Can someone explain the Troubles to me?

To be honest the protestant part of NI should go to the Netherlands, they celebrate the Dutch landing every year after all

Apparently about half of Ireland, Northern and Republic support a united island. Do you see it happening within the next century?

The Republic of Ireland doesn't want the North anymore, it would be a financial burden for the south now with their booming economy. The UK doesn't currently have it too well with NI either. Most nationalists are in the North and the Republic has all in all become a developed western state with good relations all around and an open border with NI. Grudges aren't taken seriously and the Republic is becoming more and more liberal with any unification prospects seen as an unnecessary burden.

Succintly put

Micks chimping out, as always

The troubles? Well it started before William the bastard and the Normans. The short version starts with the constitutional crises of 1909. And the home rule bill. The protestants rebelled against the British government to remain British and formed the UDF. The British army refused to crush the UDF in defiance of the British government. You think that's crazy, it gets a lot worse. But start there.

>We will fight the British government to remain subject to the British government
The UDF has to be one of the most bizarre movements in history

There's really only one solution here. Eventually, everybody on all of those islands will have to be gassed. It's for the best.

>mfw grandpa would answer this question with a silent glare harsh enough to melt steel
>mfw his daughters reflexively say "we don't discuss the troubles user" to this day

You have to imagine them as a chav version of the KKK for it to make any sense.

Ironically "Scotland" is named for the Scoti, an Irish tribal confederation. They culturally and genetically have more in common with their Catholic neighbors. Another thing, protestant immigrants referred to themselves as Irish (not British or Scottish).

>the Troubles
That's such a stupid name for a historical event. I can imagine some prudish old welsh farmer stating in a high but relaxed tone that he recalls 'the troubles'.

The trobules were, depending on who you ask, a proper and righteous cause to fend off british imperialism and reunite with their brothers, or a savage expansionist campaign ignoring the democratic will of the northern irish people, it's not made any better when both sides are horifically brutal (murdering random civllians/completely unjust imprisonment)

What the fuck are you saying, its the most irish possible name an insurgency could possibly have

well, thank you for giving us the grade school version of history

The core of the conflict was the question of the partition/reunification of Ireland. Which is a long and complicated story, but for our purposes starts during WW1, and the Easter Uprising of 1916.

The reason there was an uprising in 1916, as opposed to any other time in the previous century, was because it was largely staged by the Germans, using a few Irish nationalists as their stooges. It's important to note that at this time Irish nationalism was far from an exclusively Catholic cause, although Catholics were disproportionately involved, there were many protestant Irish intellectuals to. Nationalism had started in Europe as an antidote to religious conflict, and Irish nationalism was based on an idea of common Irish culture.

An overwhelming majority of the Irish disapproved of the violent 1916 insurrection at the time; many had relatives and friends fighting in Europe against Germany, and the appetite for independence had been low for decades. HOWEVER, British government's swift, ruthless execution of the rebel leaders caused consternation, and squandered much of Britain's moral high ground. The 'martyrs' of 1916 inspired more discontent nationalists to take up arms after the war was over. After WW1 the British Empire was bankrupt and exhausted. Ireland was a distraction they simply didn't want. The idea of Home Rule had been talked about seriously for decades - contrary to the modern canard of British apathy towards Ireland, the continuing poverty there had been a major issue for the British government for decades. When it became clear that the IRA couldn't be suppressed easily these plans were brought forth again.

Remember, Ireland didn't actually declare full independence until 1949. From so called 'independence' in 1921 until then, it was actually a self-governing province of the British Empire with the British monarch as its head of state. So it wasn't such a dramatic break with the old order.

Ulster was the most prosperous and industrialised of Ireland. Like Croatia and Slovenia at the beginning of the 1990s, they were terrified that now that the old political order was collapsing, if they remained in union with the poorer provinces - who were old cultural enemies - their prosperity would be looted away by corrupt politicians seeking a payday for their own communities. Some no doubt believed that with the Catholics arming themselves, massacres of protestants would soon follow. So, with the Catholic counties forming militias and guerrilla groups like the IRA, out of fear the Protestant counties in the north began to do the same. The situation in Ireland was heading down a very dark road; the situation in the Balkans in the early 1990s is actually a very good indication of what would have happened next had partition not gone through.

