Let us try to walk in the shoes of the majority people of the North in those times. (We have no members who post from that community.)

Not rabid Loyalists, but the ordinary decent protestant folk.
They supported the Civil Rights movement and were relieved and happy when the sectarian excesses of the old Stormont were swept away.
But, they wanted no part of the backward, feudal regime that was demanding control over their lives too.
Anyone unsympathetic so far?
The government and people of the country they wanted to remain part of, did not want them. They wanted rid of the whole lot of them.
What would you have done?
Then came PIRA, whose stated aim was to hand them over to that regime descrbed in my opening post.
To further that aim they used IEDs to systematically destroy their market streets, businesses and bus stations, often killing ordinary folk quite apart from the campaign of executions.

Anyone have an opinion?