Was the Republican campaign justifiable?

Chuck Stone

Liam Byrne wrote: »

I didn't see any words in the title to distinguish between their attacks and murders.

Their "campaign" included both.

Fratton Fred wrote: »

No, the topic is about the republican campaign.

I would like to ask all the "nationalists" who needed protecting, how much did the cold blooded killing of innocent people help them sleep at night?

I see our Southern comfort selective amnesiacs have come to the debate.

It was the killing of civilians by the BA which gave the IRA impetus. The people requested that they step up.

Regardless, civilians are killed in all conflicts.

Has there ever been a conflict in the history of the world where civilians haven't borne the brunt?

Fratton Fred

Chuck Stone wrote: »

I see our Southern comfort selective amnesiacs have come to the debate.

It was the killing of civilians by the BA which gave the IRA impetus. The people requested that they step up.

Regardless, civilians are killed in all conflicts.

Has there ever been a conflict in the history of the world where civilians haven't borne the brunt?

No selective amnesia.

This thread is about the PIRA campaign. Other conflicts are irrelevant.

The PIRA's campaign included the deliberate targeting of civilians. That is a very relevant part of this conversation.

How many dead children does a united Ireland justify?

Chuck Stone

Fratton Fred wrote: »

This thread is about the PIRA campaign. Other conflicts are irrelevant.

Other conflicts are entirely relevant.

What? They're not because you say so?

As I said before show me a conflict anywhere in the world at any time in history where civilians haven't been killed.

It's an unfortunate situation, that civilians bear the brunt, which is why avoiding conflict in the first place by talking and trying to find compromises is always preferable.

Unfortunately the collapse of the Sunningdale agreement by Unionists and the alienation of the Nationalist people by both the British and the ROI left people feeling powerless. Unfortunately violence fills political vacuums.

Get real.

Fratton Fred

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Other conflicts are entirely relevant.

What? They're not because you say so?

As I said before show me a conflict anywhere in the world at any time in history where civilians haven't been killed.

It's an unfortunate situation, that civilians bear the brunt, which is why avoiding conflict in the first place by talking and trying to find compromises is always preferable.

Unfortunately the collapse of the Sunningdale agreement by Unionists and the alienation of the Nationalist people by both the British and the ROI left people feeling powerless. Unfortunately violence fills political vacuums.

Get real.

dodge, deflection and whataboutery.

The PIRA could have defended Catholics without targeting civilians, but then their campaign was never about defending Catholics, it was simply about creating a united Ireland.

Chuck Stone

Fratton Fred wrote: »

The PIRA could have defended Catholics without targeting civilians, but then their campaign was never about defending Catholics, it was simply about creating a united Ireland.

A UI was the ideological underpinning. Removing the BA and forcing the British to the negotiating table was the goal.

Both the British and the IRA realised they had basically reached a stalemate. Neither could 'win', the British released a statement (if memory serves) saying they had no strategic interest in NI and the first ceasefire was called.

leincar

criticalcritic wrote: »

Let me begin with the controversy

Yes it was

And republican resistance is alive and well, dont mind what Sinn Fein tell you

Britain still occupys the North of this island, aslong as they do there will be resistance

People can object to that but tough, not all Irish people are lemmings willing to swallow half their country being denied sovereignty while the other half is glorified Commonwealth territory devoid of Irish culture propped up by money of ex-colonial super powers

'Ireland unfree will never will be at peace' - Padraig Pearse

Southern unionism and national self hating is rife nowadays

Im a republican, deal with it

I hope Irps areant developing Provo style revisionism

Are you for real? The majority in the South voted for the 'Good Friday' agreement so that the North would go quietly into the night. Don't kid yourself for a second.

We don't care. We have more important things on our mind.

We in the South see a border, Republicans in the North don't. Thats the only difference. Personally, there is enough tracksuit wearing, sovereign ringed adorned scobies in the South without another half a million of them(I know I'm being generous saying theres only half a million of them) half of which have absolutely no affinity to this state.

As Adams & Co would say 'Will you catch yourself on.'

