It's interesting, because this was reported out in 1993, and includes things like:
Similarly, the telephone grid is scanned at a rate exceeding one million calls per minute for conversation suspected of being useful to the IRA. The moment a trigger word or phrase is uttered, the line is tapped and a detective put on the case. My Belfast friends keep correcting my perception of this snooping. [...]
How plausible was that in 1993? Scanning dialed numbers, sure, but voice recognition?
The ECHELON keyword searches were against faxes and cables (and even then, the reporting breathlessly noted the tens of keywords they could search for at a time, and the carefully managed dictionaries). Against a whole country's voice phone traffic?
AI pioneer Oliver Selfridge was a source for Duncan Campbell's 1980s reporting, so there was at least one competent scientist involved, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Selfridge. If it's still an open question after three decades, perhaps we'll never know.
The most surprising part is that the technology could understand a Belfast accent. Even in 2022 Siri says "Hello" back to me when I begin a question with the word "How..."
It almost certainly did not operate in any way similar to how it was described in the article. See my other comment but I highly suspect this was a much simpler solution in real life. I don't think there was any monitoring of "code words" at all or even any automated voice detection. It just seemed that way to outsiders because all they ever saw was the correlation without actually understanding the capabilities behind the scenes.
Wasn't there something around it where it didn't make it to market after, or got bought and suppressed? I worked for someone who worked on it, and I remember his view was it got sabotaged somehow.
1993 was peak ECHELON conspiracy theory and really, that was an era of fax machines and mostly rare 300-1200baud modems. Commercially available hardware included the Cray EL90, and the Sun SPARC lines. Knowing what we do now, as a capability, even just trolling through basic fax OCR, aided by some traffic analysis, and a reduced list of potential targets (early social graph analysis), it seems plausible that a probabilistic and unreliable fishing expedition version of this existed - and then after some "limited hangout" leaks, there was also plausibly something on the traffic analysis side that detected anyone exercising any opsec capabilities at all in response to it, and then they focus workflows on those people.
It's as simple as getting phone records into a Sun workstation, sending an asset into the area to a pub to spread the rumor calls are being monitored, looking for a change in behavior in the data, then focusing on whoevers records change after your asset is sent in. Not saying this happened, but if you're in the threat hunting business, it seems like a pretty obvious low cost win within the capabilities of the tech at the time.
There was a huge financial fraud involving a Belgian company, Lernout & Hauspie, which acquired many of the other startups doing voice recognition and then went bust. The guy who built Dragon NaturallySpeaking and owned Dragon Systems was paid in ultimately completely worthless shares of L&H.
The technology was bought out of bankruptcy and successfully commercialized. One of the two guys involved in the fraud claimed he was a victim of a CIA conspiracy, although the other one admitted the fraud.
Looking for a short list (closed vocab) of words is far easier than going for the tens of thousands of words that something like transcription requires. Also you can accept quite high false positives. A HMM is adequate.
AT&T deployed a speaker independent keyword based system called VRCP in 1992 that automated some operator assisted calls. So keyword recognition at utility scale was plausible but there is a difference in scale between some fancy IVR tech and scanning millions of phone calls.
There were ICs in 80s consumer electronics that could do primitive recognition of prerecorded words. These could have been adapted to monitor all calls and flag them for human monitoring.
So I'd imagine that by 1993 it would have been possible to do analog voice coding, digitize the codes, and then a mainframe could scan through the codes which are just "envelopes of the bandpass filters". (Just a guess)
It’s kind of unclear from the article where this claim even comes from.
Was this something the journalist claimed to somehow know or was it something that the PIRA had told him?
Neither of them would be in a position to know especially at the time it was written, but it has all the hallmarks of the kind of “the enemy is 10ft tall” stories that tend to turn up in the fog of war.
The next part of that quote (in the article) though certainly suggests that the PIRA had perfectly good evidence to suggest that SOMETHING like this was happening based on their experience of actively manipulating it to their advantage.
It sounds reasonable as a concept without having to back up the specific technical claims of how the monitoring itself actually worked or it’s particular capabilities.
I could for example see it as something much closer to a manual operation IRL that just targeted the phones of know and suspected members along with payphones in certain areas and it would have appeared the same way to them.
They weren’t actually a particularly large organisation IRL and those passing operational messages over a public phone network was even smaller.
I’d hazard a guess that it’s not actually THAT difficult to put together a target list for surveillance that would narrow the scope down to something fairly reasonable. You aren’t actually looking for full coverage in this scenario you’re looking for a good signal to noise ratio and it ends up becoming a question of which calls are “unusual” and you could get a long way to answering with metadata alone, long before you ever thought to pass the actual contents of the call to an analyst.
If one hold grudges war will never end, whether it’s grudges from ww2 or centuries of foreign oppression of the Irish or a thousand other past conflicts in Europe. Yes, In one light having terrorist organizations go unpunished is bad but if it’s the price of peace that’s so far held then it seems like missing the forest for the trees to focus on the ira and not the end of violence.
> The problem is when one side constantly votes in a party controlled by the terrorist group. Sinn Fein is the Provisional IRA, and proud of it.
That's not an issue unique to one side of the conflict though. The DUP are hardly moderates, and were always suspected to have links to the UVF.
One of the saddest parts about the post Good Friday/Belfast settlement was how it ended up with the more extreme parts of each community splitting power between them.
The DUP had some informal ties by way of some members appearing on stage alongside loyalist paramilitaries in the past, but it was never the political party of any paramilitary group of note.
The unionist party run by the UVF is the PUP and it is barely a rounding error in the polls.
Sinn Fein has many members of senior IRA rank and calls itself "the political wing of the PIRA".
> Sinn Fein has many members of senior IRA rank and calls itself "the political wing of the PIRA".
Name one. I don't disagree that this definitely used to be the case (Martin McGuiness as the classic example), but I can't imagine Mary Lou McDonald as a member of the PIRA.
Like, I'm kinda disgusted with myself to be defending Sinn Fein, but one could argue that the necessity of political/violence co-operation was larger for the nationalists, given where they started. It was certainly the perception that the organs of the state were not religion-blind. How many Catholics were in the RUC, for instance?
Gerry Kelly. Martina Anderson. Gerry Adams (obvs). Bobby Storey. Conor Murphy. Barry McElduff.
Michelle O'Neill had no personal involvement, but her father was in the Provisional IRA. It's not uncommon for republican families to split duties in that way.
But even if I couldn't name any, it is very clear that the two organisations are deeply and inextricably linked.
> How many Catholics were in the RUC, for instance?
I get what you're saying. We should note that some of the low numbers was down to anti-policing attitudes in their own community. Indeed there are still areas run by republican paramilitary factions today where you don't call the police, or you'll have two problems.
I would need to consider the pre-1973 history in better depth, but I would agree that I wish there was better accommodation with the nationalist community in the predominantly unionist state, if it would've helped avoid what happened. But consider that the unionist attitudes were driven by fear of the other side too, this would've affected their decisions. The Northern state was intended as a compromise for Unionists, who looked South and saw their population in the ROI drop from 15% to around 1%.
Even with that said, I can never sympathise with people who bombed, intimidated and targeted civilians in the way that the various IRAs did. There is no cause for pride or celebration here, even if one accepts it as necessary. I don't see mournful regret when I see Sinn Fein members reflect on the names of those tied to that aspect of the past.
The level of violence and its many knock on effects took a tremendous toll on the unionist population, and we cannot forget who was responsible.
> Michelle O'Neill had no personal involvement, but her father was in the Provisional IRA. It's not uncommon for republican families to split duties in that way.
Sins of the father, eh?
> I would need to consider the pre-1973 history in better depth, but I would agree that I wish there was better accommodation with the nationalist community in the predominantly unionist state, if it would've helped avoid what happened. But consider that the unionist attitudes were driven by fear of the other side too, this would've affected their decisions. The Northern state was intended as a compromise for Unionists, who looked South and saw their population in the ROI drop from 15% to around 1%.
I'm definitely not disputing that at all, the Free State was a deeply hostile place to Protestants post-independence, for a bunch of reasons, most of which are pretty bad. Like, almost every village/town in the Republic has decaying Protestant churches, which shows you how much changed when partition happened.
That being said, there were real civil rights issues for Catholics in the North and that's the context for how Provisional SF/IRA got started.
