Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Martin McGuiness

Anyone who kills or orders the killing of innocent civilians is a very bad person in my view , thats it !

Mario - great posting!
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+1

I have felt both sides of the history. I do not mean any of this as judgement, just observation.

Dad used to fly 33Sqdn Puma helicopters as Army taxi's over Northern Ireland during the troubles. On his first tour of six months we lived on the base outside Belfast. I went to school on the base. We did not leave the base for almost anything. He routinely had bullet holes through his Puma. Single shots essentially from a sniper. Helicopters are light and thin skinned. Mother never slept well. I was aware of a level of tension morning noon and night.

On his second tour we stayed in the UK at the squadrons Odiham base. There was still a layer of tension you could cut with a knife in Odiham. If anything the distance made it worse for the families. No-one from the Sqdn was lost in the time he was over there but the Army lost several. That loss provokes a tightening of the team which makes them bristle and reactionary. So the circle continues and escalates.

It took a public action by the whole community to make it stop and McGuiness was involved in that. I am not certain it stopped all of the other things going on within the community. It did mean less people were killed, troops and civilians did not get caught in the crossfire and bombs stopped. It was a distinct improvement. The bad taste was worth it in the long run but it takes a generation change to release it I guess.

Ten years ago I started to do business in Northern Ireland. You could do business with one side of the local population or the other but not both. Businesses were seen to "lean" to one side or the other. In the meantime I was doing business in Eire and it was transparent with no problems at all.

I don't respect anyone who uses religion, politics, finance or force to subdue the free will of people. It was clear the activity was more about control and local market freedom. There were some ironies. Anyone caught selling hard drugs was dealt with very forcefully by what was described as the local enforcement team. That was not Military or Police.

I don't draw any conclusion on the position of having troops in a civilian situation as this is far from clever for all concerned. I think people default to a negative view of the military in situations like this. As a group none of the military wanted to be there and all knew the risk. They could not initiate action due to rules of engagement and both sides knew it. Not a nice position to be in. No winners.

I agree peace is more valuable to the community. It takes a generation to forget because the people who flew and fought in it will not drop it. They cannot unlearn what they experienced and so their view of his death is the only meagre resolution they will get when they wanted to see more. My generation who grew up with the tension don't want it back and see both sides. Sometimes you have to live with a lesser evil.

My first thought when hearing the news was simple. Maybe we can move on now.

Well said, we have to move forward even if painful to some. With Britains record in history we would not speak to more than half the world if long term grudges were held.

Excellent and thoughtful post Alistair.

Bang on.

+1

I too hope we can move on. A lot depends on the others in the background though. Has McGuiness managed to create a following with influence to prevent backward steps?
Will Gerry Adams continue the McGuiness influence?
For a resurgence in sectarianism to happen would be a kick in the teeth for McGuiness who, at least helped stop the overt violence.
There is still an undercurrent though, and it will take generations to overcome. As fewer extremeists exist to influence others it will drop back. Not an overnight result though. It will remain fragile for a while yet.

Sorry I've taken a bit of time getting back on this. I was travelling yesterday and couldn't face tapping all this into my iPhone.

You slightly misquoted me. What I actually said was "There is no such thing as a purely military solution to this sort of problem".

Now, the Malayan "emergency" is a very interesting case, one could say the exception to the rule, but I would not categorize it as "this sort of problem" as it's not at all comparable.

The communist insurgency was not at all driven by the indigenous Malay population; only a very few were involved. The communists were (rightly) perceived as being Chinese by the Malays, who largely preferred the British. The point is, it wasn't an insurgency that was wanted by the the indigenous population. Incidentally, the malay terrorists originally started out as guerrillas we were equipping to fight the Japanese in WWII (sound familiar ?)

It is true that we did manage to resolve it, but one of the main reasons that we were successful was because our approach was not purely military. Rather than just using the force of arms, the key to our success was the hearts and minds campaign which made the local villagers trust our forces more than they feared terrorists.

The campaign was highly intelligence led (made MUCH easier by the fact that almost all of the terrorists were ethnically chinese). We had a successful strategy of starving out the CTs by corralling the villagers into defended compounds, cutting off the terrorists supply lines, and extensive defoliation of the jungle and the clearings where they were trying to grow food (yes, we used agent orange and similar products very extensively in Malaya a long time before the US did in Vietnam).

Much of what we did to successfully prosecute this campaign would in any case not be possible these days due to all the constraints of human rights legislation. There was quite a lot of quiet bumping off of bad guys.

It's a bit of a pet subject of mine as my Dad was a Naval Intelligence officer in Singapore in the aftermath of the emergency when there were still a load of weapons floating around, and still communists wanting to get the whole thing going again. It nearly kicked off again in 1967 but the lid was put back on it pretty quickly.

All washed down with a strong cup of tea

(oh sorry, I thought this was the Bacon and Sausages thread)