I don’t trust a word that man says for some reason.
“There a feeling of embarrassment (in the south)”. – I think that’s a major misread of emotions down here.
Like him or not he’s right enough and opinions like his have been deliberately excluded from RTE for decades.
“Voters were also asked how important a united Ireland was to them. Just a fifth (20 per cent) agreed it was “very important, it is a priority for me”. Almost a quarter (24 per cent) said it was “not at all important”. By far the most popular response was “not very important but I would like to see it someday” which was chosen by 52 per cent of all respondents.”
But voters also said they would not accept higher taxes (79 per cent) or less money for public services (79 per cent).
People in the 6 counties paying for freedom with their lives.
People in the south wont even pay for freedom out of their pocket.
The problem **was** that NI got its freedom. The very fact that it got Home Rule led to economic and social policies exercised by the majority population over the minority. This was precisely the fear that unionists had had about being forced into a free (Rome Rule) Ireland.
Edit: you can downvote this all you want, it doesn’t make it any less true.
He makes good points. The amount of people who view the heroes of Kilmichael, Knocklong, Coolavokig etc. as righteous yet seem to enamour themselves with the Brits when it comes to Belfast, Armagh etc. is repugnant. Patriotic warriors, North and South, no matter the generation.
I can remember as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s when we came south to watch an All Ireland final, Dad would have to park the car away in a side street because cars with northern number plates were vandalised and that wasn’t because they assumed we were Unionists.
The Brit’s destroyed Ireland and the crazy thing is people in the uk have no idea about the atrocities that took place in Ireland under British rule, the uk has existed for 300 years and Ireland was apart of it for a little over 120 years so thats 40 percent of its existence yet people in the uk have no idea of the uk when Ireland was apart of it so thats 40 percent of there own history they have no clue about
I wrote this comment in a different tread few days while ago, but think it’s appropriate here;
Might be time for us in the south to re-evaluate our collective view of the troubles. There’s no shame associated in FF expressing support for the old IRA. FG are not ridiculed by the media for their association to the Blueshirts.
The reality is that many of the people who joined the Provo IRA saw that they had little choice. They couldn’t turn to the police, the army, the government. Attempts to protest peacefully were shut down by British army murder. The UN wrote off the violence as a religious, civil matter – not a political one which they should intervene in. It’s important to remember the strong support for Republican armed defence in the south in the early years of the troubles. The southern government sent guns and sanctioned training for Provos in Donegal & Kerry. The Irish army were sent to the border and helped take in refugees. Slowly, the south abandoned the people of the north and eventually turned on them.
I’m not saying that PIRA were right, but this idea that lots of evil people just happened to be born in the same part of our island and participated in violence for the craic is nonsense.
I often think what I would’ve done if I was an 18 year old in Derry at a civil rights march and the British army shot my friends, cousin or brother and then planted nail bombs on them and called them a terrorist for 50 years before admitting the truth. I certainly wouldn’t ridicule people who were backed into a corner.
There’s a story I read, I’m 95% sure it is in Richard O’Rawe’s book ‘Blanket Men’ about what motivated a young 17 year old Nationalist to join the IRA.
When he was 16, his 11 year brother was shot in the head by the British army while walking to a local shop. In the following days, there was rioting in the housing estate in response to the murder of the child. He and his father were arrested for participating in that riot and brought to Crumlin Road Station, brought into the same cell where they were raped with broom handles in front of eachother by the arresting officers – a father and his son.
He joined the Provisional IRA when he turned 17. It’s hard to understand how they’re blindly painted as terrorists with any of the context been taken in.
Bring Joe back to the Sunday Game
Fundamentally the provos represented the democratic will of a disenfranchised populace who had no available democratic road to change.
The unionists suppression of civil rights protests and then Ian Paisley urging on mobs to burn down catholic neighbourhoods was nothing short of insane
when the violence inevitably erupted and the British state intervened their total mismanagement wilful or not lead to the continuation of conflict. the refusal for negotiations by those in power in Northern Ireland at sunning-dale is what lead us to have a forty year blood letting not some IRA crusade for reunification as it’s so often depicted.
While I can totally understand why people took up arms in the North. I can even go as far as saying any Paramilitary or British Soldier killed by the IRA where legitimate targets.
What I cannot stand over is this self righteousness that that certain sections SF and the IRA have. Calling for investigations into British Atrocities while calling for IRA men to be released. Justifying their kills as collateral damage while calling the killing of an IRA man murdered.
At the end of the day the IRA went far beyond civil rights, legitimately killing enemy combatants and morphed into an organisation that deliberately targeted and killed non combatants, you cannot justify Kingsmill by saying the Brits shot people on Bloody Sunday which is what many do.
