The Wolfe Tones

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084702#Comment_121084702

How could they be "occupying forces" when the clear majority of the population ( not just the electorate, the voting age population ) in N.I. in the 1973 referendum there ( and everyone had a vote ) voted to stay part of the UK, rather than join a UI?

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121076754#Comment_121076754

Some Irish people as members of the British army treated the natives like dirt. That's how it was done in the British armed forces. This is why those Irish people and others who fought with the British army have always been looked at as traitors. 

Lolz, according to this poster Tom Barry and James Connolly were traitors.

paddyisreal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084721#Comment_121084721

I don't know ask Tom Barry - his words not mine, you might struggle considering he's dead for the last 43 years

paddyisreal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084728#Comment_121084728

Both fought pre war of independence in world war 1, bit of a difference buddy. My grandfather fought in world one and in the war of independence ( he was on the winning side before you ask ) as did a lot of Irish .

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084841#Comment_121084841

I know you do not know, and it is quite clear certain people cannot work that one out for yourselves.:)

Annd9

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084685#Comment_121084685

I agree with you , moving sex abusers around to avoid justice is a disgrace no matter who it is .

I'm simply using your logic against you, 93% of the population here choose to baptise their kids into an organisation who abused children on an unimaginable scale.

Do that 93% support that aspect of the organisation ? Of course they don't .

Same applies for younger voters of Sinn Fein.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084271#Comment_121084271

Well, yes, there have been a number of apologies on those issues, and compensation paid too.

We await Sinn Fein doing the same.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084892#Comment_121084892

You're whatabouting again.

What have Sinn Fein supporters got to say about the protection of paedophiles and rapists within the Sinn Fein/PIRA movement?

Cardinal Sean Brady was pretty much discredited and disgraced after it was found he had grossly mishandled an investigation into the paedophile priest Brendan Smyth in the 1970s.

Gerry Adams stood idly by for decades after being told by his niece that his brother was a paedophile who had sexually abused her between the ages of 4 and 9.

Why is there such silence within Sinn Fein and its support over this? Many of the same people who would vilify Brady (and not unfairly) eulogise Adams. That's gross hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance.

And what does it say about their attitude to victims? How can this party or its support be taken remotely seriously by anybody when it continues to venerate a paedophile protector?

Ash.J.Williams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084665#Comment_121084665

Tom Barry and friends fought hard and had the British running scared but he's our dirty little secret , never thanked by governments or even acknowledged officially yet was vital

Ash.J.Williams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084721#Comment_121084721

Because plantation

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084900#Comment_121084900

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-ireland-politics-ira-idUKKCN0IB22N20141022

There was this above. No doubt you don't accept it because of x,y,z reasons.

But anyway the topic is the Wolfe Tones..?

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121085046#Comment_121085046

Weasel words. A denial is not an apology. Adams was forced into a making a weasel worded statement by Mairia Cahill coming forward. Cahill sustained a pile on by Sinn Fein supporters.

But he denied what he said were accusations from rivals that Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing until it effectively disbanded in 2005, had engaged in a cover-up of child abuse.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121085100#Comment_121085100

From the article:

“IRA actions against sex offenders failed victims. That is a matter of profound regret for me and other Republicans. As Uachtaran (president of) Sinn Fein, I want to apologise to those victims,” he said.

Are the words 'I apologise' an apology? I think so.

Maria Cahill rejected that and other apologies as inadequate, and that is fair enough considering and I don't blame her and she should be supported and get a fuller apology.

Nonethless its not the case that he only denied it and never apologised.

Also discussing the motive behind the apology - 'he was only forced into apologising because of x,y,z...' - is just yourself and blanch152 immediately moving on to the next talking point.

growleaves

Also the thread is actually about the Wolfe Tones and not about the President of SF's failure to apologise properly and fully to a sex abuse victim for his organisation's not having institutional structures in place to address the abuse.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121085172#Comment_121085172

The thread is about three words - "Up The Ra". The reality of what the Ra and Sinn Fein was and is is being pointed out. Therefore it's entirely relevant.

Ash.J.Williams

Back on topic , brutal band and anyone who sings ooh ah is retarded but I'll absolutely defend your right to sing it

JP Liz V1

He was then questioned as to what he thought of the band's recent success. The Taoiseach replied: “I was at Electric Picnic, didn't get a chance to see the Wolfe Tones.

"I probably have a more sanguine view of this than maybe other people. People like ballads and they like songs that they can sing along to.

"I think some people maybe read too much into the politics of this," Varadkar said, before bringing up the topic of unification.

https://lovin.ie/news/leo-varadkar-wolfe-tones

Leo's take

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084702#Comment_121084702

Barry was an early supporter of the Provisional IRA but he became disillusioned with its tactics especially after the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974 which killed 21 people and injured 182 others, saying that even an Ireland "overflowing with milk and honey" was not worth the price of such an attack. 

Yet some say it was worth it and argue for such tactics.

The PIRA continued to target and bomb civilian targets right up to the end.

The most infamous incident, the Omagh bombing carried out by the leftover of the PIRA murdered 31 people. This is the tactic that some people defend.

"He said that he had recently been invited to Derry and Belfast, but had refused both invitations. Since the hunger strikes began he had been approached to use his influence in certain quarters, but had also refused and had told whoever had approached him that he should realise that the organisation was losing support from all quarters and that they had only themselves to blame."

