Just in the middle of reading this Road to Balcombe Street book. It really is absolutely mental what they got up to. They had the whole of London totally scared out of their shite for a couple of years. Wandering into pubs with huge bombs in bags, kidnapping people, shooting up restaurants, bombing busy shopping streets at Christmas.
Wed often say about the troubles era IRA that it’s very hard judge them and their actions unless you were brought up in the downtrodden areas of the north like they were. The craziest thing about these boys is they were from Clare, Kerry, Limerick I don’t think any of them were from the north. Probably the most ruthless violent Ira men of the era and they were just brought up in normal areas of the ‘free state’ 
they were literally barstool republicans who became front line top level republicans. I think one of them was even a footix. You’d love to know what in their childhoods drove them to such lengths.
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