Poppet:
^Oh dear Math, wrong again, the election results in Northern Ireland tell a very different story. Bobby Sands elected as an MP in '81, Sinn Fein has gone from strength to strength in terms of their electoral successes and now the second biggest party in Northern Ireland. To say that they lost the support of the communities is just ludicrous.
For them the war continues but not in the tradition way, they now have a significant foothold in the Republic of Ireland too. They have a strategy and it seems to be working for them.^
Maybe read what I actually posted and try not to be so quick with your patronising replies?
Or does the almost complete cessation of violence, racketeering, etc., make a difference to your assessment of the impact of MT's successful showdown with the PIRA?
Yes, Sinn Fein has been a runaway electoral success story, and that is exactly my point. Meanwhile, Catholic people in NI do not have to live with the threat of kneecapping and beatings and kidnappings and murder by the Provos. While discovering the joys of the ballot box it has also had to accept accountability to constituents -- all constituents and not merely their nationalist constituents. Another thing they have had to learn is that the voices of real, live people have to be listened to, and not the voices in their own heads that used to tell them all they thought they needed to know about what people wanted and how they wanted to get it.
They lost the support of the nationalist community for their campaign of violence. They lost the support of even the families of the hunger strikers. They were forced to listen to the moral authority of strikers' families, brave people who had had enough of seeing their children led into death.