I still don’t understand how just because I am not from Ireland, my informed view on the subject is not valid. I do visit Ireland at least once a year, most years twice and have spoken to people in the North through my contacts who lived through the conflict. I have spoken to a man who at the age of 12 saw his dad get gunned down by the PIRA outside his front door because he worked for a company that was contracted by the RUC to provide some sort of early IT support. An absolutely evil crime by a bunch of murderers. Those of you who were here for the last confrontation we had about Ireland which almost got me banned may remember the bright young girl from Carrickfergus who came on and spoke in support of the Republican movement but very strongly against what I was saying. Well we are now good friends online and have agreed to spend a day in Belfast together next time I am over. She has put me in contact with many people involved in the Republican struggle, mainly peacefully, through the years, I believe I know what I am talking about. I may not be 100% right, but I am just speaking my mind!

Creaking Door: The Republican Movement is so much more than just the IRA. The British Army committed an atrocity on Bloody Sunday and on their hands is the blood of those civilians.

I really do think you are doing the opposite of what I am being criticised for doing, calling murders by the IRA awful but Bloody Sunday was an “accident” and trying to explain it by saying that it was a tense time!

I wonder if his blind devotion to/support of terrorist murderers freedom fighters would be so deep if Tenerife was being blown apart by car bombs, pub bombs or it’s citizens were being gunned down in sectarian tit-fer-tats…..

It would depend on the situation!

I am interested in your response to my question at #137. And I have another question. Why is your desire for something, which by any rational argument is unlikely to come about, so passionate, particularly as you can have no personal feelings for the history, only feelings based on what you have read and seen on film, and, correct me if I am wrong, never lived in either part of Ireland.

I completely disagree with your view that a United Ireland free from British rule is not likely to happen! I firmly believe that the island of Ireland will get its freedom one day. Of course it is not going to happen overnight and we still have along way to go a long struggle ahead but it will happen, whether the Brits are voted out or forced out at the point of a gun. For the record I would far rather the former!

EGPH, i really hope for your sake that you are simply trolling.
If not i fear you have some serious issues.
Pray tell how British army actions in Iraq and Afghanistan have any bearing on British Army actions in NI? The only possible link is if you have an issue with the British Armed Forces in general.
As a resident and presumably citizen of the UK, that is a strange and worrying standpoint.
Are you ex forces, discharged for some reason or did you attempt to join and fail to measure up? This is a serious question as i am attempting to understand your animosity, if indeed you are not simply trolling.
If this is not the reason please could you expand on the cause of your animosity?
…..
Final question do you consider hamas and it’s methods as legitimate?
You display all the charactaristics of those poor young chaps who are manipulated into blowing themselves up by “religious” preaching.

I am certainly not trolling but putting forward my view on Ireland, which is obviously not widely held round these parts. How do you feel I have “serious issues” I am interested!?

I am not ex forces and have never attempted to join the forces. Although I have friends who have family in the forces, including my partner. I am not fully against the British armed forces however I think that the way they treated the Irish people was despicable. Then again I am against the British being involved in Ireland at all so of course I do look at the British Army in Ireland in a bad light to start with. Bloody Sunday is the most infamous incident where the British Army went mad and shot civilians!

I do not know much about the Arab-Israel conflict so I would hate to make any comment on Hamas if you don’t mind!

Firstly, who is the ‘we’ that you refer to?
…..
You make an interesting point about the collateral damage incurred in Afghanistan. Some is undoubtedly caused by coalition forces, but how many more times do you see and hear of Taliban suicide bombers blowing up innocent Afghans? The comparison you are, deludedly, trying to make between Afghanistan and what you consider to be collateral damage during the ‘troubles’ is absolute nonsense. The majority of what you would refer to as collateral damage caused by the IRA/PIRA is in fact nothing of the sort. It even occurred in a different country. Your views, whilst no doubt passionately held, are one of the main stumbling blocks to peace in Northern Ireland. How many bombings carried out by the IRA/PIRA on the mainland alone were designed with no purpose other than to murder civilians?

You neatly avoided the point I made about the respectability and credibility of Martin McGuinness. Name just one other British MP convicted of the posession of 250 pounds of explosives and 5,000 rounds of ammunition? What on earth do you think he was going to do with them? You are hero worshipping murderers, would you apply the same hero worship to Derrick Bird, Myra Hyndley or Peter Sutcliffe? There is, was and can never be any justification whatsoever for the murder of innocent civilians by a prohibited terrorist organisation. You will never accept that.

Regards,

kev35

The “we” is the Irish Repubican movement.

I will not repeat myself again that I do not support any act of murder against uninvolved civilians whether it was the British Army, the UVF or the IRA! Yes I am aware that many civilians were killed by the IRA, my condolences to their families but you cannot hold that against the Irish Republican movement as a whole!!

I have a lot of respect for Martin McGuinness and do not care about any previous convictions he has! In the past he was forced to fight the British Army through circumstances and he led the Derry Brigade with great valour and distinction!

I do not support murderers like Derrick Bird et al…

Lindermyer: This is one of the aspects of the Troubles that I have never got to the bottom of how the relationship between the Republicans of Northern Ireland and the British Army broke down. Each side blames the other for initiating hostilities. However as an Irish Republican I believe the story that the British Army, whilst looking for IRA suspects invaded Catholic areas and had no respect for the residents of the areas carries a lot of truth. According to those who were there the Army broke into family homes wrecked the place whilst executing a warrant and left the place dirty and untidy with children cowering in the corners. This led the residents to start distrusting the Army and this led to a downward spiral!

