It is 24 hours since I made this short post;
"If only the will of the people can prevail this time, because they did not support PIRA before.
They always supported the ballot box.
It was Sinn Fein that changed, leaving the dissidents behind, and not the people."

In reply I had many long posts containing screenfulls of outrage.
You made an issue out of what I thought was a minor point.

In all that tirade, no one managed to put up anything showing I was wrong.
Peter K came close with, "They had democratic legitimacy from the hunger strike onwards"
It was true that Bobby sands captured the Nationalist vote in his local election, but PIRA had first to make sure that the poor Nationalist voters had not a single non paramiltary candidate to vote for.
For the rest of the 80s and 90s, the staunchly anti-PIRA SDLP trounced Sinn Fein for the Nationalist vote at every election.
Hard evidence.

In 1976 tens of thousands of Nationalists demonstrated in Belfast for an end to the armed struggle.
Hard evidence.

Consider also the Republican group, Belfast Citizen's Defence Committee.
They had 50,000 people sign a "call for peace", and hoped that the Provisionals would respect the wishes of the people and stop bombing and shooting.
Hard Evidence.

As I said, I had no intention of making an issue of this.
Blame yourselves.