# What are/were your perceptions of the Troubles in Northern Ireland?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 18, 2008, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893 "2008-07-18T00:29:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/1 "2008-07-18T00:29:08Z")
Inspired by the coded warnings thread:
> **[Why did the I.R.A give coded warnings?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=475918)**
>
> What was the rationale or motivation behind the IRA’s practice of sending warnings for impending bomb attacks?
This is sort of IMHO but because it is about a political issue I posted it here. Mods can move it if they see fit. I’d like to hear peoples’ opinions on the Troubles, i.e. the bloody period from about 1968 to 1998 when there were widespread civil disturbances, terrorist acts, military engagements, and too many killings in Northern Ireland (and also rest of UK, Republic of Ireland and partly elsewhere).
Specifically although not exclusively, I’d like to hear what people _not from the countries involved_ heard about and thought about these events. News media colour one’s perceptions of foreign lands. I have had discussions with Americans, Germans, and people of other nationalities about the Troubles and realise some people harbour strangely distorted perceptions of the events.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/2 "2008-07-18T01:06:48Z")
A tragedy three-five hundred years in the making. Aided and abetted by American citizens who thought they were doing good.
My family came here because of the English. Same reasons, more or less, too. They kinda… ducked aboard a ship before someone caught 'em.
But, as far as the Troubles… Fed by American money and political support, a futile fight over nothing but pride, religion, and whose granduncle did what to whose great-uncle… and what one of 'em did to someone else’s great-aunt. Pointless. Bloody. The worst kind of thing. I didn’t think it would ever end.
I still don’t know how it did.
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### Author:  [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/3 "2008-07-18T01:54:21Z")
I have a somewhat slanted view on things since I was born in Scotland, and actually spent 3 years in Londonderry as a 3, 4 , 5 year old. This was 1966, 67, 68’ish.
What I remember is HATING the Catholic kids. Why? Because they lived in different neighbourhoods, went to different schools, and all the other Protestant kids hated them too. I have vague memories of lurking in bushes and throwing stones at the Fenian bastards as they got on the school bus. This is what we were “trained” to do.
I’m fairly confident that if I stayed I would have come to my senses eventually, but it just goes to show you how entrenched the hatred was back then. Could the Palestine/Jewish situation be any different? Not bloody likely.
Anyway, after moving to Canada and reading more about the Troubles, I actually started to side with the Catholics. I was embarrassed that the Orangemen would routinely march through Catholic neighbourhoods and rub their faces in something that was centuries old. I understand that’s not happening any more: correct?
So, now I’m married to a Catholic. My kids are attending Catholic school. I’ve become a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and couldn’t be happier that my kids are at least learning “A” religion in school. Can’t hurt 'em any.
Anyway, it’s nice to see a compromise and I’m glad newer generations don’t hold the same prejudices from when I lived there.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/4 "2008-07-18T02:39:33Z")
I always thought the IRA had the right of it to the limited extent that it would probably be better for all Irish if the island were politically unified, but otherwise, it was all so much tragic dumbassery on both sides.
My mother, BTW, once toured the Republic and got the very distinct impression most people there don’t much care whether they ever get the North united with the Republic or not.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/5 "2008-07-18T03:28:50Z")
Ancient Irish joke: “If only we were heathen so we could all live together like good Christians!”
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### Author:  [@francois60](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/francois60)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/6 "2008-07-18T04:17:46Z")
I don’t know all of the details, but in general I believe in self-determination of peoples. Northern Ireland’s status should be decided on the basis of what the people of Northern Ireland want, not on the basis of making the island whole. Too many people place historical claims or territorial continuity above the desires of the people. the people of the present are what matter, not history and geography.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/7 "2008-07-18T04:20:44Z")
[QUOTE=francois60]
I don’t know all of the details, but in general I believe in self-determination of peoples.
[/QUOTE]
That principle frequently founders on the question of the **definition** of “peoples,” and Ireland is the Ur-example.
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### Author:  [@chique](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chique)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/8 "2008-07-18T06:16:35Z")
Gang warfare writ large.
Perhaps a trite way of looking at it given the devastation but there are many worldwide conflicts that follow the same pattern. Over here is a bunch of people that are (or see themselves as) picked on. Over there are a bunch of sympathetic people with money. Let’s give them money to buy guns and see what happens!
Oh, no, that’s not our battle to fight - let them get bloody and we’ll sing songs about them. MUCH more important to invest in RPGs than touchy-feely things like economic infrastructure.
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### Author:  [@francois60](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/francois60)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/9 "2008-07-18T06:34:12Z")
**That principle frequently founders on the question of the definition of “peoples,” and Ireland is the Ur-example**
The people who live there right now have the right to decide the status of that territory.
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### Author:  [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/10 "2008-07-18T06:34:19Z")
I wasn’t out of high school yet when the bombings stopped, and I wasn’t mature enough to look for information beyond the casual news coverage we got.
