Comments by "Taint ABird" (@taintabird23) on "Farage: Irish immigration 'may need a rethink' - Murnaghan" video.
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@UCG_lPFXu37gANPoEodqUjMg It is true that there were class divisions, but your analysis is simplistic. Ireland was the only country in Europe where the majority were ruled by a minority who spoke a different language, practiced a different religion, customs, and culture while at the same time, having sole access to the law and the means to implement it. Irish Catholics had no political representation until 1829. The division was ethnic, linguistic, social, political, sectarian and economic. Ireland's experience under British rule was that of the colonised.
The Irish Revolution of the 1920s was one of the most conservative anywhere, and is well documented as such. While there were socialist republicans among the ranks and leadership, they were few and far between, with most seeking to simply remove the British from political scene to allow the Irish people to chose their own destiny. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, socialists were marginalised by the new political elite and distrusted by the dominant Catholic church.
The idea that the Irish were an inferior race probably dates back to the Romano-Britons - St Patrick himself had little time for the Irish despite dedicating his life to the conversion of Irish people. The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland was justified in the writings of Geraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) who accompanied the invaders and wrote disparagingly of Gaelic Irish society of the time, so British attitudes to towards the Irish were well formed before the early modern period. It seems to me that the racism necessary to underpin the British empire was well defined too, by the 19th century.
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