> en with that said, I can never sympathise with people who bombed, intimidated and targeted civilians in the way that the various IRAs did. There is no cause for pride or celebration here, even if one accepts it as necessary. I don't see mournful regret when I see Sinn Fein members reflect on the names of those tied to that aspect of the past.
Neither do I. Do I possibly understand what drove some of those people? Yes. Do I agree with their actions? Hell no, in fact a hundred times no. Not in my name (speaking as a citizen of the Republic). I've felt this way for a really long time, back in the 1990s when stuff was still happening.
That being said, it definitely wasn't one-sided, and remember that SF were not the only organisation killing people for no good reasons, and indeed any state sponsored violence would typically not even be counted in the "terrorism" figures.
>The level of violence and its many knock on effects took a tremendous toll on the unionist population, and we cannot forget who was responsible.
The violence fucked up everyone, that's what violence does. Like both sides suffered a whole bunch of trauma, and should Catholics never forget the UVF/UDA et al? Should they never forget the irredentist Paisley who shut down the original power-sharing plans which could have prevented thousands of deaths?
Like, ultimately it needs to end, and hanging onto grudges rarely works out well for anyone.
It's widely believed that some former high ranking IRA members still are involved in the party leadership, but nowhere near the extent that they could be said to "control" the party
> Sinn Fein is the Provisional IRA,
The ceasefire was 25 years ago, there is a whole generation of SF members who have never been in the IRA, so no, they are not the same organisation
> and proud of it
Yeah, there's pride at having held off the British Army for decades, but also a lot of very mixed feelings
There is good evidence to indicate that the IRA Army Council is still heavily involved in running Sinn Fein. And it is no wonder, because the links between the two organisations are pretty tight and always have been. The party still calls itself "the political wing of the Provisional IRA". In response to an audience member shouting "Up the 'RA", Gerry Adams famously replied with glee "They haven't gone away you know".
Sinn Fein to this day praises and commemorates former IRA murderers. Michelle O'Neill comes from a family of proud IRA members. I could go on.
Endorsing the organisation now is endorsing its history and aims, which haven't diverged despite the young faces and heavy layers of PR gloss.
> pride at having held off the British Army
And a lot of civilians who guarded prisons, happened to be going to work, were 'suspected' touts, were buying fish and chips, or were watching military parades to commemorate real sacrifice like that made in WWII.
Real reconciliation would be possible with moderate nationalists, not people who call Unionists "bastards" in private, or say "equality is a trojan horse for Nationalism".
Still, there are not good grounds to say that SF and the IRA are the same thing.
All the evidence points to the aims having changed - the aim of violent overthrow of British rule seems to have been abandoned, as evidence by the last 25 years.
But look... If you think no reconciliation is possible then there's no real point in saying any of this to you
> there are not good grounds to say that SF and the IRA are the same thing.
What would be good enough grounds, in your view?
> If you think no reconciliation is possible then there's no real point in saying any of this to you
If you think I mean reconciliation with nationalists is impossible, that is not the case at all. If you think reconciliation is possible with a party that has admitted in private that its public friendly persona is a trojan horse, I won't be taken for a fool.
> What would be good enough grounds, in your view?
That's getting a bit hypothetical. I'm just working with the evidence available to me right now. If strong enough evidence appears to the contrary then I will change my mind
And look... If you think that whatever off the cuff comments are actually the defining statement of the party's essence then ok, go with that.
Evidence, like the presence of several senior Provisional IRA members in the upper party ranks, and reliable intelligence that indicates that the IRA Army Council directs both PIRA and Sinn Fein strategy? The honoured presence of all senior Sinn Fein members at funerals for notorious PIRA members? The pro-IRA chants at election counts? Politics is a game where truth is expended for convenience, and in this regard SF/IRA are hardly exceptions. They called it the "Ballet box and armalite" strategy.
Would you at least agree that choosing an alternative party without these connections and connotations would be a better gesture from the Nationalist community to Unionists?
> off the cuff comments
I would say that an address to a party audience by the party founder addressing party strategy gives the comments significant weight, yes. If Jeffery Donaldson made comments remotely like these they would make headlines for weeks.
> reliable intelligence that indicates that the IRA Army Council directs both PIRA and Sinn Fein strategy
Again, I _think_ I'm aware of most of the relevant evidence and to me it indicates that some former high ranking IRA members still are involved in the party leadership, but nowhere near the extent that they could be said to "control" the party
> Would you at least agree that choosing an alternative party without these connections and connotations would be a better gesture from the Nationalist community to Unionists?
Yeah I see your point. But, let's face it, neither community has been all that good with gestures. I could go on about speeches made by the founding member of the DUP, but, you know what, that shit is in the past, I'd rather just move on.
> Sinn Fein - Ourselves Alone.
Ouch... That's not the literal meaning... Not easy to explain. Irish is a tricky bitch of a language, best just leave it out.
>In response to an audience member shouting "Up the 'RA", Gerry Adams famously replied with glee "They haven't gone away you know"
You're talking as if this happened recently and not nearly 30 years ago
>Sinn Fein to this day praises and commemorates former IRA murderers.
So what? How often do unionists have a bad word to say about the British forces that have spent centuries terrorizing and murdering Irish people? How are nationalists supposed to reconcile with people who by and large vote for political parties that do not support the GFA (presumably they would prefer to go back to armed conflict? perhaps the protestant supremacist state formed in 1921?) or turn up en masse to prance about in July with the deeply unpleasant orange order?
I just needed to highlight the irony in condemning me for bringing up the past, then you bring up the past and use that to condemn the British people. All in the same post. Congratulations.
The British Army got away with heinous murders too. So did loyalist terrorist groups. At some point both sides need to move on if peace is to be obtained. I like what Ghandi said: An eye for an eye makes the world blind.
I don’t recall the British bombing school buses, or libraries, or pretty much any place where people congregated.
The IRA were terrorists. Pretending that they’re not only really stopped in the US after 9/11, presumably because it became harder for supporters in the US to explain why targeting groups of civilians was an acceptable strategy.
I didn’t use the word “terrorism” in regards to the British Army. I said the British Army got away with heinous murders too. So did loyalist terrorist groups. The British Army colluded with loyalist terrorist groups and innocents died as a result.
I did not pretend the IRA were not terrorists. I said nothing in this regard.
People fight using the means available to them. The IRA had no tanks, bombers, frigates, etc. They fought back the only way they could. To them it was justified. To you it wasn’t. But this is true in all wars. The Americans were considered uncivilized during the American Revolutionary War since we frequently targeted officers during battles. This was contrary to how European armies fought.
Thank you for your response. In my response to you I had to edit it to remove some incorrect statements. I had to do that because I read into what you wrote some implications that you clearly did not intend. It’s so easy to do that.
As an aside, I am always happy to see this type of discourse, HN is such a rare place. A discussion about a topic with lots of division and when people disagree, they are friendly and reasonable about it. Kudos to both of you.
Aside from things like Bloody Sunday where the British Army opened fire on Irish marching against internment of Irish in concentration camps without trial...
The DaSilva report, Stevens inquiries etc. showed collusion between English military and intelligence and loyalist death squads, including furnishing of firearms.
So the English armed their loyalist paramilitary death squads like the Shankhill butchers and then wash their hands of it all.
To prevent widespread sectarian murdering and ethnic cleansing of both Catholic and Protestant communities, and because there Irish state is incapable of doing this.
No one in England wants anything to do with it anymore, is a mill stone round our neck.
Have you ever been to Northern Ireland? This comment is so misinformed. You say widespread, most people don’t care anymore. It is only in the incredibly deprived estates that this matters anymore, and even then it’s mostly loyalist drug dealers terrorising their own community.
The Alliance party, the non-aligned neo-liberal party here, had a massive jump in votes in the recent election.
The idea that if the British weren’t here people would instantly devolve into sectarian murders is completely laughable to me.
In my entire life I have never interacted with anyone who was sectarian. You see the areas with union flags strung up everywhere but as I say, these communities are completely insular and run by drug dealers hiding behind the aegis of shared ethnicity.
