Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
Well I won't be taken aback in my naïveté any more . That's for sure . Fucks sake they won hands down and they're still complaining .
Patrick Finucane
- Thread starter trampie
- Start date
Me and the kids are just back from a local commemoration for fallen volunteers.
I heard no words of rancour, no rabid anti-britishness or any other auld shite. Instead I saw the dignity of an ordinary people - drawn to extraordinary measures by extraordinary circumstances - who, matter-of -factly, did what they needed to do and got on with their ordinary lives.
These are people who have suffered massive community and personal loss over the last 40 years. If they could see the stuck-in-the-Seventies, black-and-white, heroes-and-villains mindset of some of their former adversaries, I'm sure they could afford themselves a wry smile.
I heard no words of rancour, no rabid anti-britishness or any other auld shite. Instead I saw the dignity of an ordinary people - drawn to extraordinary measures by extraordinary circumstances - who, matter-of -factly, did what they needed to do and got on with their ordinary lives.
These are people who have suffered massive community and personal loss over the last 40 years. If they could see the stuck-in-the-Seventies, black-and-white, heroes-and-villains mindset of some of their former adversaries, I'm sure they could afford themselves a wry smile.
bamalama
don't do that
Yep.The thing about the likes of sasaferatto@ and likesfish@ imo is, it's not about winnin or losin, they can barely disguise their hatred for the communities that gave birth to the armed struggle, that's why they systematically dehumanised them, and murdered us on our own streets.These impartial upholders of the rule of law.The fact those communities gave 'em a good fight and a few of their mates got clipped must leave a very bitter after taste...
Squaddie grunts died pointlessly shillin for the british rulin class there is no community to remember them beyond family/friends, republicans died in their chosen liberation struggle, that's why we remember them differently...
Squaddie grunts died pointlessly shillin for the british rulin class there is no community to remember them beyond family/friends, republicans died in their chosen liberation struggle, that's why we remember them differently...
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
He may well have been a danger to some of his local associates in the glenanne gang . Some loyalists today are convinced he was tipping off the Provos as to the identity of some of the gangs members , resulting in their assassination . Cleaning up his tracks behind him .
The survivors of the Miami showband massacre are pretty convinced he was the man in charge when the " fake " army patrol pulled them over . An individual who posed an extreme threat to the safety of the general public without a doubt .
His mate Maynard, now a lieutenant colonel and employed in some spooky MOD department last i heard of him, could probably tell a tale or 2 . But it's unlikely he will as HMG resolutely refuse to this day to hand over any files whatsoever regarding the Dublin Monaghan massacre . The single biggest loss of life in the entire conflict which they appear to have orchestrated from start to finish . For a supposedly friendly government to be resolutely refusing to assist a supposed partner government in the investigation of a massive terrorist crime against innocent civilians despite repeated requests to do so tells us all we need to know about the reality of Anglo Irish political relationships . And who's the " bitch " , so to speak . It's like the abused wife smiling dutifully at the side of her abuser , telling everyone about their wonderful relationship .
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
*blinks* that really is taking the piss. I'd assumed they'd always been on the naughty list, to get off of it just before such a major bomb...shennanigans of the first water
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
this may be of interest.
the more I read and watch the worse it gets. Its like there were elements in the police and military intelligence wings who had been given carte blanch to just fuck thing up. I'm still convinced they could have stopped the butcher killings too.
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
I would have thought anyone with the slightest thread of decency, conscience or morality would hate the Provisional IRA.Ditto UVF etc.
The day I joined the army, on the train to Ash Vale, I bumped into a school friend who was heading on to Aldershot to join the Paras. The murdering filth of the PIRA killed him at Warrenpoint. Pathological hatred does not even come close.
This is the same paras who shot dead 13 civilians on the streets of Derry , many of them in the back , some while waving white handkerchieves and trying to assist the wounded and dying .
Who a few months before that, in August 1971 went on the rampage in the Ballymurphy estate leaving 11 civilians dead . Including a priest attending to the dying, a 50 year old mother of eight kids ( when her young daughter went to the army post looking for her mother the paras inside taunted her by singing Where's your mama gone ). Another man was repeatedly shot 14 times in the back as he lay wounded on the ground , body deliberately ripped apart just for sport . And even an English Quaker who lived in the area was brutalised to death . After giving him a severe beating a gun was stuck in his mouth and the trigger pulled , causing him to have a heart attack . His crime was trying to distribute baby's milk to families who couldn't step outside their homes for fear of instant death . Bodies lay in the streets for 2 days in some cases . Nobody cou
D get to them because the paras continued to shoot the place up .
While just yards away loyalists went on the rampage and were driving catholic families from their homes in springmartin .
