Hey, don’t look at me. I always make a point of wearing white on St. Patrick’s day.
(BTW, did you know that Che Guevara’s last name was Lynch?)
What on earth are you talking about?
Funny, this Ulsterman wouldnt even get miffed.
Without wanting to get into insult territory, your understanding of the irish situation is …lacking.
I have been continuily in Ulster before the millennuim trying to stop the two communities butchering each other.
As an ex British soldier I would say why don’t BOTH communities fucking grow up and stop murdering each other.
Over this side of the water we really don’t care what you do.
I’m going to ignore most of your rants because others have pointed out the factual inaccuracies, but this is one I have to address. There is a huge demand for Irish passports among Northern nationalists. I’ve dealt with this quite a bit in my own work. And I’m not sure why you think British passports “carry more clout” for travellers. Irish people (north and south) usually think an Irish passport is preferable because a British passport carries more baggage, particularly in developing countries. The Irish aren’t the only ones in the world who take a dim view of Britain’s international exploits.
Ireland was fairly low down on the list of British priorities during the years after the WWI. The extensive colonial committments meant that few battalions were available for Ireland.
Even then despite all that, the British had managed to defeat the IRA for the most part when the ceasefire came, had it not what would have happened is that the UK would have had the troops (the colonies were quietening now) and would have fully surpressed the uprising and then imposed home rule on Ireland and that would have been the end of that.
I’m speaking from personal experience, Irish friends with Irish passports held up by immigration on several occassions; while I’ve sailed through barely having to open the thing.
(Not that it did me any good as I had to wait around for them)
As to the so called factual inaccuracies that "others"have supposedly pointed out, I must have been reading a different thread to the one you seem to imagined you’ve read yourself.
Unless of course the person who might or might not be an Ulsterman, might or might not be an Irish nationalist or for that matter might or might not actually be Irish claiming that they’re quite happy to be called Irish.
No doubt a Scotsman would equally be happy to be called english ?
Your post appears to stem more from wounded national pride then to have anything to do with my total renunciation of terrorism, terrorists are cowardly murderers of the innocent who justify their unforgivable actions by citing history.
The people in N.I. from both communities are sick to death of Walter Mitties and wanna be hard men; who miss the old days when their neighbours had to defer to them, are sick to death of the daily murdering and violence, and the daily fear and stress that goes with it.
They are sick to death of rabble rousers who talk about an invented Irish paradise in a mythical past.
They are sick of their friends being tortured and killed purely because of their religion, or because people of their religion are supposed to have done this, that, or the other to the people of the other religion back in the seventeenth c. or was it the fifteenth ? tenth? eleventh?
Who cares lets murder them any way, that way people who I know will think I’m hard and all the girls will fancy me.
I may only be a little fellow but when I’ve got a gun nobody comments on my being vertically challenged/a seven stone weakling/physically unattractive/take your pick.
You may well want a return to the old days, but many people on the island of Ireland don’t.
No matter how much you defend terrorism and terrorists
I may lack your profound knowledge of Ireland (which actual Irish have found deficient) but isn’t it true that Northern Ireland and “Ulster” are not identical? Weren’t the counties of Cavan, Donegal & Munster, all part of that ancient province, left with the Free State (now the Republic) because they were insufficiently Protestant?
The fullest study of the IRA in the pre-[Good Friday](Belfast - Wikipedia Agreement) era is The Provisional IRA, by Patrick Bishop with Eamonn Mallie.
Bishop makes it clear that young Irish men did not join for the social or financial benefits that Lust4Life imagines.
Recruits were told that their membership would likely lead them to one of two places: Milltown or “Long Kesh,” also known as Maze Prison. Hundreds of IRA men lie in Milltown cemetery; thousands have been imprisoned in the Maze “during what for most people is the most carefree and optimistic period of their lives…”
He continues,
Yes you’re totally correct, parts of Ulster are in Eire, parts of Eire are further north then the territory of "Northern "Ireland and extreme Irish nationalists make much of this in an attempt to make the island of Ireland in someway indivisable.
A bit like saying Arizona should be part of Mexico because they are both part of the same land mass, inspite of the very different cultural differences between the two countries.
In general parlance an Ulsterman is the usual term used to describe a member of the majority population in those parts of the island of ireland that are not ruled by Eire.
(And hopefully you can see by the longwinded and awkward usage of language that I have just had to use to describe the area why most normal people call it Northern Ireland no matter what pedants try to impose on us)
Ironically the only time that the island of Ireland has been a united political entity was under British rule.
Before it was a group of kingdoms almost perpetually at war against each other
As to the other poster telling us how members of the “RA” got no financial benefits from their membership I’d like to point out multi millionaire “Slab” M and the fact that Gerry A owns a multi million pound house in the republic(Unless he’s sold it recently).
And anyone in the island of Ireland will full well know who I mean.
(Excepting maybe,of course, those who have never heard of the term Plastic Paddys …ever, honestly)
Yes many I.R.A. members pissed their money up against the wall but thats down to them and nobody else.
Could also explain why so many of them touted for the Brits when they’d run out of beer tokens.
But thats just a guess on my part.
I’m also surprised at the number of people who have never heard of a ‘plastic paddy’. Its a very common phrase in Ireland.
I don’t hold any respect for the IRA but certain posts would suggest that they are the only terrorist organisation in Ireland. The loyalists have their own pains in the arses too.
