To the people who say the troubles was not a war

See this is more fanciful uneducated rubbish, the old IRA killed far more civilians percentage wise than the provos did and maybe more civilians altogether (it's hard to be exact on the numbers).

The old IRA only managed to kill about 240 British soldiers in the whole of Ireland while the provos killed more than that in just 6 counties in the same amount of time 72-74.

The IRA exploded 1800 bombs in 1972 on economic targets almost all of these had no casualties due to 30 minute warnings but on bloody Friday the IRA made a huge mistake and placed too many bombs and the security forces couldn't completely clear the areas in time.

Ridiculous statement, this country celebrates the old IRA who killed hundreds of civilians men, women and children a far higher percentage of people killed by the old IRA were civilian deaths compared to the PIRA.

Then you have uneducated people like you who make ridiculous statements like this due to lack of knowledge and romantic views of the past simply because civilian deaths by the old IRA are not shoved down our throats in the media every couple of days in an attempt to hurt Sinn Féin.

So there you have it folks, the war of independence is officially a terrorist campaign.

How exactly do you mean? The overwhelming majority of IRA targets were security forces (70%) far higher than their predecessor of the old IRA, for guerrilla armies them statistics are as good as good as it gets.

So you're telling me as soon as a guerrilla army kills or targets a civilian they become terrorists? So basically there an no Guerilla armies ever in history? All terrorists?

According to literally every single poll Sinn Féin are the most popular party both North and South by far, they got the most votes in the last election but the next election they are going to have so many votes there will be no way that they can be kept out of government.

Have you been living in a cave the last few months? Have you not seen the polls?

So now you've gone to comparing WW2 (the biggest war in the history of the world) when the enemy was literally wanting to take over Britain and put them under occupation, to a small armed group fighting a Guerilla war to get 6 counties of their nation back? Clutching at straws here a bit now aren't we? Obviously more drastic action would be justified in those circumstances.

At the end of the day all sides of war generally have some sort of ''decency'' if you can call it that, even if the Brits did decide to just carpet bomb Catholic areas into oblivion which realistically wouldn't have worked as at least half of the IRA didn't even live in Northern Ireland and came from across the border to launch attacks and if they decided to carpet bomb the Republic as well which was a member of the EU there would have been massive consequences.

At the end of the day the IRA acted with some sort of restraint as did the British maybe for moral reasons or more likely because of far reaching consequences for their actions, both sides could have bombed civilians into oblivion but they didn't, that does not mean either side should be ''thankful''

You seem to also be forgetting consequences to actions, if they did decide to do that what do you think would have happened?

''nothing to do with us South of the border'' ignoring that most of the IRA were from South of the border including the whole leadership in the first few years of the troubles and that during the troubles Northern Ireland was disputed territory claimed by both the UK and Republic of Ireland.

The partionists are out in force today, who is this ''us'' you are referring to?

The UDA was a legal organisation until 1992 even though for 20 years it was deeply embroiled in sectarian murder, arson, extortion and blackmail. Under pressure from nationalists and the Irish government, Sir Patrick Mayhew, the then Northern Ireland Secretary, eventually outlawed the organisation.

It's said the UDA was made up almost entirely of British/agents informers, during the Stevens Inquiry (an official British government inquiry set up to investigate collusion due to overwhelming international pressure) Stevens arrested 210 top ranking UDA members all but 4 of them were agents/informers, Stevens claimed ten years later that the British government and MI5 had no intention of letting him investigate collusion and investigation was merely a propaganda piece, Stevens later claimed his offices were burnt down by the FRU and MI5 though this was never proven.