Did the British really... *spoilers
... opened up with machineguns on an entire stadium during a football match?
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According to the "Bloody Sunday (1920)" entry in Wikipedia, the British security forces had an armored car with a machinegun, but it was just used to intimmidate the crowd. The actual killings were done with rifles and pistols. Not sure what difference that would have made to the victims, though.
The British, by the way, were mad with rage over a mass killing of some of their intelligence operatives that morning.
So what did the civilians had to do with their intelligence operatives being killed?
That's bad intelligence on their part.
No need to spill innocent blood like that.
Do the Brits still fear the Irish nowadays?
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And to think the Duke of Wellington was irish Dublin born & bred.
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by - neamtzu_rau on Tue Dec 20 2011 04:20:47
And to think the Duke of Wellington was irish...born & bred.
And so were most of the "British" security forces that opened fire at Croke Park that day. They weren't British troops but members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and some Auxiliaries. They entered Croke Park to look for IRA operatives thought to have fled there, the shooting seems to have started randomly although some policemen did claim they were fired on first. The day saw the deaths of 14 British agents, 14 Irish civilians and 3 Republicans.
The movie also shows an armoured car driving onto the pitch and opening fire with a machine gun- this never happened. The armoured car stayed outside of the ground and opened fire only into the air it seems.
There is no real excuses to be made for the murders of civilians that day but the IRA certainly had a hand in sparking the incident off- tempers were running high and angry men do stupid things.
BTW the Duke of Wellington was born in Dublin but as an Anglo-Irishmen considered himself to be British through and through, as did a large number of other Irishmen back then, a fact that seems to be overlooked somewhat these days. Ernest Shackleton is another good example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_%281920%29
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Thanks for the reply, Hotrodder.
I only know about the most recent Bloody Sunday,and then there were British soldiers firing on Irish civilians.
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There is no real excuses to be made for the murders of civilians that day but the IRA certainly had a hand in sparking the incident off- tempers were running high and angry men do stupid things.
And really I'm pretty sure the RIC and Auxiliaries themselves were just itching to get the Croke Park incident on since they were under tremendous pressure by Collins' full scale assault on them as well. He was having some good success with his spies giving him leads to wipe them out as the Brits the Volunteers.
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I for one dont give a hoot what was done in the name of Empire, its all old news.
Who is this Chandra Chump trying to impress by appearing so enraged at all these atrocities, be they real or imagined?
However, The British Empire was to all intents and purposes governed by English offices/politicians/military,(of course not to the exclusion of the Scots and Welsh)and I'm not ashamed of it.
I dont know why you're bothering trying to reason with this w*nker...theres your proof
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It may be "old news" for you chap but it is history written in blood for others. Bloody Sunday, the Amritsar "incident" in India (general Dyer really gave a true "British" performance there!), to name two that come to mind right now.
Ever really wondered why the Brits were NOT wanted in most countries they occupied? Ever really wondered why in most cases there was division and civil war (or war among independent states) after the Brits departed their former colonies?
Cute and cuddly boyz!!
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General Dyer was born in India of Irish parents and his troops at Amritsar were all Indians. Not really very "British" at all. The massacre was heavily criticised in Britain as a disgrace including by Winston Churchill.
As for whether the British were wanted or not it seems the majority of those peoples didn't actually give a stuff as often groups of 100-200000 people were policed by a single commissioner with about a dozen native policeman. If the people wanted them out they would have easily overwhelmed them.
As for the disaster that befell countries after the British left them how is that the fault of the British. They were left as democracies and Marxists often seized power, hardly something desirable. The Africans for example have largely screwed up their own countries and their leaders their own people. A lot of former colonies have been successes though.
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the IRA certainly had a hand in sparking the incident off- tempers were running high and angry men do stupid thingsBloody Sunday in Derry saw a resurgence of large scale IRA activity in the North leading to the mobilisation of rival Unionist Paramilitaries. Should we say the Para's had a hand in sparking the troubles? Bit of a silly statement to make about one event in 800 years of tit for tat wouldn't you say?
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Mikey, all I meant was that it was hardly a case of the police just driving in and mowing down people just because they felt like it. It wasn't a deliberate planned massacre or reprisal was it? More an incident that got out of hand- very like the later Bloody Sunday where the army didn't drove into Derry that day with the intention of gunning down civilians either. It wasn't as if either events can be really compared with the Waffen SS at Oradour-sur-Glane where the intention was to murder civilians as a reprisal for French Resistance activity.
"Oh dear. How sad. Never mind!"