The only solution that didn't lead to an extreme amount of bloodshed clearly was partition. Even the leadership of the IRA realised that if they pressed to keep the Ireland united, as soon as they achieved independence they'd have an immediate civil war on their hands. So the Catholic counties were given home rule, and Ulster got to stay a part of Britain.

So things settled down a bit. The trouble was, both sides still hated each other for deep cultural reasons. The newly independent Catholic counties mercilessly persecuted the protestants within their borders (who were a significant minority), with every protestant - even the nationalists who had supported Irish independence - being scapegoated as a Saxon invader who was probably spying for the British. In Ulster it was not so much active persecution on the basis of religion, since Catholics and Protestants got along perfectly well in the rest of the UK, as a denial of political rights to communities suspected of Irish nationalism (i.e. majority Catholic areas). The favourite tool for this was Gerrymandering. The Protestants of Ulster kept a very tight grip on politics, leading to poverty in the Catholic communities that were denied the same services and investment as protestant ones. Apart from simple religious bigotry, the Protestants were still terrified of unification, and thought that giving any leeway to the Catholics would be the first step on the road towards that.

By the 1960s it was becoming a much more pressing problem in Ulster due to the growing Catholic population (meanwhile the Republic had virtually persecuted its protestants out of existence). Several of Ulster's western counties had flipped from being majority Protestant to majority Catholic, and the others had large Catholic majorities. The discontent over the lack of political representation and the discrimination in jobs and housing were starting to reach a peak. In the Catholic community the people who had fought in the IRA - the original IRA - during the war for 'independence' in 1920 were folk heroes. A splinter group of the original IRA which had opposed partition - it didn't have official sanction in the Republic but did have a good amount of unofficial help - had kept up guerrilla attacks on Protestants in the North, with a particular campaign during the late 1950s and early 60s. This had always attracted a steady trickle of malcontents. However, their influence was limited.

Riots and other civil disturbances became more common throughout the 1960s. Catholics would riot, and then Protestant mobs would vandalise Catholic neighbourhoods in retaliation. The IRA's reputation suffered as it was able to do little to protect Catholic neighbourhoods.

Many Catholics in the north were more inspired by the growing civil rights movement in the US. They started peaceful marches to protest the discrimination against Catholics. It's important to point out here that the British outside N. Ireland had no particular interest in oppressing Catholics, and if the marches had continued they may well have worked. The problem for the British government in London was that this discrimination happened at a local level, so it wasn't a matter of changing their own policies, they had to pressure the Ulster protestants to grant the Catholics more political rights. It was simply that this required some effort given how bitterly entrenched sectarian politics was in Ulster and the British government in the 1960s and 70s wasn't exactly renowned for its political willpower. Also some of the more right wing didn't see why they should alienate Britain's supports in Ulster to appease a bunch of Marxists (Marxism was big in the IRA) who just wanted to secede anyway.

Then, in 1972, Bloody Sunday happened. In the runup to this the violence had gotten bad enough that the British government had been forced to deploy troops to keep order. During a peaceful civil rights march they were deployed to keep the peace, and the inevitable happened. Some of the marchers splintered away and starting throwing rocks and bottles at the soldiers. The soldiers were ordered to arrest the rioters, for which they had to leave their barricades and go out among the crowds. Rioters became mixed with peaceful protesters, troops became involved in violent altercations, and in the confusion someone opened fire - possibly he was legitimately under attack, but we'll never know. Thinking that they were under attack by the IRA, the troops opened fire into the crowd, and 14 unarmed civilians died. Up until this point the British army had been considered to be relatively neutral, at least compared to the highly sectarian Ulster police, so were a stabilising force.

After this, the Catholic community became a lot more solidly anti-British.

Bloody Sunday precipitated a big upswing in IRA membership. In fact - and this isn't really important for the overall story, but should be noted - at this point the IRA had already splintered again into the Provisional IRA, since the previous group (which had, if you remember, splintered from the original IRA that had fought in the 1919-21 war) was seen to have been ineffective in protecting Catholic communities. This new, more aggressive, version of the IRA concentrated on community defence and forcing the British out through guerrilla warfare, but when it realised it couldn't really challenge the British Army militarily it switched tactics and became a terrorist organisation. This meant a switch of focus from carrying out attacks on strategic targets as part of a campaign to drive Britain out through force, to bombings and assassinations to make political points. Either way, the IRA was still armed and funded by the Republic of Ireland.

