The accelerating fall in Sinn Féin support

Killing him in 1994, after he sold paintings to them in 1986, stopped what funding exactly?

It certainly helped with funding of either the provos or the dissidents when they got their fee from John Gilligan though.

Killing him allowed the drug dealer who happened to be directing a share of his drug money towards the provos to step up and take over the void left by Cahill.

The paintings were stolen by Cahill in 1986, hidden in the Wicklow mountains for a short period and then sold on.

The ones supposedly sold to the UVF were recovered in Istanbul in 1990 - the UVF didn't keep them and weren't caught with them, they had sold them.

Other paintings were recovered in London in 1992, and in Antwerp in 1993.

This article has the Turkish police raiding a hotel room and uvf men present in 1990. Another article names billy wright as uvf contact for buying pictures. Living in Dublin n doing deals with billy wright in the early 90s can be bad for ones life expectancy.

Poor cloclo can't quite grasp the link.

And the IRA waited 4 years to act?

Just a coincidence that in 1994 the drug dealer paying off republicans happened to want Cahill out of his way - and was willing to pay for the service

whats wrong with sf/ira ?

theres plenty that were members of both or one then the other .

sf consistently try to ignore or re write history to distance itself from the atrocities that it was involved with through this armed wing.

i dont see a problem with reminding people of that given that sf itself is so eager that people to forget it

I disagree, clarity is always needed. There is no link between the PIRA of the 1980s and the IRA of the 1920s. That needs to be understood by all.

While I assume the logic behind your argument is that the IRA of the (early) 1920s became our state army, it's a bit ridiculous to claim there is no link, Blanch.

There is quite obviously a direct link, with the PIRA coming about from the split of the anti-treaty side of the IRA, which obviously came about from the pro/anti treaty split of the IRA of 1919-1921.

This isn't to argue the legitimacy of the PIRA as the, 'sole successors' to the Old IRA as they claim, nor is it saying the history of the Rising belongs to them.....but saying there is no link is pretty absurd.

its a bit more complex than that now isnt is ? Anti treaty split followed by another split during ww2 , and another split again during the boarder campaign of the mid to late 50s , and finally another split in 1970 .

current sf has a lot less in common with the "old " ira and more in common with other terrorist gangs like uvf etc. formed as community protection and quickly evolved into terrorizing those same communities and extorting money for their own use.

sf/ira put considerable effort into spinning their own false narrative in fairness and its important that the truth be known

Sinn Féin councillor Daithí Doolan told Dublin City Council’s Joint Policing Committee that he was aware of one individual who has been acting as an “ambassador” for the protest who is a “convicted drug dealer” and who previously “boasted of flooding Ireland with drugs”.

He added that the same individual has a “political pedigree” through past involvement with the extremist British National Party (BNP).

Protests have been taking place in recent days against the use of the former Crown Paint factory in the north Dublin neighbourhood as accommodation for asylum seekers.

From The Journal

As I said, I'm not arguing that they have a claim on the heritage or that it makes them in any way defensible....I'm just pointing out that there is NO connection is pretty absurd.

Given that your own point was that it was more complicated than I implied it seems that you acknowledge that there is SOME connection between them.

Other splits happened e.g. Saor Uladh and Saor Eire splintering off etc, but the direct path to PIRA would be Old IRA, the Treaty split between the IRA and the National Army and the Border Campaign split between the IRA and the PIRA.

Just because you repeat what Blanch said doesn't make it true. They're very clearly linked given they came about via (multiple) splits from the old IRA.

As for the SF of Arthur Griffith, I'd argue that FF, FG and the Workers Party have as much of a link as current SF do, but again arguing that there are NO links is just silly.

Not liking SF or the PIRA (I'll happily take your side on both counts) doesn't mean you can pretend history doesn't actually exist. They have a clear and direct link back in both cases. That doesn't give them any legitimacy, nor does it give them ownership of the history.....but if you're going to argue that there is NO connection, you're going to have to do a bit better than sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, 'nuh uh, they're not connected because I said so'.

I genuinely don't understand what point you're trying to make. Literally any history book concerned with modern Irish history will show a connection between the old IRA and the PIRA.

Are you suggesting that all modern Irish historians are compromised by SF? Are you suggesting that they have Wikipedia locked down? Have they got the inside line on the RTE?

