brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
It's not about whether you take it literally, is it?
what no annual poppy bunfight thread?
- Thread starter Pingu
- Start date
coley
Well-Known Member
See my replies to Brogdales, I imagine if a government started using the military to break strikes, ie to literally reproduce the lost output of the strikers then serious issues would be raised, in the Army you have a process called 'redress of grievance' where (in non combat situations) you can refuse an order and ask for a RG, it's a pain as you will be given endless Shyte jobs till it's sorted, then again I think that me son mentioned it had been replaced by a form of tribunal,
If your going to drag Sasaferrato into this, polite to tag him,don't you think?
coley
Well-Known Member
Why do you want to know how old I am?
Just wondering if you are basing your opinions on being around at the time or on what you have read?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
What "opinions"?
I was talking about the findings of the Saville enquiry; do you dispute them?
coley
Well-Known Member
coley
Well-Known Member
Just where have you mentioned the Saville enquiry?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
coley
Well-Known Member
Not even going there, you argument has been that the British Army is a bunch of royalists who have an unswerving belief in their obligation to primarily defend the royal family through an archaic oath to the queen and crown and who would be prepared to put down the masses in order to do so, even to destroy airliners who posed a threat to buck house!
I have being replying in the hope you had some form of cohesive argument lined up?
Haddaway back to your game boy or PS 3 or whatever electronic toy is today's fad.
coley
Well-Known Member
I was 11, if that helps
I was 19 and had just finished me third tour there, went back in 73 for a two year deployment in Derry, Straban and Claudy and associated other muddy bits, interesting times.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
The army was used to "replace lost output" during (IIRC) 7 separate dock strikes between 1945 and 1951. To my knowledge no serious issues were raised, even when the government had some of the dockers arrested.
To be honest I don't really get why you think this so controversial a statement. Professional armies exist for such purposes, have been used for them throughout history. If the British Army did happen to be conscious enough of popular rights or class solidarity to refuse to be used in a such a way that would make them pretty much unique. The only other armies to behave similarly were comprised of conscripts.
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littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Portuguesr army 1970s. Not volunteers, conscripts. Armies can and have sided with the people
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes and no in that case - rather more complicated then the army siding with the people, far closer to the people siding with the army in fact. And that same army then being used to restrain and limit the actions of the people once they had made their move. In the same way the german army was used to neuter the german revolution. And that army was in rather specialised conditions - such that even when operating normally it faced 10 000s of thousands of deserters and armed attacks on its own ships and barracks from within itself.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
sorry, wrote that wrong. I meant to write conscript not volunteer at the end
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Yeh their behaviour in Northern Ireland was exemplary, really turned it out around there.
To be brutally frank, Northern Ireland was lucky that National Service was dead and buried by the time the British Army was sent in, because I hate to think what the body count might have been if you'd had a load of NS knob jockeys running around.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Interestingly, the same piece of human waste was responsible for counter-insurgency operations in Kenya, as was responsible for them in Northern Ireland in the late '80s/early '70s -Frank Kitson. Kitson's ideas on how to deal with "low level insurgency" informed British military policy, and arguably fucked up a lot of people, and cost an awful number of non-combatants their lives, too.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Money. It's always money.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
PInk = Countries Britain has invaded.
Massively inaccurate in the Indian Ocean alone, mate.
Plus, you need to differentiate between places invaded/taken over by private British subjects and concerns, and places invaded by the British state.
It's also unhelpful that the map represents modern boundaries. Russia, for example, was constituted of a different size and shape of territory last time we invaded, than it has now.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It's even worse than that - it uses the term invasion to denote any and all military presence no matter how tiny and fleeting and also includes pirates, local mercenary armies hired by private citizens or businesses etc. It's a load of nonsense.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
I suspect that there would be enquiries running until about the year 3000.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
PInk = Countries Britain has invaded.
That is impressive, it is pretty much the whole damn world. We punched well above our weight in those day.
As a map, it is a wee bit inaccurate though, depending on what it is portraying. In Africa, for example, some of the 'conquered' areas were taken from other European countries, mainly Germany.
We will never see those days again, and rightly so. What is an ongoing problem though, and not just Britain's fault, is the arbitrary lines drawn on the map, with no consideration of who you have 'contained' within the lines. The fall out from that grumbles on, with no end in sight.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Sorry, but what's this crap about how conscripts would have been far worse? It was the most highly trained - the SAS and their ilk - who killed the most in NI.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
I think the implication is that the conscripts/service boys would have been largely resentful scared and highly likely to be trigger happy etc. Whereas the professionals are doing the killing by intent and order rather than panic
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
They didn't. However, whatever the order from whoever, an order in itself does not justify a soldier breaking the law of the land, military law, international law and the Geneva Convention. It is the responsibility of the individual soldier to asses the legitimacy of their actions, irrespective of orders.
Thankfully, in my time in the army, I was never in a situation I did have to assess the legality before opening fire.
The closest I came to killing anyone was one of our own, who had returned drunk from a night out in Hannover in his car, and had zig-zagged the barrier. I didn't recognise the car, and was in the firing position, gun cocked, safety off, waiting for him to be silhouetted in a light over an archway. I shouted for my mate, who was asleep in the sentry box. He recognised the car, and pushed the gun off aim, just as I was taking the slack in the trigger. The car was 30 yards away, he would have got two in the back of the head. Had I fired, I would have been absolutely justified, it was during an IRA bombing campaign in Germany, and the car was heading for the male accommodation. Thank God I didn't fire, had I done so, although justified, it would have been very hard to live with.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
In every "policing" situation that the British army has participated in in the 20th century, the presence of conscripts (mostly poorly to averagely trained) has meant unnecessary deaths. This isn't "crap", it's historical analysis borne out by a host of Empire and post-Empire actions in which conscripts were used by the British army.
As for who "killed the most", there are more deaths attributable to regulars than to special forces. Only about 20% maximum of those killed by the British Army in Northern Ireland were kills attributed to "the SAS and their ilk" (even if you include MI5 kills). The majority, sadly, were carried out by regulars.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
I would not, under any circumstances, have fired on unarmed peaceful protesters, nor do I know anyone who would.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Pretty much. Add to that, that if you didn't want to be there in the first place, you're very unlikely to have any sympathy with or bother about locals and their culture - in fact we know from Malaya that conscripts came to see the locals per se as their enemies, not just the "communist" insurgents.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
I was quartered in Aldershot at one point, my neighbours were mainly Paras. One of them had killed someone in NI, and still, some years later, had nightmares about it. Even amongst the Paras, who were a damn sight more 'gung ho' than the Medics were, I didn't meet anyone who had specifically joined up to kill people. Had you stated at your initial assessment in the recruiting process, that that was why you wanted to join, you would not have got in.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
How come it happened over and over then?
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