Should the Queen Have apologised to the Irish?

[MMI]

Thank-you Ian. Although I do not agree with your attitude, I am on your side in this debate. You state quite clearly why the Queen should not have apologised. Feelings among Unionists and the Army are still too raw to allow it. The Irish might blame England for 800 years of oppression, but that's only because they have slanted their history to suit their current political purposes. They blame the English for callous murders of their people in the 20th century - Bloody Sunday is often cited, and David Cameron has issued an apology to the British people who were affected by this, but the soldiers involved, wrongly or rightly believed they were dealing with armed terrorists; Croke Park is often cited, but Croke Park was a misguided act of revenge for the greater act of murder committed by Michael Collins and his gang just hours earlier; the Easter Rising is often cited, but that was an open rebellion against the lawful government, and Pearse and his followers were committing treason in just the same way that the French Revolutionaries, the American Rebels or the Bolsheviks were in their time. I would venture to suggest that most acts of "suppression" by the English were carried out in order to preserve law and order in Ireland: it was violence and disorder they wished to suppress, not the Irish. Violence that the Irish are still committing against each other.

The Great Famine is often cited, too. The British did not cause the potato blight. In all probability, it was imported from the USA. And when the blight came to Ireland, it came to the rest of Europe too. To be fair, when pressed on the point, the Irish blame God the blight, but England for the Famine, which was worse in Ireland than anywhere else. While plentiful crops of corn were growing on Ireland's richer soils, England was importing that harvest for its own consumption, leaving the peasants to live off the poorer lands where only potatoes could grow. That England knew of the plight of the peasants in Ireland stands to its eternal shame, but it can plead in mitigation that, because of the very strong lobby of Irish landowners in the British Parliament at the time, the political will or the strength to do anything about it did not exist. Britain could have imported all the corn it needed from anywhere in the Empire - or the world, for that matter - but the Irish earls and lesser landowners of that country were making very nice profits by exporting corn to England and it was they, the Irish ruling classes, that ensured that this would continue to happen, rather than to be used to relieve their starving countrymen.

I offer no excuse for Cromwell other than that he - a traitor himself - was intent of suppressing any Royalist threat from Catholic Ireland. His decimation of the population cannot be justified, and Irish hatred for him - still alive - can be well understood. However, Cromwell's activities cannot be used to justify Irish terrorism today (nor are they, I hasten to add).

Events before that - the Tudor invasion, the Norman forces (Normandy was a viking state in France, by the way, which not only invaded Ireland, but conquered England too) are surely too far back to be relevant, just as the Irish invasions of Western England and Wales, where they plundered villages and churches and kidnapped people to be sold into slavery, including a certain Patrick from Wales, are no longer actions that the Irish should apologise for.

So I contend that England has only to apologise for failing to ensure that Ireland's great landowners put the well being of their tenants before profit. All of the rest, the Irish brought on themselves. That apology would never be accepted, for the Irish state is built on the myth of English oppression (like other nations I could mention) and an acceptance would be admission of the lies they base their legitimacy upon.

[MMI]

A side issue: President Obama is visiting Ireland now. Why is it that all but one of America's Presidents since Kennedy, even the black one, find it necessary to emphasis their Irish antecedents ... even if, like Clinton, they didn't have any? And isn't it also a little bit concerning?

[thir]

A side issue: President Obama is visiting Ireland now. Why is it that all but one of America's Presidents since Kennedy, even the black one, find it necessary to emphasis their Irish antecedents ... even if, like Clinton, they didn't have any? And isn't it also a little bit concerning?

I have absolutely no idea why!

Why might it be a concern?

[thir]

The main thing is very simple: The English took over Ireland, which it had no business doing, in order to 'civilize' it, though Ireland at the time was one of the most civilized countries in the world. (A topic for the civilization disucussion, btw.) They crushed their culuture and changed their self-sufficient ways, made them a colony and a suppressed people, in the end dependent on potatoes - in the long course of their reign there.

Lest you think I am riding the moral horse there, Denmark did much the same thing with Greenland, broke up and crushed a well functioning society perfectly adapted to its hostile surroundings, in order to 'civilize' and Christianise it. And we are still there! No apologies will come forth in the foreseable future, though they are entitled if any are, and, more importantly, they are not allowed the right to the natural resources of their own land.

And Norse vikings sat on Ireland for about 400 years, as an Irish person rather drily pointed out when I complainted about the English!

So, my point is that once you try to subdue another country, violence will follow as sure as night follows day and you cannot very well complain about it. People do not take kindly to being invaded.

