It's trendy these days to be anti colonialism, but as soon as you mention ireland all the support fizzles out. Fucks up with that? Most young people hate tories, hate british empire, etc etc, but then you say IRA and everyone gets scared. It's not even like my generation has an emotional attachment to it either - it's before our time
Well for starters, the modern IRA lead an extended and disastrous military campaign. Its leadership has sold out those early goals of a united, socialist Ireland. Instead, 30 years of war gave us little more than their political wing engaging in regional, bourgeois politics, now firmly embedded in the capitalist ruling class.
Let's not forget that the IRA was infiltrated from top , to bottom by British intelligence.
A fair argument could be made that in the late 1960's there was little choice but to engage in armed struggle, especially for those communities feeling the brunt of what was not too far from an apartheid state. But, let's not romaticise how things have gone from then and what little has been achieved by all of those sacrifices.