Originally Posted by Trollheart

Yeah, you can never condone innocents and civilians being killed, but the IRA (which began as the IRB) was originally a form of resistance against English rule of course, and was supported by just about every Irish person. At that point, they only went for military targets and it was kind of a guerrila war. Later of course it became all about paid mercenaries and special interests, and the violence just escalated.

We were lucky here in the south; had few if any bombs (just one I remember when I was quite young, in O'Connell Street) but we were always hearing about it on the news. It's hard not to think of the "Brits" deserving it, as when we saw the likes of the miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four that led to the old saying "Irish as charged", but of course you had sympathy with the innocents killed in the bombing campaigns, and the daily violence people had to suffer.

Of course, I can't really speak about it with any sort of authority, as it was up there and we were down here. Heard about it almost every day on the news, but it seldom crossed the border. Sort of like, I guess, hearing about a bomb going off in Mexico, say, and being in New York.

My late aunt's uncle was in the original IRA, and she told some interesting stories about he and other IRA men escaping - and she'd point out the window - down the garden and over that wall, with the British soldiers after them. Fascinating stuff. But a world removed from the IRA of the seventies and eighties, who mostly were just out for themselves and didn't give a curse about a united Ireland.