"the Irish made a massive contribution to rebuilding Britain after the war. Mcalpine's Fusiliers may just be a song but it encapsulated an underlying reality."
Not sure what relevance this has to the discussion Iaians
I know all about the Fusiliers - my old man was one of them thanks to the British Government's attempts to appease Hitler
The immigrants, who had a perfect right to seek work in England due to the fact that the Empire had raped and plundered their home countries for many centuries, largely took on work the indigenous population did not want and were persecuted abominably for doing so, right up to Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' scum
McAlpine, Laing, McAdam.... and all the rest were hardly the benefactors you choose you paint them - they made their fortunes exploiting the Irish by imposing abominable conditions of work on them - you should read the documentary writings of a one-time contributor to this forum, Ultan Cowley, whose 'The Men Who Built Britain' exposes the animal-like conditions of Irish labour.
None of this is new, of course; from the mid nineteenth century onwards, British mine-owners were using the plight of Irish refugees fleeing the effects of a mismanaged (possibly deliberately) by Britain famine to drive down the wages of indigenous workers
The result was starvation level conditions imposed on both the working Irish and the pittance paid to the English miners
The side effect was an inbuilt racism towards the Irish that is still apparent
Jim Carroll