Is Brexit actually going to happen?

[danny la rouge]

It’s very close to the truth. The class system until recently was nothing like the uk has.

I don’t know what people think class means, but it doesn’t mean “is identical to socio-economic profile of the UK”.

 

[grit]

C'mon Danny it came with the Pope in '79, stayed for mass then got back on the plane.

 

[danny la rouge]

Things were shite for the vast majority of Irish people until relatively recently.
Millions of Irish left between 1920 and 1990 and indeed since then too when the economy crashed....
A whole generation of people left in the 80s.
It was not a country with a broad middle class. I'm not sure why people think otherwise? Ireland was not and is not an industrialised country. Wealth literally was in the hands of a small minority.

It was not in any way similar to the UK in terms of class strata.

Kind of amazed that anyone thinks Ireland pre 1990s was anything other than one very large group of people that would be classed as poor and pretty destitute and another group of workers who were also poor ..just not exactly destitite but as close to it as you could get.
Wealth was in a small few hands. Mainly the church...the big farm owners, absentee landlords and wealthy business owners. Many of the wealthiest lived in Dublin

Between the 90s and 2006 the country boomed. People were able to save and have a decent income. Saving schemes were put in place where the government paid you to save x amount for 5 years.
Then came the collapse and people lost homes and jobs.

So yeah. There is a class strata now. It's still comprising of the "have nots", the "have some", and the "have a lot".
Most people I know and meet have a working class mentality.
Hard working people some of whom take on extra jobs just to get by.
People really think Ireland had a class system up to 1960?
Nah. The village priest, doctor and teacher were the "middle class. Everyone else was poor. Some a lot poorer than others. My dad did not consider himself from the poorest family....but he told me that he had no shoes til he was 13. I mean that's only back in the 1950s. He says that at the time everyone was the same. He grew up in a city.... with plenty communities connected to his.
People just didn't have much at all.

Ach. .I'm out of this thread now.

I’ve never seen anyone flounce after an argument with themself before. That was quite something.

You know, if you want to discuss this at all, you might start by asking why you think there was poverty on the one hand and wealthy landowners and business owners on the other, but no class system?

Who were those people living in the big townhouses in the fancy Georgian squares in Dublin? Not people of the same class as your Dad. That’s who.

You know this, but somehow you’ve edited it into a nationalist myth where you can both say it existed and didn’t exist at the same time.

 

[butchersapron]

I’ve never seen anyone flounce after an argument with themself before. That was quite something.

You know, if you want to discuss this at all, you might start by asking why you think there was poverty on the one hand and wealthy landowners and business owners on the other, but no class system?

Who were those people living in the townhouses fancy Georgian squares in Dublin? Not people of the same class as your Dad. That’s who.

You know this, but somehow you’ve edited it into a nationalist myth where you can both say it existed and didn’t exist at the same time.

Flounce after an argument with themselves they've lost at that.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Is brexit over with now then?

 

[grit]

Is brexit over with now then?

We are only getting to the good bits.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Is brexit over with now then?

All fixed.

 

[skyscraper101]

I'm wondering if there's one upside to this threat of a new Irish border, in that we could see the revival of some old customs dodging tactics, and some diddly folk classics.

 

[Wilf]

Mrs Merton's question to Debbie McGee on Ireland's class system:

Kind of amazed that anyone thinks Ireland pre 1990s was anything other than one very large group of people that would be classed as poor and pretty destitute and another group of workers who were also poor ..just not exactly destitite but as close to it as you could get.
Wealth was in a small few hands. Mainly the church...the big farm owners, absentee landlords and wealthy business owners. Many of the wealthiest lived in Dublin.

 

[grit]

I'm wondering if there's one upside to this threat of a new Irish border, in that we could see the revival of some old customs dodging tactics, and some diddly folk classics.

This has been doing the rounds in Irish what’s app groups to much amusement

 

[danny la rouge]

Mrs Merton's question to Debbie McGee on Ireland's class system:

There’s no class system. There’s a lot of poor people. And a small number of people with all the wealth and power. But there’s no class system.


There’s no cooked breakfast. There’s eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, haggis, white pudding, red pudding, tattie scones, soda scones, grilled tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, baked beans. But there’s no cooked breakfast.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

You know, if you want to discuss this at all, you might start by asking why you think there was poverty on the one hand and wealthy landowners and business owners on the other, but no class system?

Who were those people living in the big townhouses in the fancy Georgian squares in Dublin? Not people of the same class as your Dad. That’s who..

Like I said....
There were the poverty striken...
Then the "working class" who were also poverty striken. And then the Anglo Irish wealthy business people and big landowners. You ask me why that was? Because those wealthy individuals supported and were supported by a system that maintained its wealth even after the country became a republic. Nothing I wrote suggests that they didn't exist as a "class". But it was more than that. It was to do with priveledge and money. They were still very tied into the British wealth systems.

