Why did you not join the IRA?

foxsake

I didn't like their communist views

mikethecop

LOL another pro ira/sf attempt to rewrite history blows up in their faces , pun intended

😀😀😀

ye may come back in 20 years or so when some of the blood is gone off yer hands kid

mikethecop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119553929#Comment_119553929

Na you would have been grand , you could just have kidnapped some poor catholic and held his family's hostage at gun point demanded that he drive the car with the bomb if you were to afraid ,

besides you would have been busy taxing drug dealers and smuggling or maybe a bit of extorting your own community so that eventually sfira could be be wealthiest political party in Ireland and one of the biggest property owning ones in Europe with legions online trolls to manipulated upcoming elections with lies and propaganda ......

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119553293#Comment_119553293

FG/FF are as close as makes no difference, so yes SF does not represent the majority opinion.

Sunny Disposition

At an early stage they blew up a child who lived just down the road from me, that was reason enough not to join. Most people living near me in maybe the most Republican part of the country didn't join either for the exact same reason. It sounds very romantic to certain people who were nowhere near it to join up with the IRA and kill soldiers and peelers, but in reality Catholics to an extent tolerated and often feared the IRA rather than supported it. They certainly didn't protect the Catholic community, they made things way more dangerous, they also didn't represent Catholics, they represented themselves and didn't give a damn that most Catholics wanted them to stop.

It's a mad narrative going around now that the IRA were some sort of heroes and had to do what they did. They didn't achieve anything either, nothing that couldn't far more easily have been achieved through even low level civil disobedience. Their leaders knew it was going nowhere and that it was as well to wind things down, although thousands were dead at that stage. Many of them innocent Catholics who'd still be alive now if the IRA hadn't ignored what the people wanted.

I know loads of people are going to come on and contradict everything I'm saying, but at least anyone reading the thread now will get a bit of reality, they can accept it or not.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119555013#Comment_119555013

They arent though - they are distinct political parties. Before the term of this government most voters for either party would not have wanted a coalition with the other, so I dont know how you can bundle them together and claim its a majority opinion.

Girl Geraldine

So if you were to have joined, which flavour would you have signed up to ? Old, Official, Provisional, Continuity, Real? Or maybe Oglaigh Na hEireann - both flavours of that, the RIRA splinter group or the CIRA splinter group? Or perhaps the New Ira which seems to be an almalgam of disaffected members of all the aforementioned schisms and factions.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119554787#Comment_119554787

Why so defensive? You pointed out/admitted/stated that we dont know what would have happened. "If anyone was to admit anything, it would be you" - what are you on about?

Guess I read too much into how you framed/phrased the sentence. Although judging by the rest of your posts, I don't think I have.

Some of them certainly may have contributed more alive than dead, others it was likely justified. 

Justified because the conflict was ongoing. Without the conflict, then the justifications fall a little flat. And then, there's all the collateral damage, and unintended deaths.

However were they not to die in the IRAs campaign of terror, who knows if we ever would have gotten to the relatively stable and peaceful situation in NI today. You yourself admitted pointed out that cant possibly know what would have happened, so again why are you so sure that all the people who died would have improved NI more than their dying?

However, what British 'possessions' have remained oppressed? The civil rights movements absent the violence of the IRA (and other groups) might have achieved more within a peaceful environment. You're right I can't be sure.. however what you're sidestepping is why I pointed that out in the first place. The possibility that more could have been achieved without all the associated violence. Looking at the rest of the world, and where Western nations stand, it's highly unlikely that N.Ireland would have remained as it was, without the violence to justify Britain's harsh treatment.

In one breath you recognise our lack of omniscience on the situation, and in the next assert that the victims of the IRA would have all contributed more had they not been killed? See the contradiction?

Nope. Although I'm more than a bit amazed at your position that shrugs off all those deaths, and discounts the value they would have had. As people living, working, etc in the North.

Still.. I stated my opinion on the topic, and I'm not going to continue doing the rounds with you.

Silentcorner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119555150#Comment_119555150

That is very well said, I can understand how youth are drawn to the danger of it all, but to everyone else I can imagine how hard it was to live in that environment...tho my understanding of it was that a British Government decided to take the military route back when all the violence kicked off which doomed the Province to decades of turmoil, I mean the work "Provisional" is temporary in its nature!! Altho I could well be wrong on that!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119552456#Comment_119552456

Ah, but by not joining, Lord Grizzly of The Falls got to be a Guest of Honour at the Mandela funeral! Beat that!

blade1

I was doing recruiting for the I.R.A.

Hiring and Firing.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119554601#Comment_119554601

Indeed - a list of outstanding achievements!

Which, of course, makes it all the stranger that the smirker with the beard and glasses who was "never in the IRA" has reaped all of the benefits from the sacrifices made by those heroic freedom fighters.

walshb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119552138#Comment_119552138

The IRA achieved what the North has today compared to the abysmal inequality of the past that Nationalists had to endure

Esel

Andrew Marr asked the question of Jarry during a BBC TV interview a few years ago. I thought it was a brilliant angle.

