Bobby Sands - see Mod Note in OP.

antgal23 wrote: »

Solid post mate, lot of nails firmly hit on the head

One factor worth highlighting is class. Religion was and is the stick to beat the North with but no one mentions the class structure.

60s civil rights was an attempt by the Catholic underclass for equal access to housing and university

The Protestant upper class didn't want to share the pie but it was labeled sectarianism.

Sure, there was+ is a hatred of Catholics but it was mostly about money.

Recent evidence of this class structure is how ruling class Protestants treat working class Protestants. The Catholic Minister for Education several year ago highlighted that fewer working class Protestants were attending 3rd level education than their Catholic peers.

antgal23 wrote: »

I watched a documentary on this, Darky Hughes and GA were real tight until Darky went to prison in the 80s. When he got out GA wouldn't talk to him.

Danny Morrison claims SF tried to talk Sands and come sway from the strike but many would argue otherwise

Rows Grower wrote: »

I highlighted what I strongly disagreed with but that's not to say that I agree with the rest of your post.

If your honest opinion is that the GFA was a failure I doubt very much you are anything more than a bar stool republican who misses the bar stool because of the lock down and still feels the need to impress strangers with your self proclaimed republican credentials.

If you'd like to engage in reasonable discussion that is what this forum was created for and it was you yourself that started this thread, presumably because you wanted a discussion although it does appear you did actually want a pissing competition and were confident of your abilities.

This doesn't give you ownership of the thread though, just because you started it doesn't mean everything you write is above reproach, you should expect criticism if you are expressing viewpoints others do not agree with.

I'd actually like to hear the reasoning behind your views, not because I consider you a militant republican like you are trying to portray (because I don't think you are) but I'd like to find out your opinion and where you think the likes of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Tom Murphy, Gerry Kelly, John Hume and all the others too numerous to mention went wrong when they helped create the Good Friday Agreement.

Over to yourself, mo chara.

CrankyHaus wrote: »

Yeah but by the beginning of The Troubles it was less the Protestant Upper Class that resisted sharing the pie with Catholics than it was the Loyalist Working Class; fearful of losing their cherished privileges in the face of declining economic position as the traditional industries that gave them preferential employment nosedived (eg over 100,000 manufacturing jobs lost since 1970).


From the 1960s a moderation in the position of the Northern Irish Unionist elite was evident. For us it was nowhere near enough but for many Working Class Loyalists it was a harbinger of betrayal. They may well have been right as the upper-class in NI less and less saw any benefit in the outdated and volatile hierarchy based on sect and ethnicity that had been the basis of their wealth and power for a long time. As a result in 1969 the reformist UUP Prime Minister Terence O'Neill lost his seat to the firebrand Ian Paisley and his government to Brian Faulkner, who had resigned to provoke the election.


Faulkner in turn committed to the Sunningdale Process and the Loyalist community rewarded him by bringing down the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive through the Ulster Workers Council Strike. This produced decades of direct rule from Westminster.


Basically working class Loyalists no longer trusted the traditional Unionist elite to protect their interests over those of the Catholic-Irish. In fact rather than trust them they preferred to pull down Northern Ireland as an autonomous state in favour of direct rule from London.



Essentially working class Loyalists were abandoned by their political class and doubled down on Loyalist bigotry and extremism enforced by their own arms and through their own parties as the only guarantor of the position they sought to maintain ; poor but British and still above the "Taigs".

antgal23 wrote: »

But maybe the Unionist politicians know this and want to keep them stupid?