Troops Out! Finally.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
The catholic minority were oppressed in N. Ireland when I was a boy.

Time out. Oppressed? I'm going to disagree with you here.
The Protestants were desperate not to be overrun and thrown out of their church by the larger southern contingent of Catholics.

[Patroklos]

The Protestants were secure in thier position once it was clear that the UK was not going to give NI up. At that point, yes, the Catholics were oppressed.

[SlowwHand]

The Catholics were contained. Why were they contained? British troops.
Irish Catholics could have always gone home.

[Patroklos]

Boston?

[Lancer]

Think of it, it just makes sense. Pull the troops out, THEN nuke.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Irish Catholics could have always gone home.

They were home.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Do you not believe that the UK is/was a democracy? Democracies or even countries that pretend to be such generally don't need terrorist groups pushing for rights that could have been granted in non-violent ways as it only serves to ****** the quest they claim to be after.

Cuz the U.S. gave civil rights to Blacks peacefully. It's not in the nature of settler states to give power to minorities without a struggle. The Irish did try to have a civil rights movement based on the practices of Gandhi and MLK. Then the British troops massacred them.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
Yes, that summarises things well.

It is the fact that it took hundreds of years for people to decide to get on with each other rather than constantly to re-open ancient wounds that makes me think the issues were silly ones.

It wasn't a matter of ancient wounds, but current ones. It was about power and freedom. Those who had power didn't want to share it. Like whites in the South, the Protestants could easily have chosen to grant civil rights to their minorities, but they chose not to. The main difference is that in the U.S., we didn't send in the troops to seperate whites and Blacks, and then open fire on a Black crowd counter demonstrating a Klan march. That was when the IRA decided that they were going to have to pick up arms. When your own government guns you down, sometimes you have to shoot back.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


They were home.

Evidently not.

[chequita guevara]

Are you really that stupid, Slowwhand? The Irish are natives of Ireland. The Nothern Irish are Scottish settlers from the time of William of Orange's conquest of Great Britain and Ireland from James II. Hence their name, Orangemen.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Cuz the U.S. gave civil rights to Blacks peacefully.

I wasn't aware that they achieved them through the efforts of a terrorist group. Perhaps you could name the one that deserves the credit?

[chequita guevara]

In the U.S. we had riots, like in Watts. There were also men like Robert Williams. Then there were the Black Panthers, although neither the Panthers nor Williams actually initiated violence, they certainly were willing to shoot back. But they threatened to use violence to achieve their aims. As did the Nation of Islam. The FBI certainly treated them all as if they were terrorists.

Despite formal civil rights, Blacks still faced major obstacles in the 1970s getting those rights recognized and implemented. In that period you saw groups like the Republic of New Afrika engaging in actual terrorism.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Evidently not.

If anyone was to go home, it would not be the Irish Catholics, whose ancestors had always lived there, but the British Protestants planted there to create a pro-British contingent.

[Arrian]

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Are you really that stupid, Slowwhand? The Irish are natives of Ireland. The Nothern Irish are Scottish settlers from the time of William of Orange's conquest of Great Britain and Ireland from James II. Hence their name, Orangemen.

Quibble (but not a small one) - IIUC there were Protestants/Scots Irish living in two counties well before the battle of the Boyne, or even Cromwell. In fact there had been extensive contact between Scotland and at least parts of Ulster going back to before the Reformation, and accompanying settlement.

Oh, and of course many of the post Boyne settlers were English, or came from areas along the Scottish-English border where the distinction wasnt always clear, and where "border"culture overlapped the frontier.