kate adie

[steve bird]

Kate Adie.

Listen to the last part of this. What she said really says it all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f14ly thank you niva

[steve carey]

The girl got it bang on. anyone ever see the programme in the 70s last night another soldier------

[Gwyn Nicholas]

From what I recall, there were a number of factors that had the civilian population thinking the way they did. Of course there was the "as long as it stays in Ireland" attitude but also the reporting on the news was nothing like what we saw daily on the news inside the the province. That was sterilized for the general public consumption which I believe led to the boyos taking their "war" to the mainland. There was also a lack of historical knowlege concerning the troubles, so rather than being disinterested in many cases it was a lack of understanding as to what was going on in the province.

I remember my mates back home saying things like " you army boys have got it all wrong, why are you using rubber bullets instead of real ones. There are more of you soldiers than this IRA army why havn't you sorted them out". Trying to explain, why it is happening and why we did what we did ie rules of engagement(yellow card) etc was not at all easy and when you didn't really understand the whole historical picture yourself, even more so.

Thankfully now, the civilian population (judging by the success of H4H) have a better understanding of what is happening due to better reporting and programmes showing what life is like at the front and they now support our lads and lasses instead of being critical about what they are doing. Wooten Bassett is a prime example of the change in public attitude from the dark days of the troubles to the current deployments.

[Paul Hinge]

Gwyn has got this "spot on!"

I have to say that Katie Adie....although a journalist....is noted for reoporting the situation as it really is.....she has incured the wrath of some news editors but having won international recognition for her news reporting her abilities speak for themselves!

Hingey

[davidrmac]

As I recall and reflect to my incident in New Barnsley circa 81 . Kate was actually reporting on the incident live complete with camera crew . This lead to a lot of negative public and media response to her and her team . Things such as "why did you not help" so on and so forth . I recall that she took a lot of flak over this incident but also recall her response , which went somewhere along the lines of ;
"they are highly trained soldiers , it is not in their or our interests to interfere when they have been trained to deal with such circumstances as we who have not been trained would probably cause more harm than good"
I never had and never will have an issue with this as we all have roles to play and many years later when I saw the footage I thought "that's exactly how it was , good reporting girl "
Never did I have to explain anything to anyone , the clip and the report said it all as it was .