This was from 1977, yet the PIRA continued on this tactic for another 20 years. Slow learners indeed.

paddyisreal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121085743#Comment_121085743

He still said it was acceptable to kill British soldiers sure didn't he murder a good few himself. Did he apologies for it could you tell me ? Very little difference between him and the early pira on the bogside.

geospatial

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084589#Comment_121084589

It's not whatabouterism, you simply cannot judge the conflict in NI and judge PIRA actions without some comparison point.

So you start with the concept a just war, and most would agree that fighting the Nazis in Europe was a just war. Does that mean you justify all the military actions that were taken? The indiscrimate bombing of German cities had one main goal, to kill enough civilians to break the will of the German people and it's leadership. A secondary goal was to kill as many German factory workers as possible. Leaving aside the fact that night time bombing was notoriously scattershot, bombs were not smart enough to kill only factory workers and spare others. So it was indiscrimate, exact same as the London blitz, over 1,000 incendiary bombs were dropped in Cologen in one night alone.

But we excuse it, just like we excuse dropping atomic bombs in Japan, because the war was justified and the aggression of Germany and Japan had to be stopped at any cost. But there's no excuse for Britain's genocide in other countries, concentraion camps in South Africa, massacres and famine in a host of countries including our own but especially India, gulags torture and murder in Kenya. Read "A legacy of violence, a histry of the British empire" by Caroline Elkins, a superb historian, her estimate is that 100,000 died in Kenya, and that was in the 1950s not the 1850s.

I think most rational people would agree that the IRA defending their communities when they were being ethnically cleansed in 1969 was a just cause. Unless you believe that Northern nationalists should have just accepted being driven out of their homes and communities? Who exactly were defending them? Not their own govt in Stormont who were on the other side, not the Westminster govt, and not the Dublin govt. So who were they to turn to, or should they have just all fled south?

Puttting British troops on the streets in NI was never a good idea, especially when as expected they quickly took sides with loyalists and the RUC/UDR. Conformed to nationalists on Bloody Sunday when peaceful protesters were treated like cannon fodder. No turing back for Irish Republicans after that I'm afraid.

Were all the actions of the PIRA justified? absolutely not. Bombing commercial centers, restaurants and bars was far too risky in terms of likely civilian casualties. The entire campaign should have been aimed at the security forces and British army, the bastards who committed war crimes in Derry and Ballymurphy deserved everything they got and more.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121085822#Comment_121085822

Yeah, but the PIRA lumped in small farmers doing a part-time job with the RUC reservists to get pocket money with British soldiers and called their family men neighbours legitimate targets.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121084649#Comment_121084649

not odd at all as it is a conspiricy theory that has already been debunked.

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121085908#Comment_121085908

Nope.

It is a fact.

See below, from CAIRNS.

Those who deny this fact are akin to flat-earther climate denier anti-vax lunatics that populate the intersphere. I take it you are one of those?

geospatial

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121083844#Comment_121083844

Do you think young people in Ireland are far right as well? People who lean left tend to support oppressed minorities, not those doing the oppressing. I think young Irish people are unemcumbered by memories of the troubles, but know that NI nationalists were abandoned by their government, and by the British and Irish governments. Probably how they feel themselves about their own government.

geospatial

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121083139#Comment_121083139

Again totally missing my point. Young Irish people don't give a **** about your biased borderline crackpot anti-SF ranting, or for that matter ranting from the opposite direction. They voted SF in large numbers last time and will vote in greater numbers for SF next time.

If that makes them Trump supporting far right supporting paedophile supporting in your eyes, don't be surprised when they laugh at you.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121085839#Comment_121085839

the bastards who committed war crimes in Derry and Ballymurphy deserved everything they got and more.

If British soldiers and RUC men were considered legitimate targets then you can't seriously complain about Shoot To Kill in that case. By your rationale Gibraltar and Loughgall etc. were entirely justified. Sinn Fein say it was a war (I don't agree). But if you say it was a war, don't then complain when the opposing side in a war uses your tactics.

Sinn Fein/PIRA of course wanted it both ways They reserved the right to murder British soldiers, RUC men, female census workers, judges, caterers. But they cried foul after Gibraltar. Total hypocrisy.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121078871#Comment_121078871

This, +1.

No problem if people enjoy that type of music but think the day of Up the Ra along with the King Billy chants are for another time.

There has been enough work done by mefiators over the years trying to bring people together in the north, and here without the sounds of these.. ballads, rabble rousing, and stoking dissent hurt and anger on both sides.

I don't believe any of those in or outside the tent at EP would download the music or go to a concert of theirs if it wasn't jammed in to fill gaps in a not so hot lineup, so I wouldn't be getting very wrapped up in thinking that was necessarily a vote of confidence from the youth of the day.

Had a son and friends there (some who went, others didn't go to them) but said some of their friends who were off their faces were jumping and singing and collapsed in drunken heat exhaustion afterwards

Did they remember much else? No.. 😊

I don't believe in censorship but think the endless stirring on the media, social and otherwise is just feeding a nothing event really.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121086007#Comment_121086007

You make zero engagement with my points. I know most SF voters don't care about what the likes of me say. That's because they've fallen down the road of cultism like Trump supporters have and are impervious to reasoned argument on serious issues. They prefer slogans and Disneyfied fake history rather than the deeply uncomfortable real thing. Most Trump supporters are impervious to any reasoned argument too and also prefer Disneyfied fake history.

geospatial

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121086010#Comment_121086010

No issue with PIRA members who were killed or injured in action, as yes it was a war. That's the risk they took when they joined the PIRA.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121086066#Comment_121086066

If it was a "war", what government were they fighting on behalf of?

What uniforms did they wear?

Would you think that because they tortured civilians they committed war crimes?