MERGED ==> Rioters "Intended to Kill Police" + "Belfast Riots"

[VertigoGal]

I hope not.

 

[LJT]

Hopefully not but at this rate the loyalists are likely to pull some nationalist areas into the violence....then i fear that will be sufficient to make some form of the republicans retaliate.

 

[VertigoGal]

right...hope you're able to avoid any violent confrontations over there.

 

[LJT]

Thanks darlin

 

[Vincent Vega]

I hope not that we need to wish you luck, but look after yourself.

 

[Teta040]

Wait a minute. What Orange parade is this? I thought they were on July 12th every year? That's bad enough..now they have to have MORE? Is this some sick joke of Sir Ian's that is intended to kill the Sinn Fein "promise"?

Lovey idea of Ian Paisley's.....LOVELY Idea. I see he has made no statement. If Trimble was still there he would have denouced the rioters, at considerable politicl and maybe even literal risk. Fat chace with THIS bastard in power.

 

[LJT]

There have always been more Orange parades than just on the 12th....they have a whole season of parades over the summer...its the way it has always been

 

[Laura M]

Wait a minute. What Orange parade is this? I thought they were on July 12th every year? That's bad enough..now they have to have MORE? Is this some sick joke of Sir Ian's that is intended to kill the Sinn Fein "promise"?

Lovey idea of Ian Paisley's.....LOVELY Idea. I see he has made no statement. If Trimble was still there he would have denouced the rioters, at considerable politicl and maybe even literal risk. Fat chace with THIS bastard in power.

Orange Parades happen throughout the summer, the 12th is the climax of the marching season.

Ian Paisley has made a statement about people playing into the hands of the Republicans and the only person rubbing their hands with joy would be Gerry Adams.

LJT, I come from A/town but we moved out 8 years ago now.

as far as these riots, are they arresting anyone? it seems to me shooting and throwing bombs at the police is a serious offense, and frankly it seems like their response was even a little lighthanded. I'd have to wonder what would happen if mobs started shooting and attacking police in New York.

They arrested 19 people last night.

 

[LJT]

I moved into Andytown...not sure many people do that

 

[Laura M]

Well I moved into it too but I was around 4 at the time and have very little recollection of it. I don't think about it too much (we've actually moved out 9 years now and I still feel like the new people) but I do miss our neighbours and friends I had there, I went back recently for a funeral and they were all so lovely. Everyone here is reluctant to speak to each other. I also miss people talking about going to the "front of the road".

You know, you think it's awful but we left to move to a mixed, middle - upper class area and we've had nothing but trouble. We have had our windows smashed, our car damaged, our bins stolen and set alight. Our parents and neighbours have spoken to the childrens families (they are all teenagers now of around 13 - 17) and they don't stop them coming out to torture people.

 

[LJT]

Do you know St Annes? I am down the street across from it..Riverdale Park East...its not a bad street...the top of its ugly and the joyriders like to use the pitch right behind my house other than that not too bad

hehe i used to live on 'the front of the road' i used to live across from the Rock Bar onn the Falls Road...it is quite a hole down there now. Aldo's is still going strong though(chippy)

I guess it's just Belfast really....everything that happen's here just seems normal to me at least...hehe i will probably miss the riot reports when i go to Bristol

 

[Laura M]

Of course I know Riverdale. I used to live near the dole office.

I'm moving to Spain in a week for a year. I will definitely miss Belfast, I've lived here my entire life. It's such a shame people only think certain things about it because of news like this. I really hope they calm down though, I have a life to lead and I can't do it when I can't get on a bus and all the shops close early.

 

[LJT]

Good luck in moving to Spain

 

[TheQuiet1]

This is probably one of those moments when I'd be better off keeping my mouth shut. Oh well. Just some random thoughts on the whole thing (assuming it's finally over. The BBC dropped it from the national headlines yesterday I think):

1. When that BBC bloke said what the riots really showed was not so much a political stance as that NI still had a culture of violence he was right. And that's the problem. How the heck do you rid a place of such a culture? Do you really think Hain/Blair are up to it? I don't. Not when you consider places like Nottingham being called the 'gun crime capital of the UK' (Hope you're enjoying uni there btw Nikki!). I mean who'd have dreamt that Nottingham would have turned out that way in the 60s?

