RIC and DMP to be commemorated this month

Zebra3 wrote: »

Let's do a timeline.

1100s First English forces occupy parts of Ireland. What follows for centuries in England is a period of supremacist anti-Irish propaganda labelling Irish people as savages, uncivilised and animals.

Your first one is wrong. The Normans were invited by Irish chiefdom Diarmait Mac Murchada.
Secondly, they were not English, they were French speaking Normans. The Normans were as much foreign to Ireland as they were in Britain. They only really offically began to speak English in 1362.

https://www.theclassroom.com/language-did-normans-speak-22107.html

This is why the 800 years of oppression is the greatest Irish myth and lie.

markodaly wrote: »

We rarely get told what pre 1916 Ireland was like for the ordinary person. Not every Irish person was a rebel or republican, in fact the vast majority werent but did want to more self determination ala Home Rule.

I'm absolutely shocked, where and when did you go to school?

Zebra3 wrote: »

So if one group of people deems another group lazy they can then claim their land and ethnically cleanse them?

Come on. You’re smarter than this. Why don’t you re-read my full argument in my previous posts rather than playing this game were I make a point, you object, I respond to your objection and you proceed to treat my response to your objection as though it’s the only thing I’ve ever written about this and treat it simplistically as such without context to any of the points I’ve made prior to this.

markodaly wrote: »

100%.

Very easy to hate the RIC when you equate them to the SS or their ilk. Much harder to dehumanise them when the reality is that they were Catholic mainly from country farms, from all around the country.

We need less myths tbh. But alas we are not ready for it yet.

The reaction kind of shocked me to be honest. It just shows how deep seated a narrative of history has set in people's minds.

lmimmfn wrote: »

I'm absolutely shocked, where and when did you go to school?

In 1916 and before there was little appittide for Irish Republicanism and violent overthrow of the British in the masses. The rising change attitudes to a degree but there was still a large cohort who would have sat on the fence.

In other words there was, even in 1918 a difference of opinion of how best to get self determination. People point to the 1918 election, yet forget that it was a FPTP system, which killed the IPP and Home Rule. The IPP got 25.3% of the vote, yet only 5% of the seats.

About 500,000 voted for Sinn Fien, and about 250,000 voted for the IPP. There was still a large minority who supported Home Rule and even those who voted for Sinn Fien would have been skeptical of the type of violence be required and advocated in order the achive that Republic.

It is a hell of a lot more nuanced than saying every single person in Ireland was a raving Republican.

Charles Babbage wrote: »

It wasn't his business to invite them and his doing so doesn't justify them coming.

Yes, he should have held a referendum in 1162 I suppose. :rolleyes:
However, they are the facts. The Normans were invited by Irishmen.

Everyone knows they spoke French. They came from England, their exact ethnic makeup doesn't change the oppression, which is now 850 years.

To say they were English is wrong however. Both factually and historically.

Billcarson wrote: »

The actions the British took was out of frustration because the IRA were not fighting a conventional war. Appalling rapisels by the black and tans etc which disgusted even the British Army. The British Army wanted nothing to do with the black and tans such was their behaviour.

As I said in my long post above, (apologies for how long it is btw) I do think there is a limiting principle here.

Any action by the British that was knowingly targeting non-combatants for any reason is an atrocity. We all agree on this.

I’m saying that if the British are summarily executing rebels or using physical torture to get information then this is fair game given the conduct of the war being fought.

markodaly wrote: »

We rarely get told what pre 1916 Ireland was like for the ordinary person. Not every Irish person was a rebel or republican, in fact the vast majority werent but did want to more self determination ala Home Rule.

lmimmfn wrote: »

I'm absolutely shocked, where and when did you go to school?

The Sinn Fein party contested its first election, the 1908 North Leitrim by-election, where it secured 27% of the vote. The only other contestant, the Irish Parliamentary Party, took the seat with 73%. Thereafter, both support for and membership of Sinn Fein fell. At the 1910 Ard Fheis the attendance was poor, and there was difficulty finding members willing to take seats on the executive.
See Wikipedia.

gormdubhgorm wrote: »

The reaction kind of shocked me to be honest. It just shows how deep seated a narrative of history has set in people's minds.

To be honest, is doesn't surprise me.

We do not do right-wing nationalism per say, but when it comes to 'da Brits' the deepest and most primevil type of nationalism rears its ugly head time and time again. Most of all, its apparently fair game.

To be honest, if this means a UI is put off for a generation or two I am more than happy by this outcome.

We think of outselves as inclusive and tolerant but we are forever stuck in the past when it comes to the formation of the state, our relationshipt with Britain and bringing the gun out of Irish politics. Violence has always been legitmized as a means to bring about poltiical change. Lyra McKees murder was a reminder of the legacy of the rising to all.