The rest of the story is depressingly predictable. There was thirty years of tit-for-tat assassinations and terror attacks, during which the British government in London tried in vain to keep the peace as Catholic terrorists set off bombs and murdered British soldiers and "collaborators", and Protestant paramilitaries shot suspected terrorists (sometimes with the tacit approval of the British government, sometimes in spite of government attempts to restrain them). After thirty years, it was increasingly clear to everyone that none of this wasn't accomplishing anything. The IRA, which had diversified into drug smuggling and protection rackets to fund itself, had degenerated into a collection of petty gangsters. They'd also lost a lost of their support in the Republic and America due to deliberate targeting of civilians. It was also riddled by government informants. By 1997 everyone wanted peace (Of course, the British government had wanted it from the beginning. The difference now was that the IRA's position was rapidly becoming untenable and most of their leadership wanted out before they were all arrested). The Good Friday agreement was founded on the disarmament of the IRA in return for equal Protestant-Catholic representation in the newly created Northern Irish Parliament. Finally, the British government conceded that if Northern Ireland ever wanted to secede, it could, while the Republicans officially recognised it as part of the UK for the time being. And so everyone was happy, and a lasting peace was achieved.

Lol, jk. The IRA splintered again, and a few die-hards continue carrying out terrorist attacks to this day. Despite the fact even most Catholics in N. Ireland wouldn't vote for independence these days, let alone support the IRA. But at least, apart from a few nutjobs and a bunch of scummy criminals looking for an excuse, Northern Ireland is largely at peace now.

I think you're going out of your way to sanitize the British government's history.

>Catholics would riot, and then Protestant mobs would vandalise Catholic neighbourhoods in retaliation

Conveniently ignoring the mobilization of the UVF in 1966, and the Protestant bombing of power plants and killing of civilians to derail the civil rights movement.

And then this post is pretty much an outright lie.

>Then, in 1972, Bloody Sunday happened

This was three years into the Troubles.

>Up until this point the British army had been considered to be relatively neutral

Even the moderate Catholics stopped cooperating with the British government after the UK responded to the Battle of the Bogside by interning hundreds of Catholics and zero Protestants.

>Some of the marchers splintered away and starting throwing rocks and bottles at the soldiers

The Saville Inquiry concluded that this was a lie.

>and in the confusion someone opened fire - possibly he was legitimately under attack, but we'll never know

The British government spent hundreds of millions of pounds to answer this question. They concluded that the protesters had posed no threat, and that the Army had systematically covered up their misconduct for decades.

>By 1997 everyone wanted peace (Of course, the British government had wanted it from the beginning. The difference now was that the IRA's position was rapidly becoming untenable and most of their leadership wanted out before they were all arrested).

This is a lie.

The IRA agreed to Sunningdale, with the exact same peace terms, in 1972. It was the Protestants who torpedoed the peace agreement. The republicans had always been willing to come to the table.

What changed is that the IRA started doing so much damage with the big blockbuster bombs that insurance companies were losing billions of pounds.

>Conveniently ignoring the mobilization of the UVF in 1966, and the Protestant bombing of power plants and killing of civilians to derail the civil rights movement.
Conveniently ignoring the IRA guerrilla war in the early 60s. If we're going to link back every cause we'd end up going all the way back to the fucking Normans. What I said is true: Catholics would riot over civil rights, and Protestants would trash catholic neighbourhoods in retaliation.

>This was three years into the Troubles.
I didn't say the troubles hadn't already started, I just wanted to emphasise that until this there was a serious peaceful civil rights movement, and Bloody Sunday was the critical moment when the real chance for a peaceful solution went out the window.

>Even the moderate Catholics stopped cooperating with the British government
I said the British army, not the British government. And they were seen as more neutral - up until then, a Catholic about to be arrested would far rather be picked up by a British soldier who didn't give a shit about the politics and would prefer to be posted to Gibraltar, rather than an Ulster policeman steeped in the sectarian conflict. The British army might not have had much respect among Catholics but it didn't have the same hatred they held for the police. Until Bloody Sunday, after which they were considered to be the enemy too.

>The Saville Inquiry concluded that this was a lie.
The Saville enquiry started almost thirty years after the event, and didn't report until almost forty years after the event. It was under huge political pressure not to say anything that would derail the peace process, so it disregarded basically all the soldiers testimonies in favour of the protesters. The idea that the troops came under fire from IRA snipers has been pretty conclusively debunked, but there was definitely some stone throwing, and as to whether it occurred before the British troops opened fire - well, it seems unlikely that the soldiers would have fired with zero provocation.

