Posted by: pgrzelak
About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 10:07
Pity it took someone else bombing London to get the IRA to agree to
give up violence.
Posted by: Phoenix42
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 11:41
Yup it is good news.
Now lets hope that all sides sit down around a table and get Northern Ireland sorted out rather then arguing about what mineral water should be served.
Posted by: andy
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 14:14
I wish that the various Unionist spokesmen, just for once, say "Great" and then shut up.
Posted by: andy
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 14:18
...and of course we have just had the Sinn Fein vice president still refusing to recommend that people in NI seeing a crime should actually tell the police about it.
Posted by: schofiel
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 16:26
I am utterly, utterly astonished. I never thought I would live to see this day.
We lived in Greenisland near Carrickfergus from '74 onwards for many years (I still have family there), and "No Surrender!" was something I heard daily as a schoolkid.
If only someone had been brave enough to do this in 1975 - a lot of bloodshed and pain could have been avoided.
I applaud the people who have been strong enough to make this decision. Wonderful news.
Posted by: Geoff
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 18:09
Personally, I'm inclined not to believe a word they say, so I'll wait and see. They could change their minds again in a week, a month, a year or whenever if they don't get what they want. And if that happens, they'll somehow manage to go back to violence in a way that lays the blame at everyone else but them. That's what happened when they ended their first "complete cessation" in 1996 by bombing Canary Wharf and effectively saying "The Brits made us do it"
I've known too many good people who were murdered over the years and seen too many towns bombed, and I don't see why anyone should be rewarded or applauded for deciding not to murder people anymore. Otherwise what's the point in living peacefully within the law? We practically have 'celebrity terrorists' in Northern Ireland, it's a joke! Unfortunately it's not a very funny one!
The whole thing with the bombs in London this month and politicians earnestly promising "never to give in to terrorists' demands" is just all too depressingly familiar. British Governments unfortunately seem to make a habit of giving in to terrorists' demands
Posted by: pgrzelak
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 18:48
I may have missed it, but the articles I read did not state that the government made any concessions. It looked like a unilateral statement from the reports I saw. Did I miss something?
Posted by: andy
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 19:23
and the also released a Republican prisioner last night, presumably as a good will gesture to kick the whole thing off
Posted by: bonzi
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 20:23
Well, I would guess that the population is indeed mostly divided into the group that would favour unification of Ireland and the one that woud prefer outright annexation of Ulster, with an odd proponent of independence and some so depressed they don't care. I think that Peter's point was that all peaceful citizens won, regardless of the side of the fence.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: About time! (IRA) - 28/07/2005 20:37
Whee! Political debates that don't center around the US!
For those of us isolationists that don't understand "The Troubles", what is the deal? As far as I understand it, Ireland was invaded by Britain ages ago and there was an Irish revolution that eventually resulted in an independent Ireland. But Northern Ireland was kept from that nation and remained a part of Britain. That brings up question #1: why? Were there more British in that area than elsewhere? So since then, some have campaigned for the "return" of Northern Ireland to Ireland, and others have campaigned for Northern Ireland to remain British. Question #2: why? I think I understand the last part, which is that it got all heated and violent and escalated from there until it's probably gotten to the point of being a feud with mostly-forgotten reasons, but I just don't understand what brought it to that point to begin with.
Posted by: bonzi
Re: About time! (IRA) - 29/07/2005 05:30
Yes, most fascinating history, which somehow refuses to stay that, history...
Someone (Iain Banks, someone here?) said that the main obstacle to peace in Northern Ireland is "whataboutism": whenever the peace is within reach, someone would stand up and say "Yes, but what about <this or that ancient injustice>!?", and we are back to square one.
Now, here is a heretical idea: perhaps solution lies in better integrated "Europe of regions", where nation states, while still existing, are not the obstacle to different, sometimes more natural organization. Irish/British Ulster is far from being the only example: Spanish/Frensh Basque region, French/German Alsace/Lotharingia, Italian/Slovenian/Croatian Istria, Italian/Austrian Tirol... Europe has very turbulent history, and existing borders are best left alone, but there is hardly a pair of neighbouring countries that do not share some such region spanning national borders.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: About time! (IRA) - 29/07/2005 16:36
Okay, so it looks like there's the obvious Republican ideal of uniting Ireland, which is simple enough. But then this modern Republicanist militantism seems to stem from what that article refers to as civil rights violations against Catholics in Northern Ireland, but it doesn't say what those might have been.
And I can understand the Unionists desire to remain both British and on the land to which they were born, but beyond that idealism, is current (or even post-1922 in general) Irish government seen as inextricably tied to the Catholic Church, which seems to have been at least one of the biggest issues of the Unionists?
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: About time! (IRA) - 11/09/2005 22:03
Sounds like now that the IRA has promised to disarm, the (Protestant)
Orange Order has taken up the slack.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: About time! (IRA) - 12/09/2005 11:39
A rose by any other name. SIGH.
Posted by: kayakjazz
Re: About time! (IRA) - 15/09/2005 02:35
Yes, the UDA and the UVF seem to have taken on the erstwhile role of the IRA lately....after a summer in Ireland last year, which included some time in NI (fascinated by a wall thru Belfast, like the Berlin Wall, dividing two parts of the city) I came home and exhausted myself reading genral Irish history (any Irish schoolchild can cite 11 hundred years of it, while half of ours can't tell you who our last 3 presidents were...), the history from both sides of the recent upheavals (say, the last 35 years), and the history of the IRA, and came away shaking my aching head. As in the current case, with Protestant groups now attacking the police, the honors of who has behaved most badly seem to be about equally divided. And anyone who wants to keep up with it needs a scorecard (IRA, Provisional IRA, UVF, UDA, DUP, etc., are only a few of the players...) What isn't well understood in the rest of the world is that elements of both of these groups have been heavily into organized crime to finace their arsenals and activities for quite some time now, and are now heavily invested also in defending their criminal turfs. After 1100 years, one is tempted to despair, but the best hope is that ordinary people on both sides are heartily sick of the mayhem. Since the Good Friday Agreement, it has been much better, and people have gotten fond of more peaceful lives. Societal pressure seems to be the best hope, and within Ireland also, as Bonzi suggests, many people are now more interested in being European than in being Irish or Northern Irish, Protestant or Catholic--but the balance is very fragile. I hesitate to wish them the"best of Irish luck."