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Martin McGuinness dead

baron said:
He won't associate with the Queen but he just loves his terrorist friends.
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Oh come on, is the leader of the Labour Party, a social democratic institution, supposed to ‘no platform’ genocidal anti-semitic totalitarian terrorists? I think we should stick to non-controversial stuff like boycotting Elizabeth Windsor, don’t you?
 
Strawberry said:
Not every African American followed the teachings of Martin Luther King any more than all Irish nationalists followed John Hume.
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The ones who are most celebrated were non-violent resistors who changed society by appeal to reason, sympathy/empathy and logic. MLK. Rosa Parks. People who shot random whites are not given sympathetic obituaries.

Strawberry said:
I don't support any return to violence in NI, but I do view the past in less black and white terms than the rest of you because I can see plenty of wrong on the British/Unionist side too.
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I agree, Britain has treated Ireland appallingly in the past, and some of that carried over into the treatment of the Nationalist/Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. That doesn't mean that resorting to semtex in lieu of speeches is the most moral course of action... especially as the PIRA were not Batman, hunting down specific wrongdoers, but killed random innocents.
 
Giz said:
The ones who are most celebrated were non-violent resistors who changed society by appeal to reason, sympathy/empathy and logic. MLK. Rosa Parks. People who shot random whites are not given sympathetic obituaries.



I agree, Britain has treated Ireland appallingly in the past, and some of that carried over into the treatment of the Nationalist/Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. That doesn't mean that resorting to semtex in lieu of speeches is the most moral course of action... especially as the PIRA were not Batman, hunting down specific wrongdoers, but killed random innocents.
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Most of the people the IRA killed were combatants.
 
Strawberry said:
Most of the people the IRA killed were combatants.
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This is true, barely:

1080 (~52%) were members/former members of the British security forces
723 (~35%) were civilians
187 (~9%) were members of republican paramilitaries
57 (~2.7%) were members of loyalist paramilitaries
11 (~0.5%) were members of the Irish security forces

So about 40% were non-combatants. Have to say, I'm still not feeling the love.
 
I remain uninformed about the finer points of Northern Ireland, and its terrible history, but I would just mention in passing that, although Malcolm X was not a pacifist, and not philosophically opposed to violence, he was not, as far as I know, either a terrorist or a killer. Advocating self defense and armed resistance to oppression does not automatically translate into bombings, riots, random terrorist acts, or the murder of one's opponents.
 
The Don said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39185899

Someone who saw many of his dreams realised through a combination of terrorism and politics. Some no doubt view him as a Mandela figure. As an English person brought up during "the troubles" (and listening to the UK news) I have a different view.
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Mendela did start the militant wing of the ANC. So it isn't like he had something against a good bombing campaign.
 
Martin McGuinness was a winner. History remembers winners, People scorn losers.

When Northern Ireland breaks free of the UK and Ireland is re-united, people will remember just how much a winner Martin McGuinness was - and that made it possible. It's been a 100-years war, but the end is in sight.
 
Darat said:
Given his past I wish that was true, but it isn't. NI has shown that to get past the terrorism it was necessary to bring the murderers into the political process.
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That is pretty much always the case in any country with civil wars. If a side does not get quashed, you will have to have unsavory people on either side get talking.
 
Strawberry said:
Sometimes it is. For example, the IRA volunteer who shot Lenny Murphy was entirely right to do what he did. Of course it would have been better if Murphy had been arrested and sent to prison for the rest of his natural but NI in the 1970s wasn't a place where the police bothered pursuing murderers very hard if their victims were Catholic, and therefore it should come as no surprise that it was also the society that produced the PIRA.

