Ok I guess the answer is never. Thats the way it goes sometimes. Hatfields still hate the McCoys too. There is blood on both camp's hands from back when it was a political blood feud but just consider that they're primarity in a drug turf war and are just gangs. As with all drug related conflicts people are going to die. Have at each other and enjoy the ride.
The problem is, one side doesn't want to seriously discuss the issue of a united Irish Republic, claiming a moral superiority over the other side. However, the moral superiority the British like the flaunt around doesn't exist. When they weren't employing terroristic tactics themselves, they were assisting paramilitary terrorist groups (Protestant paramilitary groups who were also included on the USA's terrorism watchlist) accumulate weaponry to carry out Britain's dirty work.
The British are quite good at keeping the discussion focused on the IRA, and blaming the lack of a united Irish Republic on them. In the world of soundbite foreign policy on mass media, this has been largely successful.
However, when the discussion has to continue longer (as it has here), that accepted perception can not stand up to historical truths, and a moral
equality emerges. Perhaps even worse on Britain's side, because their support and practice of terrorism carries a mandate of the people with it.
So when the discussion reaches moral equivalence, then what? Then Tom and company raise the specter of loyalist paramilitary violence as a reaction to a united Ireland, after condemning republican paramilitary violence as a reaction to occupation and partition for nearly a century. That simply means the alleged moral superiors will continue the terrorist violence if a united Irish Republic is founded.
And really, who is more likely to be living as a second-class citizen in their own country:
1) a Catholic in Derry?
or
2) a Protestant in Dublin?
The only threat a united Irish Republic poses to the loyalists is that their privileged status, and ability to subjugate the majority native peoples, will be gone. Just as they can no longer strut through the streets of Bombay in white linen suits and pith helmets and be called "Sahib" by the native peoples. The empire is gone. It's over. Give it up already.
