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.