Fratton Fred

Chuck Stone wrote: »

A UI was the ideological underpinning. Removing the BA and forcing the British to the negotiating table was the goal.

Both the British and the IRA realised they had basically reached a stalemate. Neither could 'win', the British released a statement (if memory serves) saying they had no strategic interest in NI and the first ceasefire was called.

And so we are now back to where we were in 1922.

nevsky

leincar wrote: »

Are you for real? The majority in the South voted for the 'Good Friday' agreement so that the North would go quietly into the night. Don't kid yourself for a second.

We don't care. We have more important things on our mind.

We in the South see a border, Republicans in the North don't. Thats the only difference. Personally, there is enough tracksuit wearing, sovereign ringed adorned scobies in the South without another half a million of them(I know I'm being generous saying theres only half a million of them) half of which have absolutely no affinity to this state.

As Adams & Co would say 'Will you catch yourself on.'

Yup agree entirely. No interest in taking on an entity used to violence, where the majority up there both Catholic and Protestent don't want us (who the hell can blame them) and where the majority employer is the public service.

Don't think so.

K-9

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Unfortunately the collapse of the Sunningdale agreement by Unionists and the alienation of the Nationalist people by both the British and the ROI left people feeling powerless. Unfortunately violence fills political vacuums.

Which then leaves the Unionist and British sides feeling under attack and it becomes self perpetuating, ending up in a cesspit in the late 80's and early 90's.

laoch na mona

it arose from necessity of course some of what they did was wrong but the unionists were doing it aswel and so were the british so it was justified to a certain extent

Chuck Stone

Fratton Fred wrote: »

And so we are now back to where we were in 1922.

I agree to an extent.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

George Santayana

Chuck Stone

K-9 wrote: »

Which then leaves the Unionist and British sides feeling under attack and it becomes self perpetuating, ending up in a cesspit in the late 80's and early 90's.

That's true.

I think they would have achieved more (from a strategic POV) if they'd stuck to attacking exclusively military targets in NI and military and economic targets in Britain.

Probably would have been over far quicker.

Zombrex

hoorsmelt wrote: »

The Irish Parliament which signed the Act of Union merging Ireland with Great Britain in the UK was elected elected by Anglican suffrage only, with the added caveat that electors be landowners and male. They had no mandate to sign over Ireland to the United Kingdom, yet it was done. An historic injustice was done to this country, so those who resorted to arms to correct that injustice had the moral right to do so

Er no they didn't.

Military action, to be considered legitimate, must come from the collective will of the people, with a mandated army authorized to act on the democratic decisions of said people, expressed through a structured and transparent process. Or as we like to call it, an elected government answerable to the people.

This is why in practically every Western country the army is under civilian control, and why people get so concerned when armies sieze control in coups.

Just because an "historica injustice" has been carried out doesn't mean any Tom Dick and Harry can start forming secret unaccountable militias and blowing up pubs and shooting British military because the mood takes them. That is not legitimate military action, it is criminality.

hoorsmelt wrote: »

Secondly, the laws of war are never applied fairly, mainly because the main powers exempt themselves from their responsibility, so as it stands there is no set manner for distinguishing between a legitimate and illegitimate military force

There most certainly is, the criteria I mentioned above is such a manner to distinguish between a legitimate and illegitimate military force.

hoorsmelt wrote: »

I would contend that the sole distinction is the cause that they are fighting for, there are plenty of worthwhile anti-imperialist forces like the Zapatistas, who are formally illegal, who have a solid claim to legitimacy as armies. The PIRA had a similar mandate.

Do you understand what a mandate actually is. You don't give yourself a mandate, you are given a mandate. You don't say I'm avenging 800 years of repression, that is worthwhile so I've got a mandate. That isn't what a mandate is.

Chuck Stone

Zombrex wrote: »

Military action, to be considered legitimate, must come from the collective will of the people, with a mandated army authorized to act on the democratic decisions of said people, expressed through a structured and transparent process. Or as we like to call it, an elected government answerable to the people.

I'm deliberately going to Godwin the thread here before someone thinks that pointing it out is clever.

