[tom8517]

Originally Posted by FuckingRotter

In the usual scheme of things, what you describe would probably be a crime. Not necessarily a war crime, or crime against humanity. The British government didn't quite go full out to remove Irish Catholics from the North, still definitely criminal activity.

Bloody Sunday is as you say, quite some thing else. By then, any soldier serving in Ulster had very good reason to fear for his life. As us Brits put it, the squaddies knew Irish Catholic youths were up for a ruck with the army, and the IRA definitely antagonised the situation if reports of snipers are to be believed.

I lived for some time in Yeovil in Somerset, which is near to RNAS Yeovilton. It wasn't particularly unusual back in the day to see military policemen going round cracking the skulls of any one fighting outside pubs and clubs, going through their pockets to search for warrant cards. Matlocks were dragged back to base, if it was a civilian, an ambulance was called and they were left to bleed! Military doesn't have quite the same level of accountability as the police, so it was an ideal way to keep order.

Actually Maggie Thatcher did float the idea of ending the troubles by the mass deportation of the nationalist population south of the border. Calmer heads prevailed and her advisors talked her out of it. This was shortly after the Brighton bombing, I suppose one's judgement might be affected by narrowly missing being blown up.

Margaret Thatcher horrified her advisers when she recommended that the government should revive the memory of Oliver Cromwell - dubbed the butcher of Ireland - and encourage tens of thousands of Catholics to leave Ulster for the south.

A year after she was nearly killed in the IRA's 1984 Brighton bomb, the then prime minister expressed dismay at Catholic opposition to British rule when they could follow the example of ancestors who were evicted from Ulster at the barrel of a Cromwellian gun in the 17th century.