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Corbyn wins again!

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off topic: as an analytical chemist, your tag and avatar make me happy in my pants
Original post by DMcGovern
Corrected this. Also "leftist collectivist socialism" isn't a thing. You've just thrown three words together. A more appropriate wording would be "left-wing socialism".


No, a more appropriate wording would be sheep-like, identity politics, group think. But i was trying to be polite.
Original post by DMcGovern
You clearly don't know anything about the conflict when you say that the IRA was disbanded in 1972 when there was a split.

You seem to be confused. I said "from 1972 until the IRA was disbanded" (i.e. at the end of the 20th century). Note the words "all the way from"; that is unlikely to refer from 1972 until 1972. In other words, the UK government had contact with the IRA from 1972, until the IRA was disbanded (practically speaking around 2000). And referring to the IRA refers to the Provisional IRA. In any case it seems clear that your knowledge of the Troubles is extremely limited.

People like you are a major reason why Corbyn is completely unelectable. Of course even when Corbyn goes down to a historically devastating loss in 2020, you'll still be proclaiming your victimhood and telling us that you are the only people who really know what's going on and can see through the conspiracy. :lol:

@KimKallstrom @KingBradly @JamesN88
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by AlexanderHam
You seem to be confused. I said "from 1972 until the IRA was disbanded" (i.e. at the end of the 20th century). Note the words "all the way from"; that is unlikely to refer from 1972 until 1972. In other words, the UK government had contact with the IRA from 1972, until the IRA was disbanded (practically speaking around 2000). And referring to the IRA refers to the Provisional IRA. Do you have trouble with reading comprehension? In any case it seems clear that your knowledge of the Troubles is extremely limited.

As for the rest of your poorly written, fact-free response, it doesn't merit a response. Even if it had factual merit your clunky, unlettered prose style is painful to read. It's like reading something written by someone who only became literate as an adult. And your total lack of good faith and genuine desire to engage with the issues is wholly characteristic of deluded members of the Cult of Saint Jezbollah.

People like you are a major reason why Corbyn is completely unelectable. Of course even when Corbyn goes down to a historically devastating loss in 2020, you'll still be proclaiming your victimhood and telling us that you are the only people who really know what's going on and can see through the conspiracy. :lol:

@KimKallstrom @KingBradly @JamesN88


You cannot deny the validity of my argument so you ignore it and result to insults. Nice.

Now that's a full-on ad hominem argument.
Original post by DMcGovern
You cannot deny the validity of my argument


How can I not deny the validity of your "argument"?

I said that the UK government had contact with the IRA from 1972 until they disbanded (practically speaking, around 2000). Then you started babbling about how the Provisional IRA didn't disband in 1972, it split off from the Official IRA.

Your total inability to comprehend plain English, and then your attacking of a point that only existed in your own head, is wholly characteristic of your "contributions" to this debate.

As for ad hominems, that seems to be your only line. "Wahhh, you said something mean". Sure, I said something mean; you said something stupid. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by AlexanderHam
How can I not deny the validity of your "argument"?

I said that the UK government had contact with the IRA from 1972 until they disbanded (practically speaking, around 2000). Then you started babbling about how the Provisional IRA didn't disband in 1972, it split off from the Official IRA.

Your total inability to comprehend plain English, and then your attacking of a point that only existed in your own head, is wholly characteristic of your "contributions" to this debate.

As for ad hominems, that seems to be your only line. "Wahhh, you said something mean". Sure, I said something mean; you said something stupid. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.


Right, so completely ignore the vast majority of my argument, then resort to childish playground tactics. So I'll repeat my statement.

If you knew anything about the Loughgall Ambush you would know that it was unlawful and part of a deliberate shoot-to-kill policy by the British armed forces, near as bad as the Gibraltar Three killings.

The SDLP are not and never have been a sister party to Labour and they have never been socialist. Post-Belfast Agreement and they're a useless party appealing to middle-class Catholics.

"Northern Irish" people weren't living in fear of republican paramilitaries, they were living in fear of loyalist sectarian murderers who regularly knocked on people's doors in the dead of night and shot them dead, claiming they were republicans and striking a blow for loyalism, when all they were doing were killing innocent Catholics.

Corbyn said it was a shame Bin Laden had been shot because he wanted him put on trial. The BBC didn't mention this, probably because they have a license fee to defend.

The daily rising body-count was used as the ultimate bargaining weapon in intimidating nationalists to force the IRA to stop its military campaign. The nightly trawling of nationalist areas by loyalist serial killers was not replicated by nationalists in unionist areas. Whereas the IRA fought a political war, loyalist paramilitaries, hand in glove with state security forces, fought a sectarian war. To draw comparisons between loyalist death-squads like the Loughinisland killers or the Shankill Butchers with the IRA campaign is a grotesque insult to the victims and families of these sectarian killers.

For the record I don't actually care about Corbyn or Labour as I've no affiliation with either.

The oversimplification of the conflict here that IRA = bad and Army/ Special Forces = good is completely incompetent @That Bearded Man (stealing your words?)

Israel regularly abuses human rights and has broken more international laws than you have GCSEs. Of course I may be overestimating your intelligence that you have more than 10 GCSEs.
Original post by DMcGovern
Right, so completely ignore the vast majority of my argument, then resort to childish playground tactics.


