Brexit risks a return to dormant, but existing, violence from The Troubles- please help peace in Ireland

[sjoes006]

List of those killed during peaceful demonstration on Bloody Sunday

Please do keep calm but remember that a divided Ireland threatens the peace in Ireland.

A physical border could temper otherwise peaceful waters. Remaining status quo is key.

We’ve had mostly 20 years of peace in Ireland, but a car bomb was set off in 2018 with the suspected party being IRA. Gerry Adams himself said they never went away. Unionist have continued attacks through the 2000’s. No side is without blame but things are mostly neutral.

No one wants to return to this

Ireland 🇮🇪 Is mostly peaceful these days but it’s a delicate balance.

Brexit is threatening that balance. If Ireland is divided up again with borders and what not many feel the past will resurface.

If you are too young to remember The Troubles, I hope it stays that way.

[WhoDatGuy]

I find it very sad that adults can't get along. And tbh a little embarrassing

[sjoes006]

Are you F-ing kidding me, are you taking a piss?

Wait, thought you were speaking directly to The Troubles.

If your speaking about Parliament then, yeah it’s a shot show. But don’t worry, the US is running and even more ridiculous production.

[nightdrot]

Let me stipulate at the outset - as I have before - truth in advertising, I am an American who is an Anglophile, a history buff and have worked in politics including international issues. (Heck, I know all three stanzas to "God save the Queen." Even most of my British friends don't know all three stanzas.) With my credentials thus proffered and my sins confessed, I supported Brexit, not that it is any of my business.

While it is not impossible that Brexit might aggravate issues in Northern Ireland, it is by no means assured and, in any event, is something of a misunderstanding of the situation. Northern Ireland is not experiencing relative peace because of the European Union.

Rather, the European Union is helpful to sustaining those factors that are stabilizing Northern Ireland. It is a subtle but significant difference.

To start, the three things that drove the violence in Northern Ireland were nationalism, religion and the economic condition of the Catholic minority in the north. Each are not what they were.

In the case of religion, it has been losing force in Europe and even in Ireland - as the recent abortion vote in Ireland amply demonstrates. While religious observance is still higher in both parts of Ireland than is the European average, it is not likely a force that will lead to the kind of extremism that provoked the "Troubles" back in the day.

Secondly, in terms of nationalism, to be sure the European Union exists to dilute nationalism and channel it into economic activity. The EU can best be summed up in Adam Smith's famous aphorism, "The merchant has no country."

However, that is no assurance of peace. Indeed, the backlash against the EU that is currently going on in Europe - see also the Alternative for Germany party, see also the Freedom Party in Austria, see also the populist government in Italy, see also the riots in France, see also Poland, Hungary, et. al. - is born of the fact that national identity is not incidental to human nature. Rather, it is integral to it.

Man, when stripped of such things like religion, national identity, and so forth, is - as Edmund Burke famously said, "stripped to his naked shivering nature." Rather, things like nationalism afford a sense of community and identity and when that sense is stripped away, people will tend toward violent extremes. See also Russia, 1917. See also Italy, 1922. See also Germany, 1933, China, 1949.

It is rather a balancing act. Nationalism is not inherently violent, but can become so as two world wars amply demonstrate. By the same token, the EU is no safeguard against that and may even worsen the affliction it purports to cure.

Finally, there is the economics. Part of what drove the violence in Northern Ireland was the sense that the Roman Catholic minority was not doing as well economically as the Protestant majority. To some degree that was true for a variety of reasons, though the Catholic minority was, not surprisingly, inclined to see its poor economic performance as rooted in discrimination by the Protestant majority.

However, as the data show, the improvement of the condition of the Catholic minority began in the 1980s, well before the EU became a factor. To be sure, by opening up frictionless trade with the Republic of Ireland has helped intensify that process to some degree. However, it is not absolutely necessary to it nor is it an assurance that it will continue.

Put simply, Brexit risks a return to violence in Northern Ireland, but it by no means assures it either. Things are not quite so simple and from the British perspective, the risk is worth taking. Keeping in mind that a study by the House of Commons Library found that 77% of British laws - depending on how you count EU court rulings and regulations - were being imposed without reference to Parliament.

So, in the British view, there is the risk of violence set against the reassertion of British sovereignty and identity. It then becomes a balancing act - and so it will be.

[sjoes006]

No... just, no. You can’t put your history hat on to understand The Troubles my friend. Or at least if and when you do, that history has to be old enough to have some time between it and the people involved.

It has to come from a more neutral stance. Some people get their say and others don’t in fresh matters like these.

The fact of the matter is, if you go nosing about asking questions in Ireland today (the island as a whole) people aren’t going to talk to ya about it.

I really have no idea why you even think you should be commenting on such internal matters. You’re old enough to remember some of the conflict but you have no idea what it felt like or still feels like. The resentments that are still there. The shame. The fear.