“A mill stone around our neck”, come off it, my eyes are rolling so hard in my head I fear they may roll under the sofa
Perhaps you can explain then how Lyra McKee (who worked for TechMeme) was murdered in plain view on a public street in Derry by the “New IRA” or why police say the murder weapon was used in four other paramilitary attacks. She was not an “insular” person (she had many contacts in Sillicon Valley) and is hardly an isolated case, nor was she “depraved,” or from a depraved estate, or someone who is not cared about. She was perfectly lovely. RIP
If a person has taken the side of a terrorist group, they've decided any victims deserved what they got, so providing evidence that such belief is clearly nonsense is going to be ignored in favor of whatever twisted worldview they've taken up.
Where do you get the idea I am on the side of a terrorist group? I mentioned loyalist terrorists because although I don't consider myself as belonging to either side, my grandmother was staunchly British and therefore I know more about the loyalist terrorists. I don't know what the republican terrorists are up to because I've never lived near one of their areas.
I believe violence is only ever justified defensively and even then only as a last resort. The sooner that generation of parasitic drug barons either kill each other or die naturally the better for everyone.
Not to support terrorism in any way, but I'm not convinced they have to have decided that the victims deserve it. There's plenty of other justifications, such as it being a necessary but unfortunate evil on the way to a greater good.
I presume you are aware of how she actually died right? She’s a good friend of a good friend of mine so while I won’t claim to have known her personally I do think about how her on a semi regular basis and how unnecessary and pointless her death was.
But she wasn’t just straight up murdered like you claimed. She wasn’t even targeted, it was just a wrong place, wrong time situation.
I don’t say it to excuse what happened but the way you seem to be telling that story is just not what happened.
> The Alliance party, the non-aligned neo-liberal party here, had a massive jump in votes in the recent election.
I think this is more a splintering of the unionist community as the DUP has taken a hardline and self-harming pro-Brexit, anti-protocol, no compromise approach. For the US readers, the DUP's social views would make many of the US republicans look liberal. Their last leader was ousted for merely abstaining on, rather than opposing, a ban on gay conversion therapy. Now the DUP is holding the entire NI political system to ransom unless they get their way.
There are many unionists who are done with that shit but are still pro-UK, and this is the group that flocked to alliance in large numbers last election.
> To prevent widespread sectarian murdering and ethnic cleansing of both Catholic and Protestant communities, and because there Irish state is incapable of doing this.
If that were the reason then they wouldn't have been deployed in places like Armagh where there was no community division.
The army were sent in for the same reason that the border was drawn where it was: to serve British financial interests.
> No one in England wants anything to do with it anymore, is a mill stone round our neck.
The IRA succeeded in making it more expensive than it was worth (although the collapse of the shipbuilding industry was probably the biggest single factor).
> and because there Irish state is incapable of doing this.
The Irish state isn't responsible for NI.
At one point the Irish government actually considered militarily intervening in NI, but the British would have seen that as an honest to God act of war.
The idea that the IRA were jolly people who were just going to leave alone anyone who identified as British and wished to remain in the United Kingdom is laughable.
I've seen "Brits out" and I know what it means. I've known innocent businessmen have their livelihoods ruined and their lives taken, all by the hands of various republican factions, just for being "collaborators".
I'll never forget Enniskillen, Omagh, Bloody Friday, the attempt at Tullyhommon, or the various other atrocities and the party in Stormount that lauds them.
Look up Barry McElduff and his shameless mocking of the Kingsmill atrocity. This happened as recently as 2018 and he is already back in Sinn Fein. Not something anyone does in the spirit of reconciliation.
I'm glad someone at least had the nerve to defend us from clear intimidation and death wishes.
> I don’t recall the British bombing school buses, or libraries, or pretty much any place where people congregated.
The MRF's own ex-members describe it as a terror group; they carried out drive-by shootings of civilians, and UVF members have claimed that they took part in the bombing of McGurk's.
> why targeting groups of civilians was an acceptable strategy
Churchill allowed his Black and Tans to burn entire villages to the ground and terrorise people to subdue them with fear. Terrorism is not just blowing up buses.
My grandfather was in the "old IRA" during the Irish war of independence. My dad tells a story about a conversation he had in his youth with an elderly pub-owner who said "At least when the Black and Tans set fire to my pub I'd get compensation from the Brits, when your father set fire to it I'd get nothing"
It was a civil war, mixed up with religion. The only "british" people were the army/RUC, the rest were people from ireland. NI is not part of great britian. NI is _not_ british.
The IRA (well second/third gen by this point) had an army that was being funded partly by american's "fighting the fight of the old country". They bombs, shot, and tortured anyone they thought who were dodgy.
On the other side, the Loyalist paramilitaries were kidnapping and shooting people in a similar way.
One could make the call to say the reason why the loyalists wern't so keen on bombings (they did do them) was because you could argue that the RUC(the police in NI) and the army were acting on their side.
For example the republicans rarely called the fire brigade/ambulance because more often than not, the army would be pretending to be them. There were "murder squads" of SAS/others who would go out and "stop" people based on informer intelligence.
So yes, its brilliant that we(NI, ireland, UK) have managed to stop this. If that means that people have to live with the murder next door, so be it. Its far better than another generation of killings that has poisoned NI since the 1920s.
on a side note, do you know how hard it is to forgive/live with the "other side" when you personally know a dad, uncle, relative that was murder by the state/paramilitary?
That's not true though. The majority of NI wanted to remain part of the UK. There was a large segment of the NI population that wanted to become part of Ireland, but that was still the minority. It is absolutely false to say that NI is not part of the UK - a statement the Irish government agrees with - or that the only British were the army/ruc if we're using a definition of British == wants NI to remain part of the UK.
Maybe what is wanted by the majority in NO is different now - 20+ years is obviously a long time, and society can change so maybe they no longer wish the connection. The Good Friday agreement acknowledges that possibility and explicitly states that if the majority of NI wish to become part of Ireland then the UK is required to accept that choice.
Now, to the awful things that happened: Do I think that members of the RUC who killed civilians should have ended up in jail? of course. But I think the same thing about members of the IRA.
Finally: no I don't know what it is like to live with the "other side", but I am sure that there are many of the "other side" who lost friends and family, and also had to accept the Good Friday agreement despite their loss.
> It is absolutely false to say that NI is not part of the UK
with respect, thats not what I said. I said they are not British. Northern Ireland is not part of the british isles. They are part of the united kingdom of great Britian and northern island. I know its semantics, but alas its important.
> Now, to the awful things that happened: Do I think that members of the RUC who killed civilians should have ended up in jail? of course. But I think the same thing about members of the IRA.
agreed, but it cannot come at the cost of peace. I personally dislike the fact that civilian killers are in parliament. But if that means we can have lasting peace, that is a price that must be paid.
if we take the example of germany after the war, there were committed nazis in power for many many years after 1945. However Germany is not a country riven by nazis anymore (excluding AFD)
we must work together in order to maintain peace. The alternative is just not worth contemplating
People from Northern Ireland can be British. I'm from Belfast and my passport says "British citizen." Being a British citizen and being from Britain aren't the same thing.
The island or Ireland is one of the British Isles.
That's a fact of geography not politics, much like the UK is part of Europe but no longer part of the EU.
If you find the word British offensive then you'll need to come up with an alternative for the British Isles but it will be plainly obvious that the geographic collection of islands you are describing is still called the British Isles by everyone else.
Geographical names are political, there's nothing objective about them. Calling them the British Isles implies some kind of ownership, but Ireland is not a British possession. There's lots of other groups where you could apply the same logic, insisting on a name when it offends the people it applies to. Unless you've just bought a large quantity of atlases where Ireland is named as a British Island this would make no difference to you, so why would you argue for it.
> Northern Ireland is not part of the british isles.
My recollection is that the "British Isles" refers to the islands of [Great] Britain and Ireland (among other smaller ones), so that while Northern Island is not part of Great Britain, it is still part of the "British Isles."
> The majority of NI wanted to remain part of the UK. There was a large segment of the NI population that wanted to become part of Ireland, but that was still the minority.
Beause the British carefully drew the border in such a way as to take as much territory as possible while still having a majority who wanted to be British, much like the Russians in South Ossetia or Donetsk.
>The only "british" people were the army/RUC, the rest were people from ireland. NI is not part of great britian. NI is _not_ british.
That is not a good-faith position. "British" is universally understood to mean "relating to the people of the United Kingdom". Hence "British passport", "British citizen", etc.
