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British Governments unfortunately seem to make a habit of giving in to terrorists' demands

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British Governments unfortunately seem to make a habit of giving in to terrorists' demands

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I may have missed it, but the articles I read did not state that the government made any concessions. It looked like a unilateral statement from the reports I saw. Did I miss something?

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For every terrorist, there are another 999 people out of a thousand who feel the same way

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Not here there aren't.

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Only that the general situation in Northern Ireland has been improving for years now -- the Patten reforms of the RUC, the Parades Commission, the Good Friday agreement itself. Northern Ireland is something the Blair government has done well at.

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Again, this rather depends on which 'side of the fence' you're on. Personally, I would disagree on almost every count, as do most people I know.

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Again, this rather depends on which 'side of the fence' you're on. Personally, I would disagree on almost every count, as do most people I know.

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You were happy with a situation where police and security services collaborated with paramilitaries to get lawyers murdered?

I'm not sure how you get there from what I said?

Maybe I misunderstood your comment, I read it as saying that 100% of the population agreed with your 1 hypothetical terrorist, in aims if not means. This place just isn't like that, not by a long shot. If you'd said "for every terrorist, there are 499 people out of a thousand who feel the same way", I still wouldn't have agreed, but it would have left the door open for an opposing political ideology.

If everyone here wanted exactly the same thing, we wouldn't have this thread

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Again, what is the solution? Having more and more soldiers protecting ridiculous parades commemorating a coup done almost four centuries ago with the aid of foreign military intervention and "controling" demonstrators using live ammunition, while "Republican" and "Loyalist" terrorists continue to kill and maim victims in most cowardly way?

I don't have an answer. But one man's 'ridiculous parade' is another man's 'cultural tradition', maybe a bit more tolerance for each other would be a start I suppose.

If today's statement (and hopefully some sort of reciprocation by all the other terrorist groups) allows some breathing space for that to happen, then I'll welcome it with open arms...

"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes", I suppose

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For those of us isolationists that don't understand "The Troubles", what is the deal?

The easy questions first, eh?

I'm not a historian, and wouldn't know where to start, so resorting to Wikipedia seems like a good idea.

It would probably take all night to answer your specific questions, and since I'm speaking from an admittedly unionist viewpoint, I could end up inadvertantly starting another argument.

Putting it fairly directly, when what is now the Republic of Ireland gained independence from the UK, there was a sizeable population in the northern part of the island who considered themselves British and almost half a million men and women signed the Ulster Covenant and a parallel Declaration (for the women!) and pledged to oppose any attempt to break the link with Britain.

The reason for the greater pro-British population in this part of Ireland was that they were largely descendants of the English and Scottish settlers who were granted land in the 16th & 17th centuries and encouraged to move there in what was called the Plantation of Ulster. My own home village is still named after the settler who was granted land in the area and the fortified house that he built back in about 1619.

There was an Irish Rebellion in 1641, and there is still a stone tablet in my local church with musket holes where some of these protestant settlers were lined up and murdered, there are long memories on both sides.

A lot of the present trouble still hinges on this long-standing distrust between the Protestants (who mostly consider themselves to be British) and Roman Catholics (who mostly consider themselves to be Irish) The Protestants do not wish to be part of what they perceive to be a Roman Catholic state ("Home Rule is Rome Rule" was an old slogan in the late 19th & early 20th centuries) and the Roman Catholics do not wish to be part of the United Kingdom and so pursue independence for the whole island. Ironically, the only time Ireland was ever actually united as one political entity was under British rule.

I suspect that in many cases, you are correct, and we now just distrust each other because that's how it's always been. There was an earlier IRA campaign between 1956 & 1962, and the recent 35 years of terrorism from both sides hasn't helped, and has just given each community a longer and longer list of injustices.

The two positions are so opposite that there is no easy way to reconcile them without one side or the other thinking that they are losing and resisting the change.

In case it wasn't obvious, I'm firmly in the protestant/unionist camp and as determined to remain British as anyone who came before me, so that will probably colour my interpretation of events. The Wikipedia articles looked fairly well-written and balanced though, so they might give a better impression of the issues involved.

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For those of us isolationists that don't understand "The Troubles", what is the deal?

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Now, here is a heretical idea: perhaps solution lies in better integrated "Europe of regions", where nation states, while still existing, are not the obstacle to different, sometimes more natural organization.

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Maybe I misunderstood your comment, I read it as saying that 100% of the population agreed with your 1 hypothetical terrorist, in aims if not means. This place just isn't like that, not by a long shot. If you'd said "for every terrorist, there are 499 people out of a thousand who feel the same way", I still wouldn't have agreed, but it would have left the door open for an opposing political ideology.

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But then this modern Republicanist militantism seems to stem from what that article refers to as civil rights violations against Catholics in Northern Ireland, but it doesn't say what those might have been.

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And I can understand the Unionists desire to remain both British and on the land to which they were born, but beyond that idealism, is current (or even post-1922 in general) Irish government seen as inextricably tied to the Catholic Church, which seems to have been at least one of the biggest issues of the Unionists?

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It's widely-attested (though I've never been to NI, so I'm not really talking from experience) that the local police force, formerly known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary or RUC, fell somewhat short of impartiality when it came to sectarian crime.

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The proportion of Protestants among RUC officers was much higher than would be representative of the population

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Many but not all of Patten's recommendations were adopted, including a symbolic change of name from RUC to NIPF (Northern Ireland Police Force)

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The NIPF are making a deliberate effort to recruit more from the Catholic community, with the long-term aim of balancing-out the numbers completely, to reflect the make-up of the wider community.

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But even now, many Catholics are wary, if not outright distrusting, of the police.