[WorkingClassFilth]

So, is this going to lead to a ‘repatriations for the Irish’ movement?

Dig into any group, far enough, and you’ll find sins enough to sink them.

[Wallace T.]

Why do the Irish whine more than the descendants of other European immigrants? The Italian, Polish, German and other immigrants suffered from discrimination due to ethnic and religious bigotry as well. Only the Jews are comparable in their litany of complaints about their treatment in late 19th and early 20th Century America. German, Polish, Italian, Greek, and Slavic Americans worked hard and overcame their discrimination without wallowing in self-pity. You cannot say the same about the Jews or the Irish.

Nonetheless, the Irish have legitimate complaints against the English, who stole their country and most of their land. No other country in Europe was so oppressed, not even Poland, where at least the occupying powers of Lutheran Prussia and Orthodox Russia permitted the practice of Catholicism and did not steal the land from the peasants or the native nobility. The Highland Scots suffered intensely under the English as well, losing their land and their clan structure. Many Scots were expelled and sent to the West Indies plantations under conditions similar to those suffered by the Irish. However, since most Scots were Protestant, they did not suffer from the religious persecution that the Catholic Irish endured.

As for indentured servitude in America and Australia and impression into the Royal Navy, there were many poor Englishmen and Scots, as well as Irishmen, who were forced into this condition by corrupt courts and press gangs. By no means were the white slaves in colonial America exclusively or even predominantly Irish.