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Post by Bilk on May 27, 2008 8:39:03 GMT
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Post by Jim on May 27, 2008 9:48:38 GMT
I've never saw "do you want to go back what happened over the last thirty years" as a threat, infact I say it quite often. The reason I say it is not because I'm threatening people with republican violence, I was never involved in that, ever, and neither was any member of my immediate family that I know of, but because there is no alternative. What happens if the Government collapses? Dissidents would get a fair amount of support after an SF failure, and keeping in mind that loyalists haven't decommissioned, its wouldn't be looking good and we would have the army back, one thing I never want to happen, ever. The RIRA and CIRA are fairly different people Blik. The Contos broke away in 1986 when the republican movement was quickly changing its politics and finding its footing, infact, no, it was entering politics. They didn't like that because they wanted to keep with bombing the shite out of you lot into submission, and they had a lot of internal disagreements with the rest of the leadership. Those that formed the RIRA stayed on but the last straw was accepting Stormont, so in essence the CIRA and RIRA stand for very similar things and are united in their hatred of "mainstream" northern Republicanism. There is no good blood between dissidents and mainstream republicanism, they have one goal thats the same, and very very different methods of getting it, and very different reasons also. The mention of "No one wants to go back to the last thirty years" is ok coming from you or me. But when it is coming from the very people who were responsible for those 30 years, then I take that as a threat. We will say it at anytime in general conversation, they will say it only when they are backed into a corner, or asked awkward questions. They were a breakaway group exactly my point, same people different name. "Breakway" is the opperative word here. Just as the PIRA were a breakaway group from the OIRA. I don't believe for one minute that when the PIRA downed weapons and decided to go into politics a whole new group suddenly sprang out of the woodwork. It was the same people, they were of course left weakend by the decision of the leadership to move into bonifide politics, but it's the same people, and don't ever forget the PIRA had a period when their main weapon was firebombs in stores and crudely put together car bombs. Look where they finished up. The PIRA broke away for very different reasons so its not easy to compare the CIRA, which broke away for mainly not wanting to go a political route, to the PIRAs breakaway from the Officials which was over the effectiveness of protection of catholic areas amongst many other issues including ideological reasons. |
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Post by An Fear Dubh on May 31, 2008 8:53:51 GMT
Bilk I have never doubted that paramilitaries use fear as weapon. And crude violence against their own communities does occur. But I see your complete dismissal of the support of the paramilitaries as unfounded in view of the evidence. I can understand that you might exaggerate your view slightly to help you make a point, fair enough. Harry did that and also accepted that he might have been painting a black and white picture with no shades of grey but I recognised in Harry's response an attempt at looking to be honest and fair. That honesty of approach had a greater impact on my views than a total dismissal of all the evidence.
While I do accept you try to be honest, that honesty is not consistant with the evidence. Therefore the only person you are fooling is yourself. As others including Harry accept that evidence does exist.
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Post by Bilk on May 31, 2008 11:27:32 GMT
Bilk I have never doubted that paramilitaries use fear as weapon. And crude violence against their own communities does occur. But I see your complete dismissal of the support of the paramilitaries as unfounded in view of the evidence. I can understand that you might exaggerate your view slightly to help you make a point, fair enough. Harry did that and also accepted that he might have been painting a black and white picture with no shades of grey but I recognised in Harry's response an attempt at looking to be honest and fair. That honesty of approach had a greater impact on my views than a total dismissal of all the evidence. While I do accept you try to be honest, that honesty is not consistant with the evidence. Therefore the only person you are fooling is yourself. As others including Harry accept that evidence does exist. Look I would be foolish if I thought that there was absolutely no support for paramilitaries in the loyalist community. I think we all know that would be nonesense, there are bound to have been, and I'm sure were idiots who supported them. All I have ever said, and I've said it many times, I have never met those people. By that I mean those who were not actively involved, but voiced support for the UDA/UVF etc. I have been an active member of the loyalist community all my life, as a trade unionist. I was on the ICTU executive committee, I was on the IRCC of my own union, that is the governing boddy in my union in Ireland. We had umpteen conferences about what should be done to make life better for working class loyalists. Those conferences were very well attended by prominent members of the unionist/loyalist working class community. And by that I don't mean the leadership of loyalist paramilitaries. I mean community leaders who were reporting back from their communities. Again and again the request was the same, "Rid us of the organisation". I was making a comparison with your experience in your community to the one I had in mine. You were saying you were driven to whatever it was you were doing at any given time by the wishes of your community. So was I and my organisation, by the people we represented. Again and again we were told they wanted the paramilitaries out of their area, and they wanted the killing to stop. We were told that until we did that, anything else we could do would be a futile exercise. You may think my belief is founded on someone sitting at home and forming their own opinion or dreaming one up, it wasn't. I was as active in my community as any politition, in fact more so. I am talking about the ordrinary members of the public in my community, the ones who just wanted to live their lives in peace, the ones who paniced if they saw their son or daughter fratenising with someone who was connected, or their dad was connected. I'm sure there were teenage wannabe's who supported these people in the paras, I'm sure too there were some who grew into adulthood still supporting them. But my point is that in general, the vast majority of the unionist/loyalist population of this country did not support the paras. In fact I would go further, the vast majority detested them, almost as much as they detested the provies. And still do. |
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