The same paras who in the summer of 1972 carried out a brutal massacre of civilians in the neighbouring springhill estate in west Belfast . Where their snipers coldly and deliberately targeted anyone they could see . Including a 13 year old schoolgirl . Another priest giving the last rites to the dead . The medical volunteer accompanying him . The 15 year old schoolboy who tried to drag their bodies to safety . I've lived in that area . I've spoken to the ordinary people who had to dig holes through a succession of neighbours walls in order to evacuate their wives and kids . The deliberate terror inflicted on them by that regiment is what results in pathological hatred .
And round here we remember what they did to Majella OHare , 12 years old in her school uniform , holding a toddler by the hand , verbally abused by the scum of the paras as they passed on the way to mass . And then blown away by a burst from a GPMG straight into her back .
As far as people over here are concerned they're vermin . The absolute scum of the earth .
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
The context of it was pretty simple . The British government had from the outset of the conflict demanded the free state government bring in various draconian laws against their own citizens . Every time there appeared to be reluctance there were no warning car bombs in Dublin . Followed by immediate compliance .
By 1974 the demands of the British government under Heath had become so extensive and far reaching they were an abrogation of sovereignty pretty much . The recently elected Dublin government refused to play ball . The bombings shortly after the rejection of heaths demands immediately secured their full compliance . What became later known as the " Baldonnel protocols " we're secretly enacted . The Dublin government shit itself so badly they went into full collaboration mode . What happened to the political and security culture in the south was so far reaching that even the relatives of those killed were treated for decades as if they were subversives or guilty of something . They never even carried out an investigation . ALL of their files have disappeared from 4 separate secure locations in the south.
This wasn't a few rogue soldiers . That massacre goes the whole way up to cabinet level . To Heath himself . And that's why the London government of today point blank refuses to assist any enquiry in the south . And why even under Blairs tenure the British government prepared a sovereign immunity defence when it looked likely there'd be a case against them in the international courts . The disappearance of the Irish states files under the tenure of Blairs good mate Bertie Ahern scuppered the chances of that back then . That's what their peace process entailed I suppose, " sacrifices "
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
I've yet to start taking in the wider (electoral)political issues of the time, still reading the history of the conflict itself, the who's and whys and whats. What you suggest there doesn't explain the MRF and its mad dog behaviour, nor its succesor units. Strategy of tension, well why. To keep the republic in line? doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe I'll see clearer after more books.
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
Can't do links but there's a panorama documentary on YouTube entitled " a license to murder " which covers the Brian Nelson saga as well as the murder of Pat Finucane . They even secretly record Finucanes killer , the state assassin Ken Barrett , who talks candidly to John Ware about the background of the thing . Making the point that even for loyalist paramilitaries people like Finucane were taboo as targets . There's a lot there about how Nelson was run by the FRU and how the intelligence he was supplied by the FRU supposedly targeting IRA members was targeting innocent civilians instead . With his handlers giving him false assurances the dead their files had set up were connected to the IRA in order to keep him happy . Detectives from the Stephens enquiry are interviewed too . There's a lot of very grim detail there .
If anyone could post it up here I'd appreciate it .
If anyone could post it up here I'd appreciate it .
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wobbly
There's prior examples of using similar tactics as were used in NI, and I'm not talking of the height of the colonial era, this continued post ww2, aden, kenya, cyprus. That close to home, and against a population that could be defied as citizens of an allied nation and/or british, they needed to keep some distance and deniability. hence not doing all this shit in-house. makes more sence when you realise that this was business as usual.
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wobbly
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Thinking about it from a cunts point of view, I suppose escalating a civil war deliberatly is also a way to break the will of the civilian populace, thereby having them so sickened by violence or scared of reprisals that they stop giving any kind of succour to the irregulars.
bamalama
don't do that
"Northern Ireland is as British as Finchley" is worth keepin in mind ...then sit back, forget the why and wherefores for a minute, and think what would make these cunts do in finchley what they did in the north ?
The six counties was/is a play ground for the brit military and secret/special services, a testin ground for all kinds of shite used by the state to control,criminalise, terrorise and undermine resistant communities
The six counties was/is a play ground for the brit military and secret/special services, a testin ground for all kinds of shite used by the state to control,criminalise, terrorise and undermine resistant communities
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wobbly
They knew this was politically unwinnable, knew that the republicans couldn't be stopped, because they had too much support. politically, because there wasn't the will to resort to the tactics used in places much further from home. Somone who i'm not even going to hint at identifying told me about openly discussing how winning that battle would have involved slaughtering any adult who supported the cause, 10% or so of the population would have been enough, plus a lot more internments, which would have given them 20 years or so before it started again, and worse. Says something that the answer was known, just politically untenable. so they used what they could, what they knew.
i've spent a lot more time looking at the political mix in NI, not at the games the gvts were playing. but if you have an unwinnable war, then i'd have thought the important thing wouldn't be what was happening there, but that the rest of the population could be convinced that you were doing the right thing, that the enemy was bad enough that you actions were justified. Sas's opinions on justifiable atrocity are nauseating and illogical, but hardly unusual. it's what i grew up listening to, what i was supposed to believe. and i think that was a big part of the endgame. my only real questions are about whether/how much the pot was deliberately kept on the boil.
