Alternative Histories

[BillyStubbsTears]

Today is the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

I wonder how the past 50 years would have panned out if someone relatively senior in the British Army had not decided to shoot unarmed, peacefully protesting British Citizens in the back, and if the Establishment had not then spent decades deliberately and knowingly lying about what happened.

[tyke1962]

Today is the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

I wonder how the past 50 years would have panned out if someone relatively senior in the British Army had not decided to shoot unarmed, peacefully protesting British Citizens in the back, and if the Establishment had not then spent decades deliberately and knowingly lying about what happened.

Changed the whole picture of the troubles .

IRA membership increased significantly as a result .

If I'd have lived in Derry at that time and grew up as a Catholic I'm pretty certain I'd have signed up to the IRA too following those murders .

That's what they were , murders .

[phil old leake]

Both of you were there then and witnessed it. So you can verify that as fact

[DonnyNoel]

Both of you were there then and witnessed it. So you can verify that as fact

So no one can ever verify anything as fact(TM) ever if they weren't there to see it? Always thought that Titanic film was b*llocks.

[tyke1962]

Both of you were there then and witnessed it. So you can verify that as fact

The Saville Report conducted under the Blair government makes it a fact .

[BillyStubbsTears]

Both of you were there then and witnessed it. So you can verify that as fact

No Phil of course I wasn't there. But I have read much of the report of the inquiry that spent years exhaustively piecing together what happened.

These are two verbatim pieces from that report's conclusions.

"We   have concluded that the explanation for such firing by Support Company soldiers after they had gone into the Bogside was in most cases probably the mistaken belief among them that republican paramilitaries were responding in force to their arrival in the Bogside. This belief was initiated by the first shots fired by Lieutenant N and reinforced by the further shots that followed soon after. In this belief soldiers reacted by losing their self-control and firing themselves, forgetting or ignoring their instructions and training and failing to satisfy themselves that they had identified targets posing a threat of causing death or serious injury. In the case of those soldiers who fired in either the knowledge or belief that no-one in the areas into which they fired was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury, or not caring whether or not anyone there was posing such a threat, it is   
 at   least possible that they did so in the indefensible belief that all the civilians they fired at were probably either members of the Provisional or Official IRA or were supporters of one or other of these paramilitary organisations; and so deserved to be shot notwithstanding that they were not armed or posing any threat of causing death or serious injury. Our overall conclusion is that there   was   a serious and widespread loss of fire discipline among the soldiers of Support   Company."

"The firing by   soldiers   of 1   PARA on   Bloody Sunday caused the deaths of 13 people and injury to a similar number, none of whom was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury. What happened on Bloody   
 Sunday strengthened the Provisional IRA, increased nationalist resentment and   hostility towards the Army and exacerbated the violent conflict of the years that followed. Bloody Sunday was a tragedy for the bereaved and the wounded, and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland."

[BillyStubbsTears]

There is no question whatsoever that the British Army shot dead unarmed, peaceful British citizens that day. Whether it was through deliberate policy or total lack of discipline will likely never be known.

What IS known is that the upper echelons of the Army and Govt, supported by their rottweilers in the right wing press, immediately set out a story line that they knew to be a lie. They claimed the soldiers had come under a "fusilade of fire" from the IRA, when in fact there hadn't been a single shot fired against them.

Those lies were so hammered home that I took them as truth for most of my adult life.

There is a direct line from the way the Establishment responded to Bloody Sunday, through what they did at Orgreave and Hillsborough, right up to the farce of Partygate. It's reaction is always to close ranks, hide the truth and protect those on its side. That has led to a denial of natural justice to the people who suffered in Derry, at Orgreave and at Hillsborough. It's a stain on our national conscience. 

[SydneyRover]

It anyone in denial about this now going to rebut it?

[drfchound]

It anyone in denial about this now going to rebut it?

?

[SydneyRover]

                                               



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[tyke1962]

One thing the so called super powers have never understood .

If you want to go around invading other country's then they will  fight you with  their teeth if they have to and will go resort to any means possible if they have to .

The people of this country would have fought to the last man rather than be ruled by Nazi Germany .

The reason the North Vietnamese saw the US off is because they had the motivation to do so whilst the US conscripts wondered what the hell they were doing there and didn't really know what they were fighting for .

Massively understood is Ireland , it's a separate country overseas .

Understand that and the atrocities the IRA committed start to make sense .

[wilts rover]

The problem is the English can’t remember history, while the Irish can't forget it - Oscar Wilde

[BVB]

Understand that and the atrocities the IRA committed start to make sense .
[/quote]

Many of those atrocities weren’t against occupying forces though.
Neighbours also.
Loyalist atrocities - neighbours mostly.

Ireland is a little more complicated than a “separate country overseas” Tyke, and you’ll
know that.

[BillyStubbsTears]

There were some genuine evil bas**rds in both sets of paramilitaries, from the Omagh bombers to the Shankhill Butchers.

But things would never have got out of control had not the NI Catholics been treated as second class citizens for decades by the Protestant government with the tacit acceptance of Westminster, and then the British Army gone in as brutishly as they did when the Catholics started to rebel.

The Good Friday Agreement was a historic act of statesmanship on all sides. It gave everybody something and left no side feeling hard done by. Blair's Govt got it over the line but great credit is also due to Major before him and even Thatcher taking the first steps with the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Then the current shit show tip it all up by never listening to the grown ups who told them that you cannot have any form of Brexit without disadvantaging one community or the other in NI. It is simply not possible. We either have the current border in the Irish Sea which leaves the Unionists vulnerable, or we have a border with Ireland which is the finger to the Republicans.

And Johnson's policy is first to lie about what he signed, then blame the EU for implementing what he signed.