Young voters' view of the Troubles on the island of Ireland.

A very succinct, accurate and foreboding analysis.

Connolly, Pearse, Tone etc etc were 'separatists'? Who knew.

Almost as funny as your 'lie down and wait until the Unionist/Loyalists/British become democrats' theories

They bombed and shot their way there, that's the reality. And even then they achieved nothing that wouldn't have been achieved decades earlier with a less violent approach.

When SF violence was a reality they had very little electoral success, north or south. Basically we all voted nationalist in my area in the early 70s, a minority went with SF when they got into politics, that's all, they were still dwarved by other Catholic parties/candidates. Over the last 20 years they've achieved huge success, none of which happened when they were blowing people up.

To a degree post cease fire people (in the north) wanted to reward them for giving up violence, most people knew it'd help isolate the fanatics if they did well, that was definitely a factor in the success. But few people who were old enough to vote SF (IRA really) in the 70s, 80s and early 90s did so, not because they were content with everything in NI, but because we didn't agree with so-called armed struggle.

I was there in the late 60 and 70s, things had to change in the North, but the IRA poisoned it. A reaction was needed, but it was the wrong one, and it blighted too many lives. There certainly was an alternative, most people were in favour of an alternative, but the RA didn't care, they thought they knew better than ourselves what was good for us.

The delusion is strong with this one.

There was no indication that anything more could have been achieved with a "less violent" approach. Except for more catholics being run out of their homes. The PIRA campaign did not appear out of nowhere, nor was it unwanted. It was a direct response to civil rights movement members being targeted and attacked, both at public marches and in private. You seem to completely downplay the level of terror that was inflicted on the catholic community in the north - I can only imagine that you were reasonably well off and middle class (or else non-catholic) to hold those views.

Civil Rights beaten and mauled off the streets.

Sunningdale brought down by Loyalist/Unionist belligerence with the aid of the BA.

etc etc etc

Yea, they should have just been good little boys and girls and waited for what you feel in your waters might have been delivered. That sort of stuff doesn't happen in the real world.

And HerrKuehn wins the bingo today 🤣🤣🤣

No blanch, the implications were all in what you said.

Plaintive cries of ‘but but 1916 and 21 were different’ incoming.

No implication in what I said. I made a direct comparison between PIRA in Northern Ireland and Russian terrorists in the Donbas. Nothing less, nothing more.

You made up something else in your head.

I lived around the corner from Bombay Street, a bad time for sure, an awful thing was done. But many of those who lost their homes despised the IRA in the years to come. The idea that the IRA were doing a good thing got a little bit of traction for a very short period of time, but there was never a time when most ordinary Catholics didn't want them to stop what they were at.

You could go around about this forever and shout about what the army and the peelers did, and then someone else could retort with something the IRA did, and the circle would never be unbroken. But one of the truths of the time is that most Catholics wanted the IRA to stop what it was doing, but the RA didn't give a hoot.

Decades later the opinions of people who lived through those times still don't count apparently, we just didn't know enough about our own lives it seems.

Well, I was born a Catholic, voted for nationalist parties throughout, hurled for a club in Belfast for a number of years. I am very well off now, I wasn't then, lived in what would now be seen as poverty on the Falls. No doubt you still know more than me and the majority of Catholics who rejected the RA. Middle class, working class, whatever you like, Catholics for the most part wanted the IRA to stop. Anyone who was an adult in the North at the time knows it.

Funnily enough our opinions weren't taken into account then by the RA and years later they still don't count.

We don't know how many supported the IRA and elections are a pointless indicator, given that SF was for a time ambivalent to them and when they did decide on contesting them, they were censored, intimidated and their workers were shot dead in some cases.

Despite that they made steady inroads into the SDLP vote even during the conflict/war. By 1989 in local elections, they had half the vote (11%) the SDLP(22%) got, and increased it all through the 90's.

What you are plainly talking about is 'some' catholic opinion.

My view is that most wanted peace but could understand why the IRA existed and could see and experience themselves the reasons.

That complexity explains why the electorate moved en-masse to SF after the GFA.

You don't 'hate' an organisation and then suddenly start voting wholeheartedly for them...makes zero sense and of course lacks any nuance Sunny.

Hilarious stuff.

The reality was, and still is, that the toxic masculinity of extreme belligerent nationalists on both sides are the root cause of all the problems.

Claiming violence as the solution to problems is as toxic as it gets.