30 years ago today....

Fratton Fred

murf313 wrote: »

and why was he in prison...???

I'm sorry, but you obviously expect me to give a ****.

The IRA were a terrorist organisation. They have no right to any sort of moral highground because they decided to kill people in cold blood, many of whom were innocent ordinary men, women and children.

lugha

gargleblaster wrote: »

mandela did. i wonder if we'll see people calling him a 'dead terrorist' once he passes on.

Terrorist or not isn't the issue (you'll just get the "one man's freedom fighter" line if you trot that one out). The PIRA did not have the authority from the people who they claimed to represent (i.e. all Irish people). And neither did the loyalists BTW. This is self evidently a minimum requirement if you are going to use physical force. Mandela did have this authority.

K-9

lugha wrote: »

I remember seeing lots of posters of Margaret Thatcher with "Wanted for Murder" plastered on them. Despite being rather republican minded at that time I thought that was a bit daft.

They under estimated Maggie big time.

Sunnyisland

K-9 wrote: »

They under estimated Maggie big time.

The British press hailed the hunger strike as a triumph for Thatcher, with The Guardian newspaper stating "The Government had overcome the hunger strikes by a show of resolute determination not to be bullied".[43] However, the hunger strike was a Pyrrhic victory for Thatcher and the British government.[44] Thatcher became a republican hate figure of Cromwellian proportions, with Danny Morrison describing her as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".[44] There was extensive international condemnation of the British government's handling of the hunger strike, and the relationship between the British and Irish governments was strained.[2] As with internment in 1971 and Bloody Sunday in 1972, IRA recruitment was boosted, resulting in a new surge of paramilitary activity.[44] There was an upsurge of violence after the comparatively quiet years of the late 1970s, with widespread civil disorder in Northern Ireland and rioting outside the British Embassy in Dublin.[1] Security forces fired 29,695 plastic bullets in 1981, causing seven deaths, compared to a total of around 16,000 bullets and four deaths in the eight years following the hunger strikes///

I would think the british government especially thatcher underestimated the support the hunger strikers had, 2 of them were elected to the dail.

Fratton Fred

I don't think thatcher underestimated the hunger strikers at all. The trouble she had was that the feeling in the majority if the UK was let them die.

I think her plan was to make a point by letting the leader die, then reach a compromise to prevent further loss of life. She got out maneuvered by the IRA though. It was cold hearted and callous, but staggering the hunger strikes so a man a week was dieing and publicly letting thatcher take the blame was a stroke of genius and to an extent was the beginning of the political approach to a resolution.

K-9

realies wrote: »

The British press hailed the hunger strike as a triumph for Thatcher, with The Guardian newspaper stating "The Government had overcome the hunger strikes by a show of resolute determination not to be bullied".[43] However, the hunger strike was a Pyrrhic victory for Thatcher and the British government.[44] Thatcher became a republican hate figure of Cromwellian proportions, with Danny Morrison describing her as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".[44] There was extensive international condemnation of the British government's handling of the hunger strike, and the relationship between the British and Irish governments was strained.[2] As with internment in 1971 and Bloody Sunday in 1972, IRA recruitment was boosted, resulting in a new surge of paramilitary activity.[44] There was an upsurge of violence after the comparatively quiet years of the late 1970s, with widespread civil disorder in Northern Ireland and rioting outside the British Embassy in Dublin.[1] Security forces fired 29,695 plastic bullets in 1981, causing seven deaths, compared to a total of around 16,000 bullets and four deaths in the eight years following the hunger strikes///

I would think the british government especially thatcher underestimated the support the hunger strikers had, 2 of them were elected to the dail.

Probably. They thought Maggie would have capitulated though, the futility of the strike was one of the reasons for ending it.

Wolfe Tone

Many people, myself included, tend to focus on Bobby Sands, and somewhat leave out the fact that 9 other men died, and many others were on hunger strike too, before being called off it for various reasons.


