Numbers up Gerry

Happyman42 wrote: »

That is not what I said, the republicans depicted by the poster as psychopaths stopped immediately a deal was done and they declared that their war was over. Not the typical behaviour of sadists and psyhcopaths. The British are still killing innocents in pursuit of their aims around the world and will continue to do so with the backing of 'right thinking decent people' who wear their poppies proudly.

Nodin wrote: »

That was "many of us supported the IRA" not lived in a bubble.



....the war diary of the British regiment there at the time is still classified.

[-0-] wrote: »

Haha, run along so. The answer is there was none. You can't view the people who won our independence as heroes and the provisional IRA as evil murdering scumbags. You need consistency. You need to view the lads who got our independence in the same light if you are to have any merit to your argument, and if you do view them in that light it simply means you do not understand what went on back then.

I do. I've studied. I did not give a flying feck about the IRA until I studied the history.

Whether you support(ed) the IRA or not, it's important to understand what they have done, why, and with what consequences - and to do so in terms of serious detailed explanation rather than simple stereotype BS.

The Provisional IRA began primarily in response to a defensive need, to urgent danger. In face of the late-1960s crisis in the north of Ireland, so the provo argument goes, there was an overriding need for a defence force to protect vulnerable Catholic communities from sectarian attack. This has remianed a central part of the IRA's self-image throughout the troubles, and of wider republican perception of the organization. As late as 1997 leading Sinn Feiner, Francie Molloy, referred to the IRA as 'the defenders of our people for the last twenty-five years or thirty years'. In 1969, the oppressed communities required muscular defence, and the IRA provided it. Tied in with this in the IRA argument is a second point: the attacks of the late 1960s upon Catholic communities were part of longstanding unfair treatment of those people within a state that had been of its nature hostile to its Catholic inhabitants.

If defence is the first cornerstone of the IRA argument, then the unfairness of the northern state is the second. Just as with much Catholic Irish experience within the pre-1922 United Kingdom, so too there was a problem with northern Catholic treatment and experience after partition. Gerry Adams: "In 1922, the six northeastern counties of Ireland were partitioned from the rest of the island by the British government, against the will of the Irish people and under threat of war. This partition resulted in the creation of a sectarian state in which nationalists have always been treated as second-class citizens".

Systemic collective grievance provided the well from which Provisional republicanism was able to draw, and teh IRA relentlessly made their point that loyalty was impossible to a state built in such a way as to exclude them; and lack of allegiance to the state had brought unfair treatment, discrimination, exclusion.

Happyman42 wrote: »

Less than 3 minutes in Daragh McIntyre was interrogating Gerry Adams and had in the previous minute asserted that he was a member of the IRA.
Yeh, the programme was about the bereaved families, nothing more, nothing less. :rolleyes:

awec wrote: »

You're wasting your time Gee Bag.

Buzz84 wrote: »

So you are going on everything that was said in the Documentary as fact. Then I'm sure you seen the bit where Hughes says she was an informer. Or does that not suit your agenda?

Carlos Roca wrote: »

I'm not sure why Adams agreed to appear on the show. Hasn't he answered all those questions before? The SF PR team must be on holidays.

awec wrote: »

No it didn't. I think that's what you saw because that's what you wanted to see.

The whole thing came off as an informative programme about The Disappeared and the suffering of families at the hands of the IRA. If you thought it was going to expose new evidence then I don't think you really get what the programme was about at all. This "no new evidence" is irrelevant - an attempt to obscure.

It laid out the facts, including the fact that two senior provos said that Adams was in the IRA and commander at the time of the McConville murder. It also included interviews with McKee who all but called Adams a liar.

Just because it is politically convenient for Sinn Fein to act the ostrich over it does not mean that the programme was a hatchet job. For as long as Adams denies it while his former comrades say otherwise it will be a story - Adams has built an entire political career while claiming that he was not in the IRA.