Oh the irony. You asked what support Corbyn had given to terrorists. I wrote a fairly comprehensive post in response. You then had a tantrum, and started babbling about things that had only been said in your own mind. Users like KimKallstrom have already rebuked you in the most withering fashion, and it's only out of a sense of moral seriousness (which you clearly lack in any appreciable degree) that I am replying to your post at all.

If you knew anything about the Loughgall Ambush you would know that it was unlawful and part of a deliberate shoot-to-kill policy by the British armed forces, near as bad as the Gibraltar Three killings.


Obviously you are not legally-educated, and your intellectual deficits may make it yet more difficult for you to grasp what I'm about to say, but I shall explain it as best I can.

Shooting someone dead is not inherently unlawful. Having a policy to apply lethal force is not unlawful. Making a policy decision to kill people who are unarmed, in all circumstances, would be unlawful but no evidence has ever emerged that any such order was given by any minister of the crown or senior officer with command authority.

In Loughgall, eight IRA terrorists attacked a police station with automatic weapons and a huge bomb placed in the bucket of a digger, with the intention of demolishing the station and killing all the police officers inside. The IRA team did crash through the gates and set off the bomb, causing a large part of the station to collapse. It was then that the SAS opened fire.

All of the members of the IRA were armed, all had been involved in multiple previous crimes of murder and terrorism. The SAS didn't gun down unarmed people, they fired at men who were experienced terrorists who were armed and had already commenced the attack on the police station, and who were well aware of the risks of carrying out an act of terrorism. A gun battle ensued, and predictably the IRA lost. For the seven who died at the police station, there is no question their killing was lawful and the decision to use force to stop them was lawful.

For the one terrorist who ran across a field, the question of whether he was lawfully killed is an open one; it depends entirely on the facts which are very much in dispute. If he was still armed when he was killed, or the SAS member who killed him was in genuine fear of his life or held a genuine belief this IRA member could cause immediate violence to innocents, then the killing was lawful.

But no serious legal commentator would assert that what happened at the police station, and the command decision to deploy the SAS, was wrong in law. You need to learn to separate your emotional hard left (or fellow traveller) attachment to "anti-imperialist" causes from the objective facts of the situation.

By the way, the IRA can't claim they are soldiers not criminals, who should be treated like POWs, and then turn around and complain when they are treated as such. The stench of hypocrisy from the IRA calling themselves soldiers, attacking a police station and losing that battle, then claiming that what happened was some kind of outrage to human dignity, is overwhelming.

The SDLP are not and never have been a sister party to Labour and they have never been socialist.


Obviously you do not understand the terminology of solidarity used between centre-left parties. Your obvious lack of good faith makes any further comment on this a fool's errand.

"Northern Irish" people weren't living in fear of republican paramilitaries


Really? The Bloody Friday bombings in 1972 in which the IRA set off 22 bombs in central Belfast, at bus stations, railway stations, banks, bridges, gas department offices, including a 50 pound bomb which exploded outside a row of shops killing two Catholic women, both mothers, and a 14 year old protestant boy.... that didn't cause fear in the Northern Irish community?

The Kingsmill massacre, in which the IRA pulled over a minibus carrying working-class men, builders, on their way home from work, lined up 11 men and shot them for the "crime" of being protestant... that didn't cause fear?

The murder in 1973 (among countless others, too many to mention), of civilians like William Staunton, a 46 year old magistrate, and James Greer, a 21 year old working-class man with no paramilitary affiliations... this didn't cause fear in the community? The death of 24 year old John White in 1974, caught in the crossfire as IRA snipers attacked British soldiers... this also did not cause fear in the community?

Did the following events in 1974 cause fear in the community; the death of Michael McCreesh and Michael Gallagher, boys aged 15 and 18, who were inspecting an IRA-booby trapped abandoned car when it exploded. The death of Adam Johnston, 34, caught in an IRA truck bomb attack. Seumas O'Neill, aged 32, who was unlucky to have driven his tractor over a bomb the IRA had buried and was killed instantly. Asha Chopra, aged 25, killed by IRA sniper fire aimed at British soldiers. These are just a sampling of the IRA attacks that year.

Did the killing of Eamonn Ryan, father of two aged 32, killed by IRA terrorists during a bank robbery in 1979, cause fear in the community? And Colette Mark, killed in 1980 by IRA sniper fire intended for British soldiers? And Heather Pollock, killed in her own home by stray bullets from IRA sniper fire on an RUC unit? What of the Catholic civilian, Joseph Lynn, killed by IRA sniper fire, in 1981?

What about the death of Catholic youth Charles Love, killed by shrapnel from an IRA bomb in 1990? And David Shiels, a protestant civilian with no paramilitary or security affiliations, shot dead by the IRA? And protestant civilian Derek Ferguson, a working-class man whose only "crime" was that his cousin was a well-known protestant unionist preacher?

I could continue through the 1990s, I've only selected a tiny number of events from a few years. The idea that the community was not frightened by the violence of the IRA is idiotic and demonstrates not only a lack of knowledge of the Troubles but also an appalling immaturity and sociopathic contempt for the value of human life.

Throughout most of the Troubles the majority of nationalists supported the SDLP, not Sinn Fein / IRA, precisely because they completely disagreed with the violence and were sick and tired of their streets being turned into a battlefield, and the needless deaths.

Israel regularly abuses human rights and has broken more international laws than you have GCSEs. Of course I may be overestimating your intelligence that you have more than 10 GCSEs.