The people of Northern Ireland are therefore British by nationality, being citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, under UK law.
They are also Irish, in the sense that they are inhabitants of the island of Ireland; and also (prior to 2005) on the basis that everyone born on the island of Ireland was an Irish citizen by birth.
To see such a plainly factual statement being down voted on HN is deeply worrying.......
I suspect the Americans doing the down voting have never been cought up in a terrorist attack and are happy being keyboard warriors about something they know so little.
Thank fuck for the peace process and the hard work that has gone into it.
I suspect it was the partisan and kind of BS nature of the claim. The IRA weren’t blowing up school buses full of children or libraries.
They even had a very clear policy of trying to minimise civilian casualties in a way that loyalist groups absolutely did not, in fact they made a point to intentionally target civilians repeatedly.
So to make the claim that the OP did like it was some black and white scenario where violence against civilians was only going in one direction is objectively wrong.
Nobody is upset with the claim that the IRA were a terrorist group. They were. They did a lot of bad shit, including killing civilians but that was never any kind of policy and it never made sense for their objectives. It was correctly considered to be “bad for the cause” to piss off the support network that enabled them to operate at all.
Agreed with about about thank fuck for the peace process though.
I'm also unsure how they were minimizing civilian casualties when the blew up multiple pubs and apartment stores in the UK.
That said I'll cop to being unreasonable and biased in my first comment, I did disregard the violence committed by the RUC. I was reflexively responding to what came across as a minimization of the IRA and ended up doing what I was accusing the person I was replying to of doing.
I'll update the original comment if HN still allows it.
I tried writing a reply to this but its kind of hard to talk about the nuance here around intent etc when at the end of the day dead kids are dead kids. I don’t think anyone rightly gives a damn about if that was the intent or not and I’m certainly not here to try and justify it. The entire thing is completely unacceptable in every sense of the word.
Regarding that second link though, I thought that was INLA which were a totally different group?
They tried to bomb a bus load of Protestant children on a church trip before fleeing across the border. On the same day as the Enniskillen bomb with a device nearly four times the one used for that atrocity.
Thank heavens it failed, but the intention was there.
Just want to throw my hand up and say in all honesty I’d never heard of this story before hence my original comment.
It’s quite hard to find information on this one and I have to say the Wikipedia article [1] tells a much more plausible version of the story than an unsourced version written by someone who’s brother was killed by the IRA.
“the IRA called a radio station and said it had abandoned a 150-pound (68 kg) bomb in Tullyhommon, 20 miles (32 km) away, after it failed to detonate. That morning, a Remembrance Sunday parade (which included many members of the Boys' and Girls' Brigades) had unwittingly gathered near the Tullyhommon bomb. Soldiers and RUC officers had also been there, and the IRA said it attempted to trigger the bomb when soldiers were standing beside it. It was defused by security forces and was found to have a command wire leading to a firing point across the border.”
Nobody in this story was setting out to actively target civilians let alone children.
There is also this section in the article which may or may not be relevant but this particular theme came up on multiple occasions and I believe was proven to have happened at least once but I have to double check the sourcing on this.
“Under the thirty-year rule, a letter sent after the bombing was released by the Irish Government. The author was anonymous but claimed to be working for MI5, and the letter was sent to then Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan. Without providing any evidence, it claimed that MI5 had advance knowledge of the Remembrance Day bombing but allowed it to go ahead, so that the public could turn against the Provisional IRA and new security measures could be justified.”
At the same time, I’d say this entire story is actually a great example of why trying to wage a Guerilla campaign amongst a civilian population is an actively terrible idea. These things are going to end up happening regardless of if you meant for it to happen or not unfortunately.
So that’s all to say, none of this is in anyway justified but again, nobody was trying to actively target a bus full of children here because again, it’s hard to think of ANYTHING that could be more counter productive to their aims as you can see from the rest of the article.
Before the IRA were engaged in armed conflict, Catholics in Northern Ireland were treated like shit by the British government, police and local authorities. They were denied jobs and housing, the latter basically denying them a vote (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote). After a civil rights movement emerged, the UVF were formed in 1966 by an ex British soldier (Gusty Spencer) and it's ranks were full of soldiers and police. They petrol bombed Catholic homes, schools and businesses. They shot Catholic civilians dead in the streets. Peaceful protests by Catholics were attacked by gangs which included off-duty police. After one march in Derry the police went on a rampage, attacking Catholic homes. Police beat Catholics to death (Samuel Devenny (42) and two of his daughters were beaten in their homes - he died from his injuries. Frances McCloskey (67) was beaten by police during a protest and died of his injuries). In response, the Bogside area went into lock-down, declaring themselves a no-go area for police. Police and loyalists attacked the residents with CS gas, water cannon and armoured vehicles. The Irish government called for a UN peacekeeping force to intervene. What actually happened was that the British army went in. Initially welcomed by the Catholics, they turned out to be even worse than the police: in a single event 745 People were injured (154 with gunshot wounds) and a 9 year old was killed. Hundreds of homes were demolished or badly damaged. The Irish government set up refugee camps South of the border. All of this before the IRA had started their bombing campaigns.
I don't agree with what the IRA did. Never have. But come on. "I don't recall the British bombing blah blah blah". Selective memory.
They were not "denied the vote". Read your own link. "However, unlike the situation in Great Britain, non-ratepayers did not have a vote in local government elections." - if you did not pay rates, you couldn't vote in local elections, but could still vote for Parliament.
Furthermore, from your link:
> the Parliament of Northern Ireland voted to update the voting rules for elections to the Northern Ireland House of Commons, which were implemented for the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, and for local government elections, which was done by the Electoral Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1969, passed on 25 November 1969.
So, the IRA campaign began after the voting situation was equalised, for rate payers and non rate payers alike, in 1969. And when the Stormont Parliament was abolished in 1972, the MPs for NI were elected using UK wide rules, which again, did not "basically deny them the vote".
Thus, the IRA campaign was not about civil rights. It was about forcibly pushing NI into the Republic of Ireland, against the wishes of the majority of the population.
> in a single event 745 People were injured (154 with gunshot wounds) and a 9 year old was killed.
And which "event" was this, because given the nonsense in the rest of your post, I'm betting that this didn't happen.
Well you clearly know fuck all about the topic then. The British military are guilty of several massacres and civilian murders in Ireland both before and after 1969 and either directly or indirectly through collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
We will never know the truth about the black ops that the English security agencies were involved in. Some things are never declassified.
There are even theories that they deliberately allowed some of the IRA attacks to go through in order to sway the English public opinion. They had their informants all over the place.
Sadly, I'm not even sure which side you are raging against. From the context it seems that you mean IRA, but calling the british an model invaders and running a monti python style of speech about what they've given Ireland will be a bit grotesque.
An Anglo-Irish person asks: Post independence, was Éire a model civil rights respecting polity?
Rather than leaning in to what looks like nationalist anti-English racism, have you considered how other European countries behaved during the 1000 years of history you referred to?
I mean, the claim of "home rule is rome rule" was justified in the sense of the Catholic Church dictating much social policy until the 80s, but at the same time, the Irish government did not set up the voting system to disadvantage one religious or ethnic grouping, yet the Northern Irish government did. Your comment comes across as whataboutism.
Yes. but we have to actively try and heal these wounds.
We cannot let another generation restart an active war. We've had 25 years without an active bombing or driveby shooting campaign. almost an entire generation has grown up with their male relatives still being alive.
we cannot allow that cycle to be triggered again, its just not worth it.
> the English intrusion into Ireland is full of heinous murders
so were the Scottish plantations, but thats counter to the narrative.
> from the massacres of Drogheda
The civil war was utterly destructive, the scale of murder rape and pillage was astronomical. The wars of the three kingdoms were ripped apart. it wasn't until well into charles II that things settled.
look, we have a choice. We can either rake over tensions, or try and forge peace. Yes the troubles were _heinous_. the UK did nasty shit, but its not like the provos were golden angels either.
I am sorry for what the UK did. But I have no control over history, only now. We can either work together to stop another generation loose their male relatives, or slide into another civil war. Yes, we must acknowledge what happened, but we cannot let it define our collective fates.
