[FuckingRotter]

Oh don't be so fucking naïve. Do you seriously think that people would prefer gun wielding, booby trappy terrorists policing their communities, to the chance of peace that Good Friday ought to have brought them?

The IRA are nothing but gangsters, always have been. They no more give a shit about the civil rights of catholic/nationalist communities, than the old RUC did. In fact even less so. If you recall, in the months leading up to Bloody Sunday, the head of the RUC warned against banning civil rights marches.

The tactics used by the IRA, and don't give me any flannel about fucking dissidents, are designed to ensure the communities they operate in will keep coming to them out of fear. They murder catholic police and prison officers, it only has to be one or two. We know what happens to suspected grasses, they die, horribly. People don't not call Crimestoppers because they prefer the IRA. They don't call Crimestoppers, because when the police come and arrest suspects, they don't want the eye of suspicion to fall on them. It is safer if nobody is arrested.

People don't prefer, or respect, or support the IRA. The fear them. And that suits them fine, because they can continue their criminal activities in relative peace. They claimed to have been a working class movement, but for three decades they murdered working class people all over the UK. Admittedly, the loyalist paramilitaries killed more civilians, but the IRA weren't far behind them. More civilians died in the troubles in Northern Ireland, than paramilitaries and security services combined, and most of them died at the hands of the IRA, UVF, and their like.

Criminals, gangsters, not some sort of community organised defence force.