That was far less witty than you think. But I suppose you are coming off a very low base of linguistic fluency and flair, so perhaps I should award marks for effort, no matter how crude and cack-handed the attempt.

Anyway, I find it's a futile endeavor to continue to engage people who are such perfect exhibitions of Dunning-Kruger, so our conversation ends here.

@KimKallstrom
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by AlexanderHam
Ahh, I see you reported Kim's excellent post because it nailed your dishonesty and superficiality. The poor little Corbynite victim must be protected from all these mean people who are calling his ******** out.

I won't report your posts in response, I'm not that sensitive and in any case it's better to let them stand so people can see exactly what you're like.

Probably easier just to add you to my ignore list, that way I won't have my screen cluttered up with shrieking hard-left nonsense and sociopathic blather that characterise your "contributions".



Let's examine Jeremy Corbyn's plans instead of throwing insults about.

Corbyn’s 10 pledges

1) Full employment and an economy that works for all: based around a £500bn public investment via the planned national investment bank.
2) A secure homes guarantee: building 1m new homes in five years, at least half of them council homes. Also rent controls and secure tenancies.
3) Security at work: includes stronger employment rights, an end to zero hours contracts and mandatory collective bargaining for companies with 250 or more employees.
4) Secure our NHS and social care: end health service privatisation and bring services into a “secure, publicly-provided NHS”.
5) A national education service: includes universal public childcare, the “progressive restoration” of free education, and quality apprenticeships.
6) Action to secure our environment: includes keeping to Paris climate agreement, and moving to a “low-carbon economy” and green industries, in part via national investment bank.
7) Put the public back into our economy and services: includes renationalising railways and bringing private bus, leisure and sports facilities back into local government control.
8) Cut income and wealth inequality: make a progressive tax system so highest paid are “fairly taxed”, shrink the gap between the highest and lowest paid.
9) Peace and justice at the heart of foreign policy: aims to put conflict resolution and human rights “at the heart of foreign policy”.“fairly taxed”, shrink the gap between the highest and lowest paid.
10) Action to secure an equal society: includes action to combat violence against women, as well as discrimination based on race, sexuality or disability, and defend the Human Rights Act.
Original post by AlexanderHam

Shooting someone dead is not inherently unlawful. Having a policy to apply lethal force is not unlawful. Making a policy decision to kill people who are unarmed, in all circumstances, would be unlawful but no evidence has ever emerged that any such order was given by any minister of the crown or senior officer with command authority.

In Loughgall, eight IRA terrorists attacked a police station with automatic weapons and a huge bomb placed in the bucket of a digger, with the intention of demolishing the station and killing all the police officers inside. The IRA team did crash through the gates and set off the bomb, causing a large part of the station to collapse. It was then that the SAS opened fire.

All of the members of the SAS were armed, all had been involved in multiple previous crimes of murder and terrorism. The SAS didn't gun down unarmed people, they fired at men who were experienced terrorists who were armed and had already commenced the attack on the police station, and who were well aware of the risks of carrying out an act of terrorism. A gun battle ensued, and predictably the IRA lost. For the seven who died at the police station, there is no question their killing was lawful and the decision to use force to stop them was lawful.

For the one terrorist who ran across a field, the question of whether he was lawfully killed is an open one; it depends entirely on the facts which are very much in dispute. If he was still armed when he was killed, or the SAS member who killed him was in genuine fear of his life or held a genuine belief this IRA member could cause immediate violence to innocents, then the killing was lawful.

But no serious legal commentator would assert that what happened at the police station, and the command decision to deploy the SAS, was wrong in law. You need to learn to separate your emotional hard left (or fellow traveller) attachment to "anti-imperialist" causes from the objective facts of the situation.

By the way, the IRA can't claim they are soldiers not criminals, who should be treated like POWs, and then turn around and complain when they are treated as such. The stench of hypocrisy from the IRA calling themselves soldiers, attacking a police station and losing that battle, then claiming that what happened was some kind of outrage to human dignity, is overwhelming.

Obviously you do not understand the terminology of solidarity used between centre-left parties. Your obvious lack of good faith makes any further comment on this a fool's errand.



Really? The Bloody Friday bombings in 1972 in which the IRA set off 22 bombs in central Belfast, at bus stations, railway stations, banks, bridges, gas department offices, including a 50 pound bomb which exploded outside a row of shops killing two Catholic women, both mothers, and a 14 year old protestant boy.... that didn't cause fear in the Northern Irish community?

The Kingsmill massacre, in which the IRA pulled over a minibus carrying working-class men, builders, on their way home from work, lined up 11 men and shot them for the "crime" of being protestant... that didn't cause fear?

The murder in 1973 (among countless others, too many to mention), of civilians like William Staunton, a 46 year old magistrate, and James Greer, a 21 year old working-class man with no paramilitary affiliations... this didn't cause fear in the community? The death of 24 year old John White in 1974, caught in the crossfire as IRA snipers attacked British soldiers... this also did not cause fear in the community?

Did the following events in 1974 cause fear in the community; the death of Michael McCreesh and Michael Gallagher, boys aged 15 and 18, who were inspecting an IRA-booby trapped abandoned car when it exploded. The death of Adam Johnston, 34, caught in an IRA truck bomb attack. Seumas O'Neill, aged 32, who was unlucky to have driven his tractor over a bomb the IRA had buried and was killed instantly. Asha Chopra, aged 25, killed by IRA sniper fire aimed at British soldiers. These are just a sampling of the IRA attacks that year.

