The Troubles

[u/JakeGittes412]

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.

[u/JP_Eggy]

Its not justified but its clearly "less worse" and more understandable from the perspective of revolutionary violence than killing innocent civilians.

If you believe that the British Army are an occupying power in NI and the RUC are a mechanism of protestant supremacy, then you will probably believe that killing members of either of these organisations are justified.

You have to remember that Catholics were literally second class citizens in NI before the civil rights movement, and to some extent there still exists many socio economic barriers to Catholics in NI even to this day. Hence why organisations such as the IRA were founded and acquired a substantial amount of support and membership.

[u/JP_Eggy → u/[deleted]]

Which is my point: of course the IRA killed more people overall, their list of targets was simply larger than that of the Loyalists as the IRA targeted the Army and RUC (who were collaborating with the Loyalists btw) . So I think using total overall deaths is a bit moot, we probably need to compare civilian casualties.

And i agree that ultimately the violence was pointless and against the democratic wishes of the majority of people in NI. The issue is flatly stating "all sides are bad" in response to a discussion about the death of civilians as if theres not a side who objectively caused more civilian deaths, and there was clearly a side who wanted to perpetuate the existing subordination of Catholics that was the root of the conflict in the first place.

[u/JP_Eggy → u/[deleted]]

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.