Ireland

[Global_Justice]

are the Irish republicans fighting against the british government or the ROI government? or both :unsure:

[ComradeOm]

Eh.... no. Most of them are not fighting at all right. There&#39;s been a ceasefire for close to a decade now <_<

[loveme4whoiam]

I went over to Belfast about a month ago for a Fall Out Boy gig (was class :D), and a native of that city came with us, luckily since some of us got lost in one of the "bad" bits at 3AM while wasted :P. From her description and from talking with random taxi drivers and other people, it&#39;s settled down a lot from what it once was. I don&#39;t know about the Republic of Ireland, which by the sounds of it is even less militant. Still, you&#39;ll forgive me if I got a little freaked by the sight of a bombed out building across the street from a police station, and by the fresh scorch marks also :unsure:

[Conghaileach]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2006, 04:56 PM
are the Irish republicans fighting against the british government or the ROI government? or both :unsure:
While there has been a ceasefire by the two main Republican groups (the IRA and the INLA) for quite a few years, they&#39;re fighting the British government in that they oppose the continued British presence in six Irish counties in the North-East of the country.

Their position on the ROI government is not as clear, but most Republicans would be opposed to the existance of both the Northern and Southern states, seeing the former as colonial in nature and the latter as neo-colonial. They don&#39;t believe that reunifying the six counties with the other 26 will solve our social and economic problems.

[Global_Justice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2006, 04:12 PM
Eh.... no. Most of them are not fighting at all right. There&#39;s been a ceasefire for close to a decade now <_<
yes but they are still fighting :unsure: not neccessarly with weapons though. irsih republicans still exist and still want the same thing and are still fighting for it, but not through terrorism.

[ComradeOm]

A Unified Ireland will never be achieved through taking part in the North&#39;s institutions and SF know this. When it surrendered its guns the IRA gave up on its goal of uniting Ireland.

[Sir Aunty Christ]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2006, 07:01 PM
A Unified Ireland will never be achieved through taking part in the North&#39;s institutions and SF know this. When it surrendered its guns the IRA gave up on its goal of uniting Ireland.
I&#39;m coming at this from a non-Republican point of view, so I&#39;ll probably get shot down somewhere along the line but I am a student of Irish history so here&#39;s my 2 cents.

I don&#39;t think the PIRA did give up on that goal but they found it expedient to pursue a more constiutional path considering the political situation. To be honest, historically speaking, this has been coming for a long time - really since the hunger strikes. In 1921 Michael Collins said that the IRA were 3 weeks away from defeat in the War of Independence and by the mid-nineties, that phase of the conflict (which I think we can safely say is over) seemed unwinnable by either side so the &#39;94 ceasefire and then the Good Friday Agreement were steps along the way to Sinn Fein acheiving its political goals.

What is sadder, in my eyes, is the almost total abandonment of socialism by the mainstream Republican movement and the cowtowing to neoliberalism.

Global Justice, if you want to read an informative introduction to the IRA I&#39;d suggest Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA by Richard English.

[ComradeOm]

Originally posted by Sir Aunty [email protected] 16 2006, 07:43 PM
I don&#39;t think the PIRA did give up on that goal but they found it expedient to pursue a more constiutional path considering the political situation. To be honest, historically speaking, this has been coming for a long time - really since the hunger strikes. In 1921 Michael Collins said that the IRA were 3 weeks away from defeat in the War of Independence and by the mid-nineties, that phase of the conflict (which I think we can safely say is over) seemed unwinnable by either side so the &#39;94 ceasefire and then the Good Friday Agreement were steps along the way to Sinn Fein acheiving its political goals.
Yes and no. I was giving the short version above - it would be more accurate to say that the IRA has been committed to bourgeois politics since the mid-eighties when Adams and Sinn Fein began to dictate the organisation’s actions. Note that it was at this time that the IRA’s military capabilities really began to nosedive, a process that was largely due to the centralised structure that Adams required to wage electoral campaigns.

Its also difficult to compare the situations of Collins and Adams. For a start Collins was not responsible for the failure of the IRA in 1921, indeed he had performed excellently to ensure that it existed at all. But more importantly Collins advocated the Free State solution in the expectation that the Boundary Commission would result in a Northern Ireland too small to be economically viable. I’m sure that he’d be aghast to discover that unification has still not occurred eighty years later.

There is an almost zero probability of unification resulting from Sinn Fein’s current political campaign. In fact I’m sure that if such a concept ever became very unpopular the party would not hesitate to drop it and reposition themselves… much as they did with their socialist policies. Like I said, just another bourgeois party.