...and in the darkness bind them

Nuttzz

BCB wrote:

Bobby Sands also had a street named after him in Iran

a beacon for democracy and freedom........

A Dub in Glasgo

bonkey wrote:

Do you deny that they have carried out acts of terrorism?

jc

They have carried out acts of terror. So have the British in NI or more recently the US in Iraq. Practically every state or group involved in conflict carrys out acts of terror. The difference between them is our opinions on the objectives of each group.

Corben Dallas

Sleepy u seem to have such little grip on factual reality as regards all things IRA the North, The Hungerstikers and the NI peace talks that you are either a professional muppet or just trolling for laughs.

Bobby Sands and other Hungerstrikers straved themselves to death, for what they believed in, something that required a huge amount of personal courage and even caused Maggie Thatcher to grant separate politcal prisoner status.

The IRA are not an organised crime organisation , they are freedom fighters in the same way as The ANC and the PLO fight for a legitmate cause.

Micheal Collins, Dev etc werent regarded as criminals by Irish ppl, it was only the British Government {at the time} who believed this before Ireland gained its independance and became a 'Free State' (from English Rule) Its a question of prespective, I very much doubt u could grasp the concept.

bonkey

BCB wrote:

he died a martyr..how dare you call him a criminal.

I wasn't aware the two were mutually exclusive terms.

<shrug>

you insulting Irish martyrs like Sands and his nine brave companions who were murdered by Thatcher

I would have said you're equally insulting the memory of the man by claiming he was murdered, rather than that he freely took his own life through starvation for a cause he believed in enough to die for....

But hey...He's your hero...you (mis)represent his death whatever way you feel happiest with.

you digust me.

Then you might be beginning to understand more clearly the reaction many people have had to the "wisdom" you've been sharing with us this past week or two then.

jc

FTA69

Sleepy wrote:

The IRA are a criminal gang as they are an organisation that is illegal. They are not an army as they do not wear a uniform. We've pointed this out to you many times now. Gerry Adams made an eejit of himself on the Late Late as clearly pointed out by that otherwise rag the Sunday Independant. If the IRA were disciplined why did they murder Garda McCabe?

I'll give you that point, Sands didn't die for money, he died for ignorance and stupidity. Anyone stupid enough to die over his clothing deserved his death.


So basically, you're saying that all IRA terrorists eventually get sense and quit?

Well, in the absence of Laurence McKeown or Danny Morrison, why don't you justify the use of the men who haven't the intelligence to understand what they're fighting for?

You have contradicted yourself numerous times in that post there a chara. First of all the reason you give for considering the IRA as a "crime gang" is the simplistic fact that both states declare them illegal, you also deny their status as an army owing to the fact they do not wear a uniform (usually). That ráimís would be more palatable if you weren't being so inconsistent regarding the IRA of earlier times, the organisation of which your grandfather was a member of and who you seem to be very defensive about. The IRA of the Twenties were classed as illegal by Ireland's "legal" ruler (your word from another post) and were not recognised by any other country in the world. They also did not wear a uniform during 99% of their operations. Were they a "crime gang"? Was your grandfather a "criminal"? If you apply a set of standards to 1969 you should maintain them for 1921. Simply because an international power decrees that an organisation is "terrorist" or "criminal" does not make it automatically so, to follow on your logic on an international stage, both the ANC and the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe are "criminals".

Regards Bobby Sands, I am dissapointed to hear such insults spout from an Irish person to be honest. Sands did not die for "a uniform" he died to be recognised as a political prisoner. To label IRA POWs as being in the same categories as handbag snatchers is to defy logic. They were arrested under special counter-insurgency laws, tried in non-jury courts with the burden of proof placed on the defendant, charged on the basis of confessions extracted by torture and finally were sentenced in purpose built prisons. What other Western countries go through that procedure to incarcerate "average criminals" Sleepy? The fact you are failing to grasp is that Bobby Sands and his comrades were motivated by the struggle to evict a foreign power from Ireland, the same motivation that Terence McSweeny had to die on hunger strike in 1921. To accept a criminalisation process would be to accept the accusation that the struggle for Irish freedom was "criminal". Republicans were not willing to accept this and never will accept the decree that we are criminals. The fact you denigrated a man of such courage as "ignorant" and "stupid" really only sums up your own ignorance and stupidity. Another question for you, were Terence McSeeny and Thomas Ashe "stupid and ignorant" people?