2. The moment when the couple whose business was completely destroyed by an arson attack said they didn't blame the person who threw the petrol bomb, they blamed the government. I think that comment says a lot. And I don't just mean their reluctance to blame their 'own side' but instead be united against 'the enemy' . It also reflects just how frustrating anyone (whether unionist or loyalist) finds the current situation. Creating SF was the most sensible thing the IRA ever did because now you've got to talk to them (they're being democratic) and you've got to listen (because if you don't...). But to a lot of people, talking to SF is talking to terrorists and to a lot of people you just don't do that (remember the fuss over Mo going into Maze prison to talk to the inmates?). To them it must seem like NI is going all out to rejoin the ROI. Apppinting Peter Hain as NI Secretary, being so close knit with SF, the dragging of heels over bringing NI back into line with the rest of the UK by having an Assembly, and Blair seems to give the impression that he would be very glad to see NI leave the UK. It scares them and it's no wonder loyalist paramilitaries are behaving as they are because they can see their power slowly slipping through their fingers. It's no wonder the two extreme political parties are getting elected. The loyalists are scared of what they're losing whilst Republicans see either SF as a foil to the loyalist voting or see the quick gains they're making. Either way, the two parties that hate each other's guts getting elected is not the way forward. Where's Trimble and Hume when you need them?

3. Yeah, I really do want NI to stay in the UK. I know that because I'm English, I'm not meant to feel like this. I know that I'm supposed to say things like "we'd be better off without you" or "whatever you want; we'll do". Of-course if the majority of people in NI want to leave the UK then of-course leave, I'm not advocating some sort of occupation thing here! I won't say the reason I want NI to remain because it'll sound so stupid but it's an important reason to me.

Still the ROI has only existed since 1949, the Irish Free State just a couple of decades before that. That's no time at all in the grand scheme of things. The idea of NI and ROI being united again could happen comparatively simply (key word being comparatively!) it's not as if you're trying to unite two places that have been completely separate for centuries. Heck, the UK will probably end in the not too distant future if the right events keep happening. Maybe NI would be better off with the rest of Ireland. Maybe one day the separate UK countries will begging to join the ROI! Who knows?

Please discount those last two paragraphs, they don't really make sense (in fact nor does the whole of point two really...) but I don't want to delete them after typing all that crap.

Well, wherever NI belongs I just hope it's a peaceful one. That doesn't seem likely but hey, we can hope. And Lara, enjoy Spain and I don't think Belfast is as the worst city ever. In fact I think all things considered it seems to have dragged itself up well. It may not have gone under the miraculous transformation that the Northern English cities have (Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool etc) but given everything that's gone on there I think it's done well to get as far as it has.

I should have probably just let this thread die but I did want to put my views forward, however crazy, naive and downright wrong they may be.

 

[Vincent Vega]

There was nothing in the news today I think, are the riots over again?
I hope so and I hope nobody lost his life.

 

[LJT]

This is probably one of those moments when I'd be better off keeping my mouth shut. Oh well. Just some random thoughts on the whole thing (assuming it's finally over. The BBC dropped it from the national headlines yesterday I think):

There are always more minor things on the go...i don't think the loyalist feud about a month or so ago got much English media attention, even though 4 people were murdered. There was still some minor violence in areas last night. It will take a wee while to fizzle out.

Ok now on to your points...i understand what you were getting at, but there were big errors and inaccurracies.

Bare with me.

 

[LJT]

1. When that BBC bloke said what the riots really showed was not so much a political stance as that NI still had a culture of violence he was right. And that's the problem. How the heck do you rid a place of such a culture? Do you really think Hain/Blair are up to it? I don't. Not when you consider places like Nottingham being called the 'gun crime capital of the UK' (Hope you're enjoying uni there btw Nikki!). I mean who'd have dreamt that Nottingham would have turned out that way in the 60s?

There is a culture of violence here and that probably won't end til there is more intergration....i live in an all catholic area...how many places in the UK are like that? You may get a more majority of one religion in a city than in another, but i can walk out to my road, walk a mile and not meet a single person of another faith or someone of another race other than for the chinese's around. NI is as ghettoised as any ghetto in LA. Whole towns are one religion or the other, you can tell by the flags they fly or what colour the cribby is painted. No integration means there is no basis for trust between people, plus we have a 500 odd years history of hating each other it doesn't help.

