SirOrmondeWinter
Ad Honorem
- Dec 2011
- 3,556
God bless the Black and Tans, the heroes of the Great War who saved the lives and freedom of thousands of Irish Unionists and made the IRA and their supporters suffer as they had made innocent Unionists suffer at their hands. A few salient facts you should add to your post;Today marks the 95th anniversary of the burning of the commercial and municipal heart of Cork city in southern Ireland by British forces acting on behalf of empire. That year was a fateful one for Ireland. The republican Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás MacCurtain, had been murdered in front of his family in March 1920 by members of the security forces. MacSwiney's death focussed world attention on British policy in Ireland. The USA led international condemnation of it. A Cork jury cited David Lloyd George as being responsible for MacCurtain’s murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomás_Mac_Curtain
MacCurtain successor Terence MacSwiney died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, London, in October, in protest at his illegal arrest. He was Lord Mayor of Cork city in Ireland and a republican. He went without food for 74 days and died despite being force fed in the last week of his hunger strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_MacSwiney
In November in Croke Park football ground British forces whose commander claimed they were ‘out of hand’ killed 14 spectators, including one of the players. Even if we accept that someone in the crowd fired first, a British court of enquiry found that the shootings ‘exceeded the demands of the situation and were indiscriminate’. These finding were all buried as classified by the British government until 2000 when the papers were released.
Less than two months later the Auxiliaries (Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary), better known as the Black and Tans and the brainchild of Winston Churchill, burned some five acres of the centre of Cork city. The heart of the city's commercial and civic life was destroyed, including many of the city's civil records, the Carnegie Library and department stores. Over 30 businesses were destroyed and 2000 people lost their livelihoods.
The British government initially (and characteristically) blamed the citizens and rebels of Cork city itself and not its own agents of law and order. Anyone using or quoting Hansard as a primary source for this event will obviously be entirely misled. However, the evidence of who was responsible is now irrefutable.
The following 50 minute long documentary produced by the Irish national TV broadcaster, RTE, covers all of the main events of 1920 in Cork that led to the burning of the city.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXT105miU44
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iRngkPexYk
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFZr6YxIhuQ
Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjbO4wFqH-c
1. Thomas McCurtain was the head of the local IRA and responsible for the murders of dozens of innocent people. He got exactly what he deserved.
2. So was Terrence MacSwiney. And he got exactly what he deserved too. Your sympathy should be with their victims, not with the murderers. If he wanted to kill himself, good riddance, what choice did he give his victims?
3. The Auxies at Croke Park were fired on first by the IRA in the crowd, here's a picture of the guns they recovered afterwards;

4. The IRA supporters of Cork deserved to suffer as they had made the Irish Unionists suffer, feel no pity for them, only for their Unionist victims. The Auxies beat them down and forced them to agree to the Treaty giving Britain victory, made them care about the IRA's victims whereas they hadn't before.
How can you still think such nonsense in the era of the Shamrock Awakening?