One of the strange things about telling Dublin tales to my housemates has been that I can't really tell them. Much of what made my time in Dublin memorable was an understanding of their history - and much of that history was bloody, impoverished and unjust. And it's just not manners to bag someone's national treatment of an entire race when you're staying in their home for free.
So as I was busily trying to shut up, my housemate Julia made an interesting observation- that through most of the time the English were oppressing the Irish, most English people were also dirt poor, disenfranchised and allowed to starve or be exploited by the aristocracy.
She has a point - and it's not one that makes me think of England's ruling classes any more favourably. Is it this tradition, perhaps, that Aussie PM John Howard (who says 'most Australians' are proud of our English heritage) aspires to recreate by jailing refugees who have committed no crime, by stripping away Australian workers' rights to overtime, fair pay and even a meal break, or by making it harder for people to enrol to vote?
One wonders...
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