People forget that we are a post coloninal state, with all the hangups which renders the thinking about the type of society we wanted to create mutated and devoid of any illumination or thought. Once the brits are not here, we will be OK..., maidens dancing at the cross roads and all that.

Of course, we dont for a minute think about how we bascily swapped an administration for the other and kept about 95% of the state apperatus intack.

The whole thing can be encapsulated by painting the postboxes green, and outsourcing social and educational services to the church.

Do people honestly think that in 1924 we were more 'free' than in 1914? Tell that to the 50,000 Irish women that were incarcerated in Irish institutions

lmimmfn wrote: »

Not sure where you're getting your info from( and lack thereof) but a good start would be some 19th century Gaeilge poetry, you know, what we had to hide because our language was illegal.

Having an Irish poerty book was never illegal in Ireland. There were various laws enacted to stop offical documents and court records being in Irish and Irish being spoken in certain settings and jurisdications, but there was never an outright on the Irish written word.

Again, one takes a half truth and creates a myth from it. Par of the course.

lmimmfn wrote: »

So your comment of common Irish opinion prior to 1916 predates my response by a full 8 years, are you guys for real? seriously?

While some local councillors were elected running under the party banner in the 1911 local elections, by 1915 the party was, in the words of one of Griffith's colleagues, "on the rocks", and so insolvent financially that it could not pay the rent on its headquarters in Harcourt Street in Dublin. - Wikipedia,

By my count there were 19 by-elections outside of Ulster 1910- Easter 1916, 15 won by the IPP, one by an independent nationalist and three in Cork by the All for Ireland League which wanted a glorified county council in Dublin. The Labour Party contested and lost three in Dublin. Sinn Fein contested none.

Obviously things improved for them after 1916. But my reading tells me that their first Westminster electoral success was in North Roscommon in 1917 and that between the Rising and the 1918 General Election the IPP won seven by-elections and Sinn Fein won five. You may wish to check that out. I may be out by one either way but I am confident that I am not.

Better to stick to facts than wondering if people are real. I presume you are not a psychologist and by the looks of things not a historian either. In the words of John A. Murphy, the function of a historian is to record the facts, (not to engage in propaganda on either side, he might have added.)

Deleted User wrote: »

Rubbish. Rules for war are encouraged by the side with the most firepower. Which is why the Irish fought a guerrilla war. Any fighting done by conventional means would have brought a swift end to the rebellion, as had happened so many times before. The British Empire was still one of the worlds major empires at the time of the Rebellion.

Note that when I say "rules of war" I'm referring to specific conventions, internationally recognised going back hundreds of years. These rules came about as a basic recognition of the fact that countries will inevitably go to war for good and bad reasons and as long as this is happening there should be mutually recognised standards such as wearing uniforms so everyone knows who's a combatant and who isn't. Don't kill civilians. If opposing soldiers surrender you have to accept their surrender and treat them well until they can be returned to their home countries.

The side with the most firepower doesn't determine whether these rules will be followed, the side who initiates the conflict does.

Deleted User wrote: »

As for those opposing the US, their conventional armies were crushed by a vastly superior and technologically advanced enemy. Obeying conventional rules simply makes them a target considering the wide range of weapons in the US arsenal. It makes no logical sense to follow such conventions since they had no input in creating them in the first place.

If you're referring to the first 10 weeks of the Iraq War which was fought army to army (conventionally) The US initiated it by invading a country with an army defending it. The war was by default a conventional war. The defending Iraqi army had no say in that. During this time there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny on the Americans to properly treat Iraqi soldiers who were surrendering in droves. Obviously when the war became an unconventional war fought against a different enemy, american tactics and practices changed accordingly. ie. raids on civilian houses to find insurgents, internment of suspected insurgents, enhanced interrogation, Guantanamo. All of this in violation of the rules of war, however the insurgents who initiated the conflict threw the rulebook out first.

Deleted User wrote: »

Anyway, the US has flouted the essence of the Geneva convention using word games and playing semantics to excuse their barbaric torture of anyone even remotely suspected of opposing their invasion.

Key point here is that the Iraqi Army who the US fought initially and they insurgents they fought later weren't the same enemy. Many of the insurgents were imported from other countries. These insurgents not only initiated an unconventional war but committed terrorist atrocities along the way such as bombing of civilians. The US was under no obligation to treat them in the same fashion they treated the Iraqi Army. The same distinction applies to Iraqis not aligned with the insurgents who continued fighting unconventionally after the Iraqi Army officially surrendered.

Deleted User wrote: »

It's worth remembering that the invasion of Iraq was founded on a lie told to everyone. Hardly reason to trust the US to abide by any other pesky rules they find inconvenient. Especially since they just use private contractors to do the dirty work for them.