Did the killing of Eamonn Ryan, father of two aged 32, killed by IRA terrorists during a bank robbery in 1979, cause fear in the community? And Colette Mark, killed in 1980 by IRA sniper fire intended for British soldiers? And Heather Pollock, killed in her own home by stray bullets from IRA sniper fire on an RUC unit? What of the Catholic civilian, Joseph Lynn, killed by IRA sniper fire, in 1981?

What about the death of Catholic youth Charles Love, killed by shrapnel from an IRA bomb in 1990? And David Shiels, a protestant civilian with no paramilitary or security affiliations, shot dead by the IRA? And protestant civilian Derek Ferguson, a working-class man whose only "crime" was that his cousin was a well-known protestant unionist preacher?

I could continue through the 1990s, I've only selected a tiny number of events from a few years. The idea that the community was not frightened by the violence of the IRA is idiotic and demonstrates not only a lack of knowledge of the Troubles but also an appalling immaturity and sociopathic contempt for the value of human life.

Throughout most of the Troubles the majority of nationalists supported the SDLP, not Sinn Fein / IRA, precisely because they completely disagreed with the violence and were sick and tired of their streets being turned into a battlefield, and the needless deaths.



That was far less witty than you think. But I suppose you are coming off a very low base of linguistic fluency and flair, so I perhaps I should award marks for effort, no matter how crude and cack-handed it was.

Anyway, I find it's a futile endeavor to continue to engage people who are such perfect exhibitions of Dunning-Kruger, so our conversation ends here.

@KimKallstrom


Again, completely ignoring my statements on the loyalist terror incidents and focusing on a selected part of a sentence.

I accept your argument on the Loughgall Ambush, however there is the issue of not allowing them to surrender and the shooting of two civilians.

The SAS fired about 1,200 rounds at the IRA unit, riddling the van with bullets. The eight IRA volunteers were killed in the hail of gunfire; all had multiple wounds and were shot in the head. Seamus Donnelly managed to escape into the football field beside the road, but was shot dead there. It has also been alleged that three of the wounded IRA members were shot dead as they lay on the ground after surrendering.
Two civilians travelling in a car were also shot by the SAS. The two brothers, Anthony and Oliver Hughes, were driving back from work. About 130 yards from the base, SAS members opened fire on them from behind, killing Anthony (the driver) and badly wounding Oliver. The SAS fired about 50 rounds at them from a garden. The villagers had not been told of the operation and no attempt had been made to evacuate anyone, or to seal off the ambush zone.

This type of incident became fairly common, which served not as a deterrent but as propaganda for republican paramilitaries, like Bloody Sunday.

By the way, the IRA can't claim they are soldiers not criminals, who should be treated like POWs, and then turn around and complain when they are treated as such. The stench of hypocrisy from the IRA calling themselves soldiers, attacking a police station and losing that battle, then claiming that what happened was some kind of outrage to human dignity, is overwhelming.


You make a fair point, however the British army were not taught, nor are special forces, to riddle a vehicle with bullets. They are taught to shoot with accuracy and with as few bullets as possible. They are also taught to allow surrendering enemies to lay down their arms and be taken into custody, and not have their 'comrades' shot on the ground after dying or being seriously injured as is human decency and standard procedure in any army.

Throughout most of the Troubles the majority of nationalists supported the SDLP, not Sinn Fein / IRA, precisely because they completely disagreed with the violence and were sick and tired of their streets being turned into a battlefield, and the needless deaths.


Actually the only evidence that could support that is election results, but most republican groups followed an abstentionist policy of either not standing in elections or standing but not taking seats, meaning that Sinn Féin did not contest elections until 1982 and the republican vote was fragmented between parties and independent candidates anyway, for example Bobby Sands being a candidate for "Anti H-Block" in my constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone. It also does not hold up to more recent election results making Sinn Féin the largest party in Ireland and the largest nationalist party in the North of Ireland.

I could continue through the 1990s, I've only selected a tiny number of events from a few years. The idea that the community was not frightened by the violence of the IRA is idiotic and demonstrates not only a lack of knowledge of the Troubles but also an appalling immaturity and sociopathic contempt for the value of human life.


You have misread my post, either purposefully or mistakenly.
The communities here would've been more scared by the prospect of loyalist terrorists unless they were living in a hardline unionist area.
The daily rising body-count was used as the ultimate bargaining weapon in intimidating nationalists to force the IRA to stop its military campaign. The nightly trawling of nationalist areas by loyalist serial killers was not replicated by nationalists in unionist areas. Whereas the IRA fought a political war, loyalist paramilitaries, hand in glove with state security forces, fought a sectarian war. To draw comparisons between loyalist death-squads like the Loughinisland killers or the Shankill Butchers with the IRA campaign is a grotesque insult to the victims and families of these sectarian killers.

Farmers, shopkeepers, publicans and businessmen were slaughtered in a bloody decade of bombings and shootings in the counties of Tyrone, Fermanagh and Armagh in the 1970s. Four families each lost three relatives; in other cases, children were left orphaned after both parents were murdered. For years there were claims that loyalists were helped and guided by members of the RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment. Drawing on 15 years of research, and using forensic and ballistic information never before published, reporters have unearthed previously unpublished reports written by the PSNI's own Historical Enquiries Team and interviewed the bereaved families whose lives were shattered by this cold and calculated campaign.

