Make The Ulster Loyalists And The Afrikaners The more Romantic On In Their Conflicts!

Irish Republicans were traditionally portrayed in the media as the more romantic in the Northern irish troubles, even with prisoners covered in blankets on a dirty protest, whereas the Loyalists always came across as bullies! It would be even harder given the level of the oppression they caused to make the Afrikaner the more romantic in the struggle over Apartheid! Maybe it's usually the case that the obviously oppressed gain sympathy which leads to an 'ah, the poor lads!' sort of feeling!
 
well I'm guessing you mean "in America" Irish Republicans aren't seen as romantic in say the UK.

any ways there was a time when the US was very anti-Catholic and very racist too, I'm unsure how one might hold back the seat-change in views in the US, but if you did there would be more support for both in the US, unsure if that'd "romantic" or not.
 
They would also need to be better at PR and at courting international opinion. Loyalists in particular have an incredibly parochial "Little Ulster" mentality and didn't realise that Britain let alone the wider world had changed from 1918 and most people didn't care about the sacrifice of the 36th Ulster Division on the Somme.

I once read the memoirs of Ken Bloomfield who had been an adviser to Terence O'Neill and ended up as NI' most senior civil servant. Bloomfield was on a trade mission to America in the late 1960's at which there was an evening function, the Unionist members of the delegation were all teetotal Presbyterians who were in bed by 11 while the Nationalists stayed up drinking and telling stories. Guess who made the better impression!
 
They would also need to be better at PR and at courting international opinion. Loyalists in particular have an incredibly parochial "Little Ulster" mentality and didn't realise that Britain let alone the wider world had changed from 1918 and most people didn't care about the sacrifice of the 36th Ulster Division on the Somme.

I once read the memoirs of Ken Bloomfield who had been an adviser to Terence O'Neill and ended up as NI' most senior civil servant. Bloomfield was on a trade mission to America in the late 1960's at which there was an evening function, the Unionist members of the delegation were all teetotal Presbyterians who were in bed by 11 while the Nationalists stayed up drinking and telling stories. Guess who made the better impression!

1. Not all change is good. The fact people don't care about the sacrifice of that division is sad.

2. A sad reflection on society in general, that sobriety and responsibility (early to bed to get up early to work) isn't valued.
 
1. Not all change is good. The fact people don't care about the sacrifice of that division is sad.

2. A sad reflection on society in general, that sobriety and responsibility (early to bed to get up early to work) isn't valued.

I agree completely, 2 generations of Ulstermen had been brought up to believe that "Britain will never betray us because of the Somme." What the Loyalists failed to understand was that it was the way they ran NI after 1922 that led to many British people coming to see them as an embarrassing anachronism. Had they just treated Nationalists fairly, as Carson had implored them to do, the the Troubles would never have happened and the Northern Ireland Parliament would have continued to this day.
 

Darth Darth

Banned
Perhaps stronger sympathies for Ulstermen among American Evangelicals and conservatives against the rather leftist IRA?
 
well I'm guessing you mean "in America" Irish Republicans aren't seen as romantic in say the UK.

any ways there was a time when the US was very anti-Catholic and very racist too, I'm unsure how one might hold back the seat-change in views in the US, but if you did there would be more support for both in the US, unsure if that'd "romantic" or not.

In Continental Europe too.

While it is hard to truely symphatisise with the Afrikaners, I actualy consider them more "romantic" (all the last stand and lost cause stuff).
Might have to do with the fact, that I only learned about the affair, after they lost, and so picture them as the underdogs.

Sidestory: I was around 10, when the Bosian war was in full swing and it got a lot of tv coverage in Germany. Funny is that I (and the boys my age, I remember talking too about it) were strongly pro-serbian.
The rag-tag clad, bearded young serbian paramiltiary, firing his AK into the night image, that was probably intended to vilanize them in the eyes of adult Germans was ultra-cool to us.
 
Make The Ulster Loyalists And The Afrikaners The more Romantic On In Their Conflicts!

I see you only reference the post-sixties Troubles when talking about the conventional wisdom RE the appearance of the Nationalists versus the Unionists. Uh huh.

Don't get me wrong, I broadly agree with the notion that traditional Irish Nationalist rebellion was granted an allure that Ulster loyalism never was, but the reason for that is all bound up in events that happened before the NI Troubles. (And I disagree that this 'romantic image' applied much to popular opinion of the Provisional IRA during the period of the 1970s-1990s anyway. At least outside of Nationalist circles. Which admittedly were pretty big in the US.)
 
Could the Afirkaners gain more credibility/romanticism be emphasising their treatment during the Boer war! I had to laugh one time when I heard - Lord Kilclooney, John Taylor a conservative minded old Unionist as an MP stating in an interview on Southern Irish television that it was wrong to compare Loyalists/Unionists with the Oppressive Afrikaners in Apartheid RSA as the position of the Loyalist/Unionist in Ulster was much more analguous to that of the blacks there ie an oppressed minority!
Also Ian Paisley once ran a campaign for Protestant Rights in Ulster along with a rather Monty Pythonesque 'Save Ulster From Sodomy Campaign' against gay peoples' rights!
 
Top