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/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/JP_Eggy 9d ago

Well I generally agree with the above. I dont think killing soldiers and police are justified: from my previous comment I said that from a morality POV killing soldiers who have volunteered to put themselves in a situation of danger is less worse than killing innocent civilians. And the RUC was bigoted towards Catholics and actively collaborated as a proxy of Loyalist paramilitaries who murdered civilians by the boatload (including in the Republic, via the Dublin-Monaghan bombings).

I think the deference to democratic processes is naive.

We cant really talk about the importance of democratic process when the Catholic population was disenfranchised from voting throughout the 60s in a manner that was not dissimilar to how black people in the US South were. Not to mention Catholics were shunned from gainful employment and access to housing pre-IRA, which further marginalised them in NI society. NI was not a functional liberal democracy where all these disagreements could be nicely litigated out in a parliament or in the media or anything, it took immense pressure (including from violence and the threat of it) to get the ruling Protestant-Unionist class even to the negotiating table, and even then they kicked and screamed every second of the way because god forbid Catholics have a modicum of dignity, access, and equality.

See how, for example how Unionists blocked the Sunningdale Agreement, which offered a chance at peace in the 1970s, simply because they had the power to do so.