Softy southerners who have never been north of Malahide should probably go back to sipping their lattes and worrying about freedom for Tibet instead of moralising at people who lived through the Troubles in the north.
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Bull. I had a friend who lived in the Ardoyne. Remember Holy Cross school? His 6 year old daughter was one of those children bricked by the unionists. Remember the "Sniper at work" signs? He was forced to conceal a disassembled Barrett 50 for the Ra. Don't even attempt to tell me what I do or do not know.
 
abaddon said:
Bull. I had a friend who lived in the Ardoyne. Remember Holy Cross school? His 6 year old daughter was one of those children bricked by the unionists. Remember the "Sniper at work" signs? He was forced to conceal a disassembled Barrett 50 for the Ra. Don't even attempt to tell me what I do or do not know.
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You should know better then. Ask your friend in Ardoyne and he/she will tell you the same as me - the Troubles would have been there with or without Martin McGuinness, the peace process maybe not.
 
Rolfe,

It seemed to me that the UK Government went to no small lengths to muddy the waters about the conflict by claiming it was between the Protestants and the Catholics. Sure the majority of Republicans were Catholic and, likewise, the majority of the Unionists were protestant...but the religious angle didn't really seem to be important. Instead, the I think the UK government tried to make it appear to be a religious war in order to obfuscate the facts and to make themselves look like the good gius when they went to NI and smashed the heads of a bunch of "religious whackos".

Is that about the way you saw it?
 
Giz said:
You've lost the plot Rolfe. The lesson you should be drawing is that Scotland had an independence referendum (and will probably have another one fairly soon) the results of which were accepted without violence. McGuinness/PIRA should have gone that route, rather than with bombs and bullets. You just seem to be fantasizing that, because it's frustrating when other people dare to hold a different view of the issue than you, "you can see where the guy was coming from" when he decided to try and achieve his goals via murder.
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Scottish nationalists have never been on the receiving end of state and state sponsored violence, so that's not really an apt comparison. The reality is that McGuinness and his generation of Irish nationalists didn't just decide to turn violent for political reasons, they were already in a situation where violence was being practiced against them and gerrymandering and censorship were used to prevent them from achieving anything through the ballot box.

The two situations are really very different.
 
Giz said:
You've lost the plot Rolfe. The lesson you should be drawing is that Scotland had an independence referendum (and will probably have another one fairly soon) the results of which were accepted without violence. McGuinness/PIRA should have gone that route, rather than with bombs and bullets. You just seem to be fantasizing that, because it's frustrating when other people dare to hold a different view of the issue than you, "you can see where the guy was coming from" when he decided to try and achieve his goals via murder.
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Are you saying that before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that it would have been possible for the majority of citizens of Northern Ireland to choose to break from the UK and become part of a united Ireland? Where is this documented?
 
Strawberry said:
Scottish nationalists have never been on the receiving end of state and state sponsored violence, so that's not really an apt comparison. The reality is that McGuinness and his generation of Irish nationalists didn't just decide to turn violent for political reasons, they were already in a situation where violence was being practiced against them and gerrymandering and censorship were used to prevent them from achieving anything through the ballot box.
The two situations are really very different.
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In other words (and I'll use some grosley simplified language: while Sinn Fien's political effectiveness was hypothetically possible, political realities ktep them from being practically effective. Of course, that was through the intimidation, gerry mandeing and censoring of which you spoke.

Did I get it right?
 
Jules Galen said:
In other words (and I'll use some grosley simplified language: while Sinn Fien's political effectiveness was hypothetically possible, political realities ktep them from being practically effective. Of course, that was through the intimidation, gerry mandeing and censoring of which you spoke.

Did I get it right?
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Pretty much.
 
Rolfe,

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to help me get some facts nailed down. Most people in the States are pretty ignorant about what happened in Ireland, and even more ignorant about what is happening in Scotland. I had a brother that spent 3 years at Eden Kyle (Holy Loch Naval Base) and yet he's utterly ignorant about Scotland. Yep...after three years living in Scotland, this is all he can tell me: people are nice; it's cold; it's wet; it very green; summer days are long; winter days are short. Strange, huh?

Any ways, I find the Irish quest for re-unification to be fascinating because it tells me so much about Ireland and the UK that I didn't know. It tells me a lot about the structure and workings of Empire - it's violence, it's propaganda, it's imperialistic mindset, etc... - and that's fascinating to me.

Again. Thank you for taking the time to smarten me up.
 
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