When I said people who progress in the Republican Movement make a more educated analysis of the situation, I did not mean they "quit", I mean they began to abandon the perhaps ill-informed or developed beliefs that caused them to join in favour of a more educated policy on the political scenario in Ireland.

To answer your question regarding ill-informed people you met, idiots are no use to anyone and well you know that, but the type of person you outlined forms a small minority in the ranks of Óglaigh na hÉireann. There are good and bad apples in all organisations.

FTA69

Sleepy wrote:

Apartheid fell in South Africa without violence

How do you reconcile the above with the fact that the ANC had an armed wing called Umkhonto we Ziswe (African Spear)? An organisation that shot many police officers in South Africa, sabotaged power plants etc, bombed government installations sometimes killing civilians and occasionally robbing the odd bank? See and similarities yet? Mandela himself did a tour of Africa securing money and arms from numerous African leaders as well as establishing guerilla camps in Botswana and Mozambique from which cross-border raids were launched.

Umkhonto we Sizwe? Probably the biggest "crime gang" in the history of South Africa...

monument

Necromancer wrote:

1) Was the IRA justified in carrying out its campaign.
2) Did the IRA carry out its campaign in an acceptable way.

Three or four years ago, when I was a lot more naive I may have said yes to all the above, or I might have thought about it longer. I still might have said yes to a question on the justification of setting up a different type of group who did not kill innocent people, but I guess that doesn’t apply now.

Now slightly less naïve I can quickly say no to 1 and 2. Just because of a unacceptable targeting of innocent people. (don’t get me wrong here, I’m not commenting on any right the PIRA may or may not have had to run a campaign, just the way they have done so - it can not be justified in the name of civil rights) (oh, and it’s not just paramilitary’s targeting of innocent people I find unacceptable, it’s all so-called ‘collateral damage’)

Necromancer wrote:

3) Has the IRA's campaign led to an improvement in the state of NI.

No.

Of course, some will probably argue that have furthered their ‘cause’, there’s probably a tad bit of truth in that, in so much as it has furthered their "cause".

but of course if the ‘cause’ was actually…

1) equal civil rights
2) a government voted in by the people

my problems are…

A1) you can not justify taking one person’s most basic civil right so others can gain their civil rights

A2) To paraphrase what Gerry Adam said recently - a untied Ireland would have to be one which all agreed to – (he didn’t go on to say this…) something which eludes a lot of republicans.

growler

monument wrote:

A2) To paraphrase what Gerry Adam said recently - a untied Ireland would have to be one which all agreed to – (he didn’t go on to say this…) something which eludes a lot of republicans.

what does that mean ?
Gerry Adams is , last time I looked, a republican.

monument

It means that I feel what he said eludes a lot of (*not all*) republicans.

A Dub in Glasgo

What he is trying to say is that Gerry & his band of brothers in the SF leadership have accepted that there can never be a United Ireland as the Unionists will never agree to one. This stance is something which a lot of the republicans fail to grasp (his words not mine).

A Dub in Glasgo

monument wrote:

Three or four years ago, when I was a lot more naive I may have said yes to all the above, or I might have thought about it longer. I still might have said yes to a question on the justification of setting up a different type of group who did not kill innocent people, but I guess that doesn’t apply now.

Now slightly less naïve I can quickly say no to 1 and 2. Just because of a unacceptable targeting of innocent people. (don’t get me wrong here, I’m not commenting on any right the PIRA may or may not have had to run a campaign, just the way they have done so - it can not be justified in the name of civil rights) (oh, and it’s not just paramilitary’s targeting of innocent people I find unacceptable, it’s all so-called ‘collateral damage’)

Surely your answer to 1 and 2 should be Maybe and No respectively considering your statement that I have highlighted.

No.

Nobody will really know. The pogroms in Nationalist areas had to be stopped because the British were certainly not going to stop them.

A1) you can not justify taking one person’s most basic civil right so others can gain their civil rights

Correct if you are a total pacifict. What about killing civilains in a 'just' war, is that correct? How do you define a 'just' war?

A2) To paraphrase what Gerry Adam said recently - a untied Ireland would have to be one which all agreed to – (he didn’t go on to say this…) something which eludes a lot of republicans.

Did he really say all? 100% of the people have to agree a certain course of action or is it a majority?

monument

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

Surely your answer to 1 and 2 should be Maybe and No respectively considering your statement that I have highlighted.

1) Was the [P]IRA justified in carrying out its campaign.

No.

If the question was...

Would the PIRA have being justified in carrying out a completely different campaign?

Maybe, but it’s a bit late for that. So, it stands at no for all questions as they stand.

