The socialist ideology could not be the religious one at the same time:)
The real socialism is multi religious ( or atheistic kinda USSR) .
the real Socialism could be just the international.
Actualy we saw certain from of limited , narrow socialism “not for every one” like National Socialism in Germany.
The religion socialism is something new for me:)
However, the IRA was always pragmatic and it’s affiliations, going back most of the C20th would raise eyebrows. Infact, it was more successfulin interesting the Germans in supporting their cause than in interesting the Soviet Union.
Agree, the GErmany who always since the WW1 tryed to exploit the race or national problems among their enemies.
They pretty well supported all sort of separatists , sometimes is ignoring of their “non-aryan origin” like they inspired to Crimea tatars that there were Russians and Jews who are only guilt of their troubles…
Some people may call it ‘ideology’ but blowing civilians into dog-meat is just murder, pure and simple…
I can’t even begin to tell you how much I hated the IRA, and the support given to them by America in those days.
But the worst thing was that 99.9% of the Irish population wanted nothing to do with the paramilitary groups, in the same way that 99.9% of Americans were not handing over their cash to sponsor terrorism…
But, as always, it’s those small percentages that do the damage…:evil:
Errr, without getting into long winded debates about Communism, Socialism and Internationalsim (I did all that at uni), and the “true” nature of it, I would say that not all communism came from the Soviet Union, nor was dictated by it. EuroCommunism developed in parallel and in many ways ways independently from the Soviet Union, lead by Gramscian interpetations rather than Leninist/Stalinist. Post WW2, Gramsci’s ideas had a much greater influence on “revolutionaries” in western Europe and Latin/South America than the hardline ones from Russia.
As for religion and socialism, have a look at Liberation theology - an extremely influential idea that spread across South America and scared the catholic Church, the ant-communists and the traditional communists:
Agree, the GErmany who always since the WW1 tryed to exploit the race or national problems among their enemies.
They pretty well supported all sort of separatists , sometimes is ignoring of their “non-aryan origin” like they inspired to Crimea tatars that there were Russians and Jews who are only guilt of their troubles…
Not just since WW1, but during too:
The Irish Republican Brotherhood held many talks with teh German High Command.
The IRA changed it’s focus, but it is something much more complex than that. I wouldn’t say most of them were overly religious as there was always that divide between religion and secular ideology…
To understand the mindset, you really have to go way back to get an insight into Anglo-Irish relations…Especially to the period of 1916 to 1923…
Therefore soviet did not assisted them - they look at them as at their class enemies as well.
The PIRA probably annoyed the Soviets and more likely rejected them for fear of losing support of the segment in America of Irish Americans that supported their violence…
BTW Nick, why are you such clever…?
Eh? Something lost in translation I think. But if you’re asking why I know so much about this, my family hosted a kid from Belfast for the summer months during the 1970s. I was only about six years old. But it was a rather fascinating experience, one that made me gals to have grown up in a stable, relatively democratic state…
In any case, I suggest the writings of Tim Pat Coogan for anyone interested in the subject. He’s an Irish journalist with deep connections in all of the warring parties including the IRAs, UDA(s), the British military and intelligence apparatus, and what is now the Police Service of Northern Ireland as well as in the Irish security forces.
Hardly Marx even heard about Liberation theology…
becouse fundamental Marxism fully refuse any kind of religion at all - the famous bolshevics slogan - the Religion is the narco drug for peoples - comes from Marxism.
So if the somebody in IRA even know about theology - they obviously nothing know about Marxism , trying to call itself as Marxists.
The Religion biased Marxists - is the nonsense.
Maybe so but then Marxism is as much the “opium of the masses” as orthodox religion. It has the same manifestations, and so there is no surprise that some people have attempted a sysnthesis. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat has the same structure as the Vatican.
However, I would take issue with you use of the term Orthodox Marxism - there is no such thing. From the days that his works came out there have been interpretations and schisms amongst his followers. Even in the Soviet Union, this schism lead to the spilt between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, later there were splits between Trotsky’s internationalism and Stalin’s nationalism. In Europe Gramsci’s interepation was different from Lenin’s, and both were different from the latter Marxists of the Frankfurt school, Althusserianism or Analytical Marxism of the likes of Roemer.