[QUOTE=MMI;928160]Thank-you Ian.
They blame the English for callous murders of their people in the 20th century - Bloody Sunday is often cited, and David Cameron has issued an apology to the British people who were affected by this, but the soldiers involved, wrongly or rightly believed they were dealing with armed terrorists;
[quote]

Leo9 has promised to comment here in a seperate post which concerns the complex situation in Northern Ireland. Enough to say here that that situation, too, did not come from nothing.

Croke Park is often cited,

Let's see:
"Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola) was a day of violence in Dublin on 21 November 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. In total, 31 people were killed – fourteen British, fourteen Irish civilians and three republican prisoners.

The day began with an Irish Republican Army (IRA) operation to assassinate the ‘Cairo Gang’, a team of undercover British agents working and living in Dublin. Twelve were British Army officers, one a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary and lastly a single civilian informant.

Later that afternoon, the Royal Irish Constabulary opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, killing fourteen civilians. That evening, three IRA suspects in Dublin Castle were beaten and killed by their British captors, allegedly while trying to escape.[1]" (Wikepedia.)

So, a terrorist action performed by British soliders upon fotballers and spectators.

but Croke Park was a misguided act of revenge for the greater act of murder committed by Michael Collins and his gang just hours earlier;

Ireland was at war with Britain. The targeted persons were at least part of that war.

The Great Famine is often cited, too. <> While plentiful crops of corn were growing on Ireland's richer soils, England was importing that harvest for its own consumption, leaving the peasants to live off the poorer lands where only potatoes could grow. That England knew of the plight of the peasants in Ireland stands to its eternal shame, but it can plead in mitigation that, because of the very strong lobby of Irish landowners in the British Parliament at the time, the political will or the strength to do anything about it did not exist. Britain could have imported all the corn it needed from anywhere in the Empire - or the world, for that matter - but the Irish earls and lesser landowners of that country were making very nice profits by exporting corn to England and it was they, the Irish ruling classes, that ensured that this would continue to happen, rather than to be used to relieve their starving countrymen.

1) If the Brits had not taken over Ireland and changed the self-suficient economy, there would have been no potatoes and no famine.

2) The landowners constisted of some Irish who had sided with the English, and anglo-english landowners. I think you are right that neither felt compelled to do anything about the situation - other than make sure it did not cause them loss!

3) Ireland argued that if they are part of Britain as stated, they should recieve help as did other parts of Britain in a like situation. But they did not, which confirms their actual status as a colony no-one was responsible for.

I offer no excuse for Cromwell other than that he - a traitor himself - was intent of suppressing any Royalist threat from Catholic Ireland. His decimation of the population cannot be justified, and Irish hatred for him - still alive - can be well understood. However, Cromwell's activities cannot be used to justify Irish terrorism today (nor are they, I hasten to add).

Two (or gods know how many) wrongs do not make a right.

But the word 'terrorist' is too freely used in many situations to mean 'the people we do not like'. Who are freedom fighters and who not? What methods can justify the end when a country is oppressed?

So I contend that England has only to apologise for failing to ensure that Ireland's great landowners put the well being of their tenants before profit. All of the rest, the Irish brought on themselves. That apology would never be accepted, for the Irish state is built on the myth of English oppression (like other nations I could mention) and an acceptance would be admission of the lies they base their legitimacy upon.

Before the Normans Ireland had one the world's best educational and legal systems, with lawyers studying for years at the university. We are talking 800 something here, or earlier. Many countries sent people to their univeresities. When Ireland got Christianised, the new faith and the old ones existed peacefully for many years. They had poems and music famous still. They also had squabbles between the various lesser kings, but, I think, no more than in other places and of necessity on a smaller scale.

The Normans came to Ireland after their conquest and brutal reorganisations of England, but the situation here was different, while they initially took over Ireland as well, made it more feudal, introduced more brutal laws and money, their areas shrank to around Dublin and apparently they did not have a real hard impact on the country.

As far as I know, things went rather peacfully for centuries right up to the Reformation. In the 16th century the protestants came and the trouble between protestants and catholics started.

King Henry the 8th saw Ireland (now self governed) as a threat, and started to retake it rather brutally, which continued under Elisabeth the 1. In spite of uprisings which were put down by among other things induced famine, Ireland became a real colony under James the 1, complete with plantations and loss of any rights. I think it is from this time it went really bad, roughly the last 400 years

wikipedia:
"From the mid-16th and into the early 17th century, crown governments carried out a policy of colonisation known as Plantations. Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists ..."

