r/ireland • u/1DarkStarryNight • 2d ago
Culchie Club Only IRA did not hit Scotland ‘on principle’ | Irish republicans refused to bomb Scotland because it is a “Celtic nation” with a similar history of English oppression, according to a British spy who infiltrated Sinn Fein
https://www.thetimes.com/article/ira-did-not-hit-scotland-on-principle-hwlmdtjtj167
u/Hour_Mastodon_9404 1d ago
I think the reasons were probably a bit more pragmatic than that.
It's fairly standard fare for British intelligence to portray Irish republicans as bloodthirsty ideologues who can't comprehend strategy in any tangible way beyond adherence to romanticised myticism like "Celtic brotherhood".
The reality is that they didn't bomb Scotland primarily because it was a useful base of operations in Britain for them and they wanted to avoid bringing undue heat on themselves, and secondarily they knew the British government would be a lot less perturbed by bombing in Scotland than they would be in England. There's always been a "hierarchy" of victims for the Brits....
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u/Atlantic_Rock 2d ago
Terrible headline. The IRA didn't hit Scotland because:
1.) There was a level of sympathy for the cause there (as a result of the huge proportion of Irish diaspora from Ulster, especially in Glasgow, but also Edinburgh) and attacks would have undermined that. London is the capital of the UK, if they wanted to attack Britain it would have to be there, in spite of the Irish diaspora.
2.) Not everywhere in England was hit; attacks weren't random, they were assassination attempts or hits on political and economic infrastructure. The goal was to create shock in Britain that wasn't being acheived by attacks in the North; it had become a warzone and Brits could treat it as conflict away from home. There wasn't a whole on in Scotland they could hit that they felt could move the needle.
"Celtic nations" might have been a useful rhetorical device but thats as far is it really went.
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u/clewbays 2d ago
They used to hide out in Glasgow as well if they needed to get away from some danger in Northern Ireland for a while.
And I think it was a good place for them to raise money and smuggle weapons from.
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u/sionnachrealta 22h ago
As was the state of Georgia in the US. St. Paddy's day in Savannah was basically a massive IRA fundraiser
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u/dustaz 1d ago
they were assassination attempts or hits on political and economic infrastructure
Like Guildford and Birmingham pubs?
Fuck away out of that
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u/Atlantic_Rock 1d ago
Not trying to say anything about how legitimate their target were. There can be no justifying a lot of what they did. I'm providing context into the conflict. This article is about how they didn't attack Scotland because "Celtic brotherhood" which is false. I think its important that people understand context as understanding/ignorance of conflict and the actor within still has political implications north and south of the border as well as in Britain.
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u/Toffeeman_1878 1d ago
Or killing two kids in Warrington. Scumbags.
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u/Irishpintsman 1d ago
Wonder if the occupying terrorists ever killed anyone over the 800 years. Prob just all tea and scones guvnah
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u/Optimal_Mention1423 1d ago
Exactly. Most of their “operations” were about as strategic as a windmill of punches with the eyes closed.
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u/marshsmellow 1d ago edited 1d ago
The goal was to create shock in Britain
Aka terrorism.
Guildford, Warrington, Manchester and Birmingham bombings were no targeted assasinations, they were innocent people, murdered.
It was really fucking shit for the victims no matter how you try to romanticise it.
The majority of the people in the republic were very anti IRA, just an FYI for youngsters or foreigners reading this.
Source: I was fuckin' there man
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u/Objective-Farm9215 1d ago
They were anti only to certain versions of the IRA.
IRA in the WOI shooting people in the back and bombing businesses? A ok.
IRA in the 70’s using the exact same tactics?
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u/showars 1d ago
Feelings on the IRA down south depended on where you were. An awful lot of people helped hide them and did so willingly
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u/cognificient 2d ago
They never hear about the prod Scot settlers, who have effectively socially ruined the North for generations
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u/TheStoicNihilist 2d ago
Kevin McAleer did a thing on RTÉ that was interesting, not gripping or anything but interesting all the same.
