Keith A of Hertford, you write as though Anti-Irishness was a recently adopted attitude by many British people. The IRA atrocities to which you refer are all of the last 30 years or so, Anti Irish jibes and jokes have been a nasty feature of Media propaganda in your country for much, much longer than that. Long before Irish people dared to raise our heads against the British rulers we were the butt of "put downs" and slurs in order to establish an excuse for our "being civilised" by others.
We are not merely discussing present day attitudes here , are we? We know now that racism is rife in Britain and , shamefully, is being fermented and fostered in Ireland too.