 

[LJT]

2. The moment when the couple whose business was completely destroyed by an arson attack said they didn't blame the person who threw the petrol bomb, they blamed the government. I think that comment says a lot. And I don't just mean their reluctance to blame their 'own side' but instead be united against 'the enemy' . It also reflects just how frustrating anyone (whether unionist or loyalist) finds the current situation. Creating SF was the most sensible thing the IRA ever did because now you've got to talk to them (they're being democratic) and you've got to listen (because if you don't...). But to a lot of people, talking to SF is talking to terrorists and to a lot of people you just don't do that (remember the fuss over Mo going into Maze prison to talk to the inmates?). To them it must seem like NI is going all out to rejoin the ROI. Apppinting Peter Hain as NI Secretary, being so close knit with SF, the dragging of heels over bringing NI back into line with the rest of the UK by having an Assembly, and Blair seems to give the impression that he would be very glad to see NI leave the UK. It scares them and it's no wonder loyalist paramilitaries are behaving as they are because they can see their power slowly slipping through their fingers. It's no wonder the two extreme political parties are getting elected. The loyalists are scared of what they're losing whilst Republicans see either SF as a foil to the loyalist voting or see the quick gains they're making. Either way, the two parties that hate each other's guts getting elected is not the way forward. Where's Trimble and Hume when you need them?

Hume is retired and too ill now to be that active in politics. Trimble is now a chimney sweep well not really, but i am not sure what he has been up to since he resigned from the UUP...if you think he was a moderate or a voice of reason, you are quite sadly mistaken, since the Good Friday Agreement he has tried to out Paisley, Paisley

Unionists and loyalists have frustrated themselves...loyalists what the violence back because peace means many of them lose their little drug pushing paradises and control over their areas. The violence they have undertaken recently is just really to goad the IRA back into action in some form, they want an enemy so they can keep going and have an excuse for violence.

Sinn Fein was never created by the IRA...Sinn Fein has been about since around 1916 and even earlier (though it was the 1916 rising that propelled them into the limelight as such). They were and always have been an extreme nationalist political party and so had links to the various groups at the time like the Irish Republican Brotherhood (elements of which went on to form the IRA along with various other nationalist groups) But as far as my knowledge goes they were created independently of each other.

And you know if you are going to say Sinn Fein were a party for terrorists...well Paisley has served a jail sentence for inciting hatred in the 60s and illegal assemebly..plenty of speaches from back then showing his hatred of Catholicism. The PUP another unionist party is the political front for the UVF (with their quite amusing leader David Irvine...he has a new word he must use everyday..we think he has one of those calenders with a word for everyday...)

Mo Mowlam, went to the Maze prison and spoke to loyalist inmates...includng one Michael Stone...a vicous murderer who shot dead a number of Catholics in a graveyard who were attending a burial...Sean Kelly is also a vicious IRA murderer, who bombed killing people on the Shakhill, but when Unionists talk about 'oooh they let nationalist prisoners out' well Johnny Adair has been in and out like a yoyo...under the GFA all these loyalist/republican prisoners were released...stupidest part of the agreement too:l, it is idiotic to let these guys roam free....Adair and Kelly broke their release conditions, both still are free.

I do not see how you can view NI as going all out to rejoin with the Republic...one of the conditions of the GFA (Good Friday Agreement) was to state that there would be no reunification unless there was a majority who wished for it decided by a vote. As it stands it will probably take a 100 odd years for that to ever happen, there is still a Protestant majority in NI even though it is only about 51 to 49 percent now. Under the GFA it could only therefore be decided by a majority. The Unionists though even if there was a majority would never want a unified Ireland...it wouldn't matter if there was only a 5% percent Unionist population they would not accept a unified Ireland.

It was unionists that formed the first paramilitary group in Ulster in 1912, they imported arms from Germany of all places...yes very supportive of the queen they swear allegiance to. This was even before partition (of Northern Ireland), they setup because they did not want Home Rule in Ireland, fearing it would eventually lead to Ireland becoming a free country again. Northern Ireland was created in 1921 due to an agreement made between the Free State and the British..even then Michael Collins and all those responsible for the agreement believed it was only a temporary thing that after a while there would be a reunified Ireland...a border commission was meant to be setup to decide on this but it never ocurred. Loyalist's brought the gun into Northern politics.....there were plenty of groups beforehand as i have mentioned such as the IRB or in the 1800s the Fenians..they were for the freedom of Ireland from British occupation..and it very much was a British occupation...Ireland had always wanted to be a free country...and the discrimination over many years (hundreds) of Irish Catholics....has never helped.

