Re: 'The Trooper'
Conor: This is the mural I was talking about, found it in your link,
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/bibdbs/murals/slide4.htm#4
I didn't know there were more Eddie murals than this one, till I looked at the site you linked to. I wonder why Eddie? Is there an Iron maiden fan high up in the loyalist management?
About the NI troubles: I left there in 1973 with my family when I was 5. At that time there was a lot of bombs going off, My Dad and sister would have been blown up in a bookstore except for a courtesy call telling everyone to get out, a bomb is about to go off. I suppose that is the one redeeming feature about Irish terrorism compared to Arab, at least warnings were given to sometimes minimize civilan casualties. So the next day my Dad went to the Canadian consulate and off we went. technically I would be considered a protestant, although my parents never attend church and neither do I. They brought me up to be neutral and fair minded about the issues in NI, so I consider myself to be an impartial observer, but I am still interested in the "homeland" so I still observe, and have visited many times.
Some observations:
The cycle of hatred will continue there until the us and them attitude is toned down. It is hard to change someones attitude when they are in their 20's or 30's or older. What needs to be done is change the next generation's attitude.
I noticed when I visit there and talk to some of my cousins in high scool or recently graduated that they went to school with only protestants, and don't know any catholics. They had a low opinion of catholics, even though they did not know any. I am sure that young catholics feel the same way about protestants. The young people learn the bigotry from the older people from their "side", with no, or next to no contact from the people they are learning to despise to show them they are not that way. Conor or Silky you could help me here but the way school works there is that the catholics typically go to a catholic school, and the protestants go to what we in Canada & the USA would call a public school, right? And since the catholics go to their own school everone at the public school winds up being protestants so it might as well be called protestant school? If the kids were integrated and grew up having friends, if only school friends, from the opposite religion they would be more tolerant as adults. Some of my wiser and more tolerant relatives there realize this. Maybe they are biased but they say the biggest stumbling block to this integration is that the catholic church insists on catholic schools.
On the bright side, the troubles seem to have cooled down a lot, seems to be mostly hardliners from each side going after each other now. I think a big factor behind this is that attitudes are changing now, blowing up buildings and targeting civilians is not acceptable anymore by reasonable people. The economic tear that the republic is on is a factor too, I think. In the past when NI catholics had a legitimate complaint of discrimination going to the republic with it's backward economy was not an economically viable move. But now, the lack of discrimination, (or a lot less of it anyway) and the option of going south to get a great paying job tends to keep the ordinary people from becoming desperate enough to start rioting, or joining paramilitaries. Even some of my proddy cousins work in Dublin because of the jobs available there, money talks!
To me the paramilitaries on either side are similar to the ones we have here in Canada, here we call them "Hell's Angels". Here there is no nationalist or loyalist feelings in the mix, but the same behavoir: controlling the drug industry, gun running, hammering other criminal organisations that try to move into their turf, etc... Even if the sectarian troubles end in NI, these organisation will continue to exist and carry on their "business", same as most places in the world. But at least if they lose their loyalist/nationalist sympathisers they will find that their business is harder to carry out.
My wife and I went to Dublin for a few days on one of our visits, in 2000. it is a great city, we loved it and we still talk sometimes about moving there, even though my relatives are the north. We are used to having a big cosmopolitan city nearby (Vancouver), and also the low taxes and lack of sectarian trouble would draw us to Dublin.
upuaut