If your argument is that the PIRA are not the natural successors of the Old IRA or even that they're not the same as the Old IRA then make that argument; I'd fully agree with it.....but insisting there is absolutely no connection between them is absolutely absurd, totally at odds with reality. A series of splits in the old IRA leads directly to the PIRA, that isn't even remotely debatable.

Can you at least break down which bit you don't believe happened?

1. The Old IRA/Irish Volunteers fought in the War of Independence from 1919-1922
2. The Old IRA split along pro/anti treaty lines in 1922. The pro-treaty side became the Irish defense forces, the anti-treaty side continued to refer to itself as the IRA.
3. The anti-treaty side, still referring to itself as the IRA and clearly directly linked to the Old IRA continued it's campaign with various split-offs. In 1969, the IRA split again due to disagreement on whether SF should continue with abstentionism. Those who wished to drop the abstentionist policy continued on, referring to themselves as Official IRA (which pretty much petered out by the late 1970s), those who did not became Provisional IRA.

The existence of this obvious and direct connection doesn't bestow any legitimacy on the PIRA, nor does it make it OK for them to try claim the history of the Old IRA as their own.....but jesus, it's quite clearly, 'a connection'.

You're essentially trying to argue that a fella's great grandkids aren't connected with him because some of the other great grandkids were better and had more in common with him.

Who said anything about being on the same level? Certainly not me, given that I said precisely the opposite right there in the post you've quoted

If your argument is that the PIRA are not the natural successors of the Old IRA or even that they're not the same as the Old IRA then make that argument; I'd fully agree with it.....but insisting there is absolutely no connection between them is absolutely absurd, totally at odds with reality. A series of splits in the old IRA leads directly to the PIRA, that isn't even remotely debatable.

I'll emphasise where I say I would fully agree that they are not the, 'natural successors' of the Old IRA. I'd 100% consider our state forces to occupy that position.

The existence of this obvious and direct connection doesn't bestow any legitimacy on the PIRA, nor does it make it OK for them to try claim the history of the Old IRA as their own.....but jesus, it's quite clearly, 'a connection'.

The Continuity and Real IRA are absolutely linked to the PIRA by the way.

You seem to live in a very black and white world, with zero understanding of the words "link" or "connection".

I haven't stated that they're EQUIVALENT at any point whatsoever. I've said they're connected, which apart from histrionics and hand-wringing, no one has actually made a single argument against. There are two stages of separation from the Old IRA to the PIRA, that's a connection. History doesn't care about your hurt feelings unfortunately. Setting up strawman arguments to suggest I've argued any degree of equivalency is pretty weak.

If a group splits in two, the secondary group obviously has a fecking link to the original group. When McCartney left The Beatles, it didn't turn Wings into The Beatles, but it'd be fecking idiotic to argue they're not linked/connected.

I'd say it would be a pretty stupid name alright, but I don't think we were having a discussion about how clever the naming of various paramilitary groups was. Are you trying to argue that there is no connection between The Beatles and Wings, and by the same logic there is no connection between the various groups who have called themselves variations of the IRA, or are we agreed finally that there is an obvious connection and now focused on whether the Provo marketing department could've come up with a better name?

MK Don's have a stupid name in the soccer, an obvious allusion to their connection to Wimbledon FC. That AFC Wimbledon arguably have a better connection to Wimbledon FC's history doesn't change the fact that MK Dons are clearly and obviously connected to Wimbledon FC.....even if they have a stupid name and even though the vast majority of Wimbledon FC fans absolutely hate what they did.

There might be a parallel in there if you look hard enough....

So mlmd is giving in to utter scumbags and thugs

Back scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That's one hell of a U-turn

Regardless of persuasion, we can all agree that Sinn Fein are traitors.

I think they had to get off the fence finally, and as "opposition" they were doing fcek all, saying fcek all

God our politics in this country is fucked, there's no affective opposition what so ever.

She and her party they just dont get it.

How can a party be so incompetent.

How can they be in any way similar when the world was completely different in the 1980s from the 1920s?

Context is all.

This is the problem with the Shinners. They have absolutely no positions on some many important things. Doherty is a very weak politician.

does he have all the revelevant information? You are assuming he does, and assuming that by quoting a tweet