"These settlers, who had a British and Protestant identity, would form the ruling class of future British administrations in Ireland."
However, Ireland wasn't a popular place to live for these people and they were "absentee landlords" leaving the administrations of the plantations to the bailifss, who were accountable to noone. Obviously the result of such a system was a lot of poverty and sufffering.

A series of Penal Laws discriminated against all Christian faiths other than the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland."

The penal laws:
After the surrender of Limerick in 1691, the treaty which promised religious freedom to the Catholics was grossly violated, and they were made subject to the action of severe "penal laws", passed in the Irish parliament, an assembly composed of Protestant lords, and of members returned for boroughs controlled by the crown or by patrons or by close corporations, and for counties dominated in election affairs by great proprietors of land. Catholics were not permitted to keep school; to go beyond seas, or to send others thither, for education in the Romish religion. Intermarriage with Protestants was disallowed, in case of the possession of an estate in Ireland. Children of mixed marriages were always to be brought up in the Protestant faith.

A "Papist" could not be guardian to any child, nor hold land, nor possess arms. He could not hold a commission in the army or navy, or be a private soldier. No Catholic could hold any office of honour or emolument in the state, or be a member of any corporation, or vote for members of the Commons, or, if he were a peer, sit or vote in the Lords. Almost all these personal disabilities were equally enforced by law against any Protestant who married a Catholic wife. It was a felony, with transportation, to teach the Catholic religion, and treason, as a capital offence, to convert a Protestant to the Catholic faith. The legislation devised for the Irish Catholics in that evil time was described by Burke as "a machine as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man".

http://www.libraryireland.com/articl...Penal-Laws.php

We have seen the result of that system up til today.

I do not see the Irish as angels or saints, nor the British as devils incarnate. But the result of such systems is inescapeable, and you reap what you sow.

[MMI]

Thir's post could be given a detailed, and therefore necessarily a long response. However, I shall limit this message to what I think give an essential reply to the points she makes.

England has never tried to civilise Ireland. It was happy for the bogtrotters to do as they pleased so long as its writ ran in Dublin. However, it had very good reasons to be there (when it was there). England was first invited into Ireland to help a dispossessed Irish kingling recover his lands, taken by other Irish kinglings. England obliged and thereby gained an ally in Ireland. In return for his help, the English King became Lord of All Ireland (later King of Ireland). and established an Irish Parliament , where the Irish aristocracy would rule Ireland by themselves.

At times, the various Irish factions, in their internecine feuds would mount insurrections necessitating the English to subdue them by force. In other words, the English were obliged to suppress rebel movements in order to maintain the King's Peace, and, in fact, the presence of English/British troops on that island has almost always since then been to suppress rebellions against law and order, and attempted revolutions against the Crown. Never has England sent troops into Ireland on an unprovoked orgy of blood letting as Hiberno/American versions of history would have you believe - not even in Cromwell's time.

In addition to rebellions and revolutions, Catholic Ireland represented an open back door for an invasion of England by its enemies, and England was unwilling to give Irish revolutionaries the freedom to invite foreign invaders to start their campaigns there. For this reason English troops drove French and Spanish troops out of Ireland on different occasions to ensure their own safety.

So, far from having no business to be in Ireland, England was there by invitation, or as a peace-keeping force, or to suppress rebellions and revolutions against the established order, or to repel foreign invaders allowed in by treacherous Irishmen.

Until its union with Great Britain in 1801, Ireland has always had Home Rule in one form or another, except when it became ungovernable. Immediately upon union,
agitators began to call for independence and advocated violent methods to secure it. Thus, once again, the authorities had to quell violent uprisings and were obliged to use force to do so.


England is just one part of the geographical area known as the British Isles. Ireland is another. So is Scotland and Wales, not to mention the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and so on. England occupies the greatest proportion of land within the British Isles. It is, and always has been, the most densely populated area, with more inhabitants then all of the other nations in the British Isles put together. On a purely utilitarian basis of the greatest good for the greatest number, the interest of the English should come before those of the rest: certainly not the other way round.

England is not and never has been utilitarian in its foreign policies. It is selfish and self-interested. For that reason, the English King saw himself as the Overlord of all the other nations, and if he couldn't completely conquer them all, he could at least make sure they did not represent a significant threat to England. Scotland had a formal alliance with France. The Irish rebels had an informal one. The national security of England demanded that these threats be neutralised, and England took steps to do so in both cases.

Croke Park was not a terrorist act, it was an act of blind hatred and revenge by people who should have known better, but didn't. They killed British subjects, not Irish civilians, and it was totally reprehensible. What a master stroke it was of Collins to hide amongst those people and goad the British military into committing that atrocity. A masterful, cowardly act, committed after an equally horrendous atrocity by his own squad hours before.