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

Nobody will really know. The pogroms in Nationalist areas had to be stopped because the British were certainly not going to stop them.

Possibility, however, overall as a campaign it was not run in a way I could ever agree to, and not one that I can say helped more then it worsted things in the north.

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

Correct if you are a total pacifict. What about killing civilains in a 'just' war, is that correct? How do you define a 'just' war?

Keeping to a point as I said... (oh, and it’s not just paramilitary’s targeting of innocent people I find unacceptable, it’s all so-called ‘collateral damage’)

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

Did he really say all? 100% of the people have to agree a certain course of action or is it a majority?

No, I don’t think so, I was merrily paraphrasing what he said. Apologies if it is/was any way misleading.

Sleepy

BCB wrote:

meaning what exactly?
whatever....
The IRA are NOT i repeat NOT terrorists,they are Guerilla freedom fighters end of......... :mad:

Yes, you're helping your side of the argument with that post. :rolleyes:

Sleepy

BCB wrote:

How dare you insult the name of Bobby Sands..where you around at that time?if you were you will remember that he was elected to the British Parliament topping the poll with over 30,000 votes..you will also remember that his death caused worldwide revulsion against the British..there was demonstrations worldwide in response to his death..im talking hundreds of thousands of people..Bobby Sands also had a street named after him in Iran..he died a martyr..how dare you call him a criminal.it sickens me people like you insulting Irish martyrs like Sands and his nine brave companions who were murdered by Thatcher..id love you to go up to West Belfast or any nationalist area in the North and start saying something like that..you digust me........
:mad:

He was a member of the IRA and therefore a criminal.
Sands was not an Irish martyr, he was a Provisional IRA martyr, there is a VERY big difference (I'd say about 99% of the population of the Island tbh)
Sands was not murdered, he killed himself.
Why would you love me to say it in an area where I'd almost certainly get kneecapped for it? You really should get that blood-lust checked out by a psychologist (it might alter your politics too)

BCB

Sleepy ive come to the conclusion that you must be wind up merchant who gets his kicks from winding people up..so ill say no more on this partiuclar thread ..people like you are not worth it.....

Sleepy

BCB, if you're going to follow a party, at least learn to argue their policies intelligently without resorting to the childish mentality of "If we're not playing by my rules I'm going home". Others on this thread who I in no way agree with (FTA for example) have debated these issues intelligently without resorting to name calling. Please show me the same courtesy they have.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

BCB

Sleepy wrote:

BCB, if you're going to follow a party, at least learn to argue their policies intelligently without resorting to the childish mentality of "If we're not playing by my rules I'm going home". Others on this thread who I in no way agree with (FTA for example) have debated these issues intelligently without resorting to name calling. Please show me the same courtesy they have.

My knowledge of Sinn Fein and Republicanism is far far greater than yours will ever be my friend..i refuse to debate with people like you who insult the good name of Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers..and of course all those hundreds of thousands who supported them were also wrong to do so werent they... :rolleyes:

TÁL IRISHGAEL

He was a member of the IRA and therefore a criminal.

He was made out to be a criminal by propaganda spued from the British Propaganda machine. Did being a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood equate a person to be a criminal ?

Sands was not an Irish martyr, he was a Provisional IRA martyr, there is a VERY big difference (I'd say about 99% of the population of the Island tbh)

Bobby Sands is an Irish martyr, much like Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke, Jim Lynagh etc etc.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

BCB

T&#193 wrote: »

He was made out to be a criminal by propaganda spued from the British Propaganda machine. Did being a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood equate a person to be a criminal ?



Bobby Sands is an Irish martyr, much like Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke, Jim Lynagh etc etc.

well said.........

BCB

daveirl wrote:

This post has been deleted.

yes excelpt all these thousands were not from the one country they were from all different countriues worldwide..i cant help thinking if these people on here who are calling Sands a criminal would`ve been around at that time their attitude would`ve been oh so different...i can remember it well,almost everybody i spoke to at that time were fully supportive of the brave hunger strikers...

A Dub in Glasgo

There is no doubt that Bobby Sands is a Martyr

TÁ Láss

Sparks wrote:

1) No, because they killed innocent people;
2) No, because they killed innocent people;

OK, I've only just signed up to this board and have a lot of catching up to do but here goes.....
Sure the IRA (& I've noticed we're not specifying any particular IRA), have killed innocent people.....even Irish citizens, but they've yet to reach the levels displayed for hundreds of years by the Brits. I totally understand and accept that an apology or acceptance of wrong doing goes nowhere in bringing back a murdered family member or friend, but it is a minimal contribution to the grieving process of those who lost loved ones at the hands of the IRA.

