(1)  Throwing the gauntlet. The blether, "Just the same way as way too many Americans revelled in the IRA carnage on.the streets of England. Absurd that the "Home of the Free," financed terrorism on the streets of an ally.

(2)  Calm and reasoned explanation CMK, "Never one to shrink from controversy do you really want to discuss the potato famine and the Black and Tan's during this lovely Christmas season (tinkin about my sainted mudder I am)."

(3)  Religious Obfuscation blether, "The real enemy of the Irish people has always been the Catholic Church - a sect that formented appalling human rights abuses against the populace far more severe than ANY British abuse. And while you may point out the self-inflicted potato famine as a prime example of British abuse - anyone with true knowledge of the matter knows the role that indigenous violence and Catholocism played in the matter."

The rest of the story........

In fact, "The British instituted Penal laws, which denied the Irish
peasant population freedom. Irish were forbidden: to speak their
language, to practice their faith, to attend school, to hold an
public office, to hold certain jobs, to own land, or to ". . .own
a horse worth more than $10." These Penal laws were enacted to
push the Irish into submission. ....... Throughout the Potato Famine,.....more than one
million people died of starvation or emigrated.(1) Additionally,
over 50,000 people died of diseases: typhus, scurvy, dysentery.(2)
Despite the famine conditions, taxes, rents, and food exports were
collected in excess of 6 million and sent to British landlords.(3)
Within a decade, the population of Ireland plummeted from over
eight million to less than six million. With the colonization, a tenure system was introduced into
Ireland that gave Protestant landlords control of 95% of the land.

Tenant farmers held short-term leases that were payable each
six months in arrears. If the tenants failed to pay their rent,
they were jailed or evicted and their homes burned. During the time
of the Great Hunger (1845-1847), approximately 500,000 people were
evicted, many of whom died of starvation or disease or relocated to
mismanaged and inadequate poor houses.

The Poor Law Extension Act of 1847 was instituted to deny aid to tenant farmers with over a quarter acre
of land. This Act promoted emigration, increased land clearance, and disintegrated the structure of rural society, which were beneficial to British landowners, who sought profit, power, and
larger plots of land. According to the Poor Laws, landlords
were bound to support peasants sent to the workhouse, which cost
$12 pounds a year. Instead, some landlords sent peasants to Canada
on "coffin ships", which cost $6 pounds. Coffin ships were
"wet, leaky holds" of timber ships returning to North America that
were "crammed in with as many as 900 [people], with barely room to
stand." Approximately half of the people died during the voyage
and the other half arrived in North America unable to disembark,
without assistance, due to sickness and starvation.

One hundred and fifty years after the famine, the results are
evident in the number of Irish descendants scattered around the
globe, the treeless landscape, and the shells of homes that were
rendered uninhabitable after the landlords evicted their
tenants. While the blight provided the catalyst for the famine,
"[t]he calamity was essentially man-made, a poison of blind
politics, scientific ignorance, rural suppression, and enforced
poverty."

www1.american.edu/ted/POTATO.HTM

And dats why the Irish don't like the British so my sainted mudder told me.