Originally posted by Futile Gesture
History is full of terrible things, you know. Europeans had no “right” to occupy the Americas or Australia. The Romans had no “rights” to Europe. The Normans’ “right” to England was disputable. They still went ahead and did it.
All those things took place in the dim and distant past, the dismemberment of Ireland occured within living memory.
Unfortunately we can’t go back and change history, we have to live with what we have now.
The past cannot be changed but there is no reason to accept the current situation.
And what we have now is a established political entity called Northern Ireland where the majority of the citizens wish to remain part of the UK. These people bear no guilt from being descendants of settlers from 300 years ago, and they had no hand in the partitioning of Ireland. So why should we trample over their rights?
Of course they bear no guilt for events several hundred years ago, they do bear “guilt” (and thats such a loaded word) for what has occurred within their lifetime, the attempt to maintain a Protestant dominated state.
I am not suggesting we tramble over their rights, what I am suggesting is that there is no good reason why the Nationalist part of Northern Ireland should accept the existence of Northern Ireland as a permenant politically entity and that it should remain within the UK, if this is too change however it should be changed by democratic means, those democratic means only came into existence as a result of the Troubles, before that Northern Ireland had no right to call itself a democracy, it was as much a one-party state as the Soviet Union.
Yes, the Catholics of Northern Ireland were discriminated against, but perhaps the Protestants would have been just as badly treated in a united Ireland.
Perhaps, but as you said, we’ll never know as it didn’t happen. Their is a Protestant minority in the Republic and I’m sure they didn’t appreciate it being such an overtly Catholic state I don’t recall the same sort of official and legitimised discrimination against them as occured in Northern Ireland towards the Catholics. They were not second-class citizens. I am willing to be corrected on this point.
We’ll never know. And Ireland as a whole was certainly mistreated by the English. But whatever way it was handled it wouldn’t have been a happy result for everyone. So one thing is for sure, further changes that do not have a majority, democratic support can only makes things worse and terrorist action, such as that followed in the past by the IRA, cannot be allowed to use history as a justification.
The IRA didn’t have to use past history as a justification, the present situation was justification enough. The IRA has now outlived its usefullness and any further progress towards a United Ireland should be by democratic means.
As to the OP: the IRA, regardless of its original motivation, is a terrorist organisation by any reasonable definition of the word. It has no democratic mandate, is responsible to no-one, and in the past had a policy of attacking safe, unrelated, civilian targets as a means of forcing its objectives. During its time it has also picked up a simply criminal element that has no interest in political change and will remain an influence as long as it can hide behind the ‘legitimacy’ of the IRA’s objectives. The murder of Robert McCartney made this plain for everyone to see.
Let me just say that there is no justification for attacking civilian targets. None. That part of the IRA’s campaign is something that everyone involved should be ashamed of.
However they didn’t just attack soft targets, the British Army and Loyalist terrorist groups will attest to that. The IRA was one of the most sophesticated and successful terrorist organisations in the world, and when you read memoirs or books by ex-service personelle or high-ranking British politicians its not unusual to see a general grudging admiration even while they despise them. In fact I have noticed that its most often ex-servicemen and Loyalist paramilitaries that have the most open-minded an clear-eyed attitude towards the IRA and the Republican population of Northern Ireland, they may not agree but they can see why they were fighting.
The criminalisation of the IRA is a recent phenonemon, post-ceasefire, and is another good reason to see them disbanded.
By the way, last November the IRA was ready to disband, the deal had been done, if Ian Paisley hadn’t made a mouth of himself in Ballymena (again) the IRA would be fading into memory right about now. I, and most Catholics don’t want to see the IRA humiliated, humiliating them is by extension humiliating the Catholic community of Northern Ireland and I don’t think English people realise just how touchy a subject that is. In fact I don’t think the English population realises just how ambiguous an attitude most Catholics in Northern Ireland have towards the IRA, a black/white mentality is simply not possible.
*Originally Posted by Captain Amazing
Isn’t it possible to say, “Ok, let’s have a fully democratic and equal Northern Ireland, where the rights of both the Protestant majority and Catholic minority are protected, still within the UK.”*
Thats pretty much what we have now, but we had to fight a war to get it, it would not have been freely given.