Ireland was not at war with Britain: it was part of Britain. Collins was British subject and a violent revolutionary traitor: the targeted persons were there to maintain law and order and to prevent sedition. They were killed because they were doing their job too well.

1) If the Brits had not taken over Ireland and changed the self-suficient economy, there would have been no potatoes and no famine.

False. Ireland was not self-sufficient. It exported grain in return for manufactured goods. Potatos and oats were grown by subsistence farmers on land that was not good enough for other use.

Britain did not cause the famine. The weather/potato blight caused it, depending on which famine you mean. Both famines spread across the whole of Europe and many people died as a result of crop failure.

2) The landowners constisted of some Irish who had sided with the English, and anglo-english landowners. I think you are right that neither felt compelled to do anything about the situation - other than make sure it did not cause them loss!

My point was that it was in the power of the wealthy Irish landowners to give food and work to the peasantry, but they chose not to (with some notable exceptions), preferring to send their produce abroad where greater profits lay. They represented a powerful lobby in the British Parliament which was thereby prevented from providing relief.

3) Ireland argued that if they are part of Britain as stated, they should recieve help as did other parts of Britain in a like situation. But they did not, which confirms their actual status as a colony no-one was responsible for.

My reading of that particular part of history was that the Irish refused suggestions that aid be sent directly, preferring to trade their way out of their difficulties. However, the money from that trade did not get used to relieve the starving. It simply lined the pockets of the wealthy Irish.

But the word 'terrorist' is too freely used in many situations to mean 'the people we do not like'. Who are freedom fighters and who not? What methods can justify the end when a country is oppressed?

Do you deny the Irish Republic was born out of terrorism and that terrorist activities are still being employed to force Ulster into the Republic?

Is there a difference between England seeking to absorb the whole of Ireland and Ireland seeking to absorb Ulster?

Before the Normans Ireland had one the world's best educational and legal systems, with lawyers studying for years at the university. We are talking 800 something here, or earlier. Many countries sent people to their univeresities. When Ireland got Christianised, the new faith and the old ones existed peacefully for many years. They had poems and music famous still. They also had squabbles between the various lesser kings, but, I think, no more than in other places and of necessity on a smaller scale.

I don't know where you got that nonsense from. Ireland is and always has been a violent place. Isolated monasteries might have provided a theological education to a handful of second sons of the clan chiefs in the 9th century, but they did not amount to universities. Otherwise the Rector of the University of Bologna has some adjustments to make and some explaining to do. The differences between pagans and Christians were the same in Ireland as they were elsewhere and there were many Irish martyrs, as I'm sure you realise.


I think your synopsis of Irish history between the Tudor period until the Jacobite uprisings is a little too brief to give a fair picture. I think the main problem in these times was not the Catholic/Protestant divide (sometimes they made common cause), although that played a part, but the rival Hanoverian and Jacobean claims to the British and Irish Crowns.

In summary, then, England/Britain has and always has had a legitimate interest in the affairs of Ireland, and it has only used violence as a means of suppressing insurrections. The levels of violence were probably no greater than would have been expected at the time.

On the other hand, the IRA has never had a legitimate reason to bomb people living in Belfast, Londonderry, or Omagh, nor in London, Brighton, or Manchester.

[thir]

- the Easter Rising is often cited, but that was an open rebellion against the lawful government, and Pearse and his followers were committing treason in just the same way that the French Revolutionaries, the American Rebels or the Bolsheviks were in their time.

'Legal' is actually one of those very interesting words. What makes something legal?
Because the lawmakers say so. What makes the lawmakers legal? Because they say so.

Was the Norman invasion of Ireland legal? And if so, what made it so?

Well, an English pope declared it legal for Henry the Second to invade Ireland, to convert it from the Celtic church to Roman catholic. Does that make it legal?

The other kings, and queen Elisabeth, simply wanted it. They were the (legal?) rulers but not over Ireland, so what made it legal? We stole it ourselves, so now it is ours?

America - was already occupied. Was it legal for the settlers to take it from the Indians? Was it legal for the Britsh to simply declare it theirs? With what right?

How long does it take for something to have lasted long enough to make it legal, by force of habit?
Or is it legal by consensus?
By force and arms?

I would venture to suggest that most acts of "suppression" by the English were carried out in order to preserve law and order in Ireland: it was violence and disorder they wished to suppress, not the Irish.

Law and order was what they had, more so than many countries. Violence and disorder is what you get when your force yourself on another culture and change it with violence.