Thatcher was ignorant of Ireland at the height of the Troubles claims state papers

It’s reassuring to hear support for the rights of unionists to live in the place of their birth…unionists are entitled to protection under the constitution…

sirpeter is back

Darragh S. I don`t think these wars are started through stupidity. Rather through the greed of the few. We are just the stupid folk who give most for least return when the dirt hits the fan.

Maggie was indeed a swine. But take away the fact she let the first 4 Hungerstrikers die she was much the same as those before her. Anyone remember Roy Mason.

she was ignorant period,SHE REPRESENTED A NARROW BELIGERENT FLAG WAVING HORRIBLE NATIONALISM THAT REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE ANY OTHER PEOPLE ARGUMENTS OR RIGHTS.AS THEY LAY CLAIM TO A LAND MASS 9.000 MILES AWAY ORIGINALLY TAKEN BY FORCE,ON THE GROUNDS THAT THEY WISH TO STAY BRTITISH,OF COURSE THEY DO,THEY WERE PLANTED THERE AS WERE THE BOWLER HAT BROLLY WAVING OUTSPANS OF N.IRELAND,AND HAVE AS MUCH RIGHT TO BE THERE,A VIRULENT NASTY PIECE OF WORK.

If she was in power now the question is would she be targeting Irish Nationlist's with Drone Strikes? These stupid types of people will just cause no end of trouble as usual. Next thing you now were fighting China and Russia again you watch.

Woundedknee. We people in the North didn`t know very much either. Private back room meetings between the likes of Mc Guinness and his MI6 buddy Micheal Oatley as far back as the seventies would not have gone down well at all. The landscape we see today would no doubt have either been very differant or come a lot earlier.

Maybe Thatcher didn't know much about the North, but then again neither did most people in the South of Ireland. By the time of the Hunger Strikes, censorship of the government-controlled media in the South had been institutionalized for almost a decade. Only the Unionist/Loyalist point of view could be articulated on the Dublin airwaves, with occasional openings for those Catholics who were opposed to republicanism. The government even kept files on everyone who spoke or wrote in favor of a United Ireland, or even just in favour of the Northern Catholics being treated justly. The Dublin government cultivated a climate of fear and ignorance. It is well known that the South was so divorced from the northern Catholics and what they were going thru that the people of the South were astonished when Bobby Sands won his election. RTE, the Government channel which at that time dominated everything in the South, was so out of touch that it didn't even send a reporter the 80 or so miles from Dublin to cover the election campaign. I wasn't in Ireland when Sands was elected, but I was there when his successor, a man by the name of Carron if I recall, was elected upon Sands' death. I remember being appaled by the way that election was covered in the Dublin media. They were furious when Carron was elected, by an even bigger vote than Sands had received.

I recall visits from a cousin of mine from England to Dublin in the early 1970s, who often spoke of how little he was taught about Ireland in the English educational system of his day. He was the son of my mother's sister who had emigrated from the Irish to the British midlands in the 1940s and married an English man there. One of the prerogatives of any given struggle is that the victors get to construct a social reality based upon their selective recollection of events - retrospectively. A common experience of ordinary British and Irish people is that they both are a byproduct of a revisionist history written by the beneficiaries of the age old enmity between the British and/or Irish Isles. Which just about accounts for the disturbing level of historical amnesia that abounds amongst younger generations. Some day the truth will out.

Pilib04. The Hungerstrikers were only in control if they knew was was going on. With the most vital information being with held they had as much access to control as I do to Gerrys fortune. Woodman. you should read up a whole lot more, the brits didn`t renage on anything at the end of the first Hungerstrike. Even though Adams and others use the face saving story to give their interferance in the second justification.

Fallsers.Stop man!! Give reality a chance. Ireland will get over this fiscal mess.It's only the ebb and flow of economics anyway.Purchasing Power Parity per Capita in the Republic is $10,000 higher than in the UK in 2011.After four years of "austerity".Naturally enough if labour costs and standards of living are too high in general and out of sink with the rest of the EU competitiveness drops with the inevitable loss of jobs.The average living standard in Greece is half that of the people of the Republic in real terms.Hence the rioting which is very understandable.But can you explain the twisted mindset of ordinary piss-poor Unionists damaging their local economy over the flying of a flag..Rioting with violence over a democratic decision.The average Irish person can take the economic hit that's forced upon them.The average Greek can't afford it forced upon them..But the average piss-poor Unionist will self-destruct their economy over the number of days a flag is flying.Unionist self-destruction at it's best.

Pilib04 - you mean Hanoi Jane? I only recall her being worried about communist N. Vietnamese lives....

No surprise to hear that Thatcher was ignorant of Irish affairs, as were and are most of her countrymen…the average Brit isn’t really sure why NI still exists... it took the so-called ‘armed struggle’ to copper-fasten the ‘consent’ principle for a UI…something slow learning republican zealots and corrupt Haughey administrations had set their faces against...so contributing to many wasted lives on all sides.

fallsrat, stop with this silly charade – it’s painfully obvious you’re just a brit troll. Without the armed struggle combined with the pressure of Irish Americans, the indigenous Irish would have been ethnically cleansed from the occupied six by now. The state of the ROI is the result of the anglo oriented Dublin establishment and their industrial estate Ireland experiment followed by the forced bailout of international creditors of international banks by the Irish taxpayers.

seano - i can trace my family history back to the IRB/GPO/Official SF, born in NI, am actually irish, not australian like yerself. The only obstacle to peace in Ireland is the republican movement, mine included, the war was kept going far too long. Now we have a totally disenfranchised 26 county state where the exodus is accelerating, no NI RC or Protestant is going to vote to join this mess. Why don't you hand back your aussie passport & get back to the mother country you so love or are u another armchair critic who professes love for ireland, but would never give up the security of the life you live now under a british monarch