Tell the above, misty eyed rubbish to be frank, to the Jews in the ghettos of Poland, the Native Americans, the slave population in the southern US, etc etc etc.

Zombrex

Chuck Stone wrote: »

I'm deliberately going to Godwin the thread here before someone thinks that pointing it out is clever.

Tell the above, misty eyed rubbish to be frank, to the Jews in the ghettos of Poland, the Native Americans, the slave population in the southern US, etc etc etc.

You seem to have missed the point some what.

Just because you have a legitimate army doesn't mean they cannot commit war crimes. But the army is answerable to the people, and if the people allow this or elect a government to carry out such war crimes the people are answerable for that.

Which is why invading German as part of WW2 was justifiable.

Imagine now that instead of the German Army carrying out the holocaust it was in fact a secret militia who did it.

Would bombing the crap out of German have been justifiable? Of course not, you cannot take military action against a group that have no control over how a secret milita operates.

You have to have an army under democratic civilian control because that democracy will either keep the army in check or at the very least provide a public representation of the army in order to keep it in check.

Which gets us back to the IRA, they were not the extension of any democratic governmental group, they had no mandate and were answerable to no one.

Or to put it another way, who would you have written a letter to to express your disgust at how the IRA were carrying out, who would you have challenged in a parliament to justify the actions of the IRA, who would other world leaders have summoned to their embassy to complain about the actions of the IRA?

Chuck Stone

Zombrex wrote: »

You have to have an army under democratic civilian control because that democracy will either keep the army in check or at the very least provide a public representation of the army in order to keep it in check.

Lol, yes, because that always happens.

How do oppressed minorities fight back when they are not being represented, no, deliberately frustrated, within these fantasy perfect democracies you speak of?

Do you expect them to operate in a transparent fashion, keep contemporaneous records, wear uniforms and meet an overwhelming force on yonder hill so that they can comply with the laws of war?

I might add that it was abuse and manipulation of democracy that led to the border being drawn along lines which created a minority in NI in the first place.

FGS.

The Scientician

A common feature of these threads is to overemphasise how bad things were in Northern Ireland prior to 1969. The Stormont government, for the entirety of its existence, were a pack of cúnts if ever there were one. Even still, Northern Irish Catholics were by and large looked after by the state, but perhaps not as consistently or as fairly as Northern Irish Protestants were. My dad was born in NI, grew up there, got a university education, and a grant which was so big at the time he could send a chunk of it home. He also had a public job that was decently paying. He left NI out of choice, just before the Troubles kicked off, but all of his siblings remained and prospered there, as do their children and grandchildren to this day.

Equal rights, equal access, parity of esteem were of course needed and demanded, and things sucked for a lot of working class Catholics in NI during those years. But the fact is, the Republic and the Free State weren't too great to working class people either. Letting the church control and exploit our most vulnerable, troubled kids, and young women, driving 100,000s to emigrate with wrongheaded trade wars, notions of self-sufficiency, and lack of investment, that set back the development of this country by decades. Being poor anywhere, without prospect of employment, is awful.

The NI government of the time, the Orange Order, the RUC, the British Army, loyalist terror groups and to an extent the IRA and other republican terror groups all played a hand in escalating the civil unrest in '69/'70/'71 into the mindless, pointless, butchery of '72 and beyond. The sectarian and wholely unjust implementation of internment, the heavyhanded tactics of the British Army, the intransigence of the Stormont government, all contributed towards a situation where the IRA could grow and prosper. And the events of those terrible days are to this day used as a blanket justification for all the actions of the IRA.

Furthermore, I think a lot of people posting in these threads overestimate how many people in NI from a Catholic/Nationalist would actually vote to join the republic in a referendum. They know what side their bread is buttered on and being part of the UK is a benefit to many people in NI. With both jurisdictions being in the EU, NI no longer suffers from lack of access to the South's economy, or what's left of it, either. Have your cake and eat it too republicanism seems fairly widespread in the North.

trendyvicar

The Scientician wrote: »

A common feature of these threads is to overemphasise how bad things were in Northern Ireland prior to 1969. The Stormont government, for the entirety of its existence, were a pack of cúnts if ever there were one. Even still, Northern Irish Catholics were by and large looked after by the state, but perhaps not as consistently or as fairly as Northern Irish Protestants were. My dad was born in NI, grew up there, got a university education, and a grant which was so big at the time he could send a chunk of it home. He also had a public job that was decently paying. He left NI out of choice, just before the Troubles kicked off, but all of his siblings remained and prospered there, as do their children and grandchildren to this day.