>This is a lie.
>The IRA agreed to Sunningdale,
Actually, /that's/ a lie. The IRA didn't agree to Sunningdale, the SDLP did. As did the unionist UUP, incidentally. Militant Republicans boycotted the political process; the IRA continued attacks during negotiations. Granted, it was the unionist general strike that finally sank the plan, but it's hugely disingenuous not to mention the continued IRA terrorism as a factor. Also, the agreement did not have 'the exact same peace terms'. There was a power sharing government involved, but that's about the only similarity.

Not that what I said originally wasn't true anyway.
>It was the Protestants who torpedoed the peace agreement.
You say that like 'the Protestants' were just one faction. The British government in London had very different stances to the Protestants in Ulster. So what I said about the British government wanting peace from the beginning was completely true (and everything I said about the IRA collapsing was true too).

except 90% of brits couldn't give two shits about NI

>The Saville enquiry started almost thirty years after the event, and didn't report until almost forty years after the event

Correct. An inquiry by a disinterested party is more reliable than an inquiry from somebody actively engaged in the same war that spawned the events in question.

>It was under huge political pressure not to say anything that would derail the peace process

It was released in 2010

>it seems unlikely that the soldiers would have fired with zero provocation.

>Saville stated that British paratroopers "lost control",[12] fatally shooting fleeing civilians and those who tried to aid the civilians who had been shot by the British soldiers.[13] The report stated that British soldiers had concocted lies in their attempt to hide their acts.[13] Saville stated that the civilians had not been warned by the British soldiers that they intended to shoot.[8] The report states, contrary to the previously established belief, that none of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers, and that the civilians were not posing any threat.[8]

I trust Saville more than you, frankly.

>Conveniently ignoring the IRA guerrilla war in the early 60s

Because it was a complete failure and had no relevance to the Troubles, whereas the mobilization of the UVF directly caused the start of the Troubles.

> I just wanted to emphasise that until this there was a serious peaceful civil rights movement, and Bloody Sunday was the critical moment when the real chance for a peaceful solution went out the window.

Fair enough. I'd just like to emphasize that the British government was already seen as a sectarian force, due to the Falls Curfew and them almost exclusively interning republicans and not loyalists.

Why the fuck do Americans think they have some right to a country that isn't theirs?

Frankly, they weren't doing anything with the land.

If you don't have writing or agriculture, you have less rights than people who do have writing and agriculture, especially if said people also practice Christianity and speak English.

Loyalists are a scourge on humanity.

NI Loyalists killed the most civilians, caused the most damage, and cannot be allowed to rule themselves.
The IRA "won" the Troubles and irish catholics gained pretty much everything they wanted, since most of them didn't even want to leave the UK.

>Loyalists given the right to their own """country""" so that they don't chimp out and cause more armed conflict in Ireland
>Loyalists start to mistreat and abuse Catholic Irish in their country, failing to understand that drawing a border doesn't stop a part of ireland having irish people in it
>Loyalists chimp out and start shooting, bombing people and beating down civil rights protests
>Loyalists destabilise their own country within a couple of decades of its creation
>IRA BEGIN THEIR CAMPAIGN
>Loyalists utterly fail to even scratch the IRA, instead killing almost exclusively uninvolved civilians from both sides of the culture divide
>Loyalists kill more innocents than the IRA and all its splinters combined
>Loyalists utterly fail to do anything useful, even with the help from the British army
>Ceasefire finally reached
>Irish now have representation
>Republicanism and separatism are enshrined by law forever in Northern Ireland
>Dublin made protector of said agreement along with Westminster
>Mere decades later there is a nationalist majority in Stormont
>Loyalists cry about being oppressed and abused
>Loyalist crimes (and incompetence) become common knowledge
> Loyalists forced to vote for a party they all hate just because that party keeps out a Sinn Fein majority
>That party can no longer effectively do that
>Loyalists outraged

TL;DR- LOYALISTS ARE SEETHING

>loyalists are disgusting and murderers and i hate them
>also please let me take this land that has a collosal loyalist population
pick one

>let me take this land
Where did I say that? Bogniggers can do whatever they want, most of us here forget Northern Ireland exists. It's just funny to see people from Londonderry or Belfast LARP like proud, brave citizens of the UK when really they have since their "country" was created done nothing but add to a growing list of reasons why we should have sold them to Dublin long ago.