In the end the IRA, UDA, INLA, British Army where all as bad as eachother. All sides try to justify their actions by saying the other side did it.
Killing innocent people is wrong and should not be celebrated
I do think that there should be more taught in schools in the south about the North and the troubles. But I don’t agree with the bit he said about people in the South blaming the nationalists/catholics for fighting against their oppression.
And the Uk pumps 15billion into north again next year, to sweeten the deal.
Like come stay with the rich daddy,
I think people in the south are just as clueless as to the extent of what happened in the north as are the Brits.
Even what we have to go through today. Simple things like walking to the pitch with a hurl. Your automatically seen as a catholic/ republican. A unionist will even think your making a statement by carrying a hurl.
(Some) southerners will celebrate the likes of Tom Barry as a national hero, yet completely disregard the IRA of the latter half of the century as being nothing but terrorists.
The British army moved in to northern Ireland . For one reason too stop the violence towards the Catholics . then it was turned around . By the IRA . as you know that’s why there was a civil war weapons were supplies came from Britain for the Irish army .
He’s bang on. The free state was happy to carry on like on like nothing happened. And now incredibly many have a snobby attitude to republicans & nationalists in the north, the bloody cheek. I’ve always liked brolly, don’t always agree with everything he says but he’s intelligent & a good solicitor I’m sure
It’s a small thing and doesn’t detract from any of his points but he got the name wrong. It was Francis McCloskey, not Robert.
Protesters threw stones at the RUC and he was beaten to death in the retaliation. No evidence that he had any involvement in the protests. The RUC claimed he was killed by one of the stones and not by the batons. Awful shady stuff.
As someone from the north, I had no idea that people from the south didn’t think this way. Do people think we are all terrorists up here like the English think of us?
there is a big divide between catholic/nationalist/republican people in the north and the ‘freestaters’ especially like in my own parents they would be against sectarianism but would talk about how much southerners hate us
Usual rubbish from Joe.
South of the country might not have lived it but doesn’t mean they don’t have an understanding of what went on.
NI is covered in 2nd level schools, an entire unit on it for the LC.
Also during the troubles, there were marches over hunger strikes, British embassy burnt out etc.
Joe has a major “free stater” chip.
I think context is super important and so is an objective and contextualised education on the matter. Unless we’re completely honest and admit some hard truths, we’re never going to be truly ready for reunification.
People often make sweeping and completely one-sided arguments in the South about groups like the PIRA. Now, were attacks on civilians justified? Of course not. However if you were a young nationalist, who saw your people discriminated against, beaten, murdered, gerrymandered, economically and socially immobilised and massacred by soldiers and at every stage, the government and the police failed you, it’s not difficult to see how so many decided they would respond in kind. This is something everyone seems to ignore. That when your back is against the wall, you’ll be far more likely to pick up a gun from an extended hand.
Keep in mind also that they saw loyalist paramilitaries form and arm themselves without hinderance from the authorities, and murderous groups like the UFF and the Shankill Butchers committed atrocities without a fraction of the heat from the authorities.
For example one priest at the time said how so many PIRA militants he met in prisons told him that had Bloody Sunday not occurred, they would have never joined the PIRA.
So what would people have liked the South to do during the 60s, 70s and 80s? Send in the Irish army? Antagonise the Brits? Bring the South into a war with the Brits? We’d have been annihilated.
Europe and the US were too concerned with the Soviets to have batted an eyelid, never mind supporting the South in stopping what was happening in NI. And had the Irish army invaded NI, Europe and the US wouldn’t have supported the South because they had their own issues with the Soviets.
And regarding a United Ireland…..voting for that will do to this country what Brexit has done to the UK. Our police force and army have serious, serious staffing issues. If NI was to join the rest of Ireland, do people think that unionists will just accept that? Just accept the vote? You’re delusional if you think that. At the very best there would be political disruption, at the worst possibly a return to violence from paramilitaries. And the Gardaí and Irish military, at the moment, are in no way equipped or staffed to take that on. It would cripple the Irish economy. Hell, the regular Gardaí in the South aren’t even armed!
Hope his piles clear up
Nailed it Brolly
An interesting point is that Brolly has never voted in his life. When pushed he said he might consider PBP. Its hard to know where his leanings are politically altho I think he is more motivated by social justice than republicanism.
He has a point but I’d like to hear his thoughts on the Provisional IRA also killing innocent civilians when they could have engaged in a political process like John Hume did.
Surely killing innocent people because your community has been unfairly persecuted makes you no better and achieves nothing?
27 comments
I don’t trust a word that man says for some reason.
