Comments by "Stuart Brown" (@stuartbrown8259) on "Remember the days when smartly dressed policemen patrolled the streets of Britain?" video.

@GalacticRailroad317As someone who grew up on the backstreets of Belfast, during the troubles, I can assure you the youngsters weren't trained in military tactics. Yes a cache of petrol bombs were generally at hand somewhere, ready for when required. Believe me most of the riots came about for when the police or Army or indeed both were kicking down doors of old Doris at number 26 looking for something, terrorism related, guns, bomb making materials etc. More often than not the riots ensued because they were picking on the innocent people who had no time for paramilitaries, and it was a reaction to that in most cases. In general life continued as per normal, I'm one of these people who have read most books, or watched most documentaries about the troubles, and can safely say it wasn't as bad as they made out. If I'm correct our police here have been routinely armed since the 1950s when the IRA had a campaign back then, and that has continued to this day. One thing I can say, it's a very rare occasion when the police here even draw their handguns, never mind fire it.
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@GalacticRailroad317 I knew how the riots were directed, I was in quite a few growing up , late 70s and early 80s. Yes the older ones were telling us what streets to go down to cut them off etc, but most of the time it was us younger ones who started it out of boredom, usually in the evenings.
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