You have to have been directly affected by this conflict or endured a loss to truly understand it. It shows the total ignorance of loyalist operations that they had access to weapons and intelligence and still could only kill soft targets (random Catholics) and not any high level republicans or IRA operatives. It re-enforces the belief that UDA/UVF/UFF just hated Catholics, everyone was a target and the RUC and Army helped. The Provos were no angels either. Our country today has a lot of people who are nobodies and thrive on the hatred on both sides.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by DMcGovern
I accept your argument on the Loughgall Ambush, however there is the issue of not allowing them to surrender and the shooting of two civilians.

The assertion they were not allowed to surrender is quite speculative; because none of them survived we will never really know. Also, even where someone is purporting to surrender and are killed, it may still be a lawful killing if the person who pulled the trigger was in genuine fear of their lives.

As a more practical point, any British soldier the IRA captured would be interrogated, tortured and then killed. Many British soldiers suffered that fate. It is not at all surprising that after years of British soldiers being killed shortly after capture, while IRA members would be captured and sent to prison (and often released) that units like the Det (14 Intelligence Coy) and the SAS would ensure that no terrorists left the battlefield alive.

Surely you can also accept that, objectively speaking, it was highly obnoxious that the IRA would would do that to any British soldier captured, but expected in the opposite situation that they would always be treated fairly, arrested and sent to prison. Now, I don't suggest it should have been different; they were violent, murderous, amoral terrorists and we were the lawful government of Northern Ireland. We have to uphold the rule of law. But equally, the IRA should not have been surprised that the British Army would be perhaps less quick to give a wounded IRA man the benefit of the doubt and try to take him into custody.

That the IRA did behave like that suggests that they were completely hypocritical, or utterly cynical in using victimhood rhetoric to gee up the nationalist community, or both.

The SAS fired about 1,200 rounds at the IRA unit, riddling the van with bullets. The eight IRA volunteers were killed in the hail of gunfire; all had multiple wounds and were shot in the head


That is entirely proper and lawful. They were carrying out a terrorist attack on a police station, the SAS were not there as police officers trying to arrest a contumacious shoplifter; they were there to use deadly force and kill IRA terrorists who were carrying out an attack on civilian law enforcement. Once the command decision had lawfully been made to use force and the IRA commenced the attack by detonating the bomb, the SAS had no obligation at law to give them an opportunity to surrender which in itself would have put the SAS men at risk.

Lethal force was lawful and justified and they were entitled to use those tactics that would be most efficient in killing the terrorists.

Seamus Donnelly managed to escape into the football field beside the road, but was shot dead there


That may have been lawful, it may have been unlawful. If he was escaping and carrying a rifle, then I don't think any serious argument can be made that it was unlawful. If he was not carrying a rifle, and was no longer a threat, and the SAS men executed him then that would probably be unlawful though again the test is subjective; did they fear for their lives? Based on the information we have, no-one can say for sure.

It has also been alleged that three of the wounded IRA members were shot dead as they lay on the ground after surrendering


It has been alleged by people who weren't there and who have demonstrated time and again their willingness to be utterly cynical and hypocritical in attacking the security forces.

Two civilians travelling in a car were also shot by the SAS. The two brothers, Anthony and Oliver Hughes, were driving back from work


Yes, I know about that and that in particular was a terrible tragedy. The SAS believed they were part of the IRA unit. Obviously things could and should have been done better, but it is always a fool's errand to monday-morning quarterback and judge them from the comfort and safety of your own home when their thought processes in the heat of battle, during an ongoing terrorist attack, would have been much less objective and less able to apply precise discrimination.

The villagers had not been told of the operation and no attempt had been made to evacuate anyone, or to seal off the ambush zone.


Of course they didn't, and that was entirely proper. Sealing off the ambush zone and informing the villages is as good as cancelling the operation. As soon as they did so, the IRA would find out. This Active Service Unit had carried out numerous attacks and murders, and already bombed/destroyed two other police stations. It was a justifiable decision that this might be their only opportunity to stop them, and they took it.

The police station is also on the outskirts of the village, it wasn't as though it was in the centre of the village stretch on Ballygawley Road, it was at the very edge of the village next to open fields.

This type of incident became fairly common, which served not as a deterrent but as propaganda for republican paramilitaries, like Bloody Sunday.


They weren't that common. The Gibraltar shooting is the only other incident I can think of that is analogous in terms of ambush and comparable in the results (though 3 to 8 is obviously a significant number).

I do think it had an effect; the decision of McGuinness and Adams to reach out to the British in 1990 was largely motivated by the IRA's increasing difficulties in operating, the increasingly successful use of informants and electronic surveillance. I think it was Darky Hughes (maybe, or someone else) who said that by 1990, they basically couldn't move without the British knowing, they were always being watched, their people were regularly being put into prison, they were finding it harder to recruit than they had in the 1970s. The basket of measures Thatcher introduced to really hit the IRA hard made the 1980s much harder for the IRA and the 1970s had been.

You make a fair point, however the British army were not taught, nor are special forces, to riddle a vehicle with bullets. They are taught to shoot with accuracy and with as few bullets as possible.


It depends entirely on the situation. If the objective is to stop the terrorist attack and that lethal force is clearly lawful in such a situation, then opening up on the terrorists is a justifiable tactical decision to neutralise the terrorists as quickly as possible. From what I remember, the engagement in front of the station lasted about 30 seconds. It's a very dynamic situation; the terrorists attacked, the army fired back with maximum force, and the terrorists died.