I'm not passing judgment on whether or not the Iraq War was a moral war or an immoral war because it's irrelevant to the argument. Rules of conventional war apply irregardless.

Deleted User wrote: »

There is plenty wrong with what the US is doing. The ends do not justify the means (and I'm highly dubious about the ends here). Honestly, Bush should be strung up for war crimes along with all those who supported and encouraged this action that plunged the whole region into chaos. So, no, I don't buy into your logic, even slightly.

It's not a war crime to start a war on false pretexts or mistaken ones. That's a matter of politics. The conduct of the war itself is what's important.

Deleted User wrote: »

It was a rebellion. Rebellions of that time and previously were always put down using the harshest of tactics. The Republicans knew what would happen, and counted on it as a way of generating more recruits for the cause. Had the rebellion failed, they'd have further material for the next one. It's not as if Ireland had a scarcity of rebellions over the previous three hundred years.

Whether or not the war/rebellion is a conventional war or not is still important with regard to tactics being used to put it down. In the case of the WoI, the British are going to be harsh all the way through. However in the case of American War of Independence (which was a conventional war with all the rules being followed by both sides), if the British won, they would have hanged the political leaders of the rebellion only. The rebel soldiers themselves would have been treated fairly and released eventually.

Deleted User wrote: »

The problem is that people are assigning relatively modern thinking to a far different time. It wasn't long previously that Churchill approved the use of chemical weapons on his enemies. He could have done the same in Ireland and few (both in the UK or abroad) would have objected.

Well we've discussed examples from two vastly different time periods: Iraq War and the American War of Independence with the Irish War of Independence lying between the two. These are pretty universal concepts.

As for chemical weapons. It should be noted that they had just been invented and after the First World War they were banned under new conventions of war as being immoral weapons given that they killed indiscriminately.

Deleted User wrote: »

Indeed they are. But they only stand out for the people who are being oppressed. To the ruling people, it's just another incident in a long line of similar operations. Look to India, or any of their other colonies, and you'll find a long list of atrocities designed to shock the local population into compliance through fear.

I agree. That's why I said in my post that they were atrocities regardless of whether the war was conventional or not.

Deleted User wrote: »

It's not unreasonable..

No. It's unreasonable to expect the British to treat the WoI as a conventional war when it wasn't. We can acknowledge this while at the same time condemning British atrocities committed during the war.

Deleted User wrote: »

It's just unrealistic considering the history of Empires.

Moot point considering the previous point. Also, to be fair history has demonstrated that the British are capable of fighting conventional wars and following the rules against the Americans, French, Germans etc. They've got a pretty decent score card on this stuff. (I'm not forgetting about the war crimes that come to mind. The reason I'm discounting them here is that they are normally perpetrated by either individual soldiers or mid level commanders and can't be taken as though it were the top-down policy of their army.)

Deleted User wrote: »

Hindsight is just wonderful, isn't it? The Irish use of guerrilla warfare was done in a vacuum. There wasn't the internet. There wasn't a helpful Amazon to send you books on whatever topic you wanted. Libraries and bookstores were heavily censored. They made it up as they went along, learning what worked and discarding what didn't. Advice came from third/fourth/fifth hand sources who heard something about other rebellions, or soldiers who had faced similar tactics while serving with British forces.

The WoI was hardly the first war unconventional in modern history. The IRA knew just as well as you and I in hindsight exactly what they were undertaking and the risks they were incurring for themselves and the civilian population.

Deleted User wrote: »

There was no rule book because there were no rules. They were rebelling against a legitimate monarch. Their actions were illegal unless they were victorious.

You've summed it up perfectly.

Deleted User wrote: »

Or not. Or we could simply put all behind us as history and move on with our lives. Nobody here was alive back then. They're latching on to other peoples pain, and hatred of being oppressed. I don't like Republicans in the Republic, because they're harping on about oppression that they've never felt for themselves. They'll keep the hatred burning bright and seek to drag everyone in there with them, because misery loves company.

I have no issue with a remembrance for the RIC or other Irish who served. However, honestly, I wish they would just put all this **** in a history bin, and let the rest of us move on. Ireland doesn't need any of this crap being stirred up. It serves no useful purpose.

I tend to agree with all of this.

FrancieBrady wrote: »

I see a few of the regulars are taking their huff over losing this one out on the Irish in general. It's not hard to stir the nest. Flanagan and Varadkar immediately did the same.

Hopefully none of that ol' triumphialism is going on , Frank.

Bambi wrote: »

And The others who decry any glimpse of national sentiment as barstoolism while themselves becoming all dewy eyed for the days of Union when patriotic "ballsy" RIC men bravely turfed peasants out of their homes




If they where alive back then they would probably be the informer type scum.