Battle of the Bogside

Did anybody watch this last night? Great stuff it was. Apparently it?s a repeat but there?s a brand new one on tomorrow night too.

Focused on the civil rights movement in Derry in 1969 and how the RUC reacted to the marches by the people by battering them. Inevitably this led to the marchers responding by throwing stones and bottles. The final straw was the murder of a local man, kicked to death by 5 or 6 RUC officers, in his living room in front of his children. After that there was no way the nationalist community were going to allow an Apprentice Boys march to go ahead unopposed.

And so the locals gathered on the edge of the Bogside and fired missiles at the Apprentice Boys. The RUC then charged into the Bogside and thereafter it was magnificent stuff with all comers getting involved in the fight ? doctors, lawyers, journalists, right down. There was a cracking story told where the local women who worked in the factories were stationed at the petrol bomb making line as they, being women, were good at getting the mix of ingredients right! There was also a whip around that raised ?87 and they used it to buy more petrol!

The best though was when Bernadette McAliskey, the Nationalist MP, asked the RUC if she could get a microphone to speak to the crowd. Worn out completely after 3 days and nights of intense fighting they sensed she was trying to calm the crowd and gave her the mic. There was silence as she spoke to the rioters and said she had noticed that everyone was aiming missiles at the faces of the RUC officers and they were able to protect themselves with shields. She ordered them to split up into 2 groups with one group aiming for the head and the other for the waist and below!

Back up couldn?t be called from other areas as nationalists rose up in support of their comrades all around the 6 counties and with the rioters winning the battle hands down it was decided the only way to bring control back to Derry was to bring in the British Army ? we all know what happened after they arrived.

Gripping stuff and I still find it amazing that people of my persuasion were treated like that in my country as little as 37 years ago but as the great and unequalled Damien Dempsey says in the song Colony, ?You?ll never kill our will, To be free, To be free, Inside our minds, We hold, Hold the key.?

Violence shouldn’t be glorified whoever is carrying it out in my opinion. If it was Paisley making that speech to his side, rather than McAliskey, would you be so positive about it?

Firstly, I don?t think Paisley ever had cause to give such a speech due to the corrupt and sectarian nature of the RUC.

Secondly, Irish history is littered with instances of violent struggle given the occupation and continuing occupation of our country by British Crown forces. That the Irish people, among them my ancestors, had the courage and conviction to stand up and fight back against a powerful oppressor is a source of pride to me.

In the case in question again our foreign occupiers were the aggressors and Irish nationalists were well within their rights to fight back. Fighting back then and all through history eventually gave us the platform to achieve a better future at the negotiating table.

?Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.?

O’Connell achieved more through (mainly) peaceful means than Wolfe Tone and Emmet through violence, and commentators have argued that Home Rule - which was about to be introduced when WWI intervened, and there is no evidence to suggest that it wouldn’t have been introduced afterwards had things not changed due to the Rising - would have led to dominion status in the 1920s; which is exactly what the Rising achieved. I don’t dispute the honesty of the motives of those who sought progress through violence prior to independence, but the objective evidence as regards results achieved does not appear strong.

[quote=Bandage ]
Gripping stuff and I still find it amazing that people of my persuasion were treated like that in my country as little as 37 years ago [/quote]

You’re British then Bandage, yeah?

What O’Connell achieved cannot be compared to the aims and ambitions of Pearse and Emmet and others. O’Connell argued for, and won, Catholic Emancipation. He argued for this from a position of huge privilege and influence where he suffered none of the harships felt by other Catholics. He also benefited significantly financially from his actions through gifts and fundraising efforts from the poor Catholics of this country. His time in prison was a joke, he was treated grandly in there. As a reformer he was successful enough but his aims were not revolutionary - he wanted to bring about certain civil rights for Catholics but was distinctly lukewarm on the notion of Irish independence. In fact when his movements for Repeal of the Union were met with resistance from the Brits he backed down and cancelled his meetings.

Emmet on the other hand was a true hero. Like O’Connell he was personally wealthy obviously but he risked it all (including his life) to gain Irish freedom. The only risks O’Connell took were to his political reputation.

I wasn’t arguing that O’Connell was a better person than Wolfe Tone or Emmet, indeed I don’t know much about him, just that he at least achieved something, whereas I’m not aware of Emmet and Wolfe Tone achieving any concrete results. And while one might argue that they formed a crucial part of the revolutionary tradition which culminated in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, my point there is still that Ireland was arguably on track to achieve the same results by parliamentary means. I remain to be convinced that the violence was actually necessary.

O’Connells goals and achievements were aimed at one level of society, the middle class, and were built on the misfortune of another, the lower orders. He was besotted with British culture and based most of his political outlook on the ideology of middle class England. Yes, he achieved emancipation, but one could argue it was only a matter of time before it was revoked anyway. What he really initiated is swapping one master i.e landlords , for another, the large farmer/ catholic church. The latter of which ruthlessly extracted everything they could from an already poverty stricken people to fill the coffers of o’connells so called war chest.

Granted he did set a template for later movements like the land league but by and large he was a British citizen and had a vision of Ireland mirroring that of British society. Tho he was a native gaelic speaker himself he was also instrumental in the decline of the language as he saw English as the language of progression… In many ways he was the destroyer of Culture and way of life.

The Irish language won’t feed my children.