Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland

[shoulditbethishard1]

Thought provoking, upsetting and realised that there’s still so much more I don’t know about the troubles

Did anyone else watch it?

I mean there's lots of people coming into the country now as well as leaving it. Lots of Eastern Europeans in the last couple of decades, for example. Ukrainians more recently of course.
I've heard that Polish is the second most widely language spoken in the country now, after English.

Watched the entire series now.

I can't get over how different life seemed to be to my life compared to what was happening in Northern Ireland. I was watching the episode about the killing at the cemetery following the shooting of the IRA members in Gibralter. There was a women there who would have been my age - just about 16 / 17. The cemetery killing radicalised her. Then this was followed by the Corporals killing.

You can see how there were so many revenge killings. There was the bombing on the Shankill road leading to reprisal on reprisal..

If it had been in England, it would have been the equivalent of 1000 deaths in a week.

I can't imagine growing up in such an environment. Living in such an environment. The peace rallies, the ceasefires and the eventual Good Friday Agreement must have been such a relief to most of the people.

There was an interesting comment from some people on the price of peace. Seeing the prisoners released who had killed relatives. That must have been hard. But is it a price worth paying to ensure that Northern Ireland has peace?

It was an interesting subject - and something that is not really taught in English schools.

It really should be

Well put @Anabella321.

I agree @cakeorwine. People who expressed very valid concerns about Brexit's effect on NI and the border were accused of political posturing by too many. There was a real lack of understanding by many in GB.

Only just popped in to see some notifications and reply to this. Been injured and top busy to post for a while, so will probably be back properly next week sometime.

Thanks for your information regarding your family history as it relates to Northern Ireland itself. I think there's a lot of ignorance over the extent of overlapping history within Northern Ireland as well as from the Republic of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.

The view points of families was always more fluid than is often acknowledged. It is the more militant Republican and Loyalist families whose voices have for too long dominated both discourse on Northern Ireland as well as outsiders' perspective.

No wonder when the Republican and Loyalist terrorists groups had various weapons to ensure compliance with their narrative to a large degree.

That easily drowns out the moderates who abhorred violence. And the media in the Anglosphere were always far more willing to report on terrorist atrocities than the more complicated reality of life.

I have an excellent quote regarding this which I'll post next week.

You're correct when you say "certain professions were not open to Catholics because of the threat of murder / ‘assassination’ / blackmail". Most of this was down to the Provisionals which explains how and why the numbers of Catholics in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Ulster Defence Regiment massively declined in the early 1970s. Their families were at risk of being murdered yet all of those Catholics had the right idea in joining them which seriously undermined the Provo claim these were sectarian against Catholics.

I said before I had a relative who lived in the Ardoyne area - moved there in 1930, IIRC. The area at that time was mixed with Protestants and Catholics living side by side. In the early stages of the Troubles, PIRA forced the Protestants out of the street. But my Catholic relatives stayed not because they agreed with the Provos which they never did. They stayed in defiance of the Provos and because it was home to them. That area to this day is pro-IRA, unfortunately.

We only found out after their death a couple of years ago that there actually worked in the Stormont Civil Service. They'd kept that fact from their Republican neighbours for all their lives because they'd have been tarred and feathered by the Provos or murdered by them.

Their Republican neighbours still have zero idea about the true history of my relatives family to this day. It'll stay that way forever.

The quote from Malachi O'Doherty I provided earlier in relation to terrorists forcing people out of houses reinforces the point.

The majority of the episodes so far have focused on the Provisionals rather than the Loyalists. Indeed, it's full of misconceptions about the Provos themselves.

I always expect whataboutery like yours, but I've already stated that It's not a choice between supporting PIRA or the UVF. Most reasonable people can easily condemn both. The two groups barely ever touched each other and seemed to prefer it that way, so it's not like we have to choose between one or the other.

It's usually a Provo apologist who attempts to excuse them by claiming they weren’t sectarian despite the fact they were.

How are you coming to the conclusion that only "8% of IRA attacks were sectarian"?

The Provos certainly claimed on occasion that they were killing "alleged informers", but this was often a smokescreen to use as a kind of plausible denial they weren’t sectarian. For example, the Provos claimed Jean McConville was an "informer", but this has been proven to be a blatant lie.

https://www.policeombudsman.org/Investigation-Reports/Historical-Reports/No-evidence-Jean-Mcconville-was-an-informant-Polic

See attachment.

Your suggestion of "unconscious bias" doesn't really stand up since my family were targets for the Loyalists in addition to the Provos. The entire idea both terrorist groups had to force the people apart and never let them meet each other. This was always sectarian at heart.