If nothing else, they're keeping Jeremy Corbyn away from anything valuable.

At the cost of having their utterly retarded politicians make demands to us. Then again, Corbyn basically ensures a Shinner victory so whatever.
Don't forget that the DUP aren't half as cool as /pol/ wants you to think they are, they're a pack of retards and are still emboriled in a £500m+ scandal.

I don't know anything about the troubles and your post seems so one sided I think its satire.

Niggers nigging, except these niggers were white

>Ireland invaded by British in 16th Century
>"Plantations" are made - basically taking land from the Irish and giving it to British settlers.
>All the plantations fail except for in Ulster
>come to 1921
>Ireland has war of independence
>Is given partial independence, but the protestant part of the country will be a separate nation (because the protestants are descendants of british settlers they are loyal to britain)
>northern Ireland would be too small and economically nonviable with just protestant population (1 million or so)
>Include some catholic areas so that the country is economically viable
>Gerrymander the country so government is always strongly protestant
>No catholics allowed in police etc
>1960s
>Catholics, taking inspiration from american civil rights movement start their own
>cracked down on brutally, protestant mobs burn catholics out of their homes while police stand by and watch
>IRA returns from inactivity to defend its communities
>protestants form their own paramilitary groups in response
>British army sent in to keep the peace, in the beginning they are even welcomed by the catholic community
>british government gives control of army to NI government who then use it to oppress catholics
>things escalate from there

thats the basic gestalt. The IRA is vilified, and it did some really horrible things, but really its the British governments fault for all of it.
also MI5 ended up running the paramilitaries for the most part. Theres even documents that the Irish government have proving that UVF members were approached by army intelligence to assassinate Charles Haughey, our PM in the 70s and outspoken nationalist. Of course the british "lost" their files on this before it could be declassified

they were fucking stupid too. I get that they were loyal to the UK but they talked a lot about how the catholics would turn on the protestants when they took control.
Of course this never happened, there was no oppression of Protestants in the republic

As a Unionist living in Northern Ireland, I have to make the point that no one had a monopoly on suffering when it came to the atrocities of The Troubles, and that for the sake of our province it is best we make the compromises necessary to afford a lasting peace - whilst at the same time (in my view) sustaining union with Britain.

>An inquiry by a disinterested party
>It was released in 2010
The peace process is /always/ ongoing. The British government's sole objective is keep the Good Friday agreement in place. If you don't think it would sell its own soldiers down the river to placate Catholics (or a little further down the river, since they did genuinely fuck up and shoot some completely innocent civilians) then you understand nothing about the situation in Northern Ireland. And after all that time, it was very different to conclusively prove anything, the government could pick the most politically expedient version of events.

That's why everyone's got their panties in a bunch over what'll happen to the border between N. Ireland and the Republic after Brexit. Next to the possibility of a complete collapse in trade with the EU, nothing worries the British government more a crisis in Northern Ireland that would cause the Republican parties to withdraw from the Good Friday agreement.

>Because it was a complete failure
It still happened.

>had no relevance to the Troubles
Really? An outbreak of guerrilla warfare that ended just five years earlier had no relevance?

The Unionist militias started to form because the Unionists regarded the civil rights movements as a front for the IRA, and their activities a prelude to another military campaign. You can't just ignore decades of IRA attacks, that went right up to just before the beginning of the Troubles, when you're talking about the motivations the Unionists had to arm themselves.

honestly, even if a hard border were enforced I just can't see any trouble like there was. I'm from the republic so obviously I don't know exactly what the NI communities feel but theres absolutely no appetite for any more violence down here

>The peace process is /always/ ongoing

That sounds like a rationalization

>anything that makes the British government look bad is just to appease the Catholics
>never mind that the DUP is literally part of the British government, it's those Catholics controlling the narrative

It seems like you just want to ignore any contradictory evidence with a convenient, unfalsifiable handwave.

>Irish be peaceful and adherent Catholics
>The English being power-hungry decide to steal parts of Erin
>Subject the Irish under occupation to cruelty and draconian rule
>Treat native Irish Catholics as second-class citizens and don't allow them to defend their land from roaming protestant death squads
>Irish defend themselves to protect human rights
>English finally allow some autonomy to parts of seized land after being forced
>Most of Ireland is okay with agreement despite having lost ownership of part of their country

potatoe niggers vs scots

you realise they're the same ethnic group?

so ?