MakersMark

Better question might be is why MLMcD won't pursue the IRA rapists and child molesters?

Is it because they're good republicans?

maccored

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119554733#Comment_119554733

it's a great word - I wouldnt call it derogatory - its just a very descriptive word that hits the spot on the head a lot of the time. especially when it comes to the republican experts like yourself and blanch that frequents these forums. Hume was indeed a hero - which not too many in the public or press seemed to realise when he started talking to SF in the 80s. I would loved to have heard your views at the time as Im pretty sure it would have supported the status quo view of him. Hume was in my parents house more than once - though I only remember the one time as it was in the 70s

If you join,

it only ever ends in 2 ways,either a box or cell.....an awlful hardship of life,spent on run or waiting for early morning raid on your house

I know lad who were arrested and held for 7 days,after ira robbed bank in local town,despite having a rock-tight alibi and several hundred people who could place em at different location during robbery

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119555874#Comment_119555874

Are they all members of Sinn Féin? Because that's the political party that MLMcD is running. And, whatever about the Lord Gerry of The Falls, it's extremely unlikely that she was ever in the 'RA.

sbkenn

The answer depends on whether people mean the IRA or the Provos. IMO, the IRA stopped at about the right time. Ghandi had the English sussed. Embarrass then on the international stage. The IRA showed them for what they were, and that would have solved the problem a lot sooner, and without nearly as much grief and bad feeling. The Provos were a criminal gang, and anyway, were fighting the wrong people. As we now see, the enemy is politicians in the republic !.

enricoh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119552392#Comment_119552392

A lad I know wanted to open a coffee shop/ bakery in Belfast about 15 years ago. Went into the bank manager for the loan with all his figures, projected earnings etc.

Bank manager said you have nothing down for protection money, he made a call there n then to a local ra head n got the amount! No loan without paying protection as it'd be burnt out n bank wouldn't get repaid!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119555874#Comment_119555874

Nah- coz there’s just too many of them

brokenangel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119555150#Comment_119555150

100% correct and it was the same in my area in the North

Also along the border.

brokenangel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119556012#Comment_119556012

Anyway my opinion was and always will be the same about the PIRA.

John Hume and anyone else trying to bring peace are the heros.

I never claimed to be a republican expert by the way, I am giving an account of my personal experience in Northern Ireland and along the border during the period. I have no interest in making up stories to cover over for the PIRA.

I have no idea about Blanch 👍️

Quitelife

Its funny when the British were in Cork or Tipperary our forefathers joined the IRA and used whatever they could lay their hands on to attack the British and there was some very brutal stuff went on .

But when people in Armagh or Tyrone did it during the troubles they were wrong??

Makes no sense - just the i'm alright Jack Mentality.

Sunny Disposition

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119560520#Comment_119560520

The reality is the majority of Catholics did not agree with the IRA. They lived in the same places as the rest of us, we knew who they were, they had the same issues with the State as we had, but the vast majority just did not agree with what they were doing and would have liked them to stop. Of course the IRA didn't give a hoot, they thought that they knew better, they were going representing us whether we liked it or not.

That will always be the difference from the earlier conflict, no matter how the former IRA people spin it. The people they claimed they were fighting for in the North did not agree with what they were doing and wanted them to stop. Most of us did not hate Protestants, many had issues with police but not to the extent that we would have thought it was okay to actually kill them. The IRA made life far more dangerous, not just for Protestants, the army or the policemen, for Catholics as well.

For SF now, who are so popular, it's a very inconvenient part of the past they want to overlook. So they'll talk about discrimination and what the Brits did, while never acknowledging a large majority of Catholics did not want IRA operations to happen at all.

brokenangel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119560520#Comment_119560520

Couple of things which made a huge difference.

The majority of the nationalists wanted nothing to do with them. The other population certainly wanted nothing to do with them. So PIRA had a small minority that actually supported them

Plus if you are killing more of the people you are supposed to be protecting than the "enemy" then you know something has gone seriously f**king wrong.

John Doe1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058261287/why-did-you-not-join-the-ira

I am from a protestant East Donegal protestant family and I would not have.

The civil rights movement of the 60s would have eventually gained something similar to the GFA earlier if Bloody Sunday did not interrupt their momentum.

The IRA violence left a sour taste in the 1 million unionists and has made reunification even less likely and led to a wave of anti-irishness in Britain.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119554787#Comment_119554787

Are you actually saying that some of the victims of the PIRA were justified killings?

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119556174#Comment_119556174

That is a real example of how SF and the PIRA corrupted society in a way that people in the South have yet to fully understand. The law isn't for them.

mazdamiatamx5

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119560845#Comment_119560845

I actually agree with this comment. My intention with the OP was to provoke debate, admittedly in a provocative fashion. The usual suspects resorted to the "BUT MARY LOU BE WORSE THAN DE DEBIL" nonsense, but interesting that there have been some intelligent responses, including yours.