So, Liberation Theology is no more incongruous than any other form of Marxism
So if the somebody in IRA even know about theology - they obviously nothing know about Marxism , trying to call itself as Marxists. The Religion biased Marxists - is the nonsense.
See above. However, do not assume that groups like the IRA are rooted within Catholicism for purely religous. One needs to understand that one of the reasons that the IRA became reactivated in 1969 was because of the violence between the Catholics and Protestants. These were not just religous divides, though one’s religion placed a personin one group or another. It was no different than the civil rights fights going on in America and South Africa between blacks and whites. The ANC developed ideas from marxism - would you say that their ideas were not ortodox because they created an offshoot combining marxism and their own black african experience?
It is an erroneous statement. The USSR did suppressed different nations but it did not solve any interethnic conflicts. It just aggravated them and created new ones.
In the 1980s there was the enormous inter-ethnic violence between Armenians and Azeris with massacres and ethnic cleansings.
Nick, There are a number of so-called splinter groups from PIRA, (CIRA, RIRA etc.,) but INLA was the first, formed in the beginning from those members that even PIRA considered too extreme !
I use the phrase ‘so-called’ as they were of particular tac & strat use to PIRA.
Membership of one organisation did not necessarily preclude membership of another.
For example, should PIRA call a ‘ceasefire’ at any stage, holidays, internal fiancial investigations and so on, they could still attack any military or civilian ‘target’ and claim, “It wasn’t us, honest* !”
PIRA’s ‘decommissoning’ of wps, (not disarmament,) so slowly agreed and majestically announced, really amounted to very little. Most of the items available to view were old, outdated and in poor condition.
Back in the day the AR18 and AR180 were very popular with the Players, cheap & cheerful rifles which took AR/M16 mags. In fact the Sterling twenty, thirty and forty rd mags are the cream of that type of magazine.
That the AR18 isn’t a particularly accurate rifle was immaterial to them, the ranges were rarely that great and should they miss their target and kill a young mother, well that would be sorted with an apology…
As 32Bravo states, they are all largely racketeers.
Every black cab in Ulster pays protection money, nearly all one-armed bandits have a cut of their takings absorbed by the two-armed bandits, there’s an awful lot of copy labelled goods, (Nike, Puma, Burberry, YSL, Gucci, etc.,) run by PIRA, plus vast amounts of bootleg CDs/DVDs.
A major source of income is fuel smuggling and certain big men, Slab Murphy for example, had extremely large holding tanks buried on their land.
The story if the ‘Troubles’ is a long and complicated one; religion, politics, bigotry and myth twisted horrifically together, but the British Army were first called to assist the police in protecting the Catholic minority from the Protestant majority.
While PIRA members are as good as exclusively Catholic, it should be noted that the first soldier murdered in these thirty years of sadness fell to a bullet fired from one of the Protestant groups.
As in ‘honest as the day is long.’
The longer the daylight, the less they do wrong. (Aptly, but with sincere apologies to, Madness.)
Are what they are now and what they started out as different things, as in other movements of a revolutionary bent?
The need for money to support the cause combined with self-identification as righteous enemies of a corrupt state or power allows such people to carry out what are normally considered criminal acts in the belief that they are engaged in a higher form of action which makes their actions moral and necessary and wholly justified rather than criminal, be they IRA, Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhof, PLO, Symbionese Liberation Army, Al Qaeda or whatever.
The problem with such revolutionary movements is that unless they achieve total control of whatever it is that they were after, usually being control of a state, they often lack the willingness to surrender to the new leadership the independent power they had. So they continue in their old ways and exploit the skills, powers and processes they used to survive and grow, including violent ones which are liberating or criminal acts depending upon your point of view, but now they do it to undermine the new leadership, either intentionally or just as a by-product of their struggle for power.
Witness Hamas and Fatah for a perfect example.