Both Republican and Loyalist terrorists were completely unjustified, undemocratic and had zero mandate from the people for their terrorism.

It is always their respective apologists who attempt to excuse, justify and downplay their murders, including their sectarianism.

It is the Provisionals who were the most destructive force in Northern Ireland and the ones who took the most lives as John Hume noted very publicly. Hume also stated that the Provisionals were the biggest abusers of human and civil rights.

He was correct.

If you could show your working out of the 8% thing, I'll go on to demonstrate how the Provisionals were every bit as sectarian as the Loyalists.....

Attachment here.

So, the Provos lied about why they murdered Jean and still maintain this lie to this day.

I have finished the series, I found it really interesting and am embarrassed by my own ignorance on what happened/is happening just across the water. The fact it's not taught in schools has to be because what England has done to Ireland over the centuries is indefensible.

I thought neither the loyalists or the republicans terrorists came out of the series looking like anything other than terrorists. The murders were all horrific and just created more violence and anger.

I've just watched the 4th one. Can you even imagine the AIBUs the Troubles would have produced?

AIBU to get the kids to check my car for bombs?
AIBU to tell my family not to hang around, chatting outside in case they are victims of a Drive-By shooting?
AIBU, who do I call if I don't trust the police?

We used to check under my dads car for bombs - didn't think anything of it at the time! Totally normal.

Bit it wasn't normal.

It was my normal - doesn't make it right, but it was normal and an essential thing to do.

Never in my 43 years of being from Norn Iron have I met one either! Never heard of this

Would you give that essential task to your children @Gothambutnotahamster?

Why not? We knew not to touch anything, just take a look and make sure there was nothing unusual there. We had to know what was going on, in an age appropriate way as my dad had threats on his life and there were also threats on our lives, so we needed to know certain basic tasks to ensure our safety.

This the biggest joke you've said so far, that noone was bothered by the Derry/Londonderry before the troubles? Its always been a bone of contention and always a marker of 'which side of the fence' you were on. Just because you can copy/paste from a website doesn't make it true.
And to address your earlier point about voting, the issue was worse because of the gerrymandering that occurred, so even when a Catholic did have a vote they barely counted because of how lines were drawn

There's loads of us. We're not so bothered about our dead grandfathers' dreams as we are about our childrens' future.

Doesn't mean we vote UU or DUP!

Very interesting to know and thanks for the info, I like this thread as I've learned a lot tonight. All the best to you!

I can think of a few reasons not to get my kids to check my car for bombs @Gothambutnotahamster and do it myself instead.

My dad checked too @TooBigForMyBoots - I'd say before judging, you should walk a mile in my / my parents shoes. I can assure you it's not mentally scarred myself or my brother and that's because it wasn't made into some big drama, but was done in a very matter of fact way - it was a necessary action (as was ensuring we'd properly secured the front door if we were last in and always being aware of our surroundings etc etc).

Teaching your kids how to be as safe as possible when they're a target for terrorists will always be the right thing to do in my mind.

Who do you think I'm judging?

It sounds like you're judging my parents & my upbringing. I was trying to share my experiences not be judged.

@DownNative
Just coming back to this thread now and really, really, REALLY insulted to have been labelled an IRA apologist because I noticed that your criticism of terrorist activities in NI was a bit one sided. I wasn't the only one who noticed and it's clear on other threads too. (For the record, the IRA make me ashamed to be Irish and I am usually very proud of my nationality.)

Prior to my comment you had mentioned maybe once in a multitude of posts that you condemed both sides. Overall, I still felt the picture you presented was somewhat biased. We are all guilty of unconscious bias whether we realise it or not (especially when we don't realise it) and I just wanted to ŕecommend to MN readers to listen to many voices.

The figures I quoted re sectarian murders were from the CAIN archive, a resource you recommended upthread. Maybe you didn't read that bit.

Just in case you don't beĺieve me (again) @DownNative, here is the link to the data. Among other figures it gives the numbers of murders that were thought to be purely sectarian, as well as total numbers killed. You can do the maths yourself.

https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/violence/sutton.htm

For what it's worth I do actually agree with you that the provisional IRA were those mainly responsible for driving the conflict on during the troubles. But there were very much two sides. I am conscious that MN is a British site and many don't know the background, some won't even realise there were loyalist paramilitaries too. So I think it's important to try to give the whole picture, especially here.

And speaking of bias, let me draw attention to note no.5 in the link above.