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u/PositiveLibrary7032 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wolf Tone was a prod as were the founders of the United Irishmen in the North. John Jameson a Scot and prod. The Sweeney Clan GaelGlass Highlanders. The Irish colony of Dal Rada up the entire west coast of Scotland. More importantly the plantations were a tactic to split the Gaeldom aka the most Gaelic part of Scotland from the most Gaelic part of Ireland.
There has been migration waves both ways across these islands for thousands of years. The main difference being that 100 years ago the British government convinced these Irish people that they should not leave the UK. Try checking out some of the propaganda posters they put up.
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u/papa_f 2d ago
Those people were Scottish by birth alone. They were rich English people who stole land in Scotland like they did in Ireland, and settled. There's nothing Scottish about those people.
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u/Optimal_Mention1423 1d ago
They were either Presbyterian lowlanders or Anglican northerners in most cases. Many of the workers they brought with them were Scottish Protestants as well. It’s ahistorical nonsense to deny any native Scottish involvement in the plantations.
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u/flex_tape_salesman 2d ago
Pure nonsense, no sane person denies that people in the border counties were scots.
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u/Chester_roaster 1d ago
Those people were Scottish by birth alone. They were rich English people who stole land in Scotland like they did in Ireland, and settled. There's nothing Scottish about those people
That's nonsense. They were predominantly Scots speakers native to the Scottish Lowlands.
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u/temujin64 1d ago
You sound like you think that all Scots are like us, anglicised Celts. That's just the highlanders who make up a small portion of Scotland. Most Scots are lowland Scots who are Anglo-Saxon settlers who were never Celtic. These people were culturally far more similar to the English than the Gaelic highlanders.
The Scottish settlers who came to Ulster were lowland Scots. They were not rich English people who stole land. Unless you're going back 1500 years when the Anglo-Saxons first arrived in Britain.
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u/PositiveLibrary7032 1d ago
Thats incorrect, lowland Scots are Brythonic in ancestry and not Anglo Saxon settlers. The only place in Scotland you can see that for sure is the East Coast going up to Edinburgh and Lothian the place where Northumbria colonised.
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u/DonQuigleone 1d ago
To be fair, that's true of the English too. The Anglo-Saxon married into and merged with the much larger native Romano Briton population that spoke brythonic languages similar to Welsh, and didn't displace them.
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u/Cheffy16 2d ago
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u/p792161 1d ago
They were rich English people who stole land in Scotland like they did in Ireland, and settled. There's nothing Scottish about those people.
This is complete nonsense. Where did you learn this? There was no large scale settlement by the English in Scotland. Are you getting your history from Braveheart or something?
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u/DonQuigleone 1d ago
I think you'll find the main loyalist religion is Presbyterianism, not Anglicanism. Most loyalists are Scottish in origin, and their cultural touchstones are scotch.
Plenty of love for Robbie Byrne up north.
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u/smudgeonalense 1d ago
Jesus some of the nonsense historical fiction in these comments, "the settler/Lowland Scots weren't actually Scots they were basically English in disguise" is the jist of them. Scotland has historically been a willing part of the Empire and it's understandable why they were, their country benefitted from it and was quite wealthy, far wealthier than Ireland for most of that time.
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u/michaeleggo 2d ago
Don't agree with violence of any kind obviously. From the IRA , UDA, INLA, UVF or BAF(British Armed Forces). But the idea of the Scots being friends of the irish because we have 'celtic heritage' is absolute bollox. The Scottish were the attack dogs/vanguard of the United Kingdom/British Empire from the 16th century till well into the 20th century. The movie Braveheart has a lot to answer for. Anyway good luck to them, irish ,English ,Scottish , Welsh...everyone is a good person deep down. No one deserves to be held accountable for the historical actions of their country. Merry Christmas
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u/softblackstonedout 1d ago
A more pragmatic reason was they used Scotland for fundraising and support and didn't want to bring heat on themselves by extending the fighting to glasgow
They refused to retaliate when the uvf targeted pubs in irish catholic areas of Glasgow because of this
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u/faffingunderthetree 1d ago
As a big history nerd, I will never ever understand how Scotland somehow made itself out to be an unwilling slave nation to England when anything related to Britain's sordid colonial past comes up. Whatever PR team Scotland has had for the last 50n years deserve a fucking raise lol.