It's fairly common for people to get away with bad things for the sake of some kind of political reason. The first example that comes to mind is Hirohito who was kept in power after a terribly destructive rule for reasons of political expedience.
Ideally everyone does get brought to justice, of course, but pragmatics will usually overrule that.
On the other hand, it is one of the most peaceful regions on the planet at this point. So, passing up the opportunity for revenge seems to have paid some amazing dividends.
I just got done reading about this topic fairly heavily for the past year and it might not shock you to learn that it’s substantially more complicated than the sentence you have reduced it to. However, in the full context it’s actually not very surprising at all and everyone involved agreed that it made sense and was ultimately the right thing to do.
You haven't gotten over something that happened 25 years ago, and that you have absolutely zero control over? Obviously you're free to use up your emotional energy in any way you see fit, but it seems like a waste to me
Human societies have not often been good at de-escalating generational sectarian violence. This appears to be an example which is working. As much as you and many others quite understandably resent it, each new generation is hopefully going to have less and less to forgive.
> “Nah, it’s just weird, maybe… But I look forward to when me and the family can go to a King Willie parade and enjoy ourselves and the music, you know, like we do in Armagh on St Patrick’s Day. Is that crazy?”
Still largely can't do this, even in 2022, without the rather serious risk of severe injury or worse.
Well.. It depends,East Belfast, yeah. Rural areas, I hear a lot of the parades a these days are low key with little hardliner involvement and safe enough
Ah, yes, the IRA. Two special things about them, for me...
Decades ago, I knew a very nice, educated Irish-American gentleman, who'd grown up over there. Deep knowledge of European history, fascinating to listen to for hours, etc. But if he had a drink or two, he'd re-tell the story of the Proudest Moment of his life: Back in Ireland, when (thanks to his Sherlock Holmes knowledge and insight) he had managed to "out" several Protestants as such - in circumstances rough enough that being outed immediately lead to their being murdered. IANAL, but he showed nothing resembling regret, and never asked anyone to keep quiet about it. For me, he was a pretty visceral education in just how nice and educated someone can be...and yet still be so malicious as to boast of murdering complete strangers.
Talking about the War on Terror(tm) with folks (say, 99% of modern Americans) who really don't know squat about European history, the IRA can be extremely useful as a real-world example - where both sides are white Christians. When folks who claim to educated, unprejudiced, etc. make moralistic statements about government policies or situations involving Arabs, Islamic extremists, etc. - just re-cast the situation with the IRA, in the UK, during the Troubles. Are they comfortable with what they said, in that context? Generally no. Their reactions can be pretty educational.
I don’t know why you are being downvoted. My parents grew up during a similar ethno-religious insurgency and the scars of growing up not knowing whether your parents or siblings would get back home safe because of sociopathic individuals on a powertrip continue to haunt them and our entire family to this day. When exclusive affiliations consumes your entire identity, this can become a dangerous combination
Also, a meta commentary @dang - why are a number of comments against the IRA being downvoted? There were no saints in the Troubles and it’s startling to see comments opposing an actual sectarian terrorist group being downvoted to oblivion.
Ditto, though I'm more inclined to suspect my War on Terror comment. "Terrorist" - similar to "witch", "*igger", "atheist", "commie", "homosexual", and a number of other terms which change over time - seems mostly a label to stick on a person or group in order to proclaim that it is "okay" to hate, dehumanize, commit atrocities against, etc. them. For all too many folks, their "Licence to Hate" is one of their most precious possessions.
he had managed to "out" several Protestants as such - in circumstances rough enough that being outed immediately lead to their being murdered
I haven't downvoted you. But this story (ie that told by your interlocutor) doesn't sound credible to me. The fault line in Northern Ireland isn't religious, but between (Irish) nationalists and (British) unionists, for which Catholic and Protestant identities are only proxies.
There is a long history of Protestant involvement in the Irish nationalist movement, up to and including the Troubles. The lead trainer for the IRA during that period (whose name I'd have to look up) has given interviews emphasizing that religious identity was not a valid criterion for target selection. If I remember correctly the interview is in the first or second episode of the recent BBC series on the Troubles.
I don't see conflict between your facts and mine. The old man I knew clearly had a number of "traditional, Catholic bigotries". He was also clearly pro-Catholic & anti-protestant when talking about the history of England, France, Germany, etc. And far too admiring of Germany's National Socialist movement of the 1920's - 1940's. And other "clearly not PC" opinions.
If you're not familiar with this cluster of memes, give a quick read to a far-better-known example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin Though my old acquaintance differed from Fr. Coughlin on a number of points.
Vs. any IRA leader, speaking to a wider audience in the media, would have obvious PR reasons to downplay the religious aspects of the conflict. Nothing special about this.
I'm intimately familiar with the history, thanks. I'm not expressing doubt in you, but about your acquaintance, and whether religious identity alone was enough to get other people murdered on the spot as he told you. Also it's hard to square his support of national socialism in Germany with support for the IRA, as Irish nationalists tend toward being old-line socialists/trade unionists.
Irish nationalists had opportunistically friendly relations with Germany during WW1 but not really during WW2, and most Irish that traveled to the Spanish Civil war fought on the Republican side, though some threw in with Franco because of his support for the Catholic church.
This is very common in the Balkans. The Hague was full of lawyers, doctors, poets, playwrights, psychiatrists and historians accused of vicious war crimes
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadSimilarly, the telephone grid is scanned at a rate exceeding one million calls per minute for conversation suspected of being useful to the IRA. The moment a trigger word or phrase is uttered, the line is tapped and a detective put on the case. My Belfast friends keep correcting my perception of this snooping. [...]
How plausible was that in 1993? Scanning dialed numbers, sure, but voice recognition?
Keyword detection was alleged in 1980s, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON & https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/03/uncovering-echelon-the-top...
1993 was peak ECHELON conspiracy theory and really, that was an era of fax machines and mostly rare 300-1200baud modems. Commercially available hardware included the Cray EL90, and the Sun SPARC lines. Knowing what we do now, as a capability, even just trolling through basic fax OCR, aided by some traffic analysis, and a reduced list of potential targets (early social graph analysis), it seems plausible that a probabilistic and unreliable fishing expedition version of this existed - and then after some "limited hangout" leaks, there was also plausibly something on the traffic analysis side that detected anyone exercising any opsec capabilities at all in response to it, and then they focus workflows on those people.
It's as simple as getting phone records into a Sun workstation, sending an asset into the area to a pub to spread the rumor calls are being monitored, looking for a change in behavior in the data, then focusing on whoevers records change after your asset is sent in. Not saying this happened, but if you're in the threat hunting business, it seems like a pretty obvious low cost win within the capabilities of the tech at the time.
The technology was bought out of bankruptcy and successfully commercialized. One of the two guys involved in the fraud claimed he was a victim of a CIA conspiracy, although the other one admitted the fraud.
So I'd imagine that by 1993 it would have been possible to do analog voice coding, digitize the codes, and then a mainframe could scan through the codes which are just "envelopes of the bandpass filters". (Just a guess)
Was this something the journalist claimed to somehow know or was it something that the PIRA had told him?
Neither of them would be in a position to know especially at the time it was written, but it has all the hallmarks of the kind of “the enemy is 10ft tall” stories that tend to turn up in the fog of war.
The next part of that quote (in the article) though certainly suggests that the PIRA had perfectly good evidence to suggest that SOMETHING like this was happening based on their experience of actively manipulating it to their advantage.
It sounds reasonable as a concept without having to back up the specific technical claims of how the monitoring itself actually worked or it’s particular capabilities.
I could for example see it as something much closer to a manual operation IRL that just targeted the phones of know and suspected members along with payphones in certain areas and it would have appeared the same way to them.
They weren’t actually a particularly large organisation IRL and those passing operational messages over a public phone network was even smaller.
I’d hazard a guess that it’s not actually THAT difficult to put together a target list for surveillance that would narrow the scope down to something fairly reasonable. You aren’t actually looking for full coverage in this scenario you’re looking for a good signal to noise ratio and it ends up becoming a question of which calls are “unusual” and you could get a long way to answering with metadata alone, long before you ever thought to pass the actual contents of the call to an analyst.
There are three options:
1. Force one side to capitulate
2. Eliminate the opposing side
3. Call a cease fire and everyone walks
Both 1 and 2 failed after many years. So they went with number 3. It appears to have worked.