Equal rights, equal access, parity of esteem were of course needed and demanded, and things sucked for a lot of working class Catholics in NI during those years. But the fact is, the Republic and the Free State weren't too great to working class people either. Letting the church control and exploit our most vulnerable, troubled kids, and young women, driving 100,000s to emigrate with wrongheaded trade wars, notions of self-sufficiency, and lack of investment, that set back the development of this country by decades. Being poor anywhere, without prospect of employment, is awful.

The NI government of the time, the Orange Order, the RUC, the British Army, loyalist terror groups and to an extent the IRA and other republican terror groups all played a hand in escalating the civil unrest in '69/'70/'71 into the mindless, pointless, butchery of '72 and beyond. The sectarian and wholely unjust implementation of internment, the heavyhanded tactics of the British Army, the intransigence of the Stormont government, all contributed towards a situation where the IRA could grow and prosper. And the events of those terrible days are to this day used as a blanket justification for all the actions of the IRA.

Furthermore, I think a lot of people posting in these threads overestimate how many people in NI from a Catholic/Nationalist would actually vote to join the republic in a referendum. They know what side their bread is buttered on and being part of the UK is a benefit to many people in NI. With both jurisdictions being in the EU, NI no longer suffers from lack of access to the South's economy, or what's left of it, either. Have your cake and eat it too republicanism seems fairly widespread in the North.

I think most informed posters are aware of that.

Godge

to answer the OP, unequivocally, there was no justification whatsoever for the IRA campaign.

Zombrex

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Lol, yes, because that always happens.

Who said it always happens?

People don't always report police corruption to the police ombudsman and the police ombudsman doesn't always do its job properly. Does that mean we don't need a police ombudsman and the police should be secret and accountable to no one? Of course not.

You do not have a civilian controlled army as part of a transparent democratic system because it always works. You have it because it is far better than the alternative. Sometimes working is better than never working. democracy is not perfect, it is just better than anything else humans have ever tried.

Chuck Stone wrote: »

How do oppressed minorities fight back when they are not being represented, no, deliberately frustrated, within these fantasy perfect democracies you speak of?

The way they did it in 1918. In fact that is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, forming a civilian government with a mandate from the people which in turn recognized the Irish Volunteers as the legitimate army of State, forming the actual Irish Republican Army. The IRA as a legitimate army ceased to exist in 1922 with the signing of the Anglo Irish treaty and the formation of the Irish National Army. All IRAs since then have been illegitimate, operating without a mandate from the Irish people.

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Do you expect them to operate in a transparent fashion, keep contemporaneous records, wear uniforms and meet an overwhelming force on yonder hill so that they can comply with the laws of war?

I don't really care what they wear, but they must derive authority and be answerable to a democratically elected civilian body.

Were the IRA answerable to anyone but themselves? Of course not. This fact in of itself demonstrates they had no mandate, you cannot have a mandate unless you are answerable to those who gave you the mandate in the first place.

Chuck Stone wrote: »

I might add that it was abuse and manipulation of democracy that led to the border being drawn along lines which created a minority in NI in the first place.

You can add that all you like, it is irrelevant to my point.

Something either has a democratic mandate or it doesn't. You can't fudge the issue by just assuming you do have a mandate without actually getting one, no matter how difficult it is to get one.

No one said it was easy, but complaining it is hard isn't an excuse to skip it. Countries across the world face unfair elections all the time, often at the tail end of brutal governments. They don't just throw their hands up and abandon democracy altogether.

KeithAFC

blahfckingblah wrote: »

for a person who claims to have no religion you like bringing things back to religion while providing a blanket defence for the "PUL" community.