[nightdrot]

You asked the question on a website that is about discussion. That is the first reason I commented on it. If you don't want to hear answers, don't ask the question - particularly on this site.

Secondly, I am familiar with British and Irish politics - in part because my own career has been in politics, including international relations. Among other employers, I have worked for the U. S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the GOP House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. I also have worked with several members of both the British Parliament and the Irish Dail. I am not unfamiliar with these issues and am, in fact, deeply interested in them.

Third, because unlike yourself, who seems to believe the profoundly silly notion that these situations exist de novo and independent of the historical predicates that preceded them, I believe that an historical analysis offers a more solid foundation for analyzing these questions.

Beyond that, I would ask you to write more clearly. I can barely follow what you wrote, and what I can discern struck me less as analysis than emotion divorced from any deeper context.

[Anonymous]

Ireland threatens to support the IRA terrorist group again if the UK doesn't abandon Brexit- "Oh, we have to stop Brexit! It's for the sake of PEACE- we have to COME TOGETHER, and stop these racist nazi skinhead OAPs from ruining our perfect socialist progressive utopia!"

UK refuses to endorse the non-negotiable EU demand of the Irish 'backstop', which would entail Northern Ireland essentially being annexed, and legally considered ROI territory by the EU and all other nations the EU makes trade deals with, in perpetuity- "How dare they! We swear, we WILL stop these racist nazi skinhead OAPs from ruining our perfect socialist progressive utopia, AND support the IRA in the their noble goal of regaining our lebensraum in Northern Ireland! And if we kill people for it, then it's all THEIR fault- they shouldn't have voted for BREXIT! They deserve to die for it!"

UK refuses to allow Shamima Begum back into the UK to give birth to her baby, revoking her citizenship for still being a proud member of IS- "SEE, they're all racist nazi skinhead OAPs, just like we've been screaming for all these years! They have to be stopped, before they ruin our perfect socialist progressive utopia!"

FUCK, YOU. If YOU want to return to the troubles, then please, feel free. But feel free to be responded to, in the same way as we'd respond to any other delusional religious-radical terrorist groups who decide to declare a "Holy War" against us. If the IRA resume hostilities, why should we treat the Irish regime- which has outright pledged to give the listed terrorist organization its full military and financial support in the event of the No-Deal Brexit, as has the EU- any differently to how we treated the Afghans when Al Qaeda attacked us? Wouldn't it be prejudiced, racist, and anti-Muslim, for us to go any more softly on you than we did on the Afghans, just 'cause you're white, majority Christian, and a comfy first-world country rather than a third-world shit-hole?

So. DON'T YOU DARE GO THREATENING TO START KILLING OUR PEOPLE, in ACTS OF TERRORISM, just because we aren't bowing down to you and doing whatever YOU say we should for your 'greater good'. Because that makes you no different to Hitler, to Stalin, to Bin Laden, to Islamic State. And we WILL respond in kind. And you WILL regret it.

[AndrewMG]

Without getting political I feel Brexit is a disastrous move and anyone that can't see the UK becoming more parochial and the chance of a return to the troubles being connected is missing a few brain cells. On line tonight I'm talking to people from different continents, we should be celebrating the fact the world is becoming a smaller place rather than becoming an insignificant country with a little Islander mentality.

[sjoes006]

Appreciated feedback. To be fair, I do t think Britain wanted to become a little island state with no influence.

It was thought by some that it could be have both ways. London remaining the Financial HQ ans superpower of Europe and just grifting all the benefits without having to take in more migrants.

People were misled to believe that the UK and it’s sterling was so important to the stability of Europe that the EU would accommodate many things.

I feel bad for Scottland, they didn’t want this.

It was the older people in Northern Ireland that wanted to leave, though. The ones that do remember the hell. I guess they didn’t think through what it would mean. It’s what they’ve wanted.

Sometimes we see things in recent history so horrible that one thinks we would never be stupid enough to repeat that same mistake.

For me in the US that event was the Rodney King Riots. it seems like something we will never let happen again, but then there was Furgeson.

The idea of British soldiers occupying Northern Ireland seems completely beyond reach of reality right now. But it’s not. It will look different but same packaging.

[AndrewMG]

You're so right. I'm a son of parents who I love dearly but they both voted for brexit and my Dad and other Uncles/relatives served in Northern Ireland during the troubles. What I kinda disagree with is the fact London/England being a financial superpower, whilst I agree the UK is a huge economy for the scale of the country it is dependent on certain trade deals/relationships etc. The fact that people like Farage/Johnson can blatantly lie and not only affect the welfare of millions but risk a peace treaty in Northern Ireland that a generation ago seemed impossible whilst knowing they will either profit or not affected by their actions is ground for treason in my eyes.