I think Republicans are on a hiding to nothing to try to attack the SAS' conduct in respect of that part of the operation; using lethal force against terrorists who are at that very moment conducting an attack using guns and bombs is pretty much a textbook example of when lethal force is justified.

They are also taught to allow surrendering enemies to lay down their arms and be taken into custody


We don't know that's what happened. The official version is that the SAS opened up on the digger and the van, and all the terrorists were dead pretty quickly. I can't imagine the SAS breaking cover to go and walk up to one of them, it seems more likely the SAS emptied their clips until they saw no more movement.

Actually the only evidence that could support that is election results


The 1984 European elections being a good example. The SDLP received much higher vote total than Sinn Fein.

The communities here would've been more scared by the prospect of loyalist terrorists unless they were living in a hardline unionist area.


That's simply not true. I know people from Northern Ireland, they were scared of all the armed groups and disgusted by the violence. Anyone and everyone was at risk of being killed, and many innocents died in IRA sniper attacks and bombings.

It's true that many in the nationalist community feared the loyalist terrorist groups, that is natural. But your claim that the entire community was really only afraid of the loyalists is total bunk.

The nightly trawling of nationalist areas by loyalist serial killers was not replicated by nationalists in unionist areas


That is not an accurate characterisation of the level of violence or the relative levels of responsibility. The IRA killed around 2000 people, the loyalists around 1000 and the British army killed about 350. Remember that IRA attacks didn't occur in a vacuum, they weren't carrying out attacks on the British army in outer space, it was happening in their communities. And many innocents got caught up in that.

I do accept that the loyalists were more prone to target civilians in random shootings based on sect, but the IRA absolutely did that too. The Kingsmill massacre, they pulled over a van, pulled 11 working-class builders out, lined them up and shot them simply because they were protestant. On Bloody Friday 1972 they set off 22 bombs in bus stations, train stations, bridges, etc. In 1989 they bombed a Remambrance Day ceremony for ****'s sake, pretty much all the dead were civilians and the casualties included 13 children. On the same day a 150-pound IRA car bomb in Tullyhommon thankfully failed to go off, but the targeted square was where Boy Scouts and Girl Guides had gathered to celebrate Remembrance Day. They bombed pubs in Birminham, for goodness sake. Pubs.

The IRA were scum, and it's extremely obnoxious to defend what they did. I know that many on the hard left and their fellow travellers have a juvenile obsession with "revolutionaries" and "freedom fighters" (i.e. murderers and terrorists), but anyone with even a modicum of empathy and common sense intuitively understands the IRA campaign was completely unjustified and caused far more death, injury, pain and regression for Irish society than the "accomplishment" of accepting partition would justify.

Whereas the IRA fought a political war


It wasn't a "political war", it was a criminal terrorist campaign that resulted in 2000 deaths, all of them completely unjustified both on their own terms and on the fact the IRA ended up accepting partition anyway.

I've made a good faith effort now to respond to most of your points in the comment, it's late now and I'm tired so I'm going to bed.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by pickup
Let's examine Jeremy Corbyn's plans instead of throwing insults about.

Corbyn’s 10 pledges


Am I supposed to be impressed? I'm already fully aware of his policies. Some of them (like "Full employment and a fairer economy for all") are just platitudes, others (like the public investment bank, repealing the HSCA 2012, bringing railways back into public ownership, more funding for apprentices) were already promised by Miliband in the last parliament.

You ignorantly assume that because I oppose Corbyn I must not have seen his policies, as if nobody who has seen his policies could still disagree with him.

The irony of the Corbynites is that it wasn't that long ago that most of you were attacking the Labour Party and trying to get the Greens elected instead. You think Jeremy Corbyn is something truly new, which in large part comes from your total ignorance of Ed Miliband's policies. In fact, Ed Miliband was more left-wing than Corbyn on policies that really matter (breaking up the largest banks with an ownership cap, guaranteed job for any unemployed person, among many other things). But you wouldn't know about that because prior to May 2015 people like you barely paid attention to politics. And now you expect to have any credibility and be considered an expert?

Anyway, I find you tiresome and I definitely will add you to my ignore list so I don't have to see any more of your contributions
Original post by AlexanderHam

They weren't that common. The Gibraltar shooting is the only other incident I can think of that is analogous in terms of ambush and comparable in the results (though 3 to 8 is obviously a significant number).


- 11 November 1982: The killing of three unarmed IRA members at an RUC checkpoint in east Lurgan.
- 24 November 1982: The killing, by an RUC undercover unit, of Michael Tighe and the wounding of his friend Martin McCauley at an IRA arms cache on a farm near Lurgan, Armagh.
- 12 December 1982: The killing at an RUC checkpoint in Mullacreavie, Armagh, of two INLA members, Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll.

Also, arguably Bloody Sunday and the Ballymurphy Massacre, although these were unprovoked killings of civilians.

I do think it had an effect; the decision of McGuinness and Adams to reach out to the British in 1990 was largely motivated by the IRA's increasing difficulties in operating, the increasingly successful use of informants and electronic surveillance. I think it was Darky Hughes (maybe, or someone else) who said that by 1990, they basically couldn't move without the British knowing, they were always being watched, their people were regularly being put into prison, they were finding it harder to recruit than they had in the 1970s. The basket of measures Thatcher introduced to really hit the IRA hard made the 1980s much harder for the IRA and the 1970s had been.