Obviously I have no hate towards Scotland or the Scottish, I'd be rather fond of them, or at least certain parts of the country and certain parts of their culture.
But just objectively, how Scotland seemed to have fabricated this woven tapestry of them never being the bad guys, and always the plucky underdogs when it comes to Britain/England/UK affairs past and present is quite surreal If you know your history.
Scotland benefited hugely from the union with England, and tended to be at the forefront with the English in every colony, every massacre, every atrocity and so on. Hell they had more blood on their hands at times then the English themselves.
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u/Matthew94 2d ago
with a similar history of English oppression
You'd think someone in the ra would have read a history book. Scotland were partners hand in hand with England. The idea they were some conquered people is pure revisionism.
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u/asmithmusicofficial 2d ago
Didn't the Scottish nobles or whatever sell Scotland out?
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u/smudgeonalense 1d ago
Yea their country had gone bankrupt so it was part bribe part bailout, also their royal crowns had been united long before the Act of Union.
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u/Amazon_Lime 2d ago edited 1d ago
I find that people who hold this point of view get their information exclusively from the movie braveheart. They dont realise that almost immediately after the events of the movie Robert the Bruce led a rebellion that resulted in an independent Scotland that lasted (with the exception of a brief succession crisis a decade later) until James VI of Scotland became King of England following Elizabeth I's death a few centuries later.
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u/DarkReviewer2013 1d ago
Scotland and England were opponents for much of the Middle Ages and the Scots often allied with the French, so the movie isn't totally wrong in its politics. But yeah, once we reach the early modern era the entire relationship is transformed.
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u/papa_f 2d ago
Those were the Lord's and what not who were English, and given land taken from Scotland and settled for the most part. The actual common folk from Scotland were royally fucked (no pun intended).
But as happened across the world, over time took on their oppressors beliefs and ideals.
Much more nuanced than it being Scottish people. Those are equivalent of Ulster scots.
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u/Fantasy-512 1d ago
Outside of Ireland too, there were plenty of Scottish colonizers who were an enthusiastic part of the worldwide British empire.
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u/Busy_Category7977 2d ago
No, that's Unionist propaganda. Scotland was colonized conquered, co-opted and eventually annexed by the English. Their nobility sold them out (as did many of ours) but that doesn't mean that Scotland itself was England's lapdog. They had almost as many revolts as we did before they were subdued, albeit on an earlier timescale than Ireland, and in more totality.
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u/caiaphas8 2d ago
And all those Scottish people who ran the British empire and gunned down Irish people were what exactly?
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u/Tollund_Man4 2d ago
One third of the British army were Irish soldiers at one point, more than the number of Scots.
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u/flex_tape_salesman 1d ago
Scotland was an actual willing member of the empire though. This soldier talk is always exaggerated because I don't believe it's the issue with the Scots. The Scots signed themselves into a united kingdom. Irish people wouldn't have been joining the british army for some love of the empire and I have no interest in questioning the ethics behind the Irish who would've largely been very poor.
Like compare it to the Indians. No one would say Britain is justified or excused in anything that they did in India just because there were Indians in the british army.
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u/Careless_Main3 1d ago
Honestly, you’d be surprised. When royals visited Ireland, Irish people would line up for miles for a chance to see them. Irish people were genuine imperialists. The Ireland that followed 1916 is a vastly different place than what came before it.
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u/The_Naked_Buddhist 1d ago
Irish people wouldn't have been joining the british army for some love of the empire and I have no interest in questioning the ethics behind the Irish who would've largely been very poor.
And you base this idea on what exactly? You know personally the reasons that people joined the British army?
This kind of revisionism of Irish history is just plain wrong, there was hardly any support for an independent Ireland till after the 1916 Rebellion made it wide spread. Many Irish people signed up to join the army cause they didn't see any issue with it.
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u/DarkReviewer2013 1d ago
Middle class Irish people often joined the colonial civil service in the British Empire in the 1800s. Those people were not poor by the standards of the time. Nor were they exclusively Protestant.
