Exclusive Interview with Tim Pat Coogan - A policy of ethnic cleansing? Who’s to blame for the Irish Famine?

tory2x: thank you so kindly for noticing my diatribe, and you are very welcome. By the way, have you ever heard the saying, "pigs don't know pigs stink"?

When torytory cannot dispute the facts he hides behind the veil of "anglophobia".

“I also enjoy hearing englishmen describe the Irish hunger, the largest European social calamity of the 19th century, as an 'ethnic grudge.'” The irony being that, as demonstrated by, inter alia, the London Times articles during the famine, the english continued to hold an “ethnic grudge” against the Irish even after enslaving them, robbing all of their property (down to deforesting the island), outlawing ownership, forcing tithes to an alien “church,” and, incredibly, creating a class of felony for educating one’s children (this last one was a nice payback considering, in Spenser’s words, “the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish). This does not even touch the surface of the centuries of atrocities such as half hangings, pitch and cap, crop burning, etc. It seems that no level of criminal activity can satiate their innate degeneracy.

I also enjoy hearing Englishmen describe the Irish hunger, the largest European social calamity of the 19th century, as an 'ethnic grudge.'

I always enjoy listening to Englishmen like ToryTory calmly inform us of what the Irish are thinking.

I am not 100% certain about this, but I am guessing that my Irish ancestors migrated to the US during the potato famine. They all came here during the first half of 1800s. I have four connections back to Ireland from the 1800s: O'Neill, Harney, McKenna and Anderson (Scots Irish). I feel so fortunate that they were able to make it to the United States, otherwise I would probably not exist.

Thanks Johnshiel for that banal and oh-so-typical Anglophobic diatribe.

I'm not being peremptory, but to suppose the psyche of an entire nation is predicated on some ethnic grudge is moronic beyond belief.

Enemy ownership of the land and control of the laws was in full exercise in the 1700's, before the Act of Union and the dissolution of an elected Irish gov't in Dublin. Weren't the Penal Laws at their zenith in the late 1700's? The arrogance and ugliness of English imperialism is to blame. "We deserve your lands and your dehumanization because, well, we're English!"

Trust an Englishman to tell you what the Irish are thinking. Or to deliver a timeline that informs them how and when they must put the past behind them like ToryTory just did. They have always been so insightful in this regard.

Steady on the melodrama, Cahir! They didn't starve in their millions (ie pl). Only approx one million (ie sing) starved. The Act of Union, 1800-1922 abolished Grattan's [Protestant Landed Gentry] Parliament in Dublin, with a little help of British bribes and peerages. It called protectionism, or nobbling a competitor. The great contemporary employment hunger and its consequent emigrant haemorrhage is in part caused by aficionados of neo-Trevalyanism amongst a native home grown ruling class - in thraldom to their former colonial paymasters. Redcoats have been replaced by greenjackets. The Lisbon Treaty was the new act of union. And debt entrapment is the new imperialsm! Hunger strikes in modern Irish history are quite probably unconscious repetition compulsions of the The Great Starvation. Since partial independence, partitionist party mode has been identification with the aggressor. TDs who draw down on over generous expense accounts whilst having real estate portfolios in excess of 40 properties may be overcompensating for a Famine syndrome. Or they just be plaiin greedy? (How many bags of spuds do you need in the attic to overprovision?) And just as those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, so too are those who prevailed in any given struggle in a position to revise it, ie the establishment. PS The potatoe blight didn't just affect Ireland, (or parts of Scotland, Wales or England). It also impacted the mainland!

"The past is in the past..." Is that the reason for the continuing displays of loyalist triumphalism every 12th? Is this why they cannot accept democratically elected Sinn Fein in government?

Mainland brits are more like the Irish than you ever care to know get it right torytory

The past is in the past...

Tory brit, and you claim to know the thinking of the contemporary Irish.