I know the Wolfe Tones are not everyones cup of tea, but whenever I think of the hungerstrikers this ballad always comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybcgc8BQlQQ

El Siglo

Fratton Fred wrote: »

I don't think thatcher underestimated the hunger strikers at all. The trouble she had was that the feeling in the majority if the UK was let them die.

I think her plan was to make a point by letting the leader die, then reach a compromise to prevent further loss of life. She got out maneuvered by the IRA though. It was cold hearted and callous, but staggering the hunger strikes so a man a week was dieing and publicly letting thatcher take the blame was a stroke of genius and to an extent was the beginning of the political approach to a resolution.

It's amazing how it had to even go to those lengths to reach some level of compromise. Sands' death caused huge uproar globally. As "cold hearted and callous" in your assertion of the IRAs actions, Thatcher was even worse.

Pherekydes

Yisroel Handsome Preschooler wrote: »

Ok, well I was only in my teens at the time. However growing up in Ballymun...

Cheers for that. I grew up around the corner in Santry and I can't recall any of that, though I was probably away in the other army for much of it. We also had refugees from Belfast living next door to us, though ours were Protestants.

murf313

Fratton Fred wrote: »

I'm sorry, but you obviously expect me to give a ****.

The IRA were a terrorist organisation. They have no right to any sort of moral highground because they decided to kill people in cold blood, many of whom were innocent ordinary men, women and children.

Yeah and the brits never killed any innocent men women and children in their 800 odd years of oppresion.... not just in Ireland but the rest of their "empire".

OSI

OSI wrote: »

Never understood the heroic status bestowed upon the hunger strikers.

They saved nobodies lives, they achieved nothing great. They just died because they thought they should be classified as Political Prisoners rather than the criminals they were. By the same vein I could hold up a bank, and then demand political status as I was doing it out of opposition to the government.

id nearly go as far as highly commending you for doing such a thing

Fratton Fred

murf313 wrote: »

Yeah and the brits never killed any innocent men women and children in their 800 odd years of oppresion.... not just in Ireland but the rest of their "empire".

Blah blah blah.

mickydoomsux

murf313 wrote: »

Yeah and the brits never killed any innocent men women and children in their 800 odd years of oppresion.... not just in Ireland but the rest of their "empire".

Oh, so that how it works.

So how many children were the 'Ra allowed to kill for every child the Brits killed? Was it a 1:1 ratio?

RMD

murf313 wrote: »

Yeah and the brits never killed any innocent men women and children in their 800 odd years of oppresion.... not just in Ireland but the rest of their "empire".

Nobody ever said the Brits were good, it's safe to say the vast majority of Ireland see's the British army's action as nothing less than oppression. The IRA though on the other hand, are held up on some notch or nobleness when the end of the day they slaughtered hundred innocent civilians including 300 Catholics who they were supposedly representing.

Both sides of the political spectrum who took part in un-neccesary violence are pure and utter murdering scum, whether it was the perpetrators of Bloody Sunday or Blood Friday, the Dublin bombers or the Omagh bombers. All involved were scum of the lowest order.

Wibbs

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

I don't think there is a difference, in fact I think it is completely irrelevant that both men took different paths to arrive at the same conclusion. Both men decided their ends would be best served by going on hunger strike as a form of peaceful protest against British rule, that is all that matters when discussing the rights and wrongs of hunger striking.

If people want to criticise Sands' past in the IRA then that is fine, but in my mind it is ridiculous for them to then also condemn his gesture of peaceful protest whilst praising another man who did the same.

To my mind there is a difference and it's a simple one. Gandhi had a choice to take up arms against the oppressor or seek peaceful means. He consistently chose the latter. Sands and the other men chose the route of hunger strike because they had no choice due to circumstance(imprisonment). Of course we can never be sure of what's in anothers soul, but I'm fairly confident the majority of them would have preferred the armalite to starvation if they had had the choice. While Gandhi himself has some issues around certain aspects of his morality he's a different animal to the hunger strikers in that respect.