In 1921 the North was handed over to unionist control who discriminated against catholics and used that control for their own means. They controlled elections because Unionist business owners were given more votes, catholics were generally working class so they had less electoral power, whereas basically Unionists had complete control....the Nationalists that did get into Stormont couldn't get any bills passed because the Unionists had control of the assembly....in fact the only nationalist bill that did get passed was one for the protection of a wild bird

They had that control for 50 years. The troubles broke out around 1969, Catholics were taking part in civil rights marches in Derry, riots broke out from there...Derry was a city with a nationalist majority yet because of the unionist rules, every member of the city council was a unionist. The first major trouble in Belfast was in a Catholic area...Bombay Street...Large groups of Protestants (hundreds) from a neighbouring area came into Bombay Street, burning Catholic homes, shops, schools, trying to kill and destroy...this was during the day...all the Catholic men were at work...the majority were women and children...they took refuge in the local monastery...teenagers defended it with stones, whatever they could get their hands on...Catholic men got calls from home and they left their work to go defend their homes......and so we had the troubles...the IRA became more active..as did the loyalists. If anyone thinks the big problem in NI was the IRA, hey they were a big problem, but by no means were the IRA the only wrongdoers, the unionists began it along with discriminating British governments over 200-300 years.

Don't get me wrong the IRA was just as bad as the UVF or whoever, the IRA should never killed innocent people such as in its terror campaign in England...or just innocent Protestants here...and i do not support them...but i am nationalist at heart, so i can not help but sympathise with the cause at the beginning...many ordinary men and people got involved because the police and security forces here were all against the nationalists, there was no one to defend them...hence why the IRA had so much support and got so strong.

Why are loyalists behaving like this now? Because they are losing the power they once had...the control they had and the power they had over Catholics....it is just balancing out now, but they preferred it when they had all the power.....this is why the unionists never wanted to speak with Sein Fein....powersharing is just something they can't do with Nationalists/Catholics at the heart of it.

Unionists saying they are isolated and that everything is going the way of nationalists is bullshit(sorry) they are trying to make themselves out to be in the situation of Catholics years ago. The only reason so much has been going our way is because we had so little to begin with...as i said it's balancing out. The Orange Order which Paisley and many unionists are members of frequently talks to loyalist terrorists...in fact the Orange Order was at the launch of a new loyalist paper with loyalist terrorists also attending......it really shows how meaningless it is when they say 'we are not prepared to talk to terrorists'.

 

[LJT]

3. Yeah, I really do want NI to stay in the UK. I know that because I'm English, I'm not meant to feel like this. I know that I'm supposed to say things like "we'd be better off without you" or "whatever you want; we'll do". Of-course if the majority of people in NI want to leave the UK then of-course leave, I'm not advocating some sort of occupation thing here! I won't say the reason I want NI to remain because it'll sound so stupid but it's an important reason to me.

What reason?

I don't want NI to stay part of the UK You would be better off without us...so would the Republic...i can't see why anybody would want us...The Republic is the 8th best place to live in the world at the moment....higher than the UK...Northern Ireland is crap we would probably knock the Republic down to around 50th in the world.

My identity is of an Irish man...i am not Northern Irish or British...i am just Irish...therefore hell yeah i want a united Ireland but as i said won't happen for ages yet...but i believe it should be. You know two of the greatest Irish nationalists were both Protestants, Robert Emmett and Wolfe Tone, both were about when Ireland was still British property...they wanted a free Ireland not because of religion but because they were Irishmen...their affinity was to this country not some king or queen, in a place that couldn't give a damn.

Still the ROI has only existed since 1949, the Irish Free State just a couple of decades before that. That's no time at all in the grand scheme of things. The idea of NI and ROI being united again could happen comparatively simply (key word being comparatively!) it's not as if you're trying to unite two places that have been completely separate for centuries. Heck, the UK will probably end in the not too distant future if the right events keep happening. Maybe NI would be better off with the rest of Ireland. Maybe one day the separate UK countries will begging to join the ROI! Who knows?

Hopefully i answered this paragraph in everything else i said....sorry for being so long winded and i didn't mean any offence to you...i have nothing against ordinary English people or anything hell if i did i wouldn't be going to Bristol would I?