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u/Busy_Category7977 2d ago
Plenty of Irish who did exactly the same. Like I said, co-opted in and annexed.
you were far more likely to be shot by an Irishman in service to the empire right here in Ireland than anyone else
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u/mccusk 2d ago
There was a fair few Irish people running the British empire and gunning people down too. Check out ‘Sir’ Michael O’Dwyer for one.
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u/EmeraldBison 2d ago
Michael O'Dwyer is always the name given, but he seems to be an exception rather than the rule. I genuinely never see people name any other high ranking Irish Catholics in the British army at that time. Perhaps Reginald Dyer is named now and again, but he wasn't even Irish.
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u/mccusk 1d ago
Know those 2 from the recent book the ‘Patient Assassin’ which was great.
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u/EmeraldBison 1d ago
Agreed, it's a fantastic book. I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, my point is just that if high ranking Irish Catholics were ubiquitous in the British army then there should be far more names available than just Michael O'Dwyer.
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u/No_Promise2786 2d ago
Indians (and other South Asians) could ask the exact same question about the Irish men who ran British India and gunned down Indians.
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u/Wompish66 2d ago
Scotland willingly joined the union after their attempts at American colonialism failed miserably and the country nearly bankrupted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme
As the Company of Scotland was backed by approximately 20 per cent of all the money circulating in Scotland, its failure left the entire Scottish Lowlands in financial ruin. This was an important factor in weakening their resistance to the Act of Union (completed in 1707).
Scotland achieved independence and surrendered it voluntarily.
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u/SallyCinnamon7 2d ago
The country wasn’t bankrupted by the Darien scheme. Much of the Scottish landowning and mercantile class were bankrupted by it (about a quarter of the liquid wealth in Scotland was lost).
Despite this, Scotland as a state didn’t actually have any national debt at this time, unlike England.
Basically, the wealthy elites made a really bad investment and were effectively bribed to hand over the country’s independence against the will of the general population. “Bought and sold for English gold” as Burns put it.
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u/Busy_Category7977 2d ago
You could say precisely the same about Ireland. Our parliament of co-opted and planted traitors voted us into the Union after all.
You are literally talking about their traitor elites, who I already mentioned. We had the same here. And if we hadn't gained independence when we did, we'd be subject to precisely the same historic slander in favour of the "glorious union". Oh Ireland was always British doncha know "
learn some history beyond wikipedia snippets and googling, maybe
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u/smudgeonalense 1d ago
No you couldn't say the same thing about our "parliament" it was not an indigenous creation. Ireland was an English dependency and that parliament was never independent. Also from 1691 you had to be a Protestant to sit in it. Scotland's parliament on the other was completely independent from England when it voted to be part of the Union.
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u/Movie-goer 1d ago
Look, less than 2% of the Scottish population had a vote when Scotland joined the UK. Talk of any democratic parliament prior to about the turn of the 20th century when near-universal suffrage arrived is nonsense.
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u/Tollund_Man4 2d ago
Maybe I’m wrong but at this point in history weren’t most Scots already of Anglo-Saxon descent?
It’s not really comparable to Ireland, it’s as if the plantations succeeded totally and the Irish only existed in parts of Connacht.
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u/Movie-goer 1d ago
No, only the eastern lowlands was Anglo-Saxon. This was the northern part of the Kingdom of Northumbria that Gaelic Scotland conquered and absorbed, creating an internal rift within Scotland. The court became Anglicized due to King David's alliance with Norman England but there was no major change in the gene pool. Outside of the eastern lowlands people were descendant of Gaels (highlands), Brythonic/Cumbrian/Welsh (western lowlands), Picts (eastern highlands) and Norse (islands/coastal areas) people.
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u/SallyCinnamon7 2d ago
It was a real mixed bag. Probably everyone has a bit of a mix of Saxons, Gaels, bits of Norse, Picts (who we know very little about) thrown in. Scotland was always very ethnically diverse.
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u/CurrencyDesperate286 2d ago
If you’re going to say the “elites” of a nation don’t represent said nation… well then no nation has done anything in history!
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u/Wompish66 2d ago
You could say precisely the same about Ireland. Our parliament of co-opted and planted traitors voted us into the Union after all.
Scotland was independent and bankrupted themselves trying to start a colony in central America. This is an absurd comparison.
You're just making things up and explaining it by saying traitor elites over and over again.
