Martin Sheen proud of uncle's IRA past

[MMI]

Thank-you, den. I think this survey of Irish history confirms the assertions I have made that the Irish have always been the cause of their own problems (with a couple of exceptions in 16th/17th centuries) and it fell to Britain to keep the different factions apart.

[thir]

Thank-you, den. I think this survey of Irish history confirms the assertions I have made that the Irish have always been the cause of their own problems (with a couple of exceptions in 16th/17th centuries) and it fell to Britain to keep the different factions apart.

LOL Then you need glasses :-)))

[leo9]

Thank-you, den. I think this survey of Irish history confirms the assertions I have made that the Irish have always been the cause of their own problems (with a couple of exceptions in 16th/17th centuries) and it fell to Britain to keep the different factions apart.

Amazing. I often wondered exactly what the term "invincible ignorance" meant, and now I have a perfect example. Anyone who can read a fifteen-hundred-year catalogue of invasions and oppressions and conclude that it was all the victim's fault is totally impervious to facts.

To mention only one example, did you miss the point that the reason there are "different factions" in Northern Ireland is because we put them there?

(I'm reminded of the character who declared in all seriousness that the Troubles could be solved if the Irish Catholics would only "go back where they came from.")

[MMI]

Invincible ignorance? Hmmm.

Even the most fervent Fenian complains only of 800 years' oppression - before then, it was Ireland that invaded and oppressed Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland; the invasions from England/Britain were fewer in number than you appear to suppose, and the oppressions were more by the factions within Ireland against each other than by England/Britain against Ireland - the clans against each other and against the Earls and other landowners, the clan leaders and the Earls against the English, the Catholics against the Protestants, the Jacobites against the Hanoverians, the landowners against the subsistence farmers ...

For example, while the poor Irish were starving to death, unable to grow even a few potatoes, the wealthy Irish landowners grew high quality wheat and grazed cattle on luscious grass, and they exported their produce to England, Europe and America rather than relieve their fellow Irishmen's suffering. Meanwhile, the Irish Earls prevented the English Parliament from doing anything about it.

Virtually every "uprising" had fellow Irishmen as their targets and victims. The Irish Civil War, for example, was a bloodier affair than the Anglo-Irish War that preceded it. "Popular" uprisings that had to be quelled by British forces can be portrayed as English oppression - and they are - but in reality, they were mostly peacekeeping efforts. Consider the British troops sent into Belfast in 1969 as neutral forces to subdue sectarian rioting. Within weeks of welcoming them, the Irish nationalists turned against them and the IRA began a campaign of terror and murder against them. At the same time, the Irish Republic's government drew up plans for a military intervention in Ulster, and gave open support to the nationalist side.

Irishman against Irishman, and both blaming the English for their inability to coexist.

After WWII, the Irish government adopted a policy of preventing Irishmen who had fought in the British Army from holding any position in a state-run enterprise or in local authorities. This came to be known as the Starvation Order. Apparently it is still in force and some ex-British soldiers are still afraid to admit their involvement.

Irishman against Irishman, again. Incidentally, I am not aware that the Starvation Order extended to those who fought on the German side!

Those are the facts, unless you can demonstrate otherwise. They are not all of the facts, as I have already pointed out, but they are significant and are generally overlooked these days. I have highlighted them because it is high time that the anti-British view that the world holds when it comes to Irish politics needs to be overturned and the record set straight. The Irish nationalists do not have the monopoly on truth in this particular issue - in fact, they are masters at distorting it.

Invincible ignorance, to my mind, is deliberately ignoring the facts when they are presented.