I thought the IRA were the badguys, on the rare occasion when I thought about it at all. There wasn’t even a question of the degree of blame, I just thought the terrorists ought to have knocked it off and stopped killing people.
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### Author:  [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/11 "2008-07-18T09:38:57Z")
Let’s not forget the Provisional IRA and the armed struggle grew from the denial of the legitimate demands for the end of all the Protestant persecutions, gerry-mandering etc etc made by the Civil Rights movement.
I gre up in the UK with the Troubles as a background and remember the troops going in initially to protect Catholic communities. I blame the Protestants for their stupid vicious bigotry. It was not 6 of one and half a dozen of the other initially. Deny the legitimate grievances of a minority with a mailed fist and they will fight back.
It was tragic, it was stupid and the IRA terrorism was evil and viciously counter-productive but if the Catholic minority had not been made permanent second class citizens, if scum like Paisley and Protestant terrorists like the UVF not been operating decades of violence and thousands of deaths could be avoided.
As ever the lesson we always fail to learn is that meeting legitimate grievances with force inevitably leads to lose-lose in the end.
[Relevant Wiki article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles#Beginning_of_the_Troubles)
> [@](#):
>
> The question of when The Troubles began remains a matter of some dispute, linked to some extent to the issue of blame.
>
> The UVF was formed in 1966 as a loyalist paramilitary group and named after the Ulster Volunteers of 1912.[20] The UVF claimed what many acknowledge as the first victim of the Troubles, when they shot dead 28-year-old storeman John Patrick Scullion in west Belfast. Barman Peter Ward, an 18-year-old from west Belfast, became the second victim of a UVF gun attack in which three other men were shot and seriously injured.[19] Victor Arbuckle, aged 29, was shot dead by Loyalists during street disturbances on the Shankill Road in Belfast in October 1969, the first RUC officer to die in the troubles. The UVF was also responsible for a series of attacks on power stations and reservoirs in Northern Ireland during 1969.[21] It was hoped that this campaign would be blamed on the IRA, forcing moderate unionists to increase their opposition to the tentative reforms of Terence O’Neill’s government.
>
> Others prefer to date the start of The Troubles to 1968, when widespread rioting and public disorder broke out at the marches of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). This group launched a peaceful civil rights campaign in 1967,[22][23] which borrowed the language and symbolism of the Civil Rights Movement of Dr. Martin Luther King in the United States. NICRA was seeking a redress of Catholic and nationalist grievances within Northern Ireland.[24] Specifically, they wanted an end to the gerrymandering of electoral constituencies that produced unrepresentative local councils (particularly in Derry City) by putting virtually all Catholics in a limited number of electoral wards; the abolition of the rate-payer franchise in local government elections, which gave Protestants disproportionate voting power; an end to unfair allocation of jobs and housing; and an end to the Special Powers Act (which allowed for internment and other repressive measures) which was seen as being aimed at the nationalist community.[25][26][27]
>
> Initially, Terence O’Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, reacted favourably to this moderate-seeming campaign and promised reforms of Northern Ireland. However, he was opposed by many hard-line unionists, including William Craig and Ian Paisley, who accused him of being a “sell-out”. Some Unionists immediately mistrusted the NICRA, seeing it as an IRA “Trojan Horse”. Many resented the concept of Catholic equality in this “Protestant state”. Violence broke out at several Civil Rights marches when Protestant loyalists attacked civil rights demonstrators with clubs. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, almost entirely Protestant, was widely accused of supporting the loyalists and of allowing the violence to occur.[citation needed]
>
> Much of the hostile loyalist reaction to the Civil Rights Movement was linked to the ability of leaders to provoke fear within the Unionist populace that the IRA was not only behind the NICRA, but was also planning a renewed armed campaign.[citation needed] In fact, the IRA was moribund, had few weapons, fewer members, negligible support, and was increasingly committed (out of necessity) to non-violent politics.[citation needed] The first bombing campaign of the Troubles (largely directed against power stations and other infrastructure) was staged by the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1969 to try to implicate the IRA.[21]
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### Author:  [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/12 "2008-07-18T09:39:32Z")
I used to be rabidly anti IRA and the Catholics but then when the hunger strikes began I started to read more about the history and the social side of what was going on. I soon discovered that my perceptions were terribly flawed. Several things that I read, I particularly remember _Ten Men Dead_ about the hunger strikes and a book called _Living in a War Zone_ by an American who went to Belfast and lived with a Catholic family although he was a protestant, made obvious the level of social disadvantage the Catholics suffered.
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### Author:  [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/13 "2008-07-18T10:51:31Z")
[QUOTE=francois60]
I don’t know all of the details, but in general I believe in self-determination of peoples. Northern Ireland’s status should be decided on the basis of what the people of Northern Ireland want, not on the basis of making the island whole. Too many people place historical claims or territorial continuity above the desires of the people. the people of the present are what matter, not history and geography.