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wobbly
tbh, i don't think they needed the practice
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
some of the stuff I've been reading in Dillons 'Dirty War' suggests the pot was stirred and the hob turned up to 11.
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
That's exactly what it was about . They farmed out the wet work to the loyalists who engaged in a campaign of terror that was often simply random . Using people like nelson who believed he was targeting IRA members . Nelson was only caught because after repeated murders of people the loyalists were convinced we're IRA members were met with blanket insistence they weren't from their families and the catholic community , the UDA became so incensed they contacted the media and posted up their targeting files on the walls of the shankill road . That blunder led directly back to Nelson and the cat was out of the bag .
And alongside this terror campaign , we're anyone and any pub or bookies could be targeted , you had the daily grind of army and police harassment and searches . Not just the stop and searches and the militarised saturation of nationalist communities , but the constant fucking about . Entire housing estates subject to " seal and search " , where the army teams went in with kango hammers and ripped the walls out of everyone's houses . The checkpoints that always coincided with rush hour , keeping everyone stuck for ages on the road , day in day out . That never netted a single gun or bomb because even the dopiest Provo could conclude the big massive traffic jam might be an indication of a security check up ahead . So life was a daily grind of frustration and annoyance punctuated by random terror .
And then what do the shinners turn around and do ? I myself was present at the very first meeting in the Conway mill on the falls road in late 94 criticising what was feared, correctly, was to be sinn feins role in the resurrection of Stormont and the legitimisation of partition . organised by a small socialist group . Two punters turn up and stand behind the speakers scowling at everyone in the room , pretty clear who they were there representing . Ensuring almost complete silence from the audience . And then responded to the criticisms with shouts of " do you want the loyalists to start killing again ? Do you want our people massacred ? " . So there was were we ended up . With the fucking Provo leadership using those loyalist bastards as bogeymen to keep us silent and compliant as well . Waving them at us like a stick to shut us up .
Every time I hear one of those smarmy bastards withering on about how empowered and politicised the nationalist community are I just remember that evening . Completely the reverse . Beaten politically , depoliticised , deradicalised and completely disempowered as regards any challenge to the state . Just cattle , voting and marching fodder to be kept in line by fear .
From cannon fodder to voting fodder was all we were .
It needs to be rembered too that it wasn't just loyalists they wre colluding with in their dirty game .
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
It was interesting to read in Dillons book that the old ira leadership had caught marxism in jail and were advocating a guns down 'stages theory' strategy. Reading on the factions it seems to me that the UDA and the old IRA were analagous in terms of both being caught out when the balloon went up and this discrediting at street level led to the formation of both PIRA and the UVF. I am a shit historian though so I may be way off beam.
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
I'd disagree . In my view they came to believe it was militarily unwinnable , because history had taught them the IRA would simply resurrect and remanifest itself no matter how many times it was beaten down . And might even come back harder than what had been there before .
But I firmly believe people like Brigadier Oatley managed to convince them it was politically winnable quite some time back , very early on . But that would of course require the co option of the Provos as opposed to their destruction . Which was regarded as unfeasible by many in the British establishment but by no means all .Ultimately after much internal chicanery and slow inching that's what transpired . The strategy of the British state and the strategy of the Provos under Gerry Adams became one and the same to all intents and purposes . Ulsterisation, normalisation and criminalisation , having British rule in whatever form accepted as legitimate while resistance is criminalised . Game set and match .
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Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
I'd say it's more a case of Dillon being a shit historian . I'd treat his work with a great deal of caution .
Also the UDA didn't exist until after the troubles started . The then IRA leadership can't claim to have been caught out either . They were repeatedly warned by their ow people what was likely to happen . They however insisted that the people burning down catholic streets would discover their class consciousness if you didn't stop them . Preventing loyalists burning your street down was an act of sectarianism , according to some of the lefty intellectuals they had in tow . And they weren't just an old leadership , plenty of bright young things withering on about Paris 68 and Ho chi Minh etc were among that lot too . While those who founded the Provos were mostly old hands .
And loyalists didn't really need the likes of the UVF back then . They had the likes of the RUC and B Specials as it was . They weren't caught out in the slightest .
bamalama
don't do that
They needed the refinement and a wide open playin field gave them the scope for tactical development. Ye couldn't go round the villages of fermanagh takin the men folk and mutilating them in a field in the seventies. You could run a sectarian murder gang doin the same thing to individuals in a back room on the shankill though
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wobbly
same game, just indirectly managed
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
They actually did do that in Fermanagh though . The so called " pitchfork murders" , 2 random farmers were abducted by an army patrol and butchered with knives , absolutely berserk stuff . Cops claimed it was loyalists with pitchforks . Whole thing was exposed years later when one of them became convinced the Yorkshire ripper had to have been someone from that unit and went to the cops in England and confessed all .
