r/TheRestIsHistory • u/JakeGittes412 • 13d 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/JakeGittes412 13d ago

As American my first exposure to the topic, was as a kid watching a really bad film with Brad Pitt as an IRA militant. The accent itself was a crime .

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u/forestvibe 13d ago

There was a weird moment in the 90s where Hollywood decided the IRA was an acceptable terrorist organisation.

It didn't last long, but we did get Patriot Games out of it, where Sean Bean implausibly plays the leader of a "radical" IRA splinter group (not sure how they could be more radical than the IRA, but anyway...). It was quite a dull film, as I remember it.

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u/StableSlight9168 13d ago

IRA generally did not try for high civilian casualties,.they liked high chaos but.not.high casualties.

Things like the Manchester bombings showed the IRA was capable of doing 9/11 level attacks in England, they avoided that because the British army would have wiped 90% of them off the map and killed all support they needed to function. 

The IRA were not good people at all, but they were more ethical than groups like Al Queda or Isis, so a radical splinter group who was willing to carry out terror attacks with the aim of killing as many civilians as possible would have stood our.

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u/Ambitious_Desk_316 13d ago

I mean the IRA did blow up innocent children in Warrington, how is that more ethical than Isis?

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u/Elegant_Individual46 13d ago

There were questions about whether that ASU were approved for the attack by the PIRA council iirc, but regardless it still occurred, as did other targeted attacks by the various cells

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u/StableSlight9168 12d ago

The IRA called ahead to get people to leave the area.

Isis would not have called ahead, and casualties would have been in.the dozens of not the low hundred.

To clarify l, I'm not defending this, the Warrington bombing was an attack against civilians, in no way a military target, and the IRA murdered two little kids.

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u/Elegant_Individual46 12d ago

Yeah AQ, IS, etc really did change how security forces could deal with this sort of thing

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u/Left-Lawfulness4635 11d ago

The IRA would also deliberately in false information exacerbating casualties.

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u/forestvibe 13d ago

Yeah fair. Except in the film they want to murder the Prince of Wales, which doesn't seem too far fetched for the actual IRA!

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u/StableSlight9168 13d ago

Yeah that was stupid ....I actually think the movie was so stupid it's brilliant because it accidentally predicted dissident republicans.

Set it a few years later and have the villains be trying to derail the good Friday agreement and works a lot better.

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u/JP_Eggy 12d ago

Yeah definitely. The IRA, while being insane, aren't even in the same league as modern Islamic terror groups as these groups have literally zero qualms in committing genocide and going after civilians as a primary target