The IRA.....Once a terrorist organization or freedom fighters? You decide.

The Provisional IRA were a bunch of murdering scumbags and there can not be no excuse for their activities.

Ireland's history is long and complex and nothing is as black and white as the terrorists from either side try to portray with injustices and atrocities carried out by both sides.

The simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland wanted to remain in the United Kingdom - for the record, since the peace process began and the para-militaries laid down their arms support for the UK is consistently growing within Ulster and that support is becoming increasingly evident in traditionally Nationalist communities.

The IRA, and their loyalist equivallents, became nothing better than murdering, exploitive racketeers whose primary concern was ruling their respective communities using terror tactics with a large percentage of their funding coming from drug and gun running and dealing and protection rackets.
They exploited the romantic nature of the Irish people using events from hundreds of years ago to create at atmosphere of hatred which they manipulated for their profit and gain.

Many things were wrong with society in Northern Ireland when The Troubles began and no fair minded person can claim that there weren't massive injustices that needed addressing.
But murdering innocent people was not the way to redress those issues and no amount of spin will ever excuse The IRA for any of the atrocities they carried out.

I know many Irish people, some from The Republic and some from Ulster - some Catholics and some Protestants.
I know several people who have suffered at the hands of The IRA both here on mainland UK and some in Northern Ireland.
I know one person who miraculously escaped with his life and many others who suffered at the hands of the UDA who could be at least equally brutal and indiscriminate as the nationalist terrorists.

But the violence achieved nothing except further alienate people.
I don't think any of the IRA bombing campaigns ever changed anyone's opinion on Ulster - in fact all those deaths from their bombings only served to make people more resolute in their determination not to give in to them.

It's pretty telling that once the source of a lot of The IRA's finances and drug and gun contacts dried up in light of 9/11 The IRA were forced to the negotiating table.
There is still much resentment in the UK for the source of that financing.
But the subsequent change in life in Northern Ireland has been remarkable.
Of course things aren't perfect and as much as things have improved there are still issues that remain and some of the hatred still runs deep.
But all the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland want is simply to be left alone to get on with their lives, the same as anybody else.
And the violence never achieved anything except make people more resolute in their defiance of the terrorists.

Whatever route Ulster takes in the future there is one thing that is certain, it will be in accordance with the will and the wishes of the majority of people who live there and not the evil, murdering scumbag bastards whose only wish is to exploit and control people.

For the record, all my Grandparents were Irish Catholics.

Originally posted by Sinny
reply to post by yuppa

 

any witnesses to the stabbing? hearsay? the men were found guilty and charged with murder, there's no confusion to be had. I bet this will be another off topic post. Talk about Mods ruining a thread

Well its good they were arrested and convicted then Just because a few British were arseholes don't mean everyone is though. I am sure the same could be said for any group at times.

reply to post by mr-lizard


So we're the Brits and loyalists... All sides are retards. I am not defending the IRA but if I was a second class citizen, discriminated protests may not seem enough but attacking innocent kids,women and men is wrong by everyone involved

From what I understand of ALL currently known terrorist or freedom fighting organisations, NONE of them really remember why they are doing what they are doing. The only people in these organisations who know what they are really about ( drug money, gun running for profit, personal gain and so on and so forth) are busy lying to all the others, while those others are more often than not looking for outlets for thier rage, thinking that thier rage is justified, and that the outworking of that rage, that the organisation plans and executes is justified also, when of course, it virtually never is.

For the Irish paramilitary organisations on both sides of the border, the first and only people to have had genuine reasons to do what they did, was during the original occupation which caused the whole argument. The greivances of that time either have been, or bloody well SHOULD have been sorted out, and no one actually remembers what they even were,because it was so bloody long ago.

The only reason our generation, or indeed the one before that, or perhaps the one after ours might remember Ireland as having been riven with infighting, is because out of the original conflict (whether justified or not) sprung outright and unfettered criminality on both sides, and it is the organised commission of THAT criminal endevour, on such a wide scale, that kept the paramilitary organisations there going LONG after the issues that first lead to thier creation, ceased to be current enough to fight over.

The last thirty years of the existence of those paramilitary organisations is proof that more than anything else, the staying power of those organisations is nothing to do with the people they claim to represent keeping them afloat, but is more to do with retaining the power that those organisations gained when they had some legitimacy, using any means required to achieve that retention of power. Essentially, the only important thing to know about the paramilitary groups in Ireland is that if it were not for drugs, women, guns, and greed, none of them would still be acitive. Politically they could not be more defunct, and that has been the case for DECADES!

reply to post by glen200376
They already have mate look at Iraq,lybia

Very simple for me. Provisional IRA = Terrorist organisation. As evidenced by targeting of civilians.

Obviously, the issue is far more complex than that with far more parties involved. However, PIRA would have been unrecognisable to original IRA members.

As to the Potato Famine, etc, the newest scientific research shows that the blight was down to microbial infection from dust from Western Africa, caught up in the Jet Stream and then dumped in Ireland by the rain. That does not detract from the British Government reaction to what was going on but it does put paid to the rather foolish idea that the British deliberately caused the famine. They very clearly did not. What they actually did was what they always actually did - they took advantage of the situation once it had arisen.