[sjoes006]

I really appreciate your response. It’s nice to meet someone who has parents that had to go through all of that. My father was in his early 20’s during The Troubles. It got better during the 80’s but he was long gone.

When I say London is the Financial HQ for the EU, I don’t mean the country is producing the most GDP or any measure like that.

What I mean is they were the trading room floor second to Wall Street.

Also, I deal with Lloyd’s and many of their syndicates have set up shop in Belgium or other points within the EU.

I’m afraid Lloyd’s is in for a tough road. I can’t imagine Wall Street all of the sudden being irrelevant and being taken over by Canada.

[Barrabus_the_Free]

Hunt down an exterminate the Marxist IRA. Kill them, if they surrender then take them out to sea, strip them naked, chain a big chunk of steel to their feet, and dump them in the ocean.

Ireland will have peace when all of the IRA Marxists are dead.

[Giggletr0n]

This is only going to start off one way... badly! I don't pretend to even really care about the Brexit situation but anybody with a functioning brain will know that the news is going to be flooded with issue after issue after Brexit takes full force.

[sjoes006]

How can you not care? You profile says you live in the UK. Most millennials voted to stay and understand it’s a problem to leave.

I guess maybe because you don’t know what the reality will look like yet?

I do business with lloyd’s And now I have partners moving from London to Brussels. Smfh

I’m not okay with it.

[Giggletr0n]

I have a very cynical view on politics and political events in general - they are gonna do whatever they want no matter what!
It doesn't affect my personal life in the slightest - my career won't suffer as it's just not that kind of job and my partner's career won't suffer for the same reason, my kid's schooling won't be affected and nothing for me will change enough for me to care, maybe the prices on some of the tech I buy will increase but that's about it for me.
The reality is a grim one, initially at least, but like everything else it will eventually settle down and we will all find a way to deal with it because if we don't then we are only making it harder on ourselves!

[Anonymous]

Brexit has nothing to do with it. Paramilitaries on both sides are more like gangsters preying on their communities. They'd love to see the troubles start again so they could return to the old days when they had money and power.

[sjoes006]

Interesting opinion. I’d really like to think that the rest of Britain’s allies simply wouldn’t stand for it, at least not state backing like there was under Thatcher.

Maybe if the US gets a new president but France also has troubles of their own.

The idea of letting Northern Ireland devolve back into an apartheid state under military rule seems so completely unacceptable but not unfathomable.

I shutter at the thought. Peace in Ireland.

[Opinion Owner]

The people will never let it return to what it was. 30 years of violence just to end up exactly where things would have gone if there was no violence.

[Gedaria]

Bloody Sunday was any thing but peace ful. Why do you think the Paras opened fire because they came under fire. But all this supposed to have all been buried under the good Friday agreement.
Sadly a lot of people are using the latest situation for their own ends !!!

[sjoes006]

I think perhaps the washing at the time to Morher England was somewhat skewed.

“The Saville Inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, was established in 1998 to reinvestigate the incident. Following a 12-year inquiry, Saville's report was made public in 2010 and concluded that the killings were both "unjustified" and "unjustifiable". It found that all of those shot were unarmed, that none was posing a serious threat, that no bombs were thrown, and that soldiers "knowingly put forward false accounts" to justify their firing.[8][9] On the publication of the report, British prime minister David Cameron made a formal apology on behalf of the United Kingdom.[10] Following this, police began a murder investigation into the killings“

I’m NOT looking to place blame, because the troubles, according to my father, were just chaos every day in the 70’s.

I don’t think anyone is looking to dig up the past. The older generation is tired and the younger generation doesn’t care enough to know better.

I fall somewhere in between. Anyone 10 years older than me would clinch their butt cheeks at the mere mention of the debate.

Younger people seem to just not care or believe. But then there are the young people that want the divide and strive for it. Mostly though it’s the loyalists making trouble. But the IRA is still there though in tatters.

Most want peace, don’t you?

I think I would cry until my eyeballs fell out if I had to watch Ireland go through similar trauma from the past.

To me, The Good Friday Agreement was everything. I was a kid, but my father passed away before it was signed. But he knew peace would come.

So I hope for Palestine, I hope for nations and I hope for the underserved communities within my country.

By hope, I mean taking action, but action must have hope to be successful.

[Gedaria]

If that is right, that all were unarmed how come soldiers were injured with bullets. All so the information the enquiry so so one sided to the Irish. The were potrayed as totally innocent bi bistanders, and all knew they weren't and we're able to identify the real problem people. So it is should be 50/50 to both sides. Plus no says about many people murdered by bombers on the mainland , as far as who have blood on their hands it's looking towards northern Ireland !!!

[sjoes006]

There’s literally a movie starring Daniel Day Lewis that is based upon a car bomb, Lewis wrongly convicted and courts treating him as a terrorist. That is, the real person he plays.

