Divis Sweeney anger is true and admirable. His history, though, is something else. He generally simplifies things down to "the British(or sometimes "the English") invaded us 800 years ago". But he did actually point out a rather crucial fact a way back, that the B@T atrocities were largely committed by digruntled Scottish ex-squaddies. He would do well to remember that the Irish invaded Scotland(and were never expelled by the locals) 1500 years ago. They took over the majority(but by no means the whole of the country(you can track this quite easily by looking at the areas where the place names are Gaelic/Irish). Till quite recently, the lowland Scottish referred to the Highlanders and Islanders, and their language, as "Irish"...they had a long memory, this description was pretty accurate. Ths division was made much worse from the 17th century civil wars on, when there was a rough division in Scotland into Catholics(the Gaels) and Protestants(largely Lowland). This is a crude description of course, there were anomalies. For example,the Campbells(Gaels /Irish from Argyll) went Protestant and allied with the Edinburgh protestant government against the minority Catholic Jacobites, but by and large the Catholic/Protestant or Irish/Scots split remained.
    These bits of history, as well as the Anglo-Norman direct invasion of ireland, need to be considered seriously when people attempt to solve current problems. The English have short memories. The Irish and Scots have long memories. This has consequences now. I am neither one of the three, i try to take a more detached view.