Instead the British had to oppress the Catholics for generations creating the civil war that inevitably flared up. The IRA was the British fault.
the “other side restarting it” doesn’t make sense because from the perspective of the other side it was already restarted.
And this same party heaps endless praise on those who ordered and orchestrated sectarian murder of the other side.
There are alternative nationalist parties with no such bad blood, but they are never first choice from the other community, it seems.
It is regretful but the message is understood.
That's not an issue unique to one side of the conflict though. The DUP are hardly moderates, and were always suspected to have links to the UVF.
One of the saddest parts about the post Good Friday/Belfast settlement was how it ended up with the more extreme parts of each community splitting power between them.
The unionist party run by the UVF is the PUP and it is barely a rounding error in the polls.
Sinn Fein has many members of senior IRA rank and calls itself "the political wing of the PIRA".
The two are not identical.
Name one. I don't disagree that this definitely used to be the case (Martin McGuiness as the classic example), but I can't imagine Mary Lou McDonald as a member of the PIRA.
Like, I'm kinda disgusted with myself to be defending Sinn Fein, but one could argue that the necessity of political/violence co-operation was larger for the nationalists, given where they started. It was certainly the perception that the organs of the state were not religion-blind. How many Catholics were in the RUC, for instance?
Michelle O'Neill had no personal involvement, but her father was in the Provisional IRA. It's not uncommon for republican families to split duties in that way.
But even if I couldn't name any, it is very clear that the two organisations are deeply and inextricably linked.
> How many Catholics were in the RUC, for instance?
I get what you're saying. We should note that some of the low numbers was down to anti-policing attitudes in their own community. Indeed there are still areas run by republican paramilitary factions today where you don't call the police, or you'll have two problems.
I would need to consider the pre-1973 history in better depth, but I would agree that I wish there was better accommodation with the nationalist community in the predominantly unionist state, if it would've helped avoid what happened. But consider that the unionist attitudes were driven by fear of the other side too, this would've affected their decisions. The Northern state was intended as a compromise for Unionists, who looked South and saw their population in the ROI drop from 15% to around 1%.
Even with that said, I can never sympathise with people who bombed, intimidated and targeted civilians in the way that the various IRAs did. There is no cause for pride or celebration here, even if one accepts it as necessary. I don't see mournful regret when I see Sinn Fein members reflect on the names of those tied to that aspect of the past.
The level of violence and its many knock on effects took a tremendous toll on the unionist population, and we cannot forget who was responsible.
Ah now, Gerry was never a member of the IRA ;)
> Michelle O'Neill had no personal involvement, but her father was in the Provisional IRA. It's not uncommon for republican families to split duties in that way.
Sins of the father, eh?
> I would need to consider the pre-1973 history in better depth, but I would agree that I wish there was better accommodation with the nationalist community in the predominantly unionist state, if it would've helped avoid what happened. But consider that the unionist attitudes were driven by fear of the other side too, this would've affected their decisions. The Northern state was intended as a compromise for Unionists, who looked South and saw their population in the ROI drop from 15% to around 1%.
I'm definitely not disputing that at all, the Free State was a deeply hostile place to Protestants post-independence, for a bunch of reasons, most of which are pretty bad. Like, almost every village/town in the Republic has decaying Protestant churches, which shows you how much changed when partition happened.
That being said, there were real civil rights issues for Catholics in the North and that's the context for how Provisional SF/IRA got started.
> en with that said, I can never sympathise with people who bombed, intimidated and targeted civilians in the way that the various IRAs did. There is no cause for pride or celebration here, even if one accepts it as necessary. I don't see mournful regret when I see Sinn Fein members reflect on the names of those tied to that aspect of the past.
Neither do I. Do I possibly understand what drove some of those people? Yes. Do I agree with their actions? Hell no, in fact a hundred times no. Not in my name (speaking as a citizen of the Republic). I've felt this way for a really long time, back in the 1990s when stuff was still happening.
That being said, it definitely wasn't one-sided, and remember that SF were not the only organisation killing people for no good reasons, and indeed any state sponsored violence would typically not even be counted in the "terrorism" figures.
>The level of violence and its many knock on effects took a tremendous toll on the unionist population, and we cannot forget who was responsible.
The violence fucked up everyone, that's what violence does. Like both sides suffered a whole bunch of trauma, and should Catholics never forget the UVF/UDA et al? Should they never forget the irredentist Paisley who shut down the original power-sharing plans which could have prevented thousands of deaths?
Like, ultimately it needs to end, and hanging onto grudges rarely works out well for anyone.
I really don't think this is true.
It's widely believed that some former high ranking IRA members still are involved in the party leadership, but nowhere near the extent that they could be said to "control" the party
> Sinn Fein is the Provisional IRA,
The ceasefire was 25 years ago, there is a whole generation of SF members who have never been in the IRA, so no, they are not the same organisation
> and proud of it
Yeah, there's pride at having held off the British Army for decades, but also a lot of very mixed feelings
There is good evidence to indicate that the IRA Army Council is still heavily involved in running Sinn Fein. And it is no wonder, because the links between the two organisations are pretty tight and always have been. The party still calls itself "the political wing of the Provisional IRA". In response to an audience member shouting "Up the 'RA", Gerry Adams famously replied with glee "They haven't gone away you know".
Sinn Fein to this day praises and commemorates former IRA murderers. Michelle O'Neill comes from a family of proud IRA members. I could go on.
Endorsing the organisation now is endorsing its history and aims, which haven't diverged despite the young faces and heavy layers of PR gloss.
> pride at having held off the British Army
And a lot of civilians who guarded prisons, happened to be going to work, were 'suspected' touts, were buying fish and chips, or were watching military parades to commemorate real sacrifice like that made in WWII.
Real reconciliation would be possible with moderate nationalists, not people who call Unionists "bastards" in private, or say "equality is a trojan horse for Nationalism".
All the evidence points to the aims having changed - the aim of violent overthrow of British rule seems to have been abandoned, as evidence by the last 25 years.
But look... If you think no reconciliation is possible then there's no real point in saying any of this to you
What would be good enough grounds, in your view?
> If you think no reconciliation is possible then there's no real point in saying any of this to you
If you think I mean reconciliation with nationalists is impossible, that is not the case at all. If you think reconciliation is possible with a party that has admitted in private that its public friendly persona is a trojan horse, I won't be taken for a fool.
That's getting a bit hypothetical. I'm just working with the evidence available to me right now. If strong enough evidence appears to the contrary then I will change my mind
And look... If you think that whatever off the cuff comments are actually the defining statement of the party's essence then ok, go with that.
Would you at least agree that choosing an alternative party without these connections and connotations would be a better gesture from the Nationalist community to Unionists?
> off the cuff comments
I would say that an address to a party audience by the party founder addressing party strategy gives the comments significant weight, yes. If Jeffery Donaldson made comments remotely like these they would make headlines for weeks.
> party's essence
Sinn Fein - Ourselves Alone.
> reliable intelligence that indicates that the IRA Army Council directs both PIRA and Sinn Fein strategy
Again, I _think_ I'm aware of most of the relevant evidence and to me it indicates that some former high ranking IRA members still are involved in the party leadership, but nowhere near the extent that they could be said to "control" the party
> Would you at least agree that choosing an alternative party without these connections and connotations would be a better gesture from the Nationalist community to Unionists?
Yeah I see your point. But, let's face it, neither community has been all that good with gestures. I could go on about speeches made by the founding member of the DUP, but, you know what, that shit is in the past, I'd rather just move on.
> Sinn Fein - Ourselves Alone.
Ouch... That's not the literal meaning... Not easy to explain. Irish is a tricky bitch of a language, best just leave it out.
You're talking as if this happened recently and not nearly 30 years ago
>Sinn Fein to this day praises and commemorates former IRA murderers.
So what? How often do unionists have a bad word to say about the British forces that have spent centuries terrorizing and murdering Irish people? How are nationalists supposed to reconcile with people who by and large vote for political parties that do not support the GFA (presumably they would prefer to go back to armed conflict? perhaps the protestant supremacist state formed in 1921?) or turn up en masse to prance about in July with the deeply unpleasant orange order?
