Oh, I didn't think my comments were anti Irish, I said all killing and violence was wrong who ever does it. As on some other thread that I have mentioned my back ground, and indeed I have close familial links with Ireland. I do have issues with people that Torture and blow people up, innocent people, I just don't see a difference between the RUC, Army and the IRA, they all piss in the same pot.
As to the music, as a small child the first "folk" music I heard was TM & C. brothers "Live at Carnegie Hall", I think we had three albums in all. As I recall no one had issues with the music then, wounds, perhaps, had healed. I can understand that a generation growing up under the threat of being blown to kingdom come might be traumatised, I know how the A-bomb affected me and in a way my whole life since. Well I wasn't blown up, though I did lose a friend in Ireland to a bomb, the friendliest drunk and a-political man one could meet (some time deserter from the Irish Navy) And I wasn't interogated although I have been arrested for something I didn't do, fly posting, and demonstrating. So what is it all about, maybe it is about of sense of belonging, nailing your colours to the mast, being a patriot is belonging, "my country right or wrong". Well, buy into that if you like, I don't. Patriotism is an excuse for people (Oh and yes there are English, scottish, welsh, US as well as Irish patriots)do what they like to further someone else's ends, tragedy is that they are so full of hate they don't see it. Take IRAQ and Afghanistan, what the hell are our soldiers doing there? Why do we ( oh yes I didn't vote for them but as a democracy they are doing it in my name) vote for people like that. Beyond me