DOES IRELAND REALLY NEED TO ACT IN TANDEM WITH BRITAIN,AS ASSERTED BY CATRIONA GRAY? – by Donal Kennedy

For over a century Russia has not posed a threat to Western countries nor to those 

countries’ legitimate interests and it does not do so now.

It is the largest country on our planet blessed with natural resources and with an educated skilled population which can put them to good use for themselves and for the benefit of mankind.

In all of history she has never been Ireland’s enemy.

Most Britons are not enemies of the Irish people. 

But Ireland has suffered at the hands of English/British Governments. 

Her trade was destroyed long before Jonathan Swift urged her people to burn everything English but coal.

Wolfe Tone recognised the connection with Britain as the source of all Ireland’s woes. 

That was in the 18th Century.

Swift was an Englishman and Tone the descendant of Englishmen who arrived in Ireland about the time of Cromwell. Neither Swift nor Tone gave a hang about ethnicity. But both were concerned for the welfare of the people of the land where they lived. 

In 1897 a Commission led by a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer HUGH CULLING CHILDERS, found that in proportion to its population in the UK, Ireland had been over-taxed by £2,000,000 per year for several years.

        Hugh’s younger cousin,Erskine, wrote about the Commission later.

Going tandem with England, Ireland tends to be taken for a ride.

When Irishmen, Nationalists or Unionists, backed British Parties, Liberal,

Labour or Conservatives they were invariably taken for a ride. 

I say Irishmen, for John Redmond and John Dillon, Herbert Asquith, together

with the Tories under various leaders were against female suffrage. Ireland’s leading

pacifist and campaigner for female suffrage, Francis Sheehy Skeffington, was murdered,together with other non-combatants on Easter Tuesday 1916 by a British officer who was promoted for his crimes that same week

In 1918 Irishmen and women together voted to establish a Republic in an election

 “considered on all sides as a plebiscite”  according to THE TIMES.

. 

Britain answered by unleashing  a war of terror on the voters and their chosen representatives. 

After nearly three years, in a scene which could have been a template for THE GODFATHER, some Irish delegates accepted an Offer They Couldn’t Refuse from Lloyd George, Churchill and Co.

Despite various changes in Constitutional Structures, Ireland traded at a disadvantage imposed by Britain for most of the 20th Century.

In the 1960s a New Zealand report commissioned by the Irish State started with the observation “In the Irish Economy Cattle is King.”

Let’s think about that. From hoof to horn, via Hide cattle provide the basis for valuable industries.

But the British treated Ireland as a Banana Republic such as Guatemala. The US-ownedUnited Fruit Company runs that unfortunate land. Cattle were bred in Ireland on rich farmland then transported to England on the hoof. Thus Irish workers and the Irish economy were denied most of the riches that cattle could bring them. A  wealthy, indeed beastly rich, class of graziers without much sweat or use to the community was happy with this state of affairs.

Though Fianna Fail in particular, under De Valera’s Minister for Industry and Commerce, from 1932 on created industries applying protection, or free trade as the situation demanded Ireland was held back both by international crises and British bullying. CIE wanted to buy diesel trains from General Motors in America but had to make do with inferior British ones.

Ireland was not permitted to purchase armaments sufficient to defend herself, though her Governments made clear that the question of national unity would not be pursued by violent means. A  British Military Attache in Dublin was allowed access to Irish Defence Force Arms Magazines.

Besides all this Britain unleashed a 30-year war in Ireland in 1969.

The British State is a protection racketeer of long standing. Its record mirrors Mae West’s Diamonds.

Goodness has nothing to do with it. 

Donal Kennedy

London