No, the 1981 hunger strike was a huge propaganda victory for the Provisionals and was a Pyrrhic victory for Thatcher. Over 10,000 men and women were in the Provisionals over the course of the conflict.

We don't know that's what happened. The official version is that the SAS opened up on the digger and the van, and all the terrorists were dead pretty quickly. I can't imagine the SAS breaking cover to go and walk up to one of them, it seems more likely the SAS emptied their clips until they saw no more movement.


They would've inevitably moved to chase Seamus Donnelly, and after the firefight.

That's simply not true. I know people from Northern Ireland, they were scared of all the armed groups and disgusted by the violence. Anyone and everyone was at risk of being killed, and many innocents died in IRA sniper attacks and bombings.

It's true that many in the nationalist community feared the loyalist terrorist groups, that is natural. But your claim that the entire community was really only afraid of the loyalists is total bunk.


I did not say the whole community, but from my experience in Fermanagh the main fear was of loyalist collusion. A Protestant near us was murdered along with his Catholic wife. Our local butcher was found shot dead in his shop.

There was also danger from the Provisionals but they tended to target UDR and RUC men, not civilians, although the loyalists did drag them into sectarian tit-for-tat killings.

That is not an accurate characterisation of the level of violence or the relative levels of responsibility. The IRA killed around 2000 people, the loyalists around 1000 and the British army killed about 350. Remember that IRA attacks didn't occur in a vacuum, they weren't carrying out attacks on the British army in outer space, it was happening in their communities. And many innocents got caught up in that.


It wasn't a "political war", it was a criminal terrorist campaign that resulted in 2000 deaths, all of them completely unjustified both on their terms and on the fact the IRA ended up accepting partition anyway.


You're talking to me as if I've not lived through this.

According to Malcolm Sutton's Index to Troubles related deaths, the Provisional IRA has been responsible for the deaths of 1758 people in the period between January 1 1969 and December 31 1993. Of those, 345 (19.6% of total IRA killings) were uninvolved Protestant civilians (uninvolved meaning they were not active loyalists or working for the security forces etc.), a third (106 of them) killed in 1975-1976 alone. And among those 345 deaths, 133 were the result of deliberate sectarian killings. It also should be noted that 85 of these sectarian killings took place in the 1975-1976 period.

The majority of IRA victims (around 1000 that is more than 50%) were members of the British security forces (British Army, RUC, UDR, ...). From these figures, it is clear that the IRA campaign was directed against the British state rather than the protestant community. It was not sectarian in nature, although some individual sectarian attacks and murders unfortunately did take place (like the Kingsmill massacre in 1976). But sectarian murders committed by the IRA were more the exception than the rule (as they represent 133 killings on a total of 1758), especially given the fact that the vast majority of them (85) were committed in a short period of time (1975-1976). Relative to loyalist killings, the non-sectarian nature of the IRA campaign becomes even more evident.

In the 1969-1993 period, loyalist paramilitaries have been responsible for the killing of 911 people. Of those, 612 were uninvolved innocent catholic civilians (67.2%), and a substantial number of the rest were Protestants killed because they were married to or mistaken for a Catholic. The loyalists explicitely target civilian members of the Roman Catholic community. Such a campaign is clearly sectarian in nature.

The IRA were scum, and it's extremely obnoxious to defend what they did. I know that many on the hard left and their fellow travellers have a juvenile obsession with "revolutionaries" and "freedom fighters" (i.e. murderers and terrorists), but anyone with even a modicum of empathy and common sense intuitively understands the IRA campaign was completely unjustified and caused far more death, injury, pain and regression for Irish society than the "accomplishment" of accepting partition would justify.


While undoubtedly, there are many aspects of the IRA military campaign which have indeed strengthened (as opposed to have caused) the sectarian divisions in the Irish working class, it is wrong to absolutise these aspects and present them as if they were the only ones. The main feature of IRA violence is that it is the violence of the oppressed masses directed against the oppressor and arising out of profound economic and social causes; out of the age-old struggle of the Irish people for "justice and democracy", something that was lacking in the Northern government, and in the present phase of the struggle, directly out of the working class revolt in the six counties. The IRA campaign is intrinsically linked to the "tradition of the oppressed" and not to sectarianism.

Let us also remember the right of revolution. Written by the philosopher John Locke, the right to revolution formed an integral part of his social contract theory, in which he tried to define the origins and basis for social conditions and relationships. Locke declared that under natural law, allpeople have the right to life, liberty, and estate; under the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted against the interests of citizens, to replace the government with one that served the interests of citizens. In some cases, Locke deemed revolution an obligation. The right of revolution thus essentially acted as a safeguard against tyranny.
Democracy had been subverted to discriminate against Catholics and nonviolent protest was not working.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by AlexanderHam

That is not an accurate characterisation of the level of violence or the relative levels of responsibility. The IRA killed around 2000 people, the loyalists around 1000 and the British army killed about 350.


The details paint a somewhat different picture though. The majority of those killed by Republican paramilitaries were combatants of some form or other, with slightly over a third being civilians. By contrast, those killed by loyalist paramilitaries were overwhelmingly (80%+) civilians. For the British forces it was about 50-50.

This ultimately fits with the driving strategies of the two sides. The PIRA generally (and incorrectly) saw the British as the main obstacle, and believed that if they could either defeat the British forces or sap their will to fight on, they would win and achieve their goal of unification. The loyalist paramilitaries, by contrast, simply terrorised Catholic communities, believing that it would scare the Republicans into backing down.

