Anyone willing to admit that they supported the IRA at any point?

No, not in my lifetime. I was born in Belfast but my family moved to Dublin given the turmoil and killings up there in the 1970s. I remember the 1987 Enniskillen remembrance day atrocity and the dying words of 19 year old nurse Marie Wilson as she lay in her father's arms. The chip shop bombing on the Shankill road, the Warrington bombing killing two children, the shootings, etc etc etc . Omagh in 1998, the list just goes on and on and in...

Loyalist terror groups like the UDA also committed horrific acts of violence like the Shankill Butchers and 50 years of NI being a sectarian Protestant state and the despicable treatment of Catholics until the 1980s meant that despite the attempts to peacefully push for change the brutal police and B specials reaction to such protests sadly meant that violence was, sadly, inevitable. My parents were involved in NICRA but the brutal reaction to those peaceful marches for civil liberties inevitably led to bloodshed. The more you oppress a people, the more they fight back. This is the fatal mistake the NI Stormont govt made in 1968/69 which led to the virtual destruction of their province. They reaped what they sowed.

And if I was a young man in Derry during Bloody Sunday in 1972, I may well have joined the IRA. It was probably their biggest recruitment drive thanks to the brutality of the Paras. I can understand the fury at the sheer injustice of that massacre. Also the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 Who knows? But the bloodshed was immense and the heartache was everywhere. The Peace Process changed that and NI has come on in leaps and bounds but the legacy of the bloodshed will remain in popular consciousness for at least a century to come. NI remains a very distorted, fractured society and that is very very sad. A lot of hatred and bigotry and tribalism still abound.

Im sure certain quarters will have a go at me, but my conscience is clear. I never want to see Ireland return to those evil, dark days.

No surprises that the bitter and twisted armchair republicans (and one or two armchair loyalists on here) have been drawn to this thread like flies to sh*te. They literally cream their pants with their inability to forgive and their hatreds. The stench of hatred is palpable.

We need to move on. Northern Ireland will remain deeply scarred for decades to come but some normaity is gradually returning and picking over who did what and who was "right" does nobody any favours. Hatred and bloodshed were carried out on both sides of that evil conflict.

Which I want to see move further and further behind us in the passage of history. An entire generation is growing up with far less of the hatreds of the ageing, bitter armchair terrorist apologists.

DONTMATTER wrote: »

The families of victims deserve justice. There should be a full truth commission. That's the only way wounds are healed. Some areas are even more split than ever. Things aren't normal.

I have many friends and relatives in Northern Ireland (hell, I was born in Belfast) and I know the place very well and I can tell you that things up thete are a hell of a kot more normal than 30 or 40 years ago. Also intermarriage between both sides of the "religious" divide is at an all time high.

In fact the issues I see now for the North are its problematic propped up economy, its infrastructure deficit, treatment of ethnic minorities and LGBT people and of course, Brexit. These things werent even remotely on the radar screen 35 years ago.