I thought we only awarded medals posthumously in the RA?
My cell have a pool competition every March. I won it twice.
Of course, fair play. Sorry you didnât get released under the GFA pal, hopefully weâll see you on the outside one day. Weâll miss you at the Wexford Opera House this year, itâll be a blast (sorry, insensitive choice of word there, itâll be a cracker)
Fitzy - what is your stance on the IRA? You disagreed with me recently when I made a âyou anât make an omelette without breaking a few eggsâ comment about certain IRA activities, yet you have high regard for the IRA medals which your family member won.
Cake and eating it no?
[quote=âcaoimhaoin, post: 897466, member: 273â]Fitzy - what is your stance on the IRA? You disagreed with me recently when I made a âyou anât make an omelette without breaking a few eggsâ comment about certain IRA activities, yet you have high regard for the IRA medals which your family member won.
Cake and eating it no?[/quote]
Kev, I donât remember that conversation.
Essentially, I have conflicted views about the IRA (and for the purposes of this conversation, lets assume we are talking about the modern, troubles version of the IRA). I support the republican ideal of a 32 county Ireland. I fully support the right of Provisional IRA Volunteeers to bear arms to protect their families and communities as they came under attack from the British crown and loyalism (as a former member of the IRA said to me one, if you were 19 and living in Derry in 1972, what would you have done? Hard to argue with that). I fully support the military campaign against british and loyalist forces. But, I canât support activities that knowingly led to innocent civilians being killed and injured. Thats having my cake and eating it, conflicted, I donât know. I wouldnât have made a very good vounteer.
But then, I was raised in the 70âs and 80âs in safe, middle class Wexford, by two parents with good jobs, who provided a very pleasant life. I wasnât raised on the Bogside or Ardoyne with a Dad in Long Kesh and a mother raising a family on her own in poverty. I didnât have the rage that comes with that, so maybe I would have been a good volunteer.
Iâve had this argument with my older brother all my life, he simply dismisses republicanism out of hand. Its a right wing, Fine Gael, revisionist, Cruise OâBrien ideology that I fucking detest. Iâm not comfortable with the Bernadette Sands view on the other side also. Nothing regarding Northern Ireland is black and white in my view. There are grey areas everywhere.
In short Kev, yes, Iâm having my cake and eating, because I know something of it, but I donât know the whole story, none of us do.
@Fitzy - thatâs a fair explanation and I agree with a lot of what you have said. I still think though that to get the Brits to sit up innocents had to die. Itâs fucking awful, but the Brits had dismissed any peaceful attempts and let the Presbyterians and Loyalists run amok.
There is a possibility, and I know thi to be true in the cases of some of the âOldâ IRA medals I have come cross, that they were also involve in killing innocents. This is where I think there is hypocrisy (from all of us, not just you). Every life Carries the same weight IMO, weather it was 1921 or 1981.
The major difference I see is the âOldâ lads made some progress. What has the new IRA achieved? Not a whole pile if you were to go back to the 60âs.
There are definitely paralells between the war of independence and the modern troubles (I do hate that description, the troubles, its a very Irish way of downplaying a horrible war, but Iâm at a loss for a better one, if someone can suggest a better one Iâm all ears) and thereâs no doubt a lot of hypocrisy involved. I donât agree with your last points. The âoldâ lads made progress, progress is betrayal to some, it led to a civil war. The Provisional IRA achieved a lot, its just that many innocents had to pay with their lives for it.
Innocents died from 1916 onwards as well fitzy.
Oh absolutely and again thats part of the hypocrisy. We are taught in primary school to revere 1916 and the war of independence, the civil war is glossed over and we never really understand the period or the struggle for independence fully, unless we do our own individual reading / research. The paralells with the troubles are glossed over, its an uncomfortable and inconvenient political and moral subject for us. So we have three sets of views really - two are quite simplistic, hardline pro or anti republican and the rest of us in the middle, supporting a cause, but conflicted about how that cause has manifested itself. Its something that weâve never really faced up to as a nation, and I suspect never will. Itâs made easier for us now in the republic, because the heavy lifting has been done in the north and we donât really need to discuss anymore how our support for a republican cause can be reconciled with an abhorrence of violence. Again, I donât know, but I feel its something that merits a lot more discussion is Irish political discourse.
What I do know is that I will dismiss out of hand people with simplistic, black and white versions of these parts of our history and current state.