The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #112884   Message #2395439
Posted By: Gurney
22-Jul-08 - 05:45 PM
Thread Name: Does it matter which tradition?
Subject: RE: Does it matter which tradition?
Without wishing to upset anyone, - really, honestly, I will take mild issue with WLD about his much earlier statement about the part 'we' played in the Irish potato famine and the Highland clearances.

The famine happened, but it was not caused by 'the English.' It was a blight on that vegetable. It was exacerbated (as a famine) by unsympathetic absentee landlords, many or most of whom were English and English residents, but also by Irish landowners. At that time there was little sympathy for working punters, and this was an example of that. Landowners. Not 'the English' as a race.

The Highland clearances were another manifestation of the same attitude, and in that case there were again also local landlords heavily involved. There was money to be made letting out the shooting, but those landless tenants were in the way, so they were removed. Landlords again.
Exactly the same thing happened in England. It was there called the Enclosures, and there was even less justice involved, because landlords stole publically-owned land, which had been granted to local smallholders by an earlier monarch.

You can't trust landlords. Never could.

(Takes off flat cap, exits left...)