I suppose protecting his kiddy-fiddling relative from justice and making sure that he has a nice comfortable living might make some of us feel that one at least of your elders is less respectable than nearly all politicians – duck islands and moat refurbishment are hardly on the same scale.

Moggy

The full story behind that incident is not fully known and Gerry Adams has clearly stated that he did not know about his brother rejoining Sinn Fein, no one knows the truth! Even if he did protect his brother Liam, he would not be the first to protect a family member from the police for serious charges, it happens very often all over the world.

Your comment regarding sacrifice does you no favours at all. Look at the number of civilians killed by the IRA/PIRA and compare that to the casualties within the British Army. As others have said and you fail to appreciate, the indiscriminate murder and wounding of hundreds of innocent civilians marks the perpetrators as terrorists not freedom fighters. Was the murder of Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball in the Warrington bombing justified or justifiable? Did the deaths of two boys aged three and twelve do anything to help the cause? What was the purpose of the PIRA’s coded warning of a bomb in Liverpool when the bomb was actually placed in Warrington?

I have stated many many times that I am in no way supporting the murder of innocent civilians. In 1969 the Republican movement were being pushed into a corner by Loyalists. Do we sit down and let our people and movement by ripped apart by loyalists or do we give them some of their own medicine!! Yes innocent civilians get stuck in the middle but the British Army have killed many civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s all the collateral damage. Any attacks where innocent civilians were targeted specifically absolutely appal me whoever the perpetrators.

I guess you can post inflammatory ‘language’ in an attempt to provoke other members by glorifying IRA/PIRA acts while also expressing your apparent delight in losses suffered by the British Army, but accuse someone of talking utter “rowlocks” and add a wee “Don’t Feed” image and that post gets whipped away….

I will reiterate that I am not easily offended and am used to being called every name under the sun even by my partner before we agreed to leave that topic of the agenda for the good of our great relationship!

If the mods want to be a bit more liberal vis a vis attacks on me they can, I will PM a mod if a member crosses the line, though my line is somewhere in the distance! Though I understand the site has guidelines on personal attacks

Exactly who are you intending to ‘kick out’ of Ireland?

The British government.

EGPH is clearly an idealist but I wonder if he has considered the reality of a ‘united Ireland’? …….
……..
Could the very limited security forces of the Republic of Ireland cope with any such terrorist threat from Loyalists? Could the Republic of Ireland afford the cost of additional security measures?

If the United Kingdom agreed to a United Ireland and the British effectively disowned the loyalist community if they turned to violence, it is possible. If you love Britain so much, move here. I would love to move to Ireland as even though I have no Irish blood in me I do feel an affinity to it, a bit like some English people I know that live in Scotland despite having no links to the country but love it!

A United Ireland can work if loyalists are treated fairly and with respect they deserve if they do not resort to violence. I would be appalled if a United Ireland happened and loyalists were deliberately made to feel unwelcome. Ireland is for all its citizens that wish to live there and certainly the English language wouldn’t go anywhere.

This is a long enough post as it is (sorry mods) and what a United Ireland would mean in practice is another debate I would love to have but not in this post

Your memory serves you correctly, I did mean to add that to one of my posts but forgot to add it thanks for bringing that up!

IE in simple language…historically ireland never was 1 nation

What complete and utter tripe, whoever wrote that article has simply been selective about where history starts if you go back far enough you will find that the British invaded, no question about it!!

There you go again forgetting the teentzy weentzy democracy thing vis a vis what the majority of ulster residents wish for 😉

edit…I am not that bothered myself,but it is a complicated issue.
The whole religious thing just makes me laugh,there is no real difference between any irish residents…as some of us have alluded to previously – it is a power trip for certain people.

Yes the majority of residents in the 6 counties do wish to retain the union with the UK. What I am worried about is that Britain has made it that way by first sending scores of Protestant people mainly from Scotland to settle in the north of Ireland and remove the Catholic landowners there by force. Fast forward to 1921 and the British could have kept the 9 counties of Ulster (N.I plus Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal) but that would have meant a slight Republican majority so they split up Ulster into the maximum amount of land they could keep whilst still having their majority. The overwhelming majority that loyalists have in Belfast and the surrounding area and the sizeable community in Derry means that they could include Fermanagh and Tyrone, two very Republican counties but with very little population wise. So yes, democratically a slight majority want to keep the union but Britain has got away with carving a foreign land so that it suits their political view.

I also have to disagree with the view that the conflict in Ireland is between two religious groups. Yes you have the Protestants and the Catholics but I choose to view the situation as more about Brits (Protestants) and Irish (Catholics). That way the British government can argue that the conflict in Ireland is a religious one between two sets of people from the island of Ireland and they are just interested in keeping the peace, so they went in in 1969 to keep the peace. In reality the “Protestants” are people who owe their allegiance to Britain and have a hatred for anything Irish. The “Catholics” are people who owe their allegiance to Ireland, the island they live on!! However this view would highlight the fact that Britain simply cannot be seen as a neutral peacekeeper in Ireland EVER!!

Bob: I am actually amused you think I am a troll instead of an Irish sympathiser putting forward a different view from the one you hold. If you dislike me or my views you can simply choose not to open this thread. Of course I would love for people to stay and debate Ireland with me, I do enjoy it however people are more than welcome to ignore me if they find my views repulsive.