AIBU to ask you who started the Troubles in the North of Ireland?

[1FineDane]

If you watch this new BBC documentary, what is your answer?
I know British people think the IRA started the whole shit, but this is a BBC documentary and fairly unbiased.

I hope you watch it to realise what history there is in Northern Ireland.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0008c47/spotlight-spotlight-on-the-troubles-a-secret-history-episode-1

I blame the Dutch.

As the daughter of a catholic Belfast man growing up in London, I was taught a little bit about the troubles but my dad never went into huge detail about it. I'm not sure why. The only times I saw him really get riled up was when Ian Paisley was ranting n the tv.

The only Irish history we did was a bit about the potato famine as an aside to immigration during the industrial revolution. Caused solely by backwards peasants and their farming methods, nothing to do with England.

Really? That is shameful

I'm not watching the programme because I think this type of living history is deeply traumatic for those who have lived through it. Surely most conflicts are too complex to say that that it was a or b who caused it. The high poverty and deprivation levels plus the drive to bring rural people into city housing which turned into ghettos probably also played a significant part.

The North of Ireland is very different to Northern Ireland.

Yep arya loads of kids because that’s catholic’s for you, carving up the land more for every generation to have a plot and over farming it. Just wouldn’t listen to the educated English that wanted to teach them.

And that was a secondary English teacher that had a degree. I can understand the religious blasé because he was like that about anything, and in fairness he wasn’t exactly pro colonial or patriotic. No doubt just parroting what he’d originally learnt about a side topic covered in less than half a lesson.

No-one"started it", came about because of loads of factors as mentioned above. I learnt no Irish history at all - and I lived there...

"The North of Ireland is very different to Northern Ireland"
Indeed it is, personally I live in Northern Ireland

@TrainspottingWelsh it's no wonder that Irish people get frustrated when having these kind of conversations with British people sometimes, we learn a very different history, your "side topic" is probably the bulk of Irish history. Funnily enough I had a debate on another forum about the "famine" yesterday and this guy said, why did you export all the other food then if it was only the Potato affected? Not even knowing that Britain ruled Ireland at that time ffs

I'd agree with
1)The Normans
2) Oliver Cromwell
3) The absentee/harsh landlords of the 1800s/ 1900s

Historical issues are very rarely started by one moment/person/factor and to try and isolate this one thing is disingenuous

Although I roll my eyes at the "800 years of oppression" I would place the blame squarely in England's side, with a historical policy of screwing the Irish every way they can

Did you go to school here? because irish history is part of the curriculum (in the ROI anyway)

Sorry that last question was at @Ffsnosexallowed

We were taught very little if not zero things about the troubles, at most we heard one group wanted independence, the other half needed the British Armys help so the british were sent there to protect. So that caused the IRA to start killing innocent people.

Obviously I know this isn't true, the teachers probably didn't take into account people with Irish family. Who set me straight but it does shock me to think that was taught, and I only left school 10 years ago.

It started as a peaceful civil rights movement by the catholics who were treated as second class citizens - were given the shit housing, prevented from certain jobs and had no representation.

The British army we're brought into NI to protect the catholics in 1969.

A growing catholic population weren't going to take this shit anymore.

Henry 2nd.

I also don't think there is an answer as to who started the troubles in 1969, because they didn't suddenly occur out of nowhere. They were simmering away for decades, centuries even and they had started and stopped before on various occasions. Then in 1969 it all boiled over.

Oooh interesting, I'll watch this.

It's always so surprising to me how little English people know about Irish history.

Though very shamefully I didn't know about William of Oranges involvement for a long while and I am Dutch!

Im 38, and learnt nothing about any of Ireland’s history in school.

I started a thread on this in Telly Addicts last night and as far as I know not one contribution so far

I had Irish relatives (since deceased) old enough to remember the Black and Tans. It was definitely the British who started it.

Merlin - he took the holy stone from Killare to use as a grave market for King Arthur at Stonehenge.
The Vikings
William the Conqueror
Elizabeth 1
Cromwell
William of Orange
Victoria
Etc etc etc

@shearwater

Hmm. That's what Shaggy said.

And we all know that wasn't true.

The Normans when they invaded Ireland.
The Normans were originally Norse or Northern Germanic people.
So we can blame the Germans!! Always invading places. (Apologies to any Germans reading you're ok really).

I always thought it was the Norman's. Then Henry VIII and Cromwell piled on more problems. Recent troubles are a result of history never being able to be reversed.

That's a 7-part series and that first one was quite fascinating. I have some memories of Paisley etc, but hearing him speak again I was struck by the absolute evangelism, the ranting rhetoric and utter shit stirring.

Contrasted by the double barrelled, posh English government impositions.

As others have said The Troubles didn't start in 1969, there was a lot of history leading up to it.

It will be interesting to see if a certain politician's early IRA career is ever mentioned, given his strenuous denials, legal threats against anyone who mentions it. Revisionism... that's another root cause - all sides!

Sectarianism, religion, money, nationalism... all the usual ills caused Them!

You’re looking for more recent times. I thought there was discrimination, which was exacerbated at the end of the Second World War, which is I think when the “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs” slogan started to appear. This period is when a lot of Irish people landed on British shores to settle. I’ve always thought the British started the troubles.