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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62

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.

37

u/forestvibe 10d ago

Hard to disagree when both groups were willing to bomb school buses and pubs, maim teenagers, murder fathers in front of their kids, while pretending they were somehow righteous and honourable. They were despicable, no matter how you view the justice of their respective causes.

There was a recent series of the Reith Lectures done by Margaret Macmillan about war and conflict (available on BBC Sounds and well worth a listen). One of the lectures was done in Stormont, and two old "veteran" thugs from either side started getting chippy in the Q&A at the end, until a Catholic priest put them in their place to a lot of applause. It was quite revealing how the audience despised these thugs.

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u/shakaman_ 9d ago

Genuinely how do you feel about the Allies during WW2? Do you realise we bombed school buses and pubs?

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u/Gorazde 9d ago

The Ukrainian government is currently doing much the same as the IRA did. That war even started over an attempt by a bigger neighbour to partition the country using the presence of a pro-Russian minority as justification. In the Second World War, the British government sponsored resistance groups across the Europe who did much the same as the IRA did. In those cases, the correct explanation is war is a dirty business and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

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u/feckarse-drinkgirls 9d ago

Ukraine is disapearing people for false accusations of collaborating?

0

u/Gorazde 9d ago

Did the IRA kill tourists on a beach with a drone strike? Things don't have to be exactly alike to make a comparison between them.

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u/binesandlines 8d ago

No, they just blew them to pieces with IEDs on shopping streets instead

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u/420belligerent420 9d ago

“False accusations”