>That sounds like a rationalization
It's the obvious truth, as anyone who knows anything about the UK will tell you. The IRA still carry out terrorist attacks from time to time, so they're still very much worry to people in government. But their influence is limited while the Good Friday agreement holds - and hence the British government will go to great lengths to keep it in force. Are you from the Republic? Or are you just a plastic paddy sitting in a bar in Boston?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_Inquiry#Criticism
>One lawyer representing soldiers involved in the enquiry stated that Lord Saville "cherry picked" the evidence in his inquiry and that Lord Saville felt under pressure to give a verdict that is not borne out by the available evidence.[21]

>anything that makes the British government look bad is just to appease the Catholics
Did I not say that British soldiers had shot completely innocent protesters?

>the DUP is literally part of the British government
The status of the DUP's relationship with the Conservative's minority government right now is somewhat unclear, but they definitely weren't part of the government in London in 2010 (or during the Troubles)

Probably not, but you never know. I'm not from N. Ireland either so I couldn't tell you what the feeling on the streets is right now, but sectarianism is definitely far less important to the younger generation. Still, there are a lot of poor communities in N. Ireland with unemployed and disaffected young people, and all it takes is a couple of little shits looking to start something for the tit-for-tat violence to kick off again. Without a genuine political issue that sort of thing usually fizzles out, but if the terms of Brexit /were/ unacceptable to the Catholics then that could provide a rallying cry for a new round of IRA recruitment and a upswing in their activities.

>Home Rule Rocks
Indeed it does.

>t. Gerry O'Flannhery

That fucker Colm Meaney supported the IRA for years while he was sitting in the sun in L.A. five thousand miles out of the blast radius of any of their bombs. Hypocritical shit didn't have any problem working in England either, despite the fact that he wanted the English to get out of Ireland.

Irish oppression is a meme. Britain was too kind to the Irish. They should of grind the Irish to mush after the first rebellion like anyother European country would of done

>tfw burger
>tfw so absurdly powerful that you can sponsor an insurgency in your closest ally and they can do literally nothing about it

I'm a burger with Irish Catholic ancestors. Where do I stand?

I'm the fag is replying too.

I'm a WASP. My grandmother would have smacked the shit out of anybody who implied that I had any Irish ancestry.

I still think that the conflict can be summed up as "if you kick a dog enough times, it'll bite you," with Irish Catholics being the dog.

SF is the most popular party among the younger generation though and a united Ireland is becoming more popular, nationalism is coming back in Ireland just like in the rest of the western world.

are you American, though?

Yes, very.

Raised Episcopalian too.

>My grandmother would have smacked the shit out of anybody who implied that I had any Irish ancestry.
Why?

Because she was a New England WASP and New England WASPs hate the Irish, and are generally concerned with muh bloodline.

>the eternal Anglo
Serious question: How many destroyed desecrated degraded and abused people are enough to sate you inhuman wretches? :^)

>Yes, very.
Hence your rather shallow understanding of UK politics. You know enough about international affairs to have heard of the Good Friday agreement and know a bit about the Troubles, but all the nuance is below your radar.

Americans media is overwhelmingly pro-Irish anyway. No matter whether you're a plastic paddy or not, you've still grown up hearing a very one-sided narrative on the issue of Northern Ireland.

>Britain is biased towards the Irish
>America is biased towards the Irish

Where then, would I go to learn the real story?

Because it sounds to me like you have some fairly substantial problems with reality.

With the other blacks, this is a white person issue

>>Britain is biased towards the Irish
>>America is biased towards the Irish
>Where then, would I go to learn the real story
>implying there's a real story

The local orange hall where you can learn the real story of how the lost tribe of Israel were persecuted by the evil papists.

>Where then, would I go to learn the real story?
Veeky Forums, obviously. Why else are you here?

>Britain is biased towards the Irish
The British government is biased towards peace, which means appeasing the Catholic community in N. Ireland. Everyone in the UK knows this, and the fact that you didn't was what marked you out as a 1) an American, and 2) someone who didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.