[/QUOTE]
Trouble is, the self–determination principle is tangled up with both history and geography, as the partition was specifically designed to take in parts of Ulster that would ensure a Unionist majority. (This is why the northernmost point of the island, Malin Head, isn’t in Northern Ireland!)
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### Author:  [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/14 "2008-07-18T13:32:03Z")
[QUOTE=An Gadaí]
Specifically although not exclusively, I’d like to hear what people _not from the countries involved_ heard about and thought about these events. News media colour one’s perceptions of foreign lands. I have had discussions with Americans, Germans, and people of other nationalities about the Troubles and realise some people harbour strangely distorted perceptions of the events.
[/QUOTE]
I never made a point of learning much about it, but from my perspective it seemed like a lot of violence over trifling nonsense. It also seemed like the IRA, in addition to being terrorists, was involved with drugs and crime. These perceptions may well be totally ignorant, I’ll admit, but as an uninterested US citizen, that’s what I took away from it.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/15 "2008-07-18T13:36:58Z")
[QUOTE=Leaffan]
Could the Palestine/Jewish situation be any different? Not bloody likely.
[/QUOTE]
That’s how I thought of it, and I once got in a nasty argument with an alcoholic privileged friend of mine with a name like Eilis over it: she insisted that the IRA was nothing whatsoever like the PLO. I disagreed strongly.
The Hollywood portrayal of the IRA was generally romantic, as I remember: they were good people who sometimes went overboard in their actions.
While the IRA often seemed morally ambiguous to me (I liked their cause, thought their way of working toward it was awful), the Orange folks (can’t remember the exact name) always seemed like colonialist schmucks.
If I thought more carefully about it now, I expect my view of it would be a lot more harsh of both groups.
Daniel
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### Author:  [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/16 "2008-07-18T13:55:29Z")
[QUOTE=burundi]
I never made a point of learning much about it, but from my perspective it seemed like a lot of violence over trifling nonsense. It also seemed like the IRA, in addition to being terrorists, was involved with drugs and crime. These perceptions may well be totally ignorant, I’ll admit, but as an uninterested US citizen, that’s what I took away from it.
[/QUOTE]
That was part of the problem though. The US was a major source of funding for the IRA and successive governments did nothing to stop it. The Protestants had their own terrorists and the Ulster security agencies, police and later the British Army and security services all too often functioned as the armed thugs of Protestantism. And then there was Bloody Sunday.
My step brother was in the British Army over there on several tours and he and his mates took great delight in generally fucking with the catholics - smashing houses up on vague pretexts etc. It was standard opersating procedure once the Catholic side became The Enemy.
When all the organs of the State are against you then naturally you turn to your own community for protection and justice but that just leads to a dreadful slippery slope.
What you say about drugs and crime applied and still applies equally to the Protestant side.
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### Author:  [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/17 "2008-07-18T14:56:35Z")
[QUOTE=tagos]
That was part of the problem though. The US was a major source of funding for the IRA and successive governments did nothing to stop it. The Protestants had their own terrorists and the Ulster security agencies, police and later the British Army and security services all too often functioned as the armed thugs of Protestantism. And then there was Bloody Sunday…
What you say about drugs and crime applied and still applies equally to the Protestant side.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve no doubt you’re absolutely right. It just seems like we heard about the IRA being involved in all of this bad staff and very little about the Protestant side also having their hands dirty.
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### Author:  [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/18 "2008-07-18T15:13:58Z")
A plague on both their houses.
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### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/19 "2008-07-18T16:05:26Z")
The sectarian hatreds seemed to me to be neighborhood related. Foe example, i knew a guy (catholic) who grew un in Belfast. Protestants lived on one side of the road, Catholics on the other. neither group had anything to do with eachother.
Another chap grew up in a town outside belfast: his recollections were that both groups socialized, went to echother’s weddings and wakes, and drank together.
Another thing: Belfast was relatively quiet in the 1950-1960’s period-because (I think) the N. Ireland economy was doing very well-shipbuilding and textiles were booming, and eveybody had a job. When the koreans took the shipbuilding away, and the textile mills closed down, people were thrown out of work-that’s when things got ugly! 😕
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### Author:  [@paffinity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paffinity)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2008, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-were-your-perceptions-of-the-troubles-in-northern-ireland/456893/20 "2008-07-18T19:08:45Z")
Though I am much too young to remember even the end of the conflict, I remember vaguely having the impression that both sides were killing each other over Protestantism vs. Catholicism (I was young and didn’t grow up in a religious household, so I didn’t really know the difference between the two). Later than changed to British army = good (they were part of the government) and IRA = bad (weren’t they terrorists?).
```
I admittedly still don't know very much about the Troubles, but am constantly shocked that the death toll was so high on both sides.
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