Irish voters 'hostile' to poppy symbol

It cost Britain dearly when it went to the defence of little Catholic Belgium when it was invaded in ww1. It cost Britain dearly when it declared war on Germany when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Practically bankrupted Britain. USA did not join until 1941. The UK had to pay back loans to USA until recently.

You have a lot to learn. What did you learn at school?

Several UK commentators have pointed out that Remembrance Week was much more lowkey in Britain in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It definitely appears to have been hijacked by the 'right wing English nationalist' brigage and has become part of their culture wars.

Which they did out of self-interest. No amount of your snarky comments changes that.

There is no doubt that the British behaved themselves unacceptable.

However I doubt that the colonies were better of as independent states. Many of them drifted into corruption and communism once the British left.

Egypt one example, Uganda, etc….

Rather the British than the communists, I'd say.

If one took up arms against the British, the British reacted brutally, if one did business the British didn't care. But the communists wouldn't like you doing business freely…..

Ireland also a difficult history. The British left, the catholic church sort of took over with all their scandals and isolationism ruled. It's not that the newly formed Irish free state later on the Irish Republic was an economic paradise once the British left……

Of course they did. It's how they were set up. The colonial states weren't conquered and subjugated to bring institutions and prosperity to the native population. It was so they could be economically ravaged and raped.

Given examples such as the Bengal famine, I can't see how the British were any better than the communists. Looks like a deflection tactic to me.

Look at East Germany and other communist countries. It was far worse than the British could ever have been. The legal system is something the British influenced in most countries, the military system, along with infrastructure, roads, traffic on the left, trains, salted butter, three pronged sockets as well as cricket.

What would cricket be without India and Pakistan? 😀

Probably much less than the cost of it building harbours, lighthouses, railways, legal systems, infrastructure.

Every European country had colonies around the world. If these islands did not colonise elsewhere, someone else would have colonised them. A third of the UK administration in India was Irish.

Which is a ridiculous thing to say. It was obviously a heck of a lot more or they wouldn't have done it.

Always find it weird when Irish lads start glorifying British Imperialism. Very, very weird. I've lived in the UK for almost a decade and a half now. I'm not remotely anti-British but I've read enough books and been to enough museums and memorials to see colonialism for the evil that it was (and still is where it persists).

One thing that's common here is that there's at best a very shallow understanding of what colonialism entailed and how it worked. India wasn't conquered to make things better. It was conquered so it could be looted and raped. The East India Company was a for profit enterprise, not a charitable organisation. The word "loot" traces its origins to Hindi ffs. I appreciate that most people just don't have the time to find out what pieces of sh*t people like Robert Clive were but actually trotting out the line about sewers and lighthouses belies a critical lack of understanding about what happened.

What really gets me is that Ireland was colonised by the British crown. There was a famine that caused a million deaths and another million people emigrated. The population continued to plummet for the rest of the century. Ireland's population was 8 million while Great Britain's was about double that before the famine hit in the 1840s.

I'm not sure when right wing populist Irish nationalism developed this sentiment of simping for British colonialism and imperialism. There were Irish lads with tricolours at a recent Stephen Yaxley-Lennon disruption in London for instance.

I would never judge an ordinary person for wearing a poppy. It does a disservice to the history of Ireland and those who came before us to dismiss concerns about and defend sycophantically the forces from the right who have perverted remembrance into ugly ethnic nationalism.

There's sashes in many attics.

Colonial Irish?

Every Irish US president up to jfk were planter stock.

According to the compensation to slave owners over 90% of the Irish recipients were mostly cromwellian descendants with the name Delap being most common.

India also has a steel industry that Britain stymied in favour of its own yards. It is fitting that Tata is now dominant in Britain.

Yeah, many countries would have been better off without colonialism from the British Isles,as we were then. Take Australia for example. Yes, even though the UK was instrumental in bringing industry to Australia, they would have been better off without the UK ( we were part of the UK then).

The UK initially established basic industries like wool and coal and later provided capital and technology for more complex ones through colonization, trade, and investment.  What a mess Oz turned out to be. 😉

It's a wonder it is still part of the commonwealth, like India.