Quite a lot of witnesses said that that's just what the paras did and that was why they were in Ireland in the first place. An investigatie documentary made the same conclusion but that was in the days when telly wasn't a government poodle.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
~~~~~as an Anglo-Irishmen considered himself to be British through and through, as did a large number of other Irishmen back then, a fact that seems to be overlooked somewhat these days.~~~~~
Compare that with the election result. The IPP was reduced to a rump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_1918
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
To quote from that article, Squeethie:
which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s,
The fact that it had dominated Ireland for so long hardly demonstrates that it lacked support in the preceding years though does it, Squeethie? At least amongst those that had the vote anyway... The real swing towards Nationalism was the Easter Rising though, before that many Irish folk (possibly most) were indifferent to the Nationalist point of view, perhaps believing that independence was unattainable anyway without British acquiesence. Most Irish before the Rising probably didn't think any more about independence than the average Scot or even Geordie did (UDI for Northumberland, yea!). WW1 had also changed the political landscape forever too and was the start of the end of the British Empire after all.
It could be argued that the British actually weren't ruthless enough in their suppression of the Easter Rising. The fact that many of those who survived and didn't hang were the likes of de Valera and Collins who proved to be such a thorn in the British sides later. A few more hangings might have left a few less leaders (not that I'm supporting such a thing of course) in the IRA and Sinn Fein later. Even the Anglo-Irish War could have been even more ruthlessly suppressed if the Establishment had wanted to, and they could have simply refused any concessions, and used all the force it had available -ie lots. They would have defeated the rebels sooner or later but at huge cost to the Irish, British prestige and British soldiers lives.
But the Great War had changed attitudes even amongst the Establishment (war isn't so funny when it's your sons dying too), and definately amongst the British people themselves who no longer had much taste for conflict and wanted to see an end to it - the British people seemed to rather sympathise with the rebels, Michael Collins was after all greeted with applause when he arrived in England for the peace talks. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was really the first time that the British Establishment had given in to rebels and really demonstrated the Empire was coming to an end- an Empire that gives in is going to lose it's territory, it's unavoidable. Rebels everywhere must have taken heart that the British could be defeated by guerrilla warfare.
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The Tan War was hardly sympathetic and Monty's view that it should be fought with no restraint or given up was hardly an act of empathy. The Irish people voted for independence in 1918 and most of them got it.
A few more hangings? Himmler said something simmler but then you know same as me, that the British state is as murderous as any other.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
"Himmler said something simmler"? Is that a line from a song? Springtime For Hitler maybe?
As I said I never thought personally they should have hanged more rebels, more that it they had done a few of the more influential ones later would have ceased to be. Under their definition of treason in those days they could have justified hanging the lot. Instead most did a few months in the choky. Not quite as murderous as the Nazis IMO, Squeethie, who undoubtedly would have hanged everyone involved.
I do wonder what would have happened if the IRA hadn't been so quick off the mark by restarting their rebellion in 1919 when the dust had hardly settled after the Great War. I can't help but think a little more patience would have saved many lives. Self govt for Ireland had been promised just before WW1 and would have come soon afterwards anyway and the result would have been the same- an Irish Free State. So what was the rebellion actually for? They only achieved what they were going to get anyway. The ensuing Irish Civil War may never had happened if the hotheads hadn't been in such a hurry.
I just don't think the British had the stomach to fight a guerrilla war to a conclusion so soon after WW1. The British people (not the govt) didn't even want such a war, remember many people had Irish relatives and regarded the Irish as kith and kin.
To be fair to Monty I don't think he advocated terror tactics merely that the only way to completely win such a guerrilla war was to use them. IIRC Monty was complimented by the IRA's Tom Barry who said Monty behaved with great correctness. Monty considered himself a soldier after all and burning the houses of suspected rebels was fine by him but killing innocent civilians was not.
From Wiki:
Personally, my whole attention was given to defeating the rebels but it never bothered me a bit how many houses were burnt. I think I regarded all civilians as 'Shinners' and I never had any dealings with any of them. My own view is that to win a war of this sort, you must be ruthless. Oliver Cromwell, or the Germans, would have settled it in a very short time. Nowadays public opinion precludes such methods, the nation would never allow it, and the politicians would lose their jobs if they sanctioned it. That being so, I consider that Lloyd George was right in what he did, if we had gone on we could probably have squashed the rebellion as a temporary measure, but it would have broken out again like an ulcer the moment we removed the troops. I think the rebels would probably [have] refused battles, and hidden their arms etc. until we had gone.
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No it's one of mine ;O) In the end the British had a choice to rule ireland like the colony it was or get out. The manoeuvring between 1914 and 1919 demonstrated the usual duplicity if imperialism. Like refighting the Great War there are some things that can't change by shuffling the pack of might have beens sice the people there at the time had as much imagination as us, it's inconceivable that they weren't aware of the alternatives.
The rebellion was moot, since the Irish people voted for Sinn Fein and began to obey Dail Eirann, it was the British who tried to muscle back in like the French in Viet Nam in 1945. The skill of the British came in picking the Petainists among the Shinners and using them to liquidate the real nationalists who wanted a different society rather than to supplant the Anglo-Irish at the trough. I think you're right about public opinion, which is why the British state has fought a hundred-year war against democracy, with results which must be all to evident.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.