After things calmed down in Northern Ireland, the IRA and UDF aligned groups in Northern Ireland continued on the same path, and not always with the most vicious fights between those opposing elements but within them as they struggled for control of various criminal enterprises which supported their revolutionary and anti-revolutionary activities in an earlier period.
Google has let me down in finding any reference to it, but I seem to recall reading something quite some years ago (maybe 10 or more) about former IRA and UDF aligned crime gangs carving up the drug trade in Northern Ireland between themselves and taking out their own elements who didn’t conform.
The IRA have had contacts with foreign governments and other illegal armed organisations.
Libya has been the biggest single supplier of arms and funds to the IRA, donating large amounts (three shipments of arms in the early 1970s and another three in the mid 1980s, the latter reputedly enough to arm two regular infantry battalions) of both in the early 1970s and mid 1980s.[74]
The IRA has also received weapons and logistical support from Irish Americans in the United States, especially the NORAID group. Apart from the Libyan aid, this has been the main source of overseas IRA support. American support has been weakened by the War against Terrorism, and the fallout from the events of 11 September 2001.[75][76]
In the United States in November 1982, five men were acquitted of smuggling arms to the IRA after they revealed the Central Intelligence Agency had approved the shipment (although the CIA officially denied this).[77] There are allegations of contact with the East German Stasi, based on the testimony of a Soviet defector to British intelligence Vasili Mitrokhin. Mitrokhin revealed that although the Soviet KGB gave some weapons to the Marxist Official IRA, it had little sympathy with the Provisionals.[78] It has received some training and support from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and has had some contact with Hezbollah. In May 1996, the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s internal security service, publicly accused Estonia of arms smuggling, and claimed that the IRA had contacted representatives of Estonia’s volunteer defense force, Kaitseliit, and some non-government groups to buy weapons. [79][80] In 2001 three Irish men who became known as the Colombia Three were arrested after allegedly training Colombian guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in bomb making and urban warfare techniques. The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations in its report of 24 April 2002 concluded “Neither committee investigators nor the Colombians can find credible explanations for the increased, more sophisticated capacity for these specific terror tactics now being employed by the FARC, other than IRA training”.[81]
Aside from hosting a kid from Northern Ireland (which from what little I remember was sort of traumatic, because he was obviously a traumatized warchild that taught my brothers how to build pipebombs!). I’ve also taken a few courses on Irish history and have read the books of Tim Pat Coogan.
Incidentally, Paul (the guys name) emigrated to the US when he was in his twenties and now works as an art director at a major gallery…
Correct. I didn’t realize this until I read the Wiki on it today, but in fact the OIRA still exists and their views are oddly similar to what Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labor Party have since advocated, a permanent ceasefire. Only it was in 1972!
The INLA were complete blood thirsty nuts and many were Marxists that rejected the “truce” of the OIRA but refused to join the PIRA
I use the phrase ‘so-called’ as they were of particular tac & strat use to PIRA.
Membership of one organisation did not necessarily preclude membership of another.
For example, should PIRA call a ‘ceasefire’ at any stage, holidays, internal fiancial investigations and so on, they could still attack any military or civilian ‘target’ and claim, “It wasn’t us, honest* !”
I don’t agree with that at all. There are numerous incidents throughout the “Republicanism” movement of splinter factions, and none of it was a monolithic in which everyone followed the same chain of command nor held the same beliefs. This goes right back to the Irish Civil War following their War of Independence. The IRA is in itself a giant “splinter group,” since it is the regular Army of the Republic of Ireland that claims direct lineage to the original IRA of the War of Independence --set up by Michael Collins-- who was of course killed for being a “Free Stater” and despite the fact that he almost singularly built the IRA and is one of Ireland’s most admired men (even by the British military of his era) is still regarded as little more than a traitor by the vain, extremists that followed him…
Secondly, there are verifiable incidents of inter-Republican warfare and assassinations that occurred during one of the truce periods during the 1970s…
PIRA’s ‘decommissoning’ of wps, (not disarmament,) so slowly agreed and majestically announced, really amounted to very little. Most of the items available to view were old, outdated and in poor condition.