Possibly in general parlance in the UK (and particularly in the unionist community in Northern Ireland). But not in general parlance in the Republic of Ireland*. Someone from Donegal is an Ulsterman too. I know many people from NI who refer to themselves as Irish rather than British, and not all of them are Nationalists.
*Which, for somewhat more than a second time, is only Éire when speaking/writing in the Irish language, and even then should be spelled with the accent on the first E.
As little time as I have for Gerry Adams, his books have been audited numerous times - he paid for the house with his salaries (plural deliberate) and book royalties - he would have to be stupid to do otherwise, as it would get pounced on immediately if he couldn’t keep his figures straight.
And, in general, your view of the situation in Ireland is wrong and overly simplistic.
Must have earned a hell of a lot of money eh?
I’ve no doubt his books were meticulously audited in much the same way that I.R.A, murderers had their extradition papers *meticulously * scanned by the irish civil service and it was incredible that so many of them evaded extradition for their sick, filthy crimes due to technical omissions.
Why don’t you have much time for Gerry Adams ?
Could it be that he ended the good old days when armed bullies called the shots amongst the communities whithin they lived ?
And how about multi millionaire Slab?
You forgot to make any defence for his massive accumalation of wealth.
Slab Murphy is a cnut of the highest order, but I doubt (from everything I’ve read) he made his money out of direct paramilitary activity. He has a farm that straddles the border, and the generally accepted belief is that he made his cash from smuggling within his own farm. In particular running oil, diesel, petrol and fags from one end of his farm to the other, to take advantage of price and exchange rate disparities. I’ve no doubt he got a lot more from really big criminal enterprises.
From everything I’ve read, the average IRA “volunteer” made very little in the way of cash, despite the gangsterish methods of “fund raising” by the organisation in its heyday.
Slab got away with what he did because he was shielded from intervention by playing the “freedom fighter” card, which like the other people who lived in the border areas made him a hell of a lot of money, and gave him a very good lifestyle at the expense of the poor sods who actually believed in the cause that they were fighting for .
I wouldn’t be stunned with amazement if the murdering scum who sacrificed so many Irish lives try to make me pay the price.
Good luck mateys, you won’t gag me, not now, not ever.
I won’t say anymore on this subject
IRA members were volunteers. If they needed money to do their “job” they got a small stipend nothng more.
There was a guy (Bo) who used to sit in the corner in Grogans all the time. He was a quiet man who didn’t have lots of money. Me and my Da go there once a week. Bo would every now and then have a “chat” with my Da, he was basically getting a “loan” of a few quid off him.
Bo died last year and his obituary was in An Phoblacht. He was the quartermaster for the London operations for most of the 70’s and 80’s. That was a serious position and lots of money would have gone through his hands. The man died poor. He is just one example of ex-IRA men I have come across throughout my life, not one of them had any money apart from the money they made in RL outside of their terrorist work.
The idea that they joined to impress the women etc. is just stupid. It’s a nice way to dismiss your enemy alright but other than that it has no value whatsoever.
Yes you can find some who used the situation to take advantage for themselves as you can in very legal organisations but it wasn’t how the IRA worked in the main and the controls they put in place was one of the reasons they could continue killing and destroying for so long.
Adams’ money is legit. How do I know this? Well if it wasn’t the UK or Irish Government would have landed on him years ago. I doubt there are many people who were looked at closer by the two governments than the leaders of Sinn Fein. His book has sold very well. IIRC he and all the other Sinn Fein MP’s/TD only take the average national wage from their saleries and the rest goes to SF funds.
Heh! Methinks one should get over themselves.
So am I. I already said that.
From what I can see, you’re on a different page to everyone else in this thread.
Do you include the British Army in that? Bloody Sunday, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson etc… (and that’s only in Ireland…)
Yes, this is what I would have imagined, although I don’t know enough to say that the British authorities were willing to withdraw forces from elsewhere to suppliment their “pacification” of Ireland. From Captain Amazing’s quote above it seems that the British forces in Ireland were overstretched, perhaps the will and finances just didn’t exist at that juncture to continue the fight.
The IRA had a resources problem; their material and human resources were pretty well exhausted, and their military efforts were going to have to be drastically curtailed if there was no ceasefire.
The British had a morale problem, both in the forces and in British public opinion. To an extent they had lost confidence in their right to govern Ireland.
“As you were” wasn’t an option. The Irish Party had more or less disintegrated; it’s not clear that it could have regrouped to engage with Home Rule, if it had been implemented as envisaged in 1914.
In the events which actually happened, the still-active remnants of the Irish Party coalesced with the pro-Treaty wing of Sinn Fein, and gave us Cumman na nGaedhal.
I suppose something like that might have happened if the Treaty had been rejected and the IRA had been effectively contained. One strategy which the British might have tried would be to introduce Home Rule beefed up with at least some elements taken from the rejected Treaty, with a view to attracting some of the pro-Treaty minority in Sinn Fein out of SF and into some kind of resurrected Irish Party. This wouldn’t have been Cumman na nGaedhal, I think, but something with more inheritance from the Irish Party and correspondingly less from SF.
Would it have worked? I dunno. It would have faced opposition not must from Unionism, but from the political heirs of the defeated anti-Treaty SF, who even after military defeat would have represented a much stronger element than their predecessors in 1914.