Irish Lives Matter

 I came down from Scotland to London in 1964   I found a room at Clapham Common near Clapham Junction and went to Mass in the local Church.    They were a very friendly people these English Catholics and soon I was making friends by the dozen.   I became friendly with a black South African family and was often invited round in the evening which I did not turn down since there was a young black South African girl I had befriended.    An older man turned a cellar in his house into a club for us young people and young people from all over the world came to that cellar, black, white, and all nationalities.    I became a parish visitor for the Church and our special visits were to the newly arrived West Indian families.   I really liked their music and care free attitude.    They had wonderful humour and I became Godfather to a little West Indian boy.    I remember one time on a coach outing to Brighton I sat beside a black girl from the Cameroons, I was the envy of the black boys on the coach but she chose me, and we went off hand in hand around Brighton.   She told me the boys were boasting that their fathers were 'chiefs'.    The point I am making is it did not seem to matter much this colour business.   Even today in my Church I am mixing with people from Africa, Asia, and the Filipinos and it does not matter one jot.  But could I have the same relationship with blacks today that I had then if I arrived in London.   Would someone spoil my friendships by demanding that I kneel and apologise?

Of course, I would be told that I benefited somehow from slavery.   But I grew up in the slums of Glasgow where three or four families shared one toilet, where the buildings were infested by rats, and there were bed bugs and hair lice.   My father earned a low wage, which meant that we had few luxuries as children and at Christmas there would be only one present on the tree for my sister and I.   We were poor, for working class people were paid low wages, and if someone can point out how I or anyone else in working class Britain benefited from the slave trade I would love to listen.

But the black people are discriminated against.   I am sure some are, but the ones I know work very hard and I so admire them.    Yes, there are white people who do not like them, but there are black people who do not like whites and this problem will not be solved by white children in the classroom apologising to black children as they do in New York.   And most of those children in New York are descendants of whites who had to flee Europe to escape poverty and persecution.    One such people were the Irish.   The Irish grew corn for Irish Landlords who sent the produce to England to sell and make a tidy profit for their large pockets.    The Irish who rebelled were put down mercilessly.   Then came the Irish Famine in the 1840's and hundreds died of starvation while thousands fled to America and Britain.   The famine was caused by a potato blight and potatoes were what the peasants eat.    There was still plenty of corn but feeding peasants with their precious corn was never on the minds of the greedy landlords.   Irishmen were hung or transferred as slaves to Australia  if they dared to try stealing it to keep their children alive.    There was in Britain a resentment of these Irish Immigrants who gathered in Liverpool to find work at the docks, or replaced English or Scottish labourers because they out of necessity took any job causing the bosses to drop the wages and accept anyone willing to work at the new rates.    Rented houses put up notices 'No dogs, no blacks, no Irish'.   So if black people think they have had it bad, then the Irish were there before them.    So what should the Irish have done?   Put up notices 'Irish Lives Matter', it solves nothing but raises division and mistrust.   But then the organisation Black Lives Matter are Marxist, and division and mistrust is just what they want.