I wonder is this lad any relation to the great man?
I just read the details. Horrific.
He fled to the US to escape drunk driving charges here.
Was so drunk a barman refused to serve him anymore according to reports, was asked by several people not to drive, and refused the offer of a paid for taxi home.
Those poor girls.
Mick Cliffordâs piece seems to be just a case of him doubling down on his free state bigotry.
Brolly took the Free State dogs to task and those who have disagreed with his take has been unable to muster anything intelligent or contrite in response.
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Which part of Mickâs article donât you agree with?
The bit where he ignores Section 31, the bit where he ignores the lived experiences of northern nationalists and what they experienced from the free state establishment, the bit where he glosses over why the Provos existed in the first place.
The whole article was a lot of tosh and Clifford seems to be most hostile type of free stater, arrogant, aloof and unwilling to apologise.
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Mick Clifford: Joe Brolly opened a dam of pent-up grievance
How horrible were Southerners to their Northern sisters and brothers during the Troubles? Really horrible, according to some people.
Attitudes down here towards those who crossed the border in search of work or study during the years of violence might not appear to be a big deal, but maybe it is. In the current milieu, where the prospect of a new, possibly single-entity Ireland looms, the issue might need to be addressed.
There is an acceptance that healing between the two communities in the North would be required in any new Ireland. What is less discussed is whether those of us in this jurisdiction need to examine if we were sufficiently empathetic to nationalists who came here during those years. The issue broke into the public square just before Christmas when Joe Brolly appeared in a promo for an extended interview he gave to Virgin Media TV.
In the clip, Brolly spoke of coming south to attend Trinity College in the late 80s. There, he was taken aback by attitudes towards Northerners like himself.
âYou saw this whole orthodoxy started in the South that really ⌠it was the Catholics and the nationalists who were to blame for what happened ⌠If they had just behaved themselves and not worried about civil rights, and not taken to the gun that everything wouldâve been fine.â
An orthodoxy, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is âan idea or view that is generally acceptedâ.
Brolly is a lawyer, a class of people for whom precise language is an occupational tool. Yet here he was, relating that a large swathe of people in the Republic were so hostile to nationalists, so discommoded that killing and dying just up the road was interfering with their lives, that they wished those northern Catholics had continued to subjugate themselves in a sectarian state and everything would have been just fine.
Children talk with British soldiers at a roadblock, September 21, 1969, in a street of Belfast. Picture: AFP via Getty Images
Does anybody who was above the age of reason in the 1980s recognise such an allegedly widely held view? I know absolutely nobody who does, and I am quite sure that no such orthodoxy existed. I havenât a clue if some clown one night drunkenly pointed at Brolly in the hallowed environs of Trinity and blamed him for everything, but that wouldnât make it a widely held view.
On social media, myself and others who speak with southern accents challenged Brollyâs thesis. He was effectively painting us as harbouring what I would consider a contemptible attitude towards a community of people who, at the very least, were entitled to empathy.
Whatever shortcomings those of us in the Republic were responsible for in those years, we were not of such low morals that we considered northern nationalists a mere irritant.
What occurred next was really revelatory. An avalanche of outrage blew across social media in support of Brolly. How dare anybody question the âlived experienceâ of a Northerner down south during those years, went the general theme. To disbelieve or challenge his assertions was to engage in âgaslighting a whole communityâ, as one individual kept repeating.
The avalanche was not confined to the usual collection of clowns and cowards who feed off anger on Twitter. Serious, moderate people with genuinely held views rushed to Brollyâs defence, including writers, journalists, and academics from the North.
None related any specific incidents in which it had been either stated or inferred that they shouldnât have bothered seeking out civil rights. But it was quite obvious that Brollyâs comments, irrespective of how overblown and inaccurate they were, had burst open a dam of pent-up grievance.
Many accounts referenced feelings of alienation when they came south. They mentioned apathy and ignorance here about what was going on just up the road. They spoke of attitudes towards them in which they were made to feel less Irish than those from the Republic. A lot of this is not new, but perhaps there has been an absence of any forum in which such feelings could be aired.
Was there apathy in the Republic? There is a case to be made to that effect. If so, was it attributable to the longevity of the violence or is it just the nature of things, then and now? How did any apathy manifest itself in attitudes to those who moved down here?
Was there, as some Northerners expressed in the above outpouring, hostility towards them? How widespread was it? If southerners were not, as appears to be the charge, sufficiently empathetic, then why was that so? Do such attitudes persist today?
A British soldier searching a Belfast teenager in 1971. Picture: Keystone/Getty Images
Central to various relations and attitudes at the time was the violence. A number of those who took to social media referenced that they felt they were regarded as being somehow complicit with the actions of the Provos when they came here. This is certainly an area that deserves exploration.
Those who supported the violence propagate a false narrative that the Provos defended the nationalist community.
When it suited their purpose, the Provos murdered nationalists. Nearly a quarter of the over 1,700 people killed by the Provos were from the community.
The protection rackets and robberies engaged in by the Provos to finance the killing was targeted at those they claim to have been defending.
If people were unfairly tarnished with the label of fellow travellers on any kind of a scale, that also needs examining, as does any perceived conflation between pursuing civil rights and killing in the name of a united Ireland.
