How we English felt about the British Army being in Northern Ireland

When I was at college in the 60's one of my fellow students was in love with a guy from Belfast University. And she told us a bit about the politics he was involved in. And we'd read about the Civil Rights movement in America, and I think we thought it would be pretty cool to have one of our own. Bernadette Devlin was very charismatic. then Paisley appeared on the scene, and nobody knew what the hell he was on about, although you could tell he was pissed off about something - and we could see we were a long way out of our depth.

we couldn't really see why it was so difficult to deal with the Labour government of the period. They were a pretty non conformist open minded lot - I remember Merlyn Rees - taking a boat over to Calais to symbolically meet with Viet Cong, when they werent allowed in England. I think even Adams in his biography admits that the Cheyne House talks were an opportunity to sort things out- thrown away by the Republican side.

Then they army went in. Iremember reading a poem - more a piece of doggerel - in the window of the local recruiting office in the Lincolnshire town where I was at college. the young soldier just regarded all the Irish as yobs. I thought to myself, the presence of this man armed to the teeth will not be helping matters much!

I think those of us with any sense of history could see that the British Army had too much historical baggage to be a peace keeping force in Ireland. I wondered at the time about a UN force - but the reaction of most people was - well its part of our country - our soldiers should be able to come and go. It was dumb, but you couldn't get people to see otherwise - you have to remember that in most our cities we have a lot of Irish people - they are our neighbours and friends usually. And there were a lot of people still around from WW2 = when Northern Ireland had been an ally when Southern Ireland had been neutral. My own father fought with an Irish regiment. so there was some feeling that it was part of our country. although truth to tell - nobody would have given a damn if it had decided to join up with its southern neighbour.

still in the 80's when scarcely a week went past without some local church having a funeral for the kids in uniform - a lot of them weren't much older than kids, and quite a few of them were from round here - high unemployment round here and flashy tv ads had seduced a lot of kids into uniform. Well it was something to live with.

One bloke at our local folk club was a sergeant over there. Some loyalist gang electrified a grating where his lads used to take a pee, thus killing one of his men.   What I'm trying to say is that the loyalists were killing our soldiers as well - so it made us think - well we can't just leave, and open the way to a bloodbath, like Beirut or somewhere.

Then when Thatcher came along. Not many people liked her and her rhetoric was no surrender , no compromise - which played well with her blue rinse fans, but it was pretty damned obvious that there were secret negotiations going on - so it was hard to know what the real state of play was.

I think the Bobby Sands election victiory was a wake up call for English people. Previously we had been told that SF was very marginalised party and their election results up to then seemed to bear that out.

I hope that answers some of your questions Epona. the english army isn't there from the malevolence of the English people - whether James connolly felt he could blame us or not. we will all be very pleased when the troubles are sorted out and they are home.

I have no doubt some of what I said will enrage some people - whatever you seem to say on this subject - it always seems to enrage somebody. sometimes I just feel if could talk peaceably amongst ourselves it would be part of the answer.