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Old 02-16-2018, 08:24 PM   #634
tom8517
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I won't argue Grants that things are equal, they are not. My point was that things have improved to the point that the incentive to risk your life and liberty is not really there for young nationalists. there is an old saying that if you want to make a man truly dangerous, put in him a position where he has nothing to lose.

Pre 1969, that incentive did really exist. FR has made the point that the working class and poor of England suffered discrimination as well, true enough. But conditions in the six counties went far beyond that. The conditions in the north between partition and the troubles resemble an third world police state more than a west European democracy. The RUC may have functioned as a police force in the loyalist areas, in the nationalist areas it was a heavily armed army of occupation.

this is an account of a British journalist on his first trip to the six counties

On the Sunday, 27 September, the day I flew into Aldergrove, Paisley had called a meeting at the Ulster Hall, having heard of the flag in the window of the Sinn Féin campaign headquarters. He declared that if the RUC did not remove the flag he would lead his followers in an attack on the election office. The Stormont minister of home affairs, R W McConnell, actually went in person to see Paisley to placate him and assure him that the RUC would go in.

The day after I arrived ‘wide eyed’ in Belfast, district inspector Frank Lagan and fifty RUC men — the first time I had seen such heavily armed police in what was supposed to be part of the United Kingdom — smashed in the door of the election office, confiscated the flag and generally destroyed everything they could lay their hands on. A few days later the flag was displayed again in defiance and the RUC were soon back with pick axes. This time the office was destroyed beyond salvage. This was Northern Ireland unionist democracy at work.

the north was Britain's dirty little secret for close on 50 years
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Last edited by tom8517; 02-16-2018 at 09:02 PM.
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