Ireland,

I'm an outsider, of course, but I have been in Ireland more often than in any other country outside of Germany. If I recollect correctly, Armagh is the only county I have never stopped yet. I've spoken to many people and I've read more than two dozen books about Northern Ireland.
That doesn't make me an expert, of course, but I consider myself better informed than on many other fields on which I have an opinion.

I always found that the catholics (I know it's wrong but I use these religious labels to avoid nationalist/republican etc nomenclature problems) had very good reasons for complaints and that protestant stubbornness and arrogance has contributed much more than anything else to the development euphemised as 'The Troubles'. I think that the British government has handled the situation in a very one-sided and, in the long run, stupid way. As often, I rather believe in governmental stupidity and short-sightedness than in skilfull and planned underhandedness. Altogether, I had a lot of sympathy for the catholic side.

I'm still unconvinced that there was no peaceful alternative to the course of action initiated by, chiefly, the IRA, and later joined, with at least the same brutality but with more open sectarianism in their attacks, by protestant paramilitaries.

In Mudcat discussions on Ireland, I have often been irritated by the selectivity of the tales told. Outright falsehoods are very rare, but a selections of the facts happens often. The history is told as a mere succession of British brutalities or, on the other side, of IRA atrocities. The dead on one side have been 'murdered', the dead on the other side have 'deceased'.

Contrary to how some others here see you, I see a genuine effort in you to understand and to see the situation with someone else's eyes. I see more of that laudable attitude in you than I see in some posters who criticise you. Where I disagree with you is mostly in which facts you leave out, for instance in the Bloody Sunday description.

But I won't go into details, for I know from experience that threads on the Northern Ireland Mess are getting nasty very soon. And posters whose contribution in other threads I value a lot come over in these threads as less nice persons than I am firmly convinced they are.

BTW, Mudcat posts from posters with radical republican leanings have done more than anything else to make me less pro-catholic than I have been before my Mudcat time.

Wolfgang