between Ireland and England has always been strained. Most Irish always saw the English as the invader. Generation after generation started rebellions against English/British rule. (I use English as it was us who rule initially before the act of Union) This did not happen to the same extent as in Scotland or Wales. This Irish always, as they continue to do, see themselves as different.

The recent (past 120 years or so) Irish fights for independence are not a recent phenomena.

To give you an example of how frequent they organised military rebellions I did a little research. This only includes the struggles for independence from 1534 onwards:

1534 - Silken Thomas Rebellion
1569-73 - First Desmond Rebellion
1579-83 – Second Desmond Rebellion
1594-1603 – Nine Years War
1641 - Rebellion
1642-52 – Confederate War
1798 – United Irish Rebellion
1803 – Dublin Rebellion
1804 –Castle Hill Rebellion, Canada
1848 - Ballingarry
1866-71 – Fenian Rising. Raids, Canada
1867 – Fenian Rising, Ireland and Britain
1916 – Easter Rising, Dublin
1919-22 – War of Independence

The Easter rebellion in 1916 was just following in another line of rebellions to rid us, the foreigner. Even today Irish people when heading to the UK (excl NI) for shopping, holiday, business or whatever, refer to it as ‘going abroad’. This is not meant cynically, it’s just the way they see it.

Now we have no influence over Irish affairs, the relationship between the UK and Ireland has never been better in the history between both countries. While the Irish to dish us, and we them, there is a bond, as a result of our bloody history, that binds us. Look at the 250,000 plus Irish men that helped us out during the First World War, albeit the majority of these doing so to secure ‘Home Rule.

And in the Second World War over 80,000 southern Irishmen joined up to help fight Gerry. More then joined up from 'loyal' Ulster!

I think what one old farmer in the south of Ireland asked at the height of WW2 who he would like to see win, sums up Irish attitudes to the UK.

He answered: Oh Britain of course... but I’d like to see them almost beat’.

ANd what about Ulsters contribution to the 1st and 2nd world war, what about the 36th Ulster Divison, what about the battle for the Atlantic. Its Ironic but when ever the subject of northern ireland is brought up the million odd unionists that live here are forgotten about

Well it did in a round about way gie us the tales of "Stumpy" so I guess it wasnt a total waste then?

Junder, I do not think it’s that the unionists are forgotten. It’s just the fact that nationalists did fight in our armed forces, is more remarkable, seen as they were from a different outlook/tradition/nationality etc.

Conscription was not introduced into NI during WW2 unlike the rest of Britain. The reason for this was about 42% of the pop. were nationalist/republican and it would have caused more problems than it was worth to implement. Ireland (south) was independent at this stage, yet more southern Irish joined up to fight with British forces than NI unionists, despite unionists being the loyal section of NI society. This is a fact. I am not pointing this out to get anyone’s blood up; it’s just that facts such as these are often overlooked.

However I for one have never forgotten the contribution of the people of NI during the war effort, and perhaps they are not given the credit they are due.

Perhaps for many in Britain, the troubled past 40yrs in NI has somehow overshadowed its past contributions. For the brave men that fought and died, this is a shame.

Originally Posted by Punch

Not sure about Bloody Sunday 1921 being carried out by soldiers in uniform? Was this not the very well organised killing of Special Branch and other police officers by Michael Collin's men.
In the presence of their families in some cases by the way - in the time-honoured tradition of Irish terrorism - while still a-bed.
Perhaps you know of another incident?

You are correct, there were 2 incidents.....

the one I was refering to was the Auxilaries opening firing on a unarmed crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, killing 14 civilians

but of course this was in response to Collin's squad killing 13 members of the British intelligence organisation that morning.


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