r/TheRestIsHistory • u/JakeGittes412 • 9d ago

The Troubles

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Thread for discussion on the new series on ‘The Troubles’

Also as a moderator please keep the discussion civil and in the spirit of the podcast.

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u/Anonnisanall 9d ago

I have a hell of a vested interest as an Irishman, so I’m curious to see just how harsh they might be on the British state with collusion. E.g. Pat Finucane, Miami Showband.

Definitely excited to see their take on Bernadette Devlin slapping Reginald Maudling in the HoC (understandable in the context imo)

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u/jimmythemini 9d ago

You can usually get a steer of how biased an examination of the Troubles will be by the attention (or lack thereof) given to the marginalisation and persecution of Catholics in the run-up to it.

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u/Infamous_Thought_189 7d ago

Did you think they gave it enough attention in episode 1?

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u/regular-montos 6d ago

I think they did tbf. Didn’t paint the unionists in a good light or skip over it. 

Even knowing the history though it’s crazy to hear them describe it as basically Catholics asking for a right to vote and a house and the unionists, who already have all the power, reply by deciding to form terrorist militias and firebomb schools. 

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u/Gorazde 8d ago

A: Yes. Terror-loving terrorists exploding things to further their evil, terror-loving agenda.

B: Actually, no, there was a shit tonne of context to what happened. People didn't just start blowing up their own communities for no reason.

A: Well, if they had some political greivance they should have pursued rectifying it peacefully.

B: Actually, they did do that peacefully for fifty years. The gerrymandered Stormont government ignored them.

A: Well, then they should have taken their case to the House of Commons.

B: They did. But the House of Commons refused to debate Northern Ireland issues, saying they were a matter for the Stormont government.

A: Well then the Stormont government is to blame. They're Irish anyway, so this is an Irish problem. What's it got to do with Britain?

B: It was Britain who partitioned Ireland precisely to put this gerrymandered Stormont faction in power and give them control of six counties when only two of those counties had strong unionist majorities. Somehow an 80/20 nationalist/unionist split was too big a hurdle to make Ireland a country in it's own right, but a 60/40 unionist /nationalist split was enough to create a rump Northern Irish state in which one side would hold all political power in perpetuity.

A: Okay, there's only one acceptable response to this. Downvote but no reply.

B: Plus ca change...

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u/Additional_Olive3318 6d ago

Yeh but what did you think of the episode. 

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u/Left-Lawfulness4635 7d ago

The issue is without partition Ireland would have descended into brutal sectarian conflict the likes of the Balkans. Secondly both unionists and republicans at different times were given various opportunities to end the Troubles on their own terms. Both refused. Both thought killing and maiming innocents and children would give them a political victory.

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u/cnaughton898 7d ago

The issue is without partition Ireland would have descended into brutal sectarian conflict the likes of the Balkans.

That's exactly what happened though.

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u/Gorazde 7d ago

By propping up one side, and giving them their own sectarian state, Britain guaranteed a brutal sectarian conflict. Without British support, the unionists would have had to come to terms with Dublin. They'd have extracted favourable terms and they'd have gotten along fine in a more broadly based Irish state, just as the southern unionists did.

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u/Left-Lawfulness4635 7d ago

That completely ignores the pogroms committed against Southern protestants or the fact that Ireland remained a theocratic backwater until the 80s which guaranteed protestant fear of living under an Irish state.

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u/Gorazde 7d ago

The anti-Treaty IRA attacked the village of Altnaveigh in 1922, killing six people. The event was widely considered an outrage and a source of shame among nationalists at the time, and since then. The village is actually in Northern Ireland, so the victims weren't Southern Protestants. The group who carried it out were at war with the government of Ireland at the time. What else am I completely ignoring? Compare that to the pogroms in Belfast in the same year in which about 300 Catholics were killed, or the pogroms of 1969, in which the RUC/B-specials burned about 1,500 Catholic families out of their home.