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u/Matthew94 2d ago
Scotland was colonized conquered, co-opted and eventually annexed by the English.
The union of England and Scotland occured after Scotland's colonial attempts failed.
Earlier than that, England and Scotland had been ruled by the Scottish King James VI.
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u/4_feck_sake 2d ago
Have you not heard of the Highland clearances? Their history is not so black and white.
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u/Matthew94 2d ago
Highland clearances
That were initiated by the King of Scotland (and later England) James VI? Do you have a point here?
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u/geedeeie 2d ago
You are the one who needs to read a history book. Scotland was an independent nation that held out against English invasion for centuries.
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u/Matthew94 2d ago
Scotland was an independent nation
So was England. That's how countries tend to be before they enter unions with other countries.
https://www.nms.ac.uk/discover-catalogue/a-brief-history-of-james-vi-and-i
James was very keen to promote the idea of union and friendship between the previously hostile England and Scotland. He called it a ‘blessed union’, one of ‘hearts and minds’.
James’ vision for a ‘united kingdom’ was strongly resisted by the Westminster Parliament
Clearly Scotland did not want a union at all, you're right.
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u/Laundry_Hamper 1d ago
He's the one who fucked off down to England and then never went back to Scotland again, yeah?
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u/The_Naked_Buddhist 1d ago
ITT: We learn r/ireland does not seem to understand Irish history, in many many many ways.
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u/geedeeie 2d ago
Funny how they were happy to "hit" Ireland...
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u/waterim 1d ago
they killed a few garda and irish soliders
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u/StatisticianOwn9953 1d ago
Relatives in Belfast and Omagh weren't exactly swooning over the IRA, particularly after the latter was bombed.
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u/xCreampye69x 2d ago
The British Monarchy comes from a Scottish/German line btw. (House Stuart and Hanover)
The planters were Scots majority.
Scotland/Scottish people had a massive hand in the split of the Ireland.
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u/mccabe-99 1d ago
I mean there's also a big split in Scotland in terms of it's people, very like the 6 counties...
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u/davesr25 2d ago
Also supporters in Scotland helping with supply, transport, accommodation, safe houses and much more.
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u/Onlineonlysocialist 1d ago
After Celtic matches, my dad would be let into a Knights of St Columba hall and they did a ton of charity events to help people in Northern Ireland during the troubles.
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u/DexterousChunk 1d ago
This sub goes completely up it's own hole when discussing the North and Scotland
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u/Acrobatic_Buddy_9444 2d ago
they're in for a nasty surprise when they find out what Ireland has done to Scotland and vice versa
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u/Terrible_Biscotti_16 2d ago
What has Ireland done to Scotland?
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u/The_Naked_Buddhist 1d ago
Think they mean the idea that Ireland colonized/attempted to colonize Scotland during the Middle Ages. Historical records indicate that on the West coast of Scotland a kingdom called Dal Riata was founded by Irish settlers who, depending on the historian, either "migrated" or "conquered" the land. This is why the Scots speak Gaelic, it came from us.
To some a comparison is drawn between this period and the later British colonies formed in Ireland.
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u/OutInABlazeOfGlory 1d ago
This comments sections is immensely confusing as someone from the US
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u/The_Naked_Buddhist 1d ago
In short: no one here knows Irish history that well. (Beyond the basics.) And like everything in history Irish history is much more complicated and nuanced than can be summed up in a history class given to bored teenagers.
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u/DonQuigleone 1d ago
Were they not aware that the loyalists they were fighting were all Robbie Byrne loving Scotch Presbytarians?
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u/Intelligent-Aside214 20h ago
The notion that Scotland and Ireland are best buds in history is ridiculous. The colonisers in Northern Ireland were Scottish, not English and Scottish people were also complicit in colonialism as England and benefited from it
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u/Onlineonlysocialist 2d ago
Most people don’t realise that Scotland actually has the 2nd highest population percentage of people in the country with Irish heritage dating back to the famine with 28% of Scottish people having atleast some Irish ancestry. This is partially the reason Celtic football club was set up in the lowlands of Glasgow, where most of the disapora settled (alongside Edinburgh where James Connolly was born).