In The Name of The Father.

Soldiers fired on people that were running away. No soldiers were killed.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)

[Gedaria]

It wasn't a very good day for any one. But it is taken out of context, it was a culmination of years of bad treatment. I had a lot of friends who were in the army at that time sadly they came home in body bags, they didn't get an enquiry. The army was sent in there to keep the peace only to get killed by both religious sides. All the people that the IRA killed on the mainland a lot never got given a chance. Plus good Friday agreement was supposed to have put a line under the troubles to move forward. Persons in Northern Ireland want justice for bloody Sunday the British people want justice for the bombs that killed people , if persons who knew who these people were they have blood on their hands for keeping quiet...

[sjoes006]

Look there are no heroes on either side. But unprovoked military use of force on its own civilians is not only in violation of Geneva, Human Rights and a complete and utter betrayal by a government to its citizen betraying that citizen of citizenship de facto.

These people, the Catholics in the occupied territories, were without rights, without citizenship and under house arrest behind walls denied proper education. And the right to fair wage and work.

It’s the damn equivalent of the West Bank (but worse because these are British subjects) or Japanese internment camps.

These aren’t foreign hostile. These are citizens, people Margaret Thatcher was sworn to protect.

I understand your justified pain and resentment for the troubles that spilt over into England. This wasn’t fair or deserved, a mourn for those innocent victims just as I do all the rest.

I don’t blame the individual soldier who shot civilians throughout the occupation.

I just don’t want to hear an English person still saying “blame on both sides” or blame on protesters for Bloody Sunday.

We’re never supposed to speak of it or any other crimes again because of The Good Friday Agreement?

Well here we are, hard border, Brexit stirring up the past. The will over the people on the Island has been overridden by the continent and people are feeling under represented and unheard again.

It’s just a feeling of please, please don’t. If there’s one thing with Brexit, please leave Ireland out of it, please.

It means a great deal for the Catholic minority in the area known by Britain as Ulster

[coolbreeze]

I hope Ireland can have it's peace... I hear it's so nice there.

[sjoes006]

It’s a very special place and people. But The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was simply a ceasefire type situation and end of direct rule from London and efforts to impede Irish unity.

Brexit basically voids The Good Friday Agreement by returning duke of Northern Ireland to London.

[coolbreeze]

Uh ok I see. That would suck if that agreement gets voided like that. I noticed a lot of rules and laws have been getting changed.

[ThisAndThat]

I'm for independence and I'm for Briexit the same way i am for building the wall in the US and getting out of the UN's NWO.

[sjoes006]

Great! Then you think maybe it’s time for Britain to return The occupied counties back to Ireland?

I’m all for independence, me too!

[ThisAndThat]

Yes I do, countries need to stay out of each others business and the UN needs to be disbanded.

[Agape93]

I agree. Whilst I’m not Irish nor plan to go there, destabilizing an entire region over something petty like brexit is amazingly stupid.

[Waffles731]

I've notices an increase in Dissent IRA activity lately

[Anonymous]

No surrender to the IRA! Ulster says no to Fenian scum. The famine's over, will ye never go home?

[sjoes006]

Home? Ireland is my home.

[NYCQuestions1976]

I support Brexit AND a free Ireland. No reason we can't have both...

[sjoes006]

Please elaborate on your vision to achieve both.

I suppose there could be a way if Britain brokered a proper deal, but they can’t and if they did the unionists in N Ireland would rebel.

Now Ireland is split between the EU and Britain. This is not a step in the right direction.

[monkeynutts]

Yeah I hope for peace in Ireland too.

[Anonymous]

great take

[sjoes006]

Thanks, I was nervous about posting this, wanted to say more, but just I can’t.

It’s personal formme but I know that for many this isn’t a big issue.

[CallumPatterson]

when the peace is at all the planet?(

[sjoes006]

Such a glib comment. And you’re old enough to know better, remembering The Troubles, and from the UK so it touched your coast.

How dare you, sir? How dare you make such comment.

If a peace agreement was finally reached in the Israeli/ Palestinian situation we’d all be truly invested in keeping that peace.

The Good Friday Agreement wasn’t a peace treaty. It was simply a set of agreed upon negotiation and promise. It was more of a ceasefire and rollback of military rule.

No one in Ireland who lived through it will even talk about the period still to this day. it’s a no go.

My father explained it to me but not the specifics. Just what daily life was like for him before moving the the US.

If you have relative peace in Ireland, why would you so easily want to fuck it off and risk bedlam?

If Brexit forces a border and tension I can very well predict that IRA violence is going to be directed across to England first than back to Ireland as response to Unionist/ loyalist violence.

You don’t take 20 years of mostly peace and hard work to get there just to throw it away.

[Secretgardenblood]

Good take...