Anti-British Xenophobia and Hatred in Ireland

And it isn't only Ireland that has that "cultural memory" of distrust of Britain either. You can go to plenty of places throughout Europe and Asia and hear the same mutterings. The British Empire left a mark on many countries throughout the world that will take a long time to erase. Certainly more than 100+ years that's for sure. In addition the fallout of that Empire, as exemplified by our own situation and their partitioning of the North, left an even deeper residue of that Imperial period that made moving on significantly more difficult.

On one visit to my relatives in Cork I was sitting in a pub with some of my Irish cousins, [there are always Irish cousins - they almost qualify as a seperate ethnic group]. One of them had brought her husband along, a man I had never met. Almost immediately after our introduction he enquired, as if he was talking to a particularly backward 8 year old, if I knew what happened in 1916. We were in a pub, in Ireland, in Cork - so 1916 only meant one thing. Our ensuing debate went gradually downhill as I discovered there were a couple of aspects of Easter Week and it's aftermath that he appeared to be unaware of. He had made the not unreasonable assumption that I was woefully ignorant of Anglo-Irish history, and I couldn't blame him for that.

I can't recall learning anything useful at school about our shared, [mostly unwilling], history.

Over the years I've attempted to remedy this deficiency by the cunning use of...........books.

Perhaps there should be some compulsion, some requirement, that people should be educated about certain areas of history. Maybe.

In my case, with one Irish parent and regular contact with the town where she was born, I provided the compulsion to learn a bit myself.

My first rule was - before reading anything, consider the author. Who they are, where they're from, what is their angle, what's their message, what bias do they have - everybody has an angle of approach, it's unlikely to find someone with a genuinely objective view in this business.

It's no secret that the English know little about this shared history.

It's also been my experience that some Irish people, [perhaps more than a few], know less about Anglo-Irish history than they would like to think.

I am Irish, my wife and 3 kids were born in England but moved here when they were toddlers, I have lived and worked for many years in England and have never ever witnessed or experienced the brutal racism for being English that my wife and kids have been subjugated to through the years, I am often ashamed of the dismissive comments from many as it's only a bit of fun! It's NOT, let's call it what it really is - racism plain and simple by a group of people still living in the past clinging to an identity and a victim mentality that should remain in the past and has no place in modern society. It's time to move on... my kids are in their twenties now, and I have so many regrets about bringing them here.

This, exactly, and it's no surprise that he OP was one who was crying about it either.

To be fair up to the 90s there were bombs and shootings every week in the North. No doubt a lot of people in other countries didn't realise how concentrated it was on the six counties.

Even at the height of the troubles there weren't shootings and bombings every week.

However, the surprising thing was just how little many people in England knew of what was happening in Ireland and just how contained it actually was. Even as a kid I had to explain numerous occasions that the only time I heard about someone being shot was on the news.

In the end, I suppose it was just an eye opener to how little people in general know about much of anything that isn't going on on their immediate doorstep. Bear in mind, that this was before the internet.

Tipperary constantly gives Ireland a bad name.

I think he means all over the country. Very few or no bombs and sectarian shootings in the vast majority of Ireland at any time in living memory