“There a feeling of embarrassment (in the south)”. – I think that’s a major misread of emotions down here.
Like him or not he’s right enough and opinions like his have been deliberately excluded from RTE for decades.
“Voters were also asked how important a united Ireland was to them. Just a fifth (20 per cent) agreed it was “very important, it is a priority for me”. Almost a quarter (24 per cent) said it was “not at all important”. By far the most popular response was “not very important but I would like to see it someday” which was chosen by 52 per cent of all respondents.”
But voters also said they would not accept higher taxes (79 per cent) or less money for public services (79 per cent).
People in the 6 counties paying for freedom with their lives.
People in the south wont even pay for freedom out of their pocket.
Recent Irish unity poll.. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/large-majority-of-voters-favour-a-united-ireland-poll-finds-1.4752459
The problem **was** that NI got its freedom. The very fact that it got Home Rule led to economic and social policies exercised by the majority population over the minority. This was precisely the fear that unionists had had about being forced into a free (Rome Rule) Ireland.
Edit: you can downvote this all you want, it doesn’t make it any less true.
He makes good points. The amount of people who view the heroes of Kilmichael, Knocklong, Coolavokig etc. as righteous yet seem to enamour themselves with the Brits when it comes to Belfast, Armagh etc. is repugnant. Patriotic warriors, North and South, no matter the generation.
I can remember as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s when we came south to watch an All Ireland final, Dad would have to park the car away in a side street because cars with northern number plates were vandalised and that wasn’t because they assumed we were Unionists.
The Brit’s destroyed Ireland and the crazy thing is people in the uk have no idea about the atrocities that took place in Ireland under British rule, the uk has existed for 300 years and Ireland was apart of it for a little over 120 years so thats 40 percent of its existence yet people in the uk have no idea of the uk when Ireland was apart of it so thats 40 percent of there own history they have no clue about
I wrote this comment in a different tread few days while ago, but think it’s appropriate here;
Might be time for us in the south to re-evaluate our collective view of the troubles. There’s no shame associated in FF expressing support for the old IRA. FG are not ridiculed by the media for their association to the Blueshirts.
The reality is that many of the people who joined the Provo IRA saw that they had little choice. They couldn’t turn to the police, the army, the government. Attempts to protest peacefully were shut down by British army murder. The UN wrote off the violence as a religious, civil matter – not a political one which they should intervene in. It’s important to remember the strong support for Republican armed defence in the south in the early years of the troubles. The southern government sent guns and sanctioned training for Provos in Donegal & Kerry. The Irish army were sent to the border and helped take in refugees. Slowly, the south abandoned the people of the north and eventually turned on them.
I’m not saying that PIRA were right, but this idea that lots of evil people just happened to be born in the same part of our island and participated in violence for the craic is nonsense.
I often think what I would’ve done if I was an 18 year old in Derry at a civil rights march and the British army shot my friends, cousin or brother and then planted nail bombs on them and called them a terrorist for 50 years before admitting the truth. I certainly wouldn’t ridicule people who were backed into a corner.
There’s a story I read, I’m 95% sure it is in Richard O’Rawe’s book ‘Blanket Men’ about what motivated a young 17 year old Nationalist to join the IRA.
When he was 16, his 11 year brother was shot in the head by the British army while walking to a local shop. In the following days, there was rioting in the housing estate in response to the murder of the child. He and his father were arrested for participating in that riot and brought to Crumlin Road Station, brought into the same cell where they were raped with broom handles in front of eachother by the arresting officers – a father and his son.
He joined the Provisional IRA when he turned 17. It’s hard to understand how they’re blindly painted as terrorists with any of the context been taken in.
Bring Joe back to the Sunday Game
Fundamentally the provos represented the democratic will of a disenfranchised populace who had no available democratic road to change.
The unionists suppression of civil rights protests and then Ian Paisley urging on mobs to burn down catholic neighbourhoods was nothing short of insane
when the violence inevitably erupted and the British state intervened their total mismanagement wilful or not lead to the continuation of conflict. the refusal for negotiations by those in power in Northern Ireland at sunning-dale is what lead us to have a forty year blood letting not some IRA crusade for reunification as it’s so often depicted.
While I can totally understand why people took up arms in the North. I can even go as far as saying any Paramilitary or British Soldier killed by the IRA where legitimate targets.
What I cannot stand over is this self righteousness that that certain sections SF and the IRA have. Calling for investigations into British Atrocities while calling for IRA men to be released. Justifying their kills as collateral damage while calling the killing of an IRA man murdered.
