A revealing story

 

It's from Tim Pat Coogan's superb history of the IRA, and it goes something like this: 

There were and are many individual exceptions: soldiers and police who tried to understand the people and involve themselves in helping the community. But where these were not regarded with outright suspicion and hatred as potential spies, they came up against the inevitable 'them' and 'us' syndrome which a young soldier from Dublin encountered one night when he stopped a Belfast architect of my acquaintance at a roadblock and tried to show friendliness towards him while going through the motions of searching his car. He was coldly rebuffed. 'But,' he tried, 'I'm one of you. I'm a Catholic—from Dublin.'

'Your bullets are just as hard,' said the architect.

Comments

[Matthew]

I'm glad you've enjoyed it.