I defend a community which is vastly out numbered on here. So it does come up from time to time.

Batsy

Was the Republican campaign justifiable?

No. They were nothing but racist Little Irelanders, and so is any Irishman who thinks Northern Ireland should gain independence from the British Union.

irishh_bob

Batsy wrote: »

No. They were nothing but racist Little Irelanders, and so is any Irishman who thinks Northern Ireland should gain independence from the British Union.

do yourself and everyone else a favour , go and read a history book ( the daily mail doesnt count ) , preferabley one on your own nations history , you might learn something , number one = the conflict and divide in northern ireland wasnt along racial and ethnic lines

Liam Byrne

Chuck Stone wrote: »

I see our Southern comfort selective amnesiacs have come to the debate.

Care to back that up with some proof, or are you happy to throw an unsubstantiated slur in there in a pathetic attempt to discredit an opposing view ? :rolleyes:

Chuck Stone

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Care to back that up with some proof, or are you happy to throw an unsubstantiated slur in there in a pathetic attempt to discredit an opposing view ? :rolleyes:

I'm not going to trawl yours and other's posts to prove what is pretty obvious.

Granted, you less so than most as you tend to condemn all violence against civilians across the board and across conflicts.

Zombrex

Chuck Stone wrote: »

I'm not going to trawl yours and other's posts to prove what is pretty obvious.

Granted, you less so than most as you tend to condemn all violence against civilians across the board and across conflicts.

As do the vast majority of posters who don't agree with supporting or justifying the IRA.

The constant use of the "Oh yeah, well what about what the British did, you obviously support that don't you!" non-response, so common on threads like this, is as inaccurate as often as it is tiresome.

One day people will get over the false dichotomy of thinking that if you condemn the IRA you must support the Loyalists or British atrocities, or vice versa.

Though I wouldn't hold my breath. One of the first responses to my posts on this thread was someone telling me that the British weren't that good at respecting democracy as if that some how had anything to do with my point or as if I had ever suggested otherwise :rolleyes:

trendyvicar

irishh_bob wrote: »

do yourself and everyone else a favour , go and read a history book ( the daily mail doesnt count ) , preferabley one on your own nations history , you might learn something , number one = the conflict and divide in northern ireland wasnt along racial and ethnic lines

Yes it was.

Chuck Stone

Zombrex wrote: »

As do the vast majority of posters who don't agree with supporting or justifying the IRA.

This is not true.

There are plenty of people on this site who condemn Nationalist violence on the one hand but who supported the illegal war on Iraq, Call for an attack on Syria, support Israel's attacks on Gaza and Lebanon and call for an attack on Iran.

Liam doesn't, in my experience at least, in fairness to him.

trendyvicar

Can anyone summarise what would be different now if Republican groups had never existed?

Border-Rat

lugha wrote: »

It is difficult to tell if those that propagate the nonsense that Irish troops crossing the border in ’69 as an option, do in fact believe this (I actually think some really do) or are the just milking the propaganda value.

Then why does that free-state army exist? If Dublin was invaded tommorow, it would be 'nonsense' for the Irish army to counter-attack, merely because the enemy was in a stronger position?

Well, here’s a question. If you really do think that the BA could be so easily repelled, why didn’t PIRA succeed?

I didn't say anything about 'easy'. Since when are military decisions based on whether or not they're easy?

After all they had resources and support and would have had the considerable advantage of being able to use guerrilla tactics rather than conventional military engagements.
Simply answer, they did not have the capacity to do so. And neither would the Irish army have.

Then what is the point of the Irish army? If they can't defend 06 Counties? They have responsibility for 4 times that size.

The criticism of the IRA is rarely directed at their role in seeking to defend the Northern Catholics. It was for their pursuit of a united Ireland using violent means, against the clear wishes of the Irish people. that they stand indicted.

Less so is it even mentioned. The IRA afforded us protection up here. What did they detractors do? Nothing. If you people don't want the 06 Counties, refrain from throwing muck over how we defend ourselves.

You people want to pontificate, but at the same time you want no responsibilities.