Back in the day the AR18 and AR180 were very popular with the Players, cheap & cheerful rifles which took AR/M16 mags. In fact the Sterling twenty, thirty and forty rd mags are the cream of that type of magazine.
That the AR18 isn’t a particularly accurate rifle was immaterial to them, the ranges were rarely that great and should they miss their target and kill a young mother, well that would be sorted with an apology…
Yet the European commission set up to monitor the “arms decommissioning” has stated the contrary, including sophisticated shoulder SAMs were turned in. They have also stated that there is no reason to believe that the PIRA still have any significant weapons…
As 32Bravo states, they are all largely racketeers.
Every black cab in Ulster pays protection money, nearly all one-armed bandits have a cut of their takings absorbed by the two-armed bandits, there’s an awful lot of copy labelled goods, (Nike, Puma, Burberry, YSL, Gucci, etc.,) run by PIRA, plus vast amounts of bootleg CDs/DVDs.
A major source of income is fuel smuggling and certain big men, Slab Murphy for example, had extremely large holding tanks buried on their land.
They may be. However, the PIRA was also the only effective policing force in Republican areas for decades, as the RUC and Ulster Defense Regiment were seen as corrupt, and more interested in keeping the Catholics in line rather than community policing.
Also, there are many an accusation of collusion between the security forces of both Northern Ireland and the British intelligence establishment, using the Protestant loyalists in groups like the UFF as essentially proxy death squads.
So, there is plenty of controversy to go around…But the IRA, with the exception of the CIRA and RIRA (who completely disgraced themselves with the Omagh bombing), are disarmed and are effectively, and successfully, engaged in politics. Not killings…
Thank God.
The story if the ‘Troubles’ is a long and complicated one; religion, politics, bigotry and myth twisted horrifically together, but the British Army were first called to assist the police in protecting the Catholic minority from the Protestant majority.
While PIRA members are as good as exclusively Catholic, it should be noted that the first soldier murdered in these thirty years of sadness fell to a bullet fired from one of the Protestant groups.
I couldn’t agree more. However, here is an interesting assessment by the British Army as reported by the BBC…
Army paper says IRA not defeated
An internal British army document examining 37 years of deployment in Northern Ireland contains the claim by one expert that it failed to defeat the IRA.
The admission is contained in a discussion document released by the Ministry of Defence after a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
The 100 page document analyses in detail the army’s role over 37 years.
It focuses on specific operations and gives an overview of its performance.
The six-month study, covering the period 1968-2005, was prepared under the direction of the then chief of general staff, General Sir Mike Jackson.
The document, obtained by the Pat Finucane Centre, points to a number of mistakes, including internment and highlights what lessons have been learnt.
It describes the IRA as “a professional, dedicated, highly skilled and resilient force”, while loyalist paramilitaries and other republican groups are described as “little more than a collection of gangsters”.
It concedes for the first time that it did not win the battle against the IRA - but claims to have “shown the IRA that it could not achieve its ends through violence”.
In a statement, the Pat Finucane Centre - a human rights group - said the document “betrays a profoundly colonial mindset towards the conflict here and those involved in it”.
“Loyalist violence and the links between loyalist paramilitaries and the state has been airbrushed out of this military history,” it said.
In a statement issued on Friday, an Army spokesman said: "This publication considers the high level general issues that might be applicable to any future counter-terrorist campaign that the British Armed Forces might have to undertake.
“It is critically important to consider what was learned by those who served in Northern Ireland.”
I don’t agree with that at all. There are numerous incidents throughout the “Republicanism” movement of splinter factions, and none of it was a monolithic in which everyone followed the same chain of command nor held the same beliefs. This goes right back to the Irish Civil War following their War of Independence. The IRA is in itself a giant “splinter group,” since it is the regular Army of the Republic of Ireland that claims direct lineage to the original IRA of the War of Independence --set up by Michael Collins-- who was of course killed for being a “Free Stater” and despite the fact that he almost singularly built the IRA and is one of Ireland’s most admired men (even by the British military of his era) is still regarded as little more than a traitor by the vain, extremists that followed him…
Now that’s just silly. You’re bandying words, or in this case names, for the sake of trying to demonstrate that you are clever.