Badgermonkey

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

I know the Wolfe Tones are not everyones cup of tea, but whenever I think of the hungerstrikers this ballad always comes to mind:

Spare us the Wolfe Tones please or I'll post some Richie Kavanagh.

De Chastelain should have ensured their instruments were put beyond use, Jesus.

flas

seamus wrote: »

What war?

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. From the British POV these are nothing more than terrorist seperatists and they never were. Hence there's no reason why they were due to be treated any differently to any other citizen of the state who'd been found guilty of a crime.

My real problem here is the portrayal of these people as heroes. What did the IRA achieve in their 30-odd year campaign of murder and terrorism? Zilch. Absolutely nothing.
Thousands died and at the end of the day, there was no surrender, there was no submission. At the end of the day, they stuck their arses on seats, feet under the table, and talking sealed the deal. Peaceful protest and discussion.
The true tragedy here is as Makikomi has painted it out - the misplaced loyalty, suffering and subsequent death of these hungers strikers served to reignite ignorant support behind the IRA and result in thousands of needless deaths which could have been prevented if they'd turned to peaceful and political methods of conflict instead of taking up arms.

from the british POV as you put it, this republic was set up by a group of terrorist seperatists.if anyone truely believes that the good friday agreement woud have come about without the 30 years of bloodshed that proceeded it then they are deluded. the talks started so the bullets would stop. catholics in the 6 counties now have the same civil rights as protestants, the same chance in life and are not discriminated against in every day life. none of this would have been possible without the spark of the troubles.

SafeSurfer

Yisroel Handsome Preschooler wrote: »

Ok, I'm really reluctant to get too deeply into this..

How much different were those times?.

Remember both lived under British oppression - when Sand was born, and at the time when he got involved in republican activities Catholic Irish men and women were denied basic civil rights - neither Sands 'nor Barry were eligiable to vote, couldn't hold public office, couldn't serve in the public or civil service.. Were denied trial by juries - simply because of their religion, nationality and their oppressive governments.

Just in the interests of keeping it factual.
Universal suffrage was granted in the UK in 1918 to men over 18 and women over 30. The Irish free state applied equal franchise rights to men and women in 1921.
Kevin Barry was eligible to vote.
Bobby Sands would have turned 18 in 1972 and would have been entitled to vote in N. Ireland.

Bobby Sands' sister Bernadette Mc Kevitt along with her husband Michael helped found the 32 Sovereignty movemnet, accused of invlovemnet with republican dissidents the Real IRA.
She said of her brother

"Bobby did not die for cross-border bodies with executive powers. He did not die for nationalists to be equal British citizens within the Northern Ireland state."

Gerry Adams claimed that the only mandate the PIRA needed was the presence of British troops in the 6 counties. Something the dissidents would agree with today.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Pherekydes wrote: »

Cheers for that. I grew up around the corner in Santry and I can't recall any of that, though I was probably away in the other army for much of it. We also had refugees from Belfast living next door to us, though ours were Protestants.

Living in Santry in the 70's and 80's was a far cry from living in Ballymun.. You remember the low wall between Santry and Shangan Rd?..

We called it 'The Berlin Wall' because it separated what we referred to as the posh middle class neighbours in ''the purchased houses'' from us in the flats..

Were you could attend the Lady's of Victory's school, and join the credit union down there - we couldn't.

We couldn't go to teen disco's in Victory's, or walk past the lights at the ESB junction on the Ballymun main road without being turned around the the cops or ran out of the area by the 'grown ups.

So yea, I'm not really surprised you have N.I. prods neighbours - as I said earlier, the catholics were housed first in army camps - then in area's like Ballymun and Finglas.

Trust me, your not comparing like with like when you talk about Santry and Ballymun in the 70's and 80's.

nlgbbbblth

Fratton Fred wrote: »

The IRA were a terrorist organisation. They have no right to any sort of moral highground because they decided to kill people in cold blood, many of whom were innocent ordinary men, women and children.

what about the rest of them? The non-innocent ones.

gigino

I do not hero-worship those who bomb and disfigure women and children, or those who shoot retired people in the back.

