FYI as to the "Troubles": it would be a gross overstatement to classify them as a civil war, or avoiding one. Put simply, we down in the south did not care, as long as it stayed up there. Yes, we seethed and booed when Catholics were interned and then kicked out of Northern Ireland, and our so-called leader at the time made some vague, not-to-be-taken-seriously threats about the Republic joining the fight on behalf of our Catholic brothers, but it came to nothing more than posturing and lipservice in the end. When it came right down to it, nobody in the (comparatively) affluent south was going anywhere near the north, except to shop.
The Troubles were never a civil war. The Republic was not involved in it (other than the IRA, which is not the same). There was never any serious effort by our government to interfere other than via political whining, and even when it found its way down here via the odd bomb or bomb scare, we more or less shrugged and thanked our Catholic God that that was over, now let them get back to killing each other in the North. No, for us it was always "up there" and we had a very dismissive attitude towards it. Despite so-called Republican yobbos scrawling BRITS OUT on a Dublin estate wall, nobody even contemplated "joining the fight". It wasn't like ISIS fighters going to Iraq: nobody here cared. To us they were "Nordies" and "Proddies" (the vast majority of Northern Ireland was and is Protestant anyway) and we just left them to it.
Not to mention that the Irish Army would only have scored any sort of victory against the British one due to the Brits being unable to shoot straight for laughing!
One of our local comedians did a great sketch recently where the leader (Jack Lynch) has everyone fired up about marching on the border, supporting our Catholic brothers, and they're all going "Yeah! Let's do it" and so on. Then there's a pause, and he looks around and says "But it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so we won't do it tomorrow." Choruses of "Oh no! Rain! Oh well then..." and it tails off. Very funny - you have to see it to really appreciate the irony and lack of commitment.
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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
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