Secondly, there are verifiable incidents of inter-Republican warfare and assassinations that occurred during one of the truce periods during the 1970s…
Of course there were/are. Some of us have witnessed them. The use of a Black & Decker power drill (as I have already alluded to) was one such.
Yet the European commission set up to monitor the “arms decommissioning” has stated the contrary, including sophisticated shoulder SAMs were turned in. They have also stated that there is no reason to believe that the PIRA still have any significant weapons…
And you believe that??
You obviosly have not witnesed the hate and distrust these two communities have for each other. That report is very niave.
They may be. However, the PIRA was also the only effective policing force in Republican areas for decades, as the RUC and Ulster Defense Regiment were seen as corrupt, and more interested in keeping the Catholics in line rather than community policing.
You call that policing? You seem to be susceptible to the propaganda.
Please explain what you mean by corrupt. You see, I would have called it bias.
Also, there are many an accusation of collusion between the security forces of both Northern Ireland and the British intelligence establishment,…
Of course they did, it was a very dirty business.
So, there is plenty of controversy to go around…But the IRA, with the exception of the CIRA and RIRA (who completely disgraced themselves with the Omagh bombing), are disarmed and are effectively, and successfully, engaged in politics. Not killings…
Now, that really is silly.
Thank God.
And that’s premature.
I couldn’t agree more. However, here is an interesting assessment by the British Army as reported by the BBC…
“It is critically important to consider what was learned by those who served in Northern Ireland.”
In any case, I hope we hear more from you Cuts…
Nick
Unless you’ve trod the streets and allyways, the lanes and the hedgerows - please don’t lecture Cuts, who has been there and done it. One cannot begin to understand the situation as was and still remains in Ulster, unless you’ve been there and tasted the hatred. It would be akin to describing to a Vietnam vet what it was like in Vietnam.
But in Vietnam there was at least a clear visual difference between potential enemy and your own side, as well as other differences.
I should think it’s rather harder to deal with a Vietnam type situation when the enemy looks just like you, your family, and everyone you know. And largely behaves like them as well.
But if the good guys look the same as the bad guys, it makes no difference whether one looks like either, oneself. It still boils down to who is who - but I take your point.
Returning to Ulster: after serving there a little while, one can generally see differences in the physiognomy between the two sides. Even in different parts of England people can look distinctively different to those from a different region. It isn’t fool-proof ( and it shouldn’t matter anyway, because the majority, of either side, are the bad guys), but there are differences, and at times they are very obvious.
The divide between the people of Northern Ireland is not only religeous. They have different origins. For the most part, the Roman Catholic, Republicans are of Irish origin, whereas the Protestants are, again, for the most part, immigrants - particularly from Scotland.
I would argue that there are lots of similarities in the role of the security forces in different theatres of the world conducting internal security and counterr insurgency operations. The main reason being, the role of the opposition (the guerrila) is pretty much the same and similar methods being used.
As an example of lessons learned: the way the British forces conducted their operations against Basra City, when they first invaded and later entered the city, were modelled on ‘Operation Motorman’, which was the operation in which british forces entered the so called ‘No Go’ areas of Derry and Belfast in 1972. Ironically, the situation in Basra deteriorated so that later there came to be ‘No Go’ areas there also.
I don’t mean any offence to Nick, but as far as I’m concerned, there is no substitute for experience. For example, one can spend one’s childhood reading and fantasising as to what it is to have sex, but until one has been balls deep in ecstacy, one really has no real idea.
The link lists the people killed in N.I. in 1972. It also describes cause of death and by whom the killing was claimed. It might give some idea of what was going on out there at the time:
Of course, if the Tommies were the murderous brutes that these people would have you believe, they wouldn’t need any of the protection afforded by helmets, shields and armoured vehicles - they’d have just finished it.
