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Post by Waverley on Mar 24, 2011 17:07:21 GMT 1
Bought this film last week on Amazon. Had a brief look at it and it is quite gruesome as all civil wars are no matter which side you support. The saddest part being when they had to shoot their own countrymen once they had gained independence from Britain... As I spent a few days with many Irish folk last week I was a wee bit apprehensive about talking about the Civil Wars in their company. It turns out that some of their grandparents were members of the original IRA and ended up in Collins's Free State Army and very much anti-De Valera. It is strange but I can see similarities between Collins and De Valera in the same way that I look at Wallace and Bruce...one was a true Patriot and the other was a feckin chancer.
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trotsky
New Member
Hello Hello
Posts: 404
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Post by trotsky on Sept 12, 2011 10:31:31 GMT 1
Interesting period of Irish history with Collins willingness to accept the treaty settlement for the twenty six counties and the republican faction pushing for a united Ireland. Don’t know that much about the period, have read a wee bit and seen the Michael Collins film but was reading something the other day which is connected to the period with modern day implications around the sectarian debate in Scotland. The claim that songs like the “Boys of the old Brigade” are about a non sectarian old IRA and are about the “political struggle” seem now to be challenged in Ireland itself. The debate in the South by academics and the media is about the attempted cover up of evidence of sectarian killings of Southern Irish Protestants during the early 1920’s, especially the IRA's killing of Protestants in the Bandon Valley area in 1922 and the enforced exodus of hundreds of Protestant families from West Cork. The debate is now challenging the perception that the old IRA was non-sectarian, interesting stuff.
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Post by Waverley on Sept 12, 2011 13:02:31 GMT 1
Many historians of the Great War and the Irish War of INdependence are well aware of the sectarian atrocities carried out by sections of the I.R.A. on innocent farmers in Cork in the 1920's Trotsky. It is only now that all these facts are coming to the fore and there are certain people in Ireland who are doing their best to block it getting into the 'mainstream' of local knowledge and historical debate. I have been friendly with several authors of Irish History over the years on various internet boards and they are under no illusion that certain columns of the I.R.A.were not 'freedom fighters' but nothing but cold blooded sectarian 'terrorists'. I am a member of a board which has covered this matter in depth and even I have been shocked at some of the claims that have been made in Irish newspapers regards the ethnic cleansing that went on during the 1920's. Indeed it is still being carried out to a lesser extent, when I say lesser extent I mean minus the murders, but still happening nevertheless in Derry...whereby Protestants families are constantly under attack in order to make them move from certain areas of the town.
Interesting enough the Black and Tans are at long last beginning to get some recognition as being an elite fighting force during their times in Ireland where they simply met violence with violence...brutal but effective nevertheless. They were sent to Ireland to do a job which was to counteract I.R.A. terrorism and they done it...they quite simply terrified the terrorists.
Savagery in Irish War of Independence on all sides.
The Black and Tans were not so bad after all it seems according to a new book.
That will come as disturbing news to millions of Irish Americans including, by his own account, Vice President Joe Biden, who were raised on stories of Black and Tans atrocities in Ireland during the War of Independence.
The Black and Tans were generally thought of as the scum of the British system, psychopaths released from jails and turned into an evil militia and sent to Ireland.
Not so says a new book by historian David Leeson entitled "The Black and Tans; British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence 1920-21." It is published by Oxford University Press.
The book was reviewed by Eunan O' Halpin in The Irish Times and he says it will open many eyes.
Among the major surprises I found reading his review was that many of the Black and Tans were actually Irish-born and that regular soldiers were far more likely to commit atrocities.
O'Halpin writes; "Leeson's careful analysis of Black and Tan recruitment disposes of the widely aired charge that these temporary policemen were the sweepings of the British penal system. Rather, they were a miscellany of British and Irish ex-servicemen, almost none of whom had criminal records. "
"He also suggests that pre-First World War soldiers were more likely than younger Black and Tans to commit disciplinary and criminal offenses in Ireland, challenging the assumption that the chronic ill discipline of these temporary policemen was specifically a manifestation of the brutalizing effects of the First World War on impressionable youths."
He also notes that " While the Black and Tans were largely confined to service alongside regular RIC men, waiting for the IRA to attack them, the Auxiliaries were intended as an elite force tasked to take the battle to the IRA."
This they did with a vengeance and it is abundantly clear that they abused that power, even more than the Black and Tans actually did.
In another book about the era "1920-1922 The Outrages" by Pearse Lawlor, published by Mercier Press it is clear that the worse of all groups, including the Black and Tans were the Ulster Special Constabulary.
The book discusses the numerous atrocities they carried out, as indeed did the IRA at the time as Lawlor notes, citing especially the brutal murder of an 80-year-old helpless Protestant clergyman in Cavan.
He covers the pogroms against Catholics in at least three major towns led by off-duty Ulster Special Constabulary, later known as the 'B' specials and they leave even the Black and Tans in the halfpenny place when it comes to murder and mayhem.
Almost all revolutions are born in spilt blood and the Irish fight was no different.
What is interesting is how, as history unfolds,previously hard held facts and truths are questioned and re-examined.
It seems we are at that stage with the Irish War of Independence.
There are no choir boys in war we know.These books just make that fact even clearer
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Post by ojohafiao on May 4, 2019 20:19:29 GMT 1
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Post by usirunacax on May 4, 2019 22:10:32 GMT 1
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