Such exploration of the past should be done honestly and in good faith and outside the political realm. But it canât be a question of one side, on the basis that it feels it was victimised, determining that it, and it alone, has a monopoly on remembering exactly how things were.
By last weekend, Brolly appeared to row back from his previous comments. In his Sunday Independent column, he went into detail of how successive governments in the Republic had a repressive instinct towards anything even vaguely associated with Northern violence in the 70s. Thatâs pretty accurate and largely attributable to the state of siege â paranoia even â felt among the political class about the threat of the Provos at the time. But what of the orthodoxy that so many of his kindred spirits had endorsed?
âThe people of the Republic had and have an emotional connection to us,â he wrote.
However, the establishment closed ranks against us ⌠When I arrived in Trinity in 1987, I was amazed by the general apathy. But, to be honest, once I was in Dublin a few months, I almost forgot about the North myself. It was no longer my daily routine.â
So there was no orthodoxy. There was no lived experience to that effect, unless it was at the hands of âthe establishmentâ, however that might have come about.
There was no widespread contempt towards nationalists, as inferred by his initial comments.
Brolly had been talking through his hat, but his little rant has given rise to something that would be best dealt with as we all try to look ahead towards some kind of new Ireland.
Lookit I wonât get into a debate about it because I havenât the timeâŚbut can I ask how old you are and what your âlived experienceâ of the troubles is? Can I also ask you do you condemn the Provos for murdering their own or for coming down to the âfree stateâ and murdering, robbing and destroying lives? Thanks.
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Joe forgot his own when he went to Trinners.
I was born in the 80s.
I donât condemn The Provos, I donât support every action they carried out but I 100% believe that nationalists in the north would be a much worse position than they are now as they were abandoned by the British Govt and Free State to a sectarian pogrom. Given that SF dominate politics in the nationalist constituencies I think itâs proof that the vast majority of nationalists in the north believe the armed campaign was needed and had credibility because how could you countenance voting for them otherwise?
It seems you are bound in blueshirt ideology and Brollyâs comments irked you, solely because of their accuracy.
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Ouch.
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Not much ouch about it. FFIRA and FGIRA had a little war when they went about killing 1000s of their fellow countrymen in a year but the establishment Simple Mick is so in tune with seem to eulogise these people.
The contradictions of the staters are hard to square off.
Conflating @Fulvio_From_Aughnacloy with the IRA just because he comes from Northern Ireland is the very thing Brolly is taking issue with
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That would be the case if Fluvio wasnât a rabid Provo supporter. But he is.
I think the best demonstration of Joe Brollyâs theory is how when Austin Currie and Mary McAleese stood for election in the Republic they were soundly rejected. Oh wait.
The staters still canât swallow that they abandoned northern nationalists in a sectarian pogrom. They canât fathom out in line of that abandonment that republicans armed themselves against a violent sectarian state.
What did they expect northern nationalists to do? Let RUC officers batter Catholics off the streets for looking for equal rights, allows British soldiers to spray bullets in civilians, have the security forces provide sectarian killers with carte blanche to carry out gruesome murders?
The above seemingly never seems to draw any reprehension from the staters, the biggest outrage they seem to have is that republicans would arm themselves against the above which was a way of life.
Nothing says Free State more than covering up the Dublin-Monaghan bombings (the largest military atrocity in their state) because the fingerprints of British intelligence were all over it.
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Iâm far from being âbound in blueshirt ideologyâ, please donât make that assumption and look for a row with me simply because I asked you a question!
I personally do have a lot of sympathy and empathy for the Irish in the 06 and what they have went through, I do understand and appreciate why the provisional movement needed to happen, I do believe the Irish state did leave nationalists in the north down, I do believe history should be taught properly in the schools in the republic. I do like Brolly but think he is a complicated character and wouldnât thread on every word he says. Conversely I do see things from a southern perspective, it was difficult to understand or appreciate what was happening in the north 30/40 years ago, the north may as well have been another country and the way things were reported in the media wasnât very balanced, therefore people are human beings and will think and form opinions based on the information theyâve been given. I do think that a lot of support amongst the public for the Provisional movement was lost when they came across the border killing and terrorizing their own.
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No itâs not in this instance, heâs stated on numerous occasions he supports the provos. I donât automatically assume every nationalist in the north supports the provos. Perhaps you should heed your own adviceâŚ
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Fluvio uses the Ballymurphy massacre for his own ends.
What he doesnât tell you is 15 year old Bernard Teggart, who was the son of Danny Teggart, murdered by the Brits at Ballymurphy, was dragged out by the Provos and himself murdered two years later.
The fault of the people of the âFree Stateâ, no doubt.
Sssshhhh.
Good to hear
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Would there be anything to be said for Northern Ireland becoming their own independent state?
Free from Dublin and London,a fresh start??
According to themselves theyâd be of little economic burden to us Freestaters.
So why not ,and pardon the French,Fuck off and paddle your own canoe??
You cunts arenât happy with being under Lizzys thumb and on the other hand,have a serious issue with our alleged indifference to your challenges over the years.
Why not man up,fuck off and look after your own patch and keep the rest of us out if it?
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