Originally Posted by
mark12345
Tets is going to reign us all in very quickly for turning this into a history debate rather than a football one - but I'm as guilty as anyone.
I should have made the distinction clearer between the World Wars - WWI as you correctly point out was between imperialsitc states and it began after the Archduke Franz Ferdinand incident. However, intelligent as your opening salvos are, you just cannot be serious when you say: "the idea that the British forces at any time have had a positive influence in Ireland is laughable."
Laughable is the correct word for that statement. Leaving the Troubles aside, we never would have been there to experience those awful times in the late 60's and early 70's had it not been for the British. They joined the Americans to fight and defeat the Germans when the rest of Europe, with a few exceptions, was lying down. You have never heard your parents say that we would have all been in concentration camps had the Nazis won the war? You mention that the British had plans to invade Ireland? I have never heard that, but I am willing to research it. Could it perhaps have been because we were refuelling German U-boats on the west coast of Ireland during WWII? Maybe, maybe not, but what you say is interesting nonetheless.
And lastly, Irish slavery was perpetrated by the British (the Vikings were the ealier slave traders). I don't dispute that for one second. All I was saying is that some people out there (not related to this site) are trying to rewrite history (and their numbers are growing), saying that there was no such thing as Irish slavery. If anybody ever debates the existence of Irish slavery with you Liamo, remind them that the natives of the island of Montserrat (in the Carribean) were but a few hundred. However in the late 1700's and early 1800's the population on the island was estimated to be 100,000. Where did all the people (slaves) come from? Answer 60 per cent from Africa, and 40 per cent from Ireland. The common denominator - the British.
