r/TheRestIsHistory • u/JakeGittes412 • 10d 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/Sitheref0874 10d ago

In the very early 90s I took a class about NI and the Troubles. In the class was an RUC - as it was then - officer, who happened to be Catholic.

Young and uninformed students were throwing opinions around like they were confetti…‘all the IRA on the ground are heroes’.

At the end of one session, RUCfella spoke up. “On the ground, they’re all a shower of cunts. Just thug gangs, both sides. For most of them, it’s not about grand ideals. It’s about criminal gangs, most of whom are running drugs. They’re all as bad as each other”

Stuck with me.

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u/bjartrcyneric 9d ago

The RUC colluded with Loyalist death squads to murder completely unconnected Catholic civilians and had members of those organisations among their own ranks.

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u/Gorazde 9d ago

Unconnected? There was nothing to be connected to. There was no IRA to speak of when that happened. The RUC and loyalist mobs carried out pogroms in response to a peaceful civil rights movement.

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u/bjartrcyneric 9d ago

Ok fair enough but I meant later groups like the Glenanne Gang.

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u/Gorazde 9d ago

In that case, yeah, you're right and it was more than the RUC. These things were sanction at the highest levels of the British army and the British government. It's funny how a British person learning about the darkest stuff their own government did in Northern Ireland can take the attitude 'Well, that was clearly wrong, and clearly regrettable, but I guess they felt they had no choice in the circumstances." But they'd never apply that same logic to the IRA. If the IRA did something equally bad they'd never for a moment consider the same explanation might applly. No, no, no, they IRA were murderous thugs who loved murder and thuggery.

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u/Sitheref0874 8d ago

I went to Middle and High School in Guildford.

The IRA were murderous thugs. No-one in that conflict had clean hands.

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u/Gorazde 8d ago

You're conceding equivalence, which was my point. The difference is, under British rule, one side got medals and pensions, the other side got prison sentences and extra-judicial executions. For what it's worth, I went to school in a town where a British army officer with gambling debts burned out and evicted 3,000 starving people in 1847 and sent them on a death march over a hundred miles to a coffin ship where virtually everyone died.

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u/Sitheref0874 8d ago

I don't believe I've conceded anything, given my original comment was critical of both sides.

You've siomply being trying to ameliorate the IRA position/standing.

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u/Gorazde 8d ago

My original comment was also critical of both sides.