Those of us who lost INNOCENT loved ones at the hands of the British or loyalist establishments, have basically been told to suck it up and get on with it.
The difference for us is that our friends & family were murdered by supposedly "legal" organisations...... SO OF COURSE THAT MAKES IT OK AND ACCEPTABLE!!

Sparks wrote:

3) No, because all the advances in civil rights were made through the courts and legitimate government, not through killing innocent people.

Ach please, get a grip!!!
It was only through years of protesting, fighting and the loss of loved ones that we've managed to obtain the VERY LITTLE difference that we're actually beginning to see nowadays. Unfortunately, those years of protest etc. resulted in the death of too many members of my family, community and friends for me to ever be so nonchalent about things. I can only assume from your attitude that you're fortunate enough to have never experienced the same!!!

TÁ Láss

Sparks wrote:

a) is irrelevant to the questions you originally asked, as are b) and c).
There have been numerous cases throughout history of people having genuine grievances with the State they lived in that caused them to organise into groups and bring about change, all without having to kill people. Not even just things like Ghandi, but even simple things - the recent eVoting debacle, for example, was a government programme that would have adversly affected us all, but it was dealt with by a peaceful group working completely within the system, rather than someone shooting Minister Cullen in the kneecaps or blowing up his family.

Don't you think that those of us who have participated in those peaceful protests, especially within the North East of Ireland, wanted to believe that it was possible to bring about such changes with peaceful protests???
Unfortunately the "state" that myself, my parents, grandparents etc..... dealt with, wasn't prepared to allow even this sort of nationalist dissension! Take a look at BLOODY SUNDAY. This just happens to be the most infamous example; I could specify MANY others that I have personally been present at but know have never made it into the media.

Saying that, the British media have played a massive part in the treatment of Irish nationalists for at least several hundred years (read some of the stuff that was printed by English newspapers during 1846 - 1850 if you want to start somewhere), so that's hardly surprising. What is surprising is the fact that IRISH people can so easily overlook the facts.

TÁ Láss

spanner wrote:

it is all very well working within the system when your dealing with the relitive trival matter of evoting, but lets all remember how the PIRA began.
there was an attempt to resolve grivevances peacefully with people like john hume and austin currie copying the martin luther style non violent protest however we all know what happened to that it was bloody represed by loyalist thugs as the RUC looked on and sometimes joined. matters became so bad they began to burn down nationlist parts of beflast as the law looked on, both the british and irish governments hesitated on what to do, so the PIRA broke off from the main body of the IRA and began to get guns so as to defend nationlist areas and when the british army finally came in and decided they must disarm the PIRA it was to late and the die had already been cased.

so even though they now are really nothing but glorified crinimals there roots where of an understandable cause.

Hey Spanner,

Although your post was somewhat difficult to follow, you made some very relevant points........ until the last sentence!!
I personally, am not an avid PROVO supporter, but I have grown up watching the lives, freedom and families sacrificed by the same people and feel nothing but contempt for someone who can judge patriotic men & women in such an offhand manner!!! Like I said, I certainly don't consider myself a PROVO supporter, even though they make up the majority of my community, but I find it unbelievably disrespectful to hear someone stereotypically categorize some of these people in the way that you just did.

Sleepy

TÁ Láss, surely you can see that if the Provos had never existed the death toll on all sides in the north would have been far lower? You, and countless others like you wouldn't have had to have gone through such suffering.

You can't see my point about Sands at all can ye? I'm an Irishman. I was born, raised, live and pay taxes in the Republic of Ireland. He's a martyr for a cause that the majority of the people on this island disagree with, and I would go so far as to say a martyr for a cause that has been a bloody stain on our history. He's no Irish martyr, he's a martyr to a small minority of Irish people i.e. the provos.

Maybe I'm too logical a person, or too remote from emotion but I can't let the fact he suffered a horrific death outweigh the fact that he chose that death because he wanted political status as a prisoner. Something which in all practicalities equated to the right not to have to wear the standard prison uniform. Sure you can argue for the symbolism of this status but symbolism, to my mind at least, is neither worth killing or dying for.

/off-topic TÁ Láss, could you please reduce the size of your sig, it's completely distracting.