The IRA were terrorists. Pretending that they’re not only really stopped in the US after 9/11, presumably because it became harder for supporters in the US to explain why targeting groups of civilians was an acceptable strategy.
The British army opened fire on a civil rights march, killing 14 people, all of whom were unarmed.
It is the most significant day of the Troubles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)
I did not pretend the IRA were not terrorists. I said nothing in this regard.
People fight using the means available to them. The IRA had no tanks, bombers, frigates, etc. They fought back the only way they could. To them it was justified. To you it wasn’t. But this is true in all wars. The Americans were considered uncivilized during the American Revolutionary War since we frequently targeted officers during battles. This was contrary to how European armies fought.
EDIT: Deleted incorrect statements.
Having re-read your original comment I can see clearly that's not something you said or were in anyway implying, so again I apologize unreservedly.
The DaSilva report, Stevens inquiries etc. showed collusion between English military and intelligence and loyalist death squads, including furnishing of firearms.
So the English armed their loyalist paramilitary death squads like the Shankhill butchers and then wash their hands of it all.
Why are English soldiers in Ireland any how?
To prevent widespread sectarian murdering and ethnic cleansing of both Catholic and Protestant communities, and because there Irish state is incapable of doing this.
No one in England wants anything to do with it anymore, is a mill stone round our neck.
The Alliance party, the non-aligned neo-liberal party here, had a massive jump in votes in the recent election.
The idea that if the British weren’t here people would instantly devolve into sectarian murders is completely laughable to me.
In my entire life I have never interacted with anyone who was sectarian. You see the areas with union flags strung up everywhere but as I say, these communities are completely insular and run by drug dealers hiding behind the aegis of shared ethnicity.
“A mill stone around our neck”, come off it, my eyes are rolling so hard in my head I fear they may roll under the sofa
I believe violence is only ever justified defensively and even then only as a last resort. The sooner that generation of parasitic drug barons either kill each other or die naturally the better for everyone.
But she wasn’t just straight up murdered like you claimed. She wasn’t even targeted, it was just a wrong place, wrong time situation.
I don’t say it to excuse what happened but the way you seem to be telling that story is just not what happened.
I think this is more a splintering of the unionist community as the DUP has taken a hardline and self-harming pro-Brexit, anti-protocol, no compromise approach. For the US readers, the DUP's social views would make many of the US republicans look liberal. Their last leader was ousted for merely abstaining on, rather than opposing, a ban on gay conversion therapy. Now the DUP is holding the entire NI political system to ransom unless they get their way.
There are many unionists who are done with that shit but are still pro-UK, and this is the group that flocked to alliance in large numbers last election.
Cutting and running when it gets hard in the colonies is more difficult when the colony is next door.
Said as someone in a former colony, with the country having all the expected post-colonial problems.
If that were the reason then they wouldn't have been deployed in places like Armagh where there was no community division.
The army were sent in for the same reason that the border was drawn where it was: to serve British financial interests.
> No one in England wants anything to do with it anymore, is a mill stone round our neck.
The IRA succeeded in making it more expensive than it was worth (although the collapse of the shipbuilding industry was probably the biggest single factor).
The Irish state isn't responsible for NI.
At one point the Irish government actually considered militarily intervening in NI, but the British would have seen that as an honest to God act of war.
I've seen "Brits out" and I know what it means. I've known innocent businessmen have their livelihoods ruined and their lives taken, all by the hands of various republican factions, just for being "collaborators".
I'll never forget Enniskillen, Omagh, Bloody Friday, the attempt at Tullyhommon, or the various other atrocities and the party in Stormount that lauds them.
Look up Barry McElduff and his shameless mocking of the Kingsmill atrocity. This happened as recently as 2018 and he is already back in Sinn Fein. Not something anyone does in the spirit of reconciliation.
I'm glad someone at least had the nerve to defend us from clear intimidation and death wishes.
The MRF's own ex-members describe it as a terror group; they carried out drive-by shootings of civilians, and UVF members have claimed that they took part in the bombing of McGurk's.
Churchill allowed his Black and Tans to burn entire villages to the ground and terrorise people to subdue them with fear. Terrorism is not just blowing up buses.
The IRA (well second/third gen by this point) had an army that was being funded partly by american's "fighting the fight of the old country". They bombs, shot, and tortured anyone they thought who were dodgy.
On the other side, the Loyalist paramilitaries were kidnapping and shooting people in a similar way.
One could make the call to say the reason why the loyalists wern't so keen on bombings (they did do them) was because you could argue that the RUC(the police in NI) and the army were acting on their side.
For example the republicans rarely called the fire brigade/ambulance because more often than not, the army would be pretending to be them. There were "murder squads" of SAS/others who would go out and "stop" people based on informer intelligence.
So yes, its brilliant that we(NI, ireland, UK) have managed to stop this. If that means that people have to live with the murder next door, so be it. Its far better than another generation of killings that has poisoned NI since the 1920s.
on a side note, do you know how hard it is to forgive/live with the "other side" when you personally know a dad, uncle, relative that was murder by the state/paramilitary?
Maybe what is wanted by the majority in NO is different now - 20+ years is obviously a long time, and society can change so maybe they no longer wish the connection. The Good Friday agreement acknowledges that possibility and explicitly states that if the majority of NI wish to become part of Ireland then the UK is required to accept that choice.
Now, to the awful things that happened: Do I think that members of the RUC who killed civilians should have ended up in jail? of course. But I think the same thing about members of the IRA.
Finally: no I don't know what it is like to live with the "other side", but I am sure that there are many of the "other side" who lost friends and family, and also had to accept the Good Friday agreement despite their loss.
with respect, thats not what I said. I said they are not British. Northern Ireland is not part of the british isles. They are part of the united kingdom of great Britian and northern island. I know its semantics, but alas its important.
> Now, to the awful things that happened: Do I think that members of the RUC who killed civilians should have ended up in jail? of course. But I think the same thing about members of the IRA.
agreed, but it cannot come at the cost of peace. I personally dislike the fact that civilian killers are in parliament. But if that means we can have lasting peace, that is a price that must be paid.
if we take the example of germany after the war, there were committed nazis in power for many many years after 1945. However Germany is not a country riven by nazis anymore (excluding AFD)
we must work together in order to maintain peace. The alternative is just not worth contemplating
That's a fact of geography not politics, much like the UK is part of Europe but no longer part of the EU.
If you find the word British offensive then you'll need to come up with an alternative for the British Isles but it will be plainly obvious that the geographic collection of islands you are describing is still called the British Isles by everyone else.
My recollection is that the "British Isles" refers to the islands of [Great] Britain and Ireland (among other smaller ones), so that while Northern Island is not part of Great Britain, it is still part of the "British Isles."
Beause the British carefully drew the border in such a way as to take as much territory as possible while still having a majority who wanted to be British, much like the Russians in South Ossetia or Donetsk.
That is not a good-faith position. "British" is universally understood to mean "relating to the people of the United Kingdom". Hence "British passport", "British citizen", etc.
The people of Northern Ireland are therefore British by nationality, being citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, under UK law.
They are also Irish, in the sense that they are inhabitants of the island of Ireland; and also (prior to 2005) on the basis that everyone born on the island of Ireland was an Irish citizen by birth.
Seconded.
To see such a plainly factual statement being down voted on HN is deeply worrying.......
I suspect the Americans doing the down voting have never been cought up in a terrorist attack and are happy being keyboard warriors about something they know so little.
Thank fuck for the peace process and the hard work that has gone into it.
They even had a very clear policy of trying to minimise civilian casualties in a way that loyalist groups absolutely did not, in fact they made a point to intentionally target civilians repeatedly.
So to make the claim that the OP did like it was some black and white scenario where violence against civilians was only going in one direction is objectively wrong.
Nobody is upset with the claim that the IRA were a terrorist group. They were. They did a lot of bad shit, including killing civilians but that was never any kind of policy and it never made sense for their objectives. It was correctly considered to be “bad for the cause” to piss off the support network that enabled them to operate at all.
Agreed with about about thank fuck for the peace process though.
I'm sorry I screwed up, it was a polytechnic I was thinking of rather than a library: http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/lbc/index.php/segment/00168003...
I'm also unsure how they were minimizing civilian casualties when the blew up multiple pubs and apartment stores in the UK.
