The sectarianism in the north gets wound up by the orange marches every year . That's what the orange order was set up to do -it's been going on for two centuries now .Long before cars were invented -let alone the idea of putting bombs into them - the orange orders were deliberately stirring up sectarianism, and then using the outrages committed in response to that deliberately stirred-up sectarianism as excuses for calling for more repressive measures against those they had deliberately been stirring up the sectarianism against -ie catholics .

The Orange Order and the protestant ascendancy it is pledged to protect in the north always saw and still see catholics as inferior people to themselves - in the same way as white bigots see black people as inferior or israeli settlers see Palestinians as inferior to themselves . The orange order is racist - its anti-catholicism is essentially the intolerance and racism of a privileged settler caste that does not want to integrate into Irish society - even though the order itself is an all Ireland institution .

I can remember hearing Ian Paisley speaking on the television - this wasn't so long ago ,sometime in the nineties (nineteen-nineties) . He said something along the lines of this.

>The good lands that we the protestant people now hold in Ulster was once only bog and it was inhabited by the people of the bog. Many years ago our ancestors took this land from the bog people and turned it by their labours into good fertile land . And now the bog people want to take back that good fertile land ,but we will not return that good land to the bog people >.

Paisley was coming out with this sort of stuff at a meeting that was being recorded on the TV and would have been well aware of the fact that he was being recorded,but he didn't care.

Northern catholics able to recall the sixties will tell you how as they went into church on a Sunday morning there would be a solitary Orangeman standing outside beating a Lambeg drum . As they were inside the church praying the solitary Orange lambeg drummer would still be standing outside banging away - often while his fingers bled onto the huge drum . He was there to deliberately intimidate and provoke people inside the church , and defy anyone inside to come out and tell him to go away . The drummer used to keep it up all through the service . The north's institutionally sectarian police force ,the RUC, would always be close at hand to monitor the situation and come to the aid of the solitary drummer if there was a response from anyone in the congregation . This sort of blatant sectarianism was not only tolerated ,but actively encouraged at the highest institutional levels .The car bombs were misguided responses to the institutional sectarianism in the north ,not the other way around .

I really can't see why British territorial army men would want to be involving themselves in Irish political affairs . Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course ,but where are you coming from lads ? Most people I knew when I lived in England didn't see why British soldiers were garrisoned in Ireland. If they didn't recognize the injustice of the northern set-up - which many did - and say that Britain should leave Ireland for that reason ,people would tend to say things like "what has all this got to do with us - let them fight it out between themselves" .

What seems to have happened is that, since the Good Friday Agreement,a section of British people who previously took such a consciously ignorant attitude towards Irish politics have suddenly started to take an unhealthy interest in Fermanagh's dreary steeples .