That was just private sport though . Wasn't an organised policy . So your right about that , even though they actually still managed to do it .
They'd previously been stationed in Aden , under leadership of Mad Mitch . Those type of murders had been commonplace there and they pretty much thought they could do it to the people in Fermanagh too .
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wobbly
Oh, I'm in agreement with you on that.(got a bloody good grade on the essay as well)
my point was that there was a lack of political will to engage in the level of atrocity needed for military victory, in westminster and the british population as a whole. sas shows the acceptance into what they beleive was the occasional foray into the tactics that were more openly acceptable in far away places against non white people (cause although they can sneer at the celts, celts aren't seen as dark folk anymore) and accept claims shooting up groups of unarmed people were standard military self defence, they wouldn't accept a literal decimation.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
That's the theory.
In practice it doesn't work, because people are stubborn bastards, many of whom refuse to knuckle under. Alexander the Great tried repression and slaughter to stop guerrilla attacks on his mighty army as they pushed through Persia and Afghanistan toward India. It merely guaranteed that more peoples on his route of march decided to take to the hills and sneak-attack the forward elements of his army.
And so it has been for at least 3,000 years.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
In 1990 there was an occurrence that pretty much "deep-sixed" any possible military "victory" by the British army, and that was the volume of personnel reductions under "Options for Change" - the 1990 Defence spending review paper punted by Shagger Clark. You can't effectively operate a system of oppression when you're short-staffing it, and reducing "frontline" (i.e. infantry) regts by a battalion or more a piece, and amalgamating other regts in order to get rid of a battalion here and there meant that (even with reducing BAOR obligations) there weren't enough squaddies to go around. The Tories' involvements in the Balkans; the Kurdish no-fly zone/safe haven and other "imperial entanglements" besides NI meant either considering "peace" (whatever that has come to mean in the context of NI) or LOSING a war on the streets/in the borderlands through attrition.
Most convenient way to neutralise an enemy is to pin a badge to the enemy's chest and say "now you're the milk monitor. Distribute the milk as you see fit".
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
I thought they had given up trying to win by then and had gone for an acceptable level of violence. Assuming sooner or later everyone will just get bored and stop.
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
They'd ruled out the military victory by the mid 1970 s . The Provos had been spying on the mail over in England and intercepted a pile of documents outlining the strategy for the future..published them in an phoblact as well .
What they were focused on was the political defeat of republicanism itself . And by that I don't just mean the Provos , who were just one manifestation of it , but the very concept of it . The republican political dimension in Ireland was to be neutralised and delegitimised , whilst British sovereignty in whatever political form it might take was to be made the only legitimate position . the process of ulsterisation , normalisation and criminalisation .
To pull as many troops back as possible and replace them wherever the situation permitted with locals . To get local political institutions up and running and their political legitimacy accepted . To emphasise the conflict was communal , tribal and criminal and not a struggle against the violation of national sovereignty by an imperialist power .
That was ultimately achieved both sides of the border . There are more ways to criminalise, and therefore delegitimise , someone's political position than by trying to force them to wear a symbolic convicts uniform . Much more effective means as it turned out .
They could afford to scale down their troops because by the 1990s the Provos weren't really up to much . Even their most active area South Armagh was reduced to snipes and mortars . There was no danger of anyone being overrun .
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
They were prepared for , resigned to ,the fact there'd always be a rump who couldn't be co opted . But if that rump could be contained both politically and militarily then it's unlikely they'd pose any threat to the overall process of ulsterisation and normalisation .
Martin mcguiness standing on the steps of the stormont parliament as a British minister , 2 big union jacks fluttering overhead , flanked by the chief constable of the new RUC on one side and Peter Robinson on the other . Denouncing those who'd just launched armed attacks on the British garrison and the cops as " traitors to Ireland " encapsulates the entire strategy perfectly .
There you have the parliament itself, and by extension it's big brother parliament in Westminster and overall British sovereignty legitimised . Their armed forces legitimised . And not merely the armed actions of their opponents criminalised but the political position which underpinned those actions in the first place delegitimised as well .
For that to come about required collusion on a grand scale . Not just involving loyalists but also republicans . As well as the southern government and the constitutional nationalist parties . The republican well so to speak had to be drained . It's political defeat was much more important than any military defeat . In fact a movement founded on the lessons and example of defeat and resurrection could never be beaten in military terms . It would just pick new leaders and await its moment . The trick here was to ensure the political
Environment would be such that it's moment would never return .
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