Posted on 01/09/2019 4:35:54 PM PST by crz
Some more on the walls in N Ireland and why they are there. Sadly, they had to be put up to help end the "Troubles" as they are called there.
Another wall I saw on my trip to the British Isles was in Londonderry. Built in the 17th Century:
Like you said, they are actually brought up to hate. But, there is a prime example of what an oligarchy does to society since this was in large started by the monarchy.
The first time I recall the term being used was for the civil war which followed the British granting independence to the Southern part of Ireland (around 1921), but allowing the Unionist majority to keep the 7(?) northern counties in the United Kingdom. The Irish Nationalists led by Michael Collins agreed to this compromise; the Irish Republican Army did not. The IRA assassinated Collins, and the “Troubles” broke out, with Irish killing Irish all over the Island, aye and in Irish expat communities in the UK, in the Commonwealth, even in the US.
But the division goes back further than that. My Irish grandmother was from Belfast. She emigrated to the US in the 1890’s. She told us of watching the St Patrick's Day Parades in New York, from the hotel where she worked. There was a corner there, where the parade turned down one street and up the next; the winds in the middle of March always blew around that corner with increased force, and whipped away the street wide banners the Irish Catholic Marching Societies carried. That corner was also where the Irish Protestant societies would gather. When a Fenian Marching Society would come turning the corner, and a particularly rough gust of wind would tear their green flags from their hands, the Protestants would set up a chant “Hurrah for Good King William, Good King William of Orange!” And then the riot would start. So, at least, she often told the story. Which she would punctuate by saying, with some satisfaction, "Fight ye Devils, fight! We hate Peace!"
It actually began some time before William and Mary. It went WAY back to John Lackland and maybe before. That was the beginning. The dam Brits did NOTHING to help in the matter either during the Potato famines when there was grain that could have been distributed. Instead they sold it on the market.
But your right, it REALLY got to going in the 20th century. And the Irish NEVER forget. It’ll start again.
Yep, walls set up by combat engineers in spring 2008 in Sadr City broke the back of the Shi’ite militias in that area of Baghdad. Read up on the battles of Sadr City.
You sound just like my cousin who still blames the “Brits” for the Potato Famine.
Actually, the government of Great Britain had very little they COULD do, for the first 2 years of the potato crop failure. The system of relief was based on the local governments, the “Parish Relief Dues.” In England, Cornwall and Wales, where the failure of the 1847 crop was just as severe as in Ireland, the local governments were stretched to the limit, but managed to keep things together. In Ireland, so many families were living on less than 5 acres of ground, sometimes not even paying rent to the landlords (who were as Irish as their tenants), that when the crop failed the Parrish Relief facilities were overwhelmed. And when they ran out of money, their Boards of Governors (those same landlords), closed the shelters and workhouses. That grain, which was still being sold on the market, didn't belong to the British Government, so it couldn't be distributed by the same. The British Government did buy grain on the international market, including from the US, for distribution (and for sale in Ireland to bring down the price of Irish barley and oats and wheat), but it was Indian corn (Maize), which the Irish didn't eat. It took a couple of years for the British Government to set up programs of work projects (a lot of the roads in Ireland were started in the late 1840s to provide jobs for men who had lost their tenancies due to the crop failures). Private and religious relief agencies tried to feed the hungry; it did not help anyone when the Catholic parish priests forbade their congregants to go to a protestant soup kitchen, lest they hear a prayer that was not Jesuit approved. The solution which ultimately worked was to export the excess population, to the US, to Canada, to Mexico, to England and Scotland, throughout the Empire. But these were shiploads of half-starved people, moving to often harsher climes than they were used to, held in quarantine until the sick could be separated from the healthy. Many died.
Those that stayed behind usually did all right, once the fungus that was killing the potatoes died out. Instead of impossible tenant holdings of 5 acres or less, they could rent plots of ten or twenty acres, which was enough for a family to live on, and pay your rents and dues. The landlords, the Lord Cardigans and the Lord Raglans, and the other less well historically attested were highly motivated to work with their tenants to keep the lands profitable. But the survivors never forgot, and never forgave.
England wanted Irish land for grazing herds; they certainly didn’t want a developed country behind them while they faced France and Germany to the east. They cleared the land while seizing crops for rents and driving the people off; they cemented the claim by transplanting Protestants (many from Scotland) to the north of the island. There was no such thing as an “Irish Protestant”; we had no “reformation”, but instead got trafficked Protestants.
Well your partially correct.
The lumber potato was the main crop for the Irish. It was a real bad one for blight. That famine spread all over Europe.
As for the Irish troubles, the famine was just one step in the building hate they had building for the Protestants. It started WAY before the Stuarts and really started during the Plantagenets reign. At that time there was no such thing as protestants (John Lackland) or King John.
They also wanted Scottish lands for sheep. Highland Clearances.
The English have quite a lot to answer for, sadly. Most of it the result of the monarchy/nobility/ oligarchy’s are like that.
Yes, my town decades ago had tons of Scots, and they were no fans of England (regardless of their religion).
Odd position for parts of the UK now; England voted to leave the EU, while Scotland and Northern Ireland want to stay.
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