This is not to say that the IRA never targeted civilians, they often did. But it was never a fundamental aspect of their strategy in the same way it was to the loyalists', For example, there was no IRA equivalent of the UDA 'Doomsday Plan', which essentially proposed mass atrocities to ethnically cleanse large parts of Northern Ireland of Catholics.

It wasn't a "political war", it was a criminal terrorist campaign that resulted in 2000 deaths, all of them completely unjustified both on their own terms and on the fact the IRA ended up accepting partition anyway.


The Troubles initially grew out of the struggle over civil rights in Northern Ireland, and the institutional discrimination against and disenfranchisement of Northern Irish Catholics. Indeed, the NI civil rights movement didn't even initially demand power sharing, just an end to their hugely unfair treatment. When activists attempted to march peacefully for these demands, they were stoned and beaten by loyalist thugs. When a moderate unionist leader, Terence O'Neill, attempted to grant some of the demands, loyalist paramilitaries bombed him out of office.

There were many things wrong with the IRA. Their many attacks on civilians. Their bizarre romanticised nationalist dogma which obscured their political analysis (and Sinn Fein still pointlessly observe many of these petty 'traditions'). But in itself, the basic decision of those who became IRA fighters to take up arms because peaceful efforts to win basic social and political rights had resulted in nothing but violence against them is one I won't fault.

Also, for the record I recognise that British governments throughout the Troubles were in a very difficult position. With the arguable partial exception of Thatcher, every Prime Minister involved, from Wilson to Blair, had no particular desire to keep Northern Ireland in the UK; they just wanted the conflict solved, and didn't see unification as a viable part of that, at least not in the short-term. They were essentially forced by loyalist and unionist rejectionism into imposing the default position of direct rule which they didn't really consider just or viable. That said, the collusion with loyalist death squads, and even the creation of the British Army's own death squads like the MRF, was unforgivable, though I do accept that, in general, these were initiatives from within the military rather than the British government proper.
Reply 113
Whoop whoop go Corbyn!!

Bring on 25 years of Tory rule! :yeah:
Reply 114
As a Tory I'm delighted. As a Brit I'm appalled.
Reply 115
Original post by pickup
Let's examine Jeremy Corbyn's plans instead of throwing insults about.

Corbyn’s 10 pledges

1) Full employment and an economy that works for all: based around a £500bn public investment via the planned national investment bank.
2) A secure homes guarantee: building 1m new homes in five years, at least half of them council homes. Also rent controls and secure tenancies.
3) Security at work: includes stronger employment rights, an end to zero hours contracts and mandatory collective bargaining for companies with 250 or more employees.
4) Secure our NHS and social care: end health service privatisation and bring services into a “secure, publicly-provided NHS”.
5) A national education service: includes universal public childcare, the “progressive restoration” of free education, and quality apprenticeships.
6) Action to secure our environment: includes keeping to Paris climate agreement, and moving to a “low-carbon economy” and green industries, in part via national investment bank.
7) Put the public back into our economy and services: includes renationalising railways and bringing private bus, leisure and sports facilities back into local government control.
8) Cut income and wealth inequality: make a progressive tax system so highest paid are “fairly taxed”, shrink the gap between the highest and lowest paid.
9) Peace and justice at the heart of foreign policy: aims to put conflict resolution and human rights “at the heart of foreign policy”.“fairly taxed”, shrink the gap between the highest and lowest paid.
10) Action to secure an equal society: includes action to combat violence against women, as well as discrimination based on race, sexuality or disability, and defend the Human Rights Act.


These policies aren't worth the pixels I see them on. We have, in order:

1) Money tree
2) Meddle in the housing market (US house meddling caused 08 meltdown)
3) End flexible part-time work for students and working parents, re-militarise unions
4) Part-platitude, part-outright refusal to even consider cost-saving measures on our bloated public health system
5) Fluffy nothingness
6) Use the money tree to uproot our energy economy to prevent sea levels rising an inch in 150 years, although we aren't even sure if that'll happen really either
7) Retrograde 70s rubbish about public ownership of the utilities
8) A tax on the successful, incentive the rich to move away so we can all be equally squalid.
9) "Peace and justice" here meaning we should support genocidal, goat-loaving cultists who almost to a man consider our way of life sinful, in their insane crusade against Israel.
10) Identitarian rubbish to appease the Jess Phillips' and Diane Abbotts of his own party.

I'm not impressed.
Original post by DMcGovern
You're talking to me as if I've not lived through this.


You didn't live through it. You were born after the Good Friday Agreement was signed. :confused:
Hot chocolate ode to Jeremy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw8vw55GzhU&app=desktop

PS this is not Diane Abbott
Original post by Snufkin
You didn't live through it. You were born after the Good Friday Agreement was signed. :confused:


No, no I wasn't. I was born after the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed. You also clearly don't know anything about it here if you think that after the Belfast Agreement was signed all the violence just stopped. Omagh, Drumcree, Holy Cross.
Original post by DMcGovern
No, no I wasn't. I was born after the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed. You also clearly don't know anything about it here if you think that after the Belfast Agreement was signed all the violence just stopped. Omagh, Drumcree, Holy Cross.


Yes, you were. You're about to apply to university so you can't be older than 17. You did not live through The Troubles - don't embarrass yourself by arguing otherwise.

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