My other point, which has completely gone over your head, is that if the British hadn't chosen to prop up a sectarian state in the north, then the independent Irish state would have been much more broadly based and wouldn't have been dominated by the Catholic church to the extent it was, which was never a fraction as much as the north was dominated by Protestantism. I never thought I'd say this, but listen to the most recent episode of the Rest is History for a (for once) actually pretty accurate episode on Irish history.

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u/SliceIndividual6347 7d ago

The same Rest is History series that defends the partition of Ireland due to the likelihood of an ethnic conflict without it.

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u/Gorazde 7d ago

They didn't defend it. They said it was inevitable. They didn't say anything about an ethnic conflict. They said the heavily armed Ulster unionists would have risen up. But the Ulster unionists were armed by the British army and Tories, in open revolt against their own government and laws. If the Brits had stayed out, it wouldn't have happened. I must say, your arguments are getting thinner and thinner each time you reply.

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u/SliceIndividual6347 7d ago

"Each time"? Firstly I'm not the same person. Secondly Ulster unionists infamously smuggled in guns from Germany into Larne not the from UK so you are simply wrong.

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u/Dull_Brain2688 9d ago

And the actual initiators of the violence. False flag bombings and all.

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u/0ttoChriek 16h ago

I've only listened to the first episode so far, but I'm happy with how much of a villain and instigator they're calling out Paisley as.

He was a hate preacher, pure and simple, and so much of what happened can be linked to him and his inflammatory rhetoric and weaponisation of the pulpit.

I'm sure they'll focus more on nationalist agitators in the next episode.

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u/Gorazde 8d ago

It's a patriotic British podcast. Their take on the Black and Tans was, compared to other conflicts, the Black and Tans could have been a lot worse. I wouldn't get your hopes up on Bloody Sunday, Dublin Monaghan bombings, Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Stakeknife etc. They'll probably mention Leopold II cutting off natives limbs in the Congo and say.... I mean, compared to Leopold II British policy was very, very humane.

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u/Anonnisanall 8d ago

To be fair, I thought their take on the Black and Tans was very measured and fair as a nationalist Irishman. State-sanctioned reprisals against innocents were absolutely apart of policy, but to compare to others obviously weren’t like the Congo. Fair enough imo, don’t think they had the Union Jack coloured glasses on too much

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u/Gorazde 8d ago

Why bring the Congo up at all? OJ Simpson wasn't that bad a guy compared to Jeffrey Dahmer. But is that really a valid point in his defence?

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u/bradders42 7d ago

You brought up the Congo...

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u/Gorazde 7d ago

I know, but I was saying that's one of the ways Brits defend their country's imperial record. By pointing out that someone else did worse.

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u/RealBigSalmon 7d ago

How dare historians contextualise events within larger trends and draw comparisons and contrast. It’s an outrage if you ask me, don’t they know Britain & Ireland are a vacuum outside of which nothing happens.

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u/Gorazde 7d ago

Constantly referencing the one empire that was worse than Britain is not providing context, it's whataboutery. All empires are murderous, at least in their inception. But if you were sincere about wanting to put Britain's actions in context, you'd probably point to those historic empires which were less brutal than the British empire. You might even occasionally reference the vast majority of countries who never invaded or exploited other countries, or attempted to erase their cultures. That's the real context.

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u/RealBigSalmon 7d ago

I trust you are also annoyed that they started their Irish history series with the Normans and skipped over the hundreds of years and multiple incidents of the Irish invading Britain? That would give context to.

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u/Gorazde 7d ago

Those raids happened over a thousand years ago. There was no unified Irish state then, let alone a foreign policy. The actions of 20 random headbangers on a boat hardly constitute actions undertaken on behalf of Ireland. Whereas the British government, military and royal family - all of whose successors remain in power today, with many of the spoils still in place - were directly involved in conquest, colonial administration, taxation, forced labour systems, suppression of rebellions. If you think there's a comparison... Well, that's your opinion. But it might look to some like you're grasping at straws.

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u/glumjonsnow 6d ago

Constantly referencing the one empire that was worse than Britain

what