Just if you could tell this is something i feel strongly about...and there is so much history to do with here, its confusing and very long, i could have gone back to the 1100s to explain why here is the way it is, but i tried to keep to recent events

I hope this has helped in some way and sorry it's hard to explain some things here if i don't go into detail..... i could write a book on this.

 

[VertigoGal]

Thanks for the very informative post(s) LJT

I now feel as if I understand a bit more past the "yeah, well something about Catholics and Protestants" phase!

 

[Vincent Vega]

Yes, I had the problem with my A-level oral examination.
We had the topic Terrorism and I took the IRA in Northern Ireland.
It was very hard to cut down the history to about four minutes of my speech. There was so much to mention starting with 1167 and then Wolfe Tone, the Plantations, Oliver Cromwell, Wilhelm the Orange and so on, but I really had to leave that off and only speak about the key incidents and then about the Troubles and the recent situation.

This is really a lot of history, and a bloody one.
But in the end I made it

Nice to read what you have to say about it.

 

[LJT]

Thanks guys...glad it has helped your understanding in some way...it is confusing even to someone who has this stuff in their blood.

One thing that i should mention is that here we have a kinda 'social conscience' where the likes of the famine and all that are still relevant to people, it still angers people...it just floats there...it hasn't faded....feelings here seem to be held onto for a very very very long time.

 

[VertigoGal]

right...I was reading this thing about how certain cultures tend to have longer "collective memories" than others. It mentioned a lot of Eastern European cultures as having that trait, and it seems like that could be the same here. If you look at the US, I feel like we have the shortest memory of most of the countries on earth. That can be a good thing and a bad one...

 

[Vincent Vega]

Yes, seems to be a trauma for th Irish, especially for the Catholics since the Protestant usually were better off.
As far as I know the Protestants got their rations and nearly the rest of it got shipped to England.

 

[LJT]

You could say our collective memory is ooo about 500 years give or take a hundred

Yeh i guess that collective memory thing would apply...irish culture is very family/community based...what happens one of us effects most of us in a way or we feel it as being so.

If any other Irish people are about..what do you guys think?

 

[LJT]

Yes, seems to be a trauma for th Irish, especially for the Catholics since the Protestant usually were better off.
As far as I know the Protestants got their rations and nearly the rest of it got shipped to England.

Well the cause of the famine was simple...the blight destroyed the potatoes which was the main food of the poor Irish..Protestant landlords though could afford a much greater variety of foods...the Irish Catholic farmers and labourers nearly relied souly on the potato crop....with that gone they starved. Ireland though had crops of corn growing, but that was for export to England, and English officials refused to stop the importing of Irish corn (i think it was corn) thus leaving the Irish without any alternative food.

 

[sallycinnamon78]

Re: Re: Rioters "intended to kill police"

You honestly believe that Loyalists are responsible for EVERY SINGLE act of violence that occurs over there???

I realise I'm a little late here, but I think they key word in Jamila's post was all, and she is 100% correct in that respect.

 

[VertigoGal]

In New Jersey schools, the potato famine is taught as part of the unit on genocide. (I'm sure that's for political reasons as much as anything)

 

[Vincent Vega]

Well the cause of the famine was simple...the blight destroyed the potatoes which was the main food of the poor Irish..Protestant landlords though could afford a much greater variety of foods...the Irish Catholic farmers and labourers nearly relied souly on the potato crop....with that gone they starved. Ireland though had crops of corn growing, but that was for export to England, and English officials refused to stop the importing of Irish corn (i think it was corn) thus leaving the Irish without any alternative food.

Really bitter what happened there. The Catholics didn't have access to other food than potatoes, that were gone by the blight, by export or for the Protestants, and so they died.
And many others moved to America.

 

[financeguy]

Jamila raises some valid points in her opening post.

Of course she is correct in pointing out that violence in Northern Ireland does not emanate exclusively from Republicans.

In fact the 1969-1994 Troubles were intially sparked off by Loyalist attempted progroms against Nationalists, not by the IRA.

Of course, the IRA response was totally disproportionate and evil.

Anyway that is just to explain the (recent) historical context.

On a side note I don't buy the idea that this is about Protestant versus Catholic. It is more to do with national identity than religion, in my view. Religion is only a side issue.