That said I'll cop to being unreasonable and biased in my first comment, I did disregard the violence committed by the RUC. I was reflexively responding to what came across as a minimization of the IRA and ended up doing what I was accusing the person I was replying to of doing.
I'll update the original comment if HN still allows it.
Regarding that second link though, I thought that was INLA which were a totally different group?
They tried to bomb a bus load of Protestant children on a church trip before fleeing across the border. On the same day as the Enniskillen bomb with a device nearly four times the one used for that atrocity.
Thank heavens it failed, but the intention was there.
It’s quite hard to find information on this one and I have to say the Wikipedia article [1] tells a much more plausible version of the story than an unsourced version written by someone who’s brother was killed by the IRA.
“the IRA called a radio station and said it had abandoned a 150-pound (68 kg) bomb in Tullyhommon, 20 miles (32 km) away, after it failed to detonate. That morning, a Remembrance Sunday parade (which included many members of the Boys' and Girls' Brigades) had unwittingly gathered near the Tullyhommon bomb. Soldiers and RUC officers had also been there, and the IRA said it attempted to trigger the bomb when soldiers were standing beside it. It was defused by security forces and was found to have a command wire leading to a firing point across the border.”
Nobody in this story was setting out to actively target civilians let alone children.
There is also this section in the article which may or may not be relevant but this particular theme came up on multiple occasions and I believe was proven to have happened at least once but I have to double check the sourcing on this.
“Under the thirty-year rule, a letter sent after the bombing was released by the Irish Government. The author was anonymous but claimed to be working for MI5, and the letter was sent to then Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan. Without providing any evidence, it claimed that MI5 had advance knowledge of the Remembrance Day bombing but allowed it to go ahead, so that the public could turn against the Provisional IRA and new security measures could be justified.”
At the same time, I’d say this entire story is actually a great example of why trying to wage a Guerilla campaign amongst a civilian population is an actively terrible idea. These things are going to end up happening regardless of if you meant for it to happen or not unfortunately.
So that’s all to say, none of this is in anyway justified but again, nobody was trying to actively target a bus full of children here because again, it’s hard to think of ANYTHING that could be more counter productive to their aims as you can see from the rest of the article.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day_bombing
I don't agree with what the IRA did. Never have. But come on. "I don't recall the British bombing blah blah blah". Selective memory.
They were not "denied the vote". Read your own link. "However, unlike the situation in Great Britain, non-ratepayers did not have a vote in local government elections." - if you did not pay rates, you couldn't vote in local elections, but could still vote for Parliament.
Furthermore, from your link:
> the Parliament of Northern Ireland voted to update the voting rules for elections to the Northern Ireland House of Commons, which were implemented for the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, and for local government elections, which was done by the Electoral Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1969, passed on 25 November 1969.
So, the IRA campaign began after the voting situation was equalised, for rate payers and non rate payers alike, in 1969. And when the Stormont Parliament was abolished in 1972, the MPs for NI were elected using UK wide rules, which again, did not "basically deny them the vote".
Thus, the IRA campaign was not about civil rights. It was about forcibly pushing NI into the Republic of Ireland, against the wishes of the majority of the population.
> in a single event 745 People were injured (154 with gunshot wounds) and a 9 year old was killed.
And which "event" was this, because given the nonsense in the rest of your post, I'm betting that this didn't happen.
We will never know the truth about the black ops that the English security agencies were involved in. Some things are never declassified. There are even theories that they deliberately allowed some of the IRA attacks to go through in order to sway the English public opinion. They had their informants all over the place.
Rather than leaning in to what looks like nationalist anti-English racism, have you considered how other European countries behaved during the 1000 years of history you referred to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_nationalism_in_Europe
More recently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Ukraine
I this this is whataboutism and unhelpful. They were all terrible and not being the worst is not a badge of honour.
You have to award some credit for being a bit ahead of the crowd.
Gerry Adams condones the murder Lord Mountbatten, and very likely ordered it. Why isn't he in jail?
Here's what they sing:
“13 dead and not forgotten, we got 18 and Mountbatten.”
We cannot let another generation restart an active war. We've had 25 years without an active bombing or driveby shooting campaign. almost an entire generation has grown up with their male relatives still being alive.
we cannot allow that cycle to be triggered again, its just not worth it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi3jCBT-Yhs&ab_channel=Newst...
He was alleged by many, including the FBI, to have been a paedophile with a penchant for boys in uniform
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19731909.lord-darkne...
so were the Scottish plantations, but thats counter to the narrative.
> from the massacres of Drogheda
The civil war was utterly destructive, the scale of murder rape and pillage was astronomical. The wars of the three kingdoms were ripped apart. it wasn't until well into charles II that things settled.
look, we have a choice. We can either rake over tensions, or try and forge peace. Yes the troubles were _heinous_. the UK did nasty shit, but its not like the provos were golden angels either.
I am sorry for what the UK did. But I have no control over history, only now. We can either work together to stop another generation loose their male relatives, or slide into another civil war. Yes, we must acknowledge what happened, but we cannot let it define our collective fates.
Ideally everyone does get brought to justice, of course, but pragmatics will usually overrule that.
There were over 10000 bombings during the Troubles [2]. Hard to imagine now.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/20/we-dont-know-o...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombings_during_the_Tr...
Still largely can't do this, even in 2022, without the rather serious risk of severe injury or worse.
But yeah, inner city is different.
Have a few good friends in around Lurgan who reckon I'd have a great time, but also reckon I'd end up in several bags after.
Decades ago, I knew a very nice, educated Irish-American gentleman, who'd grown up over there. Deep knowledge of European history, fascinating to listen to for hours, etc. But if he had a drink or two, he'd re-tell the story of the Proudest Moment of his life: Back in Ireland, when (thanks to his Sherlock Holmes knowledge and insight) he had managed to "out" several Protestants as such - in circumstances rough enough that being outed immediately lead to their being murdered. IANAL, but he showed nothing resembling regret, and never asked anyone to keep quiet about it. For me, he was a pretty visceral education in just how nice and educated someone can be...and yet still be so malicious as to boast of murdering complete strangers.
Talking about the War on Terror(tm) with folks (say, 99% of modern Americans) who really don't know squat about European history, the IRA can be extremely useful as a real-world example - where both sides are white Christians. When folks who claim to educated, unprejudiced, etc. make moralistic statements about government policies or situations involving Arabs, Islamic extremists, etc. - just re-cast the situation with the IRA, in the UK, during the Troubles. Are they comfortable with what they said, in that context? Generally no. Their reactions can be pretty educational.
Also, a meta commentary @dang - why are a number of comments against the IRA being downvoted? There were no saints in the Troubles and it’s startling to see comments opposing an actual sectarian terrorist group being downvoted to oblivion.
Ditto, though I'm more inclined to suspect my War on Terror comment. "Terrorist" - similar to "witch", "*igger", "atheist", "commie", "homosexual", and a number of other terms which change over time - seems mostly a label to stick on a person or group in order to proclaim that it is "okay" to hate, dehumanize, commit atrocities against, etc. them. For all too many folks, their "Licence to Hate" is one of their most precious possessions.
I haven't downvoted you. But this story (ie that told by your interlocutor) doesn't sound credible to me. The fault line in Northern Ireland isn't religious, but between (Irish) nationalists and (British) unionists, for which Catholic and Protestant identities are only proxies.
There is a long history of Protestant involvement in the Irish nationalist movement, up to and including the Troubles. The lead trainer for the IRA during that period (whose name I'd have to look up) has given interviews emphasizing that religious identity was not a valid criterion for target selection. If I remember correctly the interview is in the first or second episode of the recent BBC series on the Troubles.
If you're not familiar with this cluster of memes, give a quick read to a far-better-known example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin Though my old acquaintance differed from Fr. Coughlin on a number of points.
Vs. any IRA leader, speaking to a wider audience in the media, would have obvious PR reasons to downplay the religious aspects of the conflict. Nothing special about this.
Also worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarian_violence_among_Chris... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Irelan... The history of Ireland has very clear, hellishly brutal Catholic vs. Protestant roots for the more-recent Troubles.
Irish nationalists had opportunistically friendly relations with Germany during WW1 but not really during WW2, and most Irish that traveled to the Spanish Civil war fought on the Republican side, though some threw in with Franco because of his support for the Catholic church.