Real heros are those of all religions and none who strived to do a decent days work and be law abiding citizens. There were many catholics in n. ireland who done just that.

KeithAFC

Sands was a religious person too. He believed in god. So was not afraid to die as he knew he would meet god.

gigino

nlgbbbblth wrote: »

what about the rest of them? The non-innocent ones.

You mean who they "thought" were not "innocent"...like poor mother of ten Jean McConville ?

Fratton Fred

gigino wrote: »

I do not hero-worship those who bomb and disfigure women and children, or those who shoot retired people in the back.

Real heros are those of all religions and none who strived to do a decent days work and be law abiding citizens. There were many catholics in n. ireland who done just that.

I have a very good friend from Belfast. Her father worked on the markets and often received threats. Her mother would get phone calls telling her that her husband had been killed. Her best friends dad was in the RUC and he was shot. They couldn't workout who got him because he was a catholic. Apparently catholic chief inspectors were hated by both sides.

My friends brother was beaten up for being a catholic, badly. When he recovered, they tried to recruit him, but he told them to **** off. He got beaten up again. All the family wanted to do was get on with their lives, but apparently they had to choose sides.

A week later, Andrea left for London and didn't return for ten years.

Fratton Fred

nlgbbbblth wrote: »

what about the rest of them? The non-innocent ones.

What about them?

Endymion

Seaneh wrote: »

Does the same apply to Nelson Mandella? Or other people in the world who fought back against oppression and denial of human rights when peaceful protests were met with violence?

yes

cc4life

gigino wrote: »

I do not hero-worship those who bomb and disfigure women and children, or those who shoot retired people in the back.

Real heros are those of all religions and none who strived to do a decent days work and be law abiding citizens. There were many catholics in n. ireland who done just that.

Law abiding citizens? the ones who dont question the awful hand that has been delt to them and just put up with it..real heroes alright

Badgermonkey

KeithAFC wrote: »

Sands was a religious person too. He believed in god. So was not afraid to die as he knew he would meet god.

Can we just stick to one deluded ideology at a time Keith, I can't multitask.

RMD

cc4life wrote: »

Law abiding citizens? the ones who dont question the awful hand that has been delt to them and just put up with it..real heroes alright

I suppose the real heroes bomb, maim and kill innocent civilians? Even those they're supposedly representing? The real heroes of the Troubles were those who were active in the civil rights movement. Ivan Cooper is the perfect example of a hero during the Troubles, a Protestant who fought for Catholic civil rights yet avoided violence at all costs.

Pherekydes

Yisroel Handsome Preschooler wrote: »

Living in Santry in the 70's and 80's was a far cry from living in Ballymun.. You remember the low wall between Santry and Shangan Rd?..

We called it 'The Berlin Wall' because it separated what we referred to as the posh middle class neighbours in ''the purchased houses'' from us in the flats..

Were you could attend the Lady's of Victory's school, and join the credit union down there - we couldn't.

We couldn't go to teen disco's in Victory's, or walk past the lights at the ESB junction on the Ballymun main road without being turned around the the cops or ran out of the area by the 'grown ups.

So yea, I'm not really surprised you have N.I. prods neighbours - as I said earlier, the catholics were housed first in army camps - then in area's like Ballymun and Finglas.

Trust me, your not comparing like with like when you talk about Santry and Ballymun in the 70's and 80's.

I know. I lived the other side. The so-called posh side. We were beaten up and chased at every opportunity by kids from across the great divide. I had several relatives living there, so staying out wasn't an option. I worked in the Towers. My first gf was from there. I met her in Mick's. Most Ballymunners were fine people.

Both of my parents were from the south inner city. It's amusing to hear them being called posh. My mother was a Shinner voter. My father was a Labour party activist. Not exactly upper class.