>>America is biased towards the Irish
I said the American media. And come on, well all know it is.
youtube.com/watch?v=3eRxPDLYM9Q

>Because it sounds to me like you have some fairly substantial problems with reality.
>says the person who thinks the Catholics were completely peaceful civil rights activists and it was the Unionists who were the first to arm themselves, thus starting the Troubles

So raise the Crimson Banner high
It flies for you and me
And signifies the reason
Why we’re British and we’re free

Now sound the flute and strike the drum
Let’s hear the cymbals clash
And play again ‘old Derry’s walls
Garvagh and the Sash,
As on we march we’ll proudly tell
In story and in song
How William Prince of Orange
Won the Battle of the Boyne.

>it was actually a self-governing province of the British Empire with the British monarch as its head of state. So it wasn't such a dramatic break with the old order.
It was a dominion like Canada, Australia and South Africa were (and remaining a dominion was one of the main causes of the Irish Civil War) and after 1936 was basically a republic de-facto even having a president.

> The newly independent Catholic counties mercilessly persecuted the protestants within their borders (who were a significant minority), with every protestant - even the nationalists who had supported Irish independence - being scapegoated as a Saxon invader who was probably spying for the British.
The Republic of Ireland was so oppressive to Protestants that its first president Douglas Hyde was a Protestant. Such tyranny.

Which is why the IRA went after London property, rather than planning elaborate bombings in Belfast proper. No one with power would give a single shit if they did it in Belfast.

perfidious fuckin' albion

>he fact that you didn't was what marked you out as a 1) an American, and 2) someone who didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.

I think you might be confusing bias and knowledge.

>says the person who thinks the Catholics were completely peaceful civil rights activists and it was the Unionists who were the first to arm themselves, thus starting the Troubles

Well, can you name an IRA attack in between 1963 and 1968?

Because that's when the entire shitstorm started.

If, during the period immediately before a war, one side starts doing things like burning down the other side's homes, or bombing power plants as a false flag attempt, and they don't do these things as an immediate response to a similar activity by the other side, I think that it's fair to describe them as the aggressor.

You can't take a casus belli and then bottle it up and uncork it a few years later. You're not Bush Junior.

>Britan
>16th century

>You can't take a casus belli and then bottle it up and uncork it a few years later. You're not Bush Junior.
The difference is the Ba'at party didn't have a bunch of former Al Qaeda members in it.

The Civil Rights movement may have had peaceful methods, but there were plenty of Republicans with connections to the IRA involved in the push for political rights for Catholics. With the last IRA war only five years behind them, when the Unionists saw the Republicans gathering in large numbers and organising political structures, their reaction to the statements that it was all just a peaceful movement must have been 'how fucking stupid do you think we are?'

>The IRA, which had diversified into drug smuggling and protection rackets to fund itself, had degenerated into a collection of petty gangsters.
That's not what the British Army said: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6276416.stm

>Ireland catholic
>Britain Protestant
You make it should like it was a religious conquest
The first English invasion of Ireland was in 1169 when both countries were catholic

>it was largely staged by the Germans, using a few Irish nationalists as their stooges.

Stopped reading there. Germans didnt even manage to put any arms into the hands of the rebels. To claim they staged it is profoundly incorrect

really it seems sort of like Britain cannot help themselves when it comes to making people loathe them.

it's like it almost purposefully (and for little reason) escalates a situation beyond the point where it would be possible to fix it.

what did the British government do wrong?

You're aware you're intentionally lying.

Just a miscomunication is all.

sent a paratroop regiment on riot/crowd-control duty in an area with somewhat high tensions.

I don't know about the training but it seems like they weren't suited for crowd control at all as they made the elementary mistake of shooting a fuckton of unarmed civilians.

It's generally a pretty shit idea to use the military for police duty

This tbqh.

Prods and Taigs shooting each other over retarded reasons and blowing up everything to spite the other. All while the UK sends SAS death squads and Paras shoot anything that moves. IRA knee caps people and UVF bombs a pub.

Now have that go on for thirty years.

The whole thing is so autistic that when you stop and think about it, it just becomes sad.

Unironically..

I was referring to the fact that the US used the UN resolution authorizing the first Gulf War as their justification for invading Iraq in 2003.

So yeah, it's pretty reasonable to say that the NI and British governments brought the war on themselves by abusing the Catholic populace.

>Protestant paramilitaries have begun mobilizing to attack Catholic civil rights activists
>Catholics are arming in response
>you know what would be smart
>interning Catholics and confiscating weapons from them, and not interning any of the Protestants
>wtf why are you shooting at us
>fucking Irish subhumans

Pretty accurate