At the end of the day the IRA went far beyond civil rights, legitimately killing enemy combatants and morphed into an organisation that deliberately targeted and killed non combatants, you cannot justify Kingsmill by saying the Brits shot people on Bloody Sunday which is what many do.
In the end the IRA, UDA, INLA, British Army where all as bad as eachother. All sides try to justify their actions by saying the other side did it.
Killing innocent people is wrong and should not be celebrated
I do think that there should be more taught in schools in the south about the North and the troubles. But I don’t agree with the bit he said about people in the South blaming the nationalists/catholics for fighting against their oppression.
And the Uk pumps 15billion into north again next year, to sweeten the deal.
Like come stay with the rich daddy,
I think people in the south are just as clueless as to the extent of what happened in the north as are the Brits.
Even what we have to go through today. Simple things like walking to the pitch with a hurl. Your automatically seen as a catholic/ republican. A unionist will even think your making a statement by carrying a hurl.
(Some) southerners will celebrate the likes of Tom Barry as a national hero, yet completely disregard the IRA of the latter half of the century as being nothing but terrorists.
The British army moved in to northern Ireland . For one reason too stop the violence towards the Catholics . then it was turned around . By the IRA . as you know that’s why there was a civil war weapons were supplies came from Britain for the Irish army .
He’s bang on. The free state was happy to carry on like on like nothing happened. And now incredibly many have a snobby attitude to republicans & nationalists in the north, the bloody cheek. I’ve always liked brolly, don’t always agree with everything he says but he’s intelligent & a good solicitor I’m sure
It’s a small thing and doesn’t detract from any of his points but he got the name wrong. It was Francis McCloskey, not Robert.
Protesters threw stones at the RUC and he was beaten to death in the retaliation. No evidence that he had any involvement in the protests. The RUC claimed he was killed by one of the stones and not by the batons. Awful shady stuff.
As someone from the north, I had no idea that people from the south didn’t think this way. Do people think we are all terrorists up here like the English think of us?
there is a big divide between catholic/nationalist/republican people in the north and the ‘freestaters’ especially like in my own parents they would be against sectarianism but would talk about how much southerners hate us
Usual rubbish from Joe.
South of the country might not have lived it but doesn’t mean they don’t have an understanding of what went on.
NI is covered in 2nd level schools, an entire unit on it for the LC.
Also during the troubles, there were marches over hunger strikes, British embassy burnt out etc.
Joe has a major “free stater” chip.
I think context is super important and so is an objective and contextualised education on the matter. Unless we’re completely honest and admit some hard truths, we’re never going to be truly ready for reunification.
People often make sweeping and completely one-sided arguments in the South about groups like the PIRA. Now, were attacks on civilians justified? Of course not. However if you were a young nationalist, who saw your people discriminated against, beaten, murdered, gerrymandered, economically and socially immobilised and massacred by soldiers and at every stage, the government and the police failed you, it’s not difficult to see how so many decided they would respond in kind. This is something everyone seems to ignore. That when your back is against the wall, you’ll be far more likely to pick up a gun from an extended hand.
Keep in mind also that they saw loyalist paramilitaries form and arm themselves without hinderance from the authorities, and murderous groups like the UFF and the Shankill Butchers committed atrocities without a fraction of the heat from the authorities.
For example one priest at the time said how so many PIRA militants he met in prisons told him that had Bloody Sunday not occurred, they would have never joined the PIRA.
So what would people have liked the South to do during the 60s, 70s and 80s? Send in the Irish army? Antagonise the Brits? Bring the South into a war with the Brits? We’d have been annihilated.
Europe and the US were too concerned with the Soviets to have batted an eyelid, never mind supporting the South in stopping what was happening in NI. And had the Irish army invaded NI, Europe and the US wouldn’t have supported the South because they had their own issues with the Soviets.
And regarding a United Ireland…..voting for that will do to this country what Brexit has done to the UK. Our police force and army have serious, serious staffing issues. If NI was to join the rest of Ireland, do people think that unionists will just accept that? Just accept the vote? You’re delusional if you think that. At the very best there would be political disruption, at the worst possibly a return to violence from paramilitaries. And the Gardaí and Irish military, at the moment, are in no way equipped or staffed to take that on. It would cripple the Irish economy. Hell, the regular Gardaí in the South aren’t even armed!
Hope his piles clear up
Nailed it Brolly
An interesting point is that Brolly has never voted in his life. When pushed he said he might consider PBP. Its hard to know where his leanings are politically altho I think he is more motivated by social justice than republicanism.
He has a point but I’d like to hear his thoughts on the Provisional IRA also killing innocent civilians when they could have engaged in a political process like John Hume did.
Surely killing innocent people because your community has been unfairly persecuted makes you no better and achieves nothing?