Sleepy

FTA69 wrote:

You have contradicted yourself numerous times in that post there a chara. First of all the reason you give for considering the IRA as a "crime gang" is the simplistic fact that both states declare them illegal, you also deny their status as an army owing to the fact they do not wear a uniform (usually). That ráimís would be more palatable if you weren't being so inconsistent regarding the IRA of earlier times, the organisation of which your grandfather was a member of and who you seem to be very defensive about. The IRA of the Twenties were classed as illegal by Ireland's "legal" ruler (your word from another post) and were not recognised by any other country in the world. They also did not wear a uniform during 99% of their operations. Were they a "crime gang"? Was your grandfather a "criminal"? If you apply a set of standards to 1969 you should maintain them for 1921. Simply because an international power decrees that an organisation is "terrorist" or "criminal" does not make it automatically so, to follow on your logic on an international stage, both the ANC and the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe are "criminals".

I distinguish between the IRA and the Provisional IRA because they are two distinctly different organisations. The former had a genuine mandate as after the martyrdom of 1916, the vast majority of the country were supportive of their actions. This cannot be said to be true of the Provos. The IRA never targeted civilians (and indeed much outrage was caused when Jim Sheridan used a car bomb in his movie depicting this era: Michael Collins), again this cannot be said to be true of the Provos. I'm sure you'll argue that the civilians were never the primary target, but the fact remains that to the Provos these were acceptable "colatteral damage". Again, I'm sure you'll highlight the example of the original Bloody Sunday to show that the British weren't above killing civilians in the past. To that I'll counter with a question: would the Allies have been acting within reason if they'd set up concentration camps for captured Nazis purely because the Nazis had used them in the past?

Regards Bobby Sands, I am dissapointed to hear such insults spout from an Irish person to be honest. Sands did not die for "a uniform" he died to be recognised as a political prisoner. To label IRA POWs as being in the same categories as handbag snatchers is to defy logic.

You're right, one of these groups are petty thieves, the other are murderers. See my previous post as to why I equate Sands' death to dying for his clothing.

They were arrested under special counter-insurgency laws, tried in non-jury courts with the burden of proof placed on the defendant, charged on the basis of confessions extracted by torture and finally were sentenced in purpose built prisons. What other Western countries go through that procedure to incarcerate "average criminals" Sleepy? The fact you are failing to grasp is that Bobby Sands and his comrades were motivated by the struggle to evict a foreign power from Ireland, the same motivation that Terence McSweeny had to die on hunger strike in 1921. To accept a criminalisation process would be to accept the accusation that the struggle for Irish freedom was "criminal". Republicans were not willing to accept this and never will accept the decree that we are criminals. The fact you denigrated a man of such courage as "ignorant" and "stupid" really only sums up your own ignorance and stupidity. Another question for you, were Terence McSeeny and Thomas Ashe "stupid and ignorant" people?

Again, I'll restate my belief that dying for the symbolism inherrant in a uniform in a prison is a silly, needless way to die. I know Sands has helped the Republican movement far more in death than in life by giving ye a poster boy akin to Ché Guevara but I still feel he was stupid to kill himself in this way. Not once have I questioned his bravery, but again I'll restate bravery != intelligence.

When I said people who progress in the Republican Movement make a more educated analysis of the situation, I did not mean they "quit", I mean they began to abandon the perhaps ill-informed or developed beliefs that caused them to join in favour of a more educated policy on the political scenario in Ireland.

Am I to assume from your own membership of Sinn Fein as opposed to the IRA that you see "more educated policy on the political scenario in Ireland" to be the peaceful, political route? If so, we're completely in agreement and that's what I meant by they "quit": they lay down their arms and become law-abiding citizens working within the constraints of democracy to achieve their goals.

To answer your question regarding ill-informed people you met, idiots are no use to anyone and well you know that, but the type of person you outlined forms a small minority in the ranks of Óglaigh na hÉireann. There are good and bad apples in all organisations.

A fair point. But not all organisations put those bad apples in a position where they can kill.

Sleepy

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

What he is trying to say is that Gerry & his band of brothers in the SF leadership have accepted that there can never be a United Ireland as the Unionists will never agree to one. This stance is something which a lot of the republicans fail to grasp (his words not mine).

I'd take his point to be that a large percentage of the Republic of Ireland have no interest in a United Ireland. I certainly don't.

I can see why in Republican ideology, it's a romantic notion, however, under the stark realities of international economics, it would be the financial death knell of the Republic.

mike65

Sure the IRA (& I've noticed we're not specifying any particular IRA), have killed innocent people.....even Irish citizens, but they've yet to reach the levels displayed for hundreds of years by the Brits

Thats alright then.

Mike.