As for the comment about working class industrial movements.. made by another posted.. .nothing I wrote runs contrary to that history. You think I don't know about Larkin ? Connolly? Just because I am sharing what happened to poor Irish people does not mean that my views are only reflecting "nationalism". The country was full of extremely poor people. High mortality rates. Extreme TB contamination. Horrendous tenements and the highest rates of emigration.
Why doubt history and make my comments political just because I point the finger at those who had governed Ireland for hundreds of years and left it in a deplorable state. They left it with two distinct groups. A massive group of deprived poverty stricken people with very little and a very small group of extremely well off people who had been very connected to those in

Outside of Dublin in the countryside there was also extreme poverty.

As regards my family history?
I have no family history in Dublin pre 1965... Mine comes from Monaghan and Tryrone down to Clare and Limerick.
Industry didn't happen in Clare. Limerick had piggeries, toffee (cleeves), clothing company, and timber manufacturing. All poorly paid work. People lived in tenaments and everyone rented. Most rented accommodation was owned by absentee landlords...based in the UK
The biggest thing to happen in Clare was the Shannon electric scheme and German workers came over to build it because there weren't enough skilled Irish workers. Between the early days of the republic and the 1990s, if you lived outside the pale and you had work at all that was not on a farm you were extremely lucky....

The majority of workers were unskilled. You mention the Dublin lockout. Irish unskilled workers living in tenements that were horrendous. Widespread TB. Very high mortality rates...it was more than a "working class" issue.... It was an entire mass group of people living in abject poverty. This happened all over Ireland... Not much in terms of steel works or coal mining...Most jobs were in low paid manufacturing..
Bit really there were very few work options for the majority of people.

Hence the mass emigration...that has gone on since people could get on a boat and leave

For those who think Irish people were living good lives in the 20th century? They were fucked. People left in droves ... 30s...40s...50s...60s...70s...80s..
90s...And again recently. The difference now is that the peoole leaving are skilled educated workers...leaving because there is not enough work for them here.

What happened in Ireland was much more than just class systems. It was abject discrimination and slavery...by a dominant foreign power. The country was left in a dreadful state...And it has taken a century to get something half decent..And that's not to say it's perfect...it isn't. Not at all. Class structure implies that you have some inkling of your potential rights. Unfortunately Ireland's history is one of a country full of people who had no rights and were so oppressed as to not know they could have rights...just basic human rights...let alone workers rights. A nation treated like animals.....used and abused.

Someome called me a nationalist and implied that it's a dirty word ...a slur...
Nationalism here is not like British nationalism. A nationaliat herr can also hold a view of peace and wanting cooperation
If you or anyone else cannot understand that then you'll never ever understand or appreciate what happened in our combined histories.....I know exactly how degraded in every way the Irish populace was at the hands of another country. And I take a sense of pride in the fact that most of the country is independent of that situation now. It does not mean that I want a war or a return to the troubles....it does not make me a radical republican to be proud of the Republic...or even knowing my own language...or indeed calling the country I live in Eire...because that's it's name. Some people here would say "you're a sympathiser" just because you remember Bloody Sunday as a fact.

Eta
Actually...I've just read the latest posts now.
What the fuck?

 

[danny la rouge]

You’re having a lot of arguments with things nobody has said. A lot.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

You’re having a lot of arguments with things nobody has said. A lot.

I'm not arguing at this stage.
I'm reminding.

It's relevant. Think about it.

 

[teuchter]

Lupa never said there was "no class system".

 

[danny la rouge]

Lupa never said there was "no class system".

Oh. My. God.

 

[danny la rouge]

Class strata didn't exist in Ireland til very recently.

.

 

[butchersapron]

.

Danny - you surely know better than even to respond to his smug prodding.

 

[danny la rouge]

Danny - you surely know better than even to respond to smug prodding.

Apparently not.

 

[teuchter]

Well, 'strata' and 'system' both start with an s, so I suppose they must mean the same thing?

From reading what Lupa has written, my interpretation was that the point they were making was that there were a bunch of people at the 'bottom', a very few at the top and not many in the middle, and this was different to the stratification you see in the UK. How true that is, I'm not sure, but its not the same as saying there was no class system.

 

[andysays]

Like I said....
There were the poverty striken...
Then the "working class" who were also poverty striken. And then the Anglo Irish wealthy business people and big landowners. You ask me why that was? Because those wealthy individuals supported and were supported by a system that maintained its wealth even after the country became a republic. Nothing I wrote suggests that they didn't exist as a "class". But it was more than that. It was to do with priveledge and money. They were still very tied into the British wealth systems.

As for the comment about working class industrial movements.. made by another posted.. .nothing I wrote runs contrary to that history. You think I don't know about Larkin ? Connolly? Just because I am sharing what happened to poor Irish people does not mean that my views are only reflecting "nationalism". The country was full of extremely poor people. High mortality rates. Extreme TB contamination. Horrendous tenements and the highest rates of emigration.
Why doubt history and make my comments political just because I point the finger at those who had governed Ireland for hundreds of years and left it in a deplorable state. They left it with two distinct groups. A massive group of deprived poverty stricken people with very little and a very small group of extremely well off people who had been very connected to those in

Outside of Dublin in the countryside there was also extreme poverty.

As regards my family history?
I have no family history in Dublin pre 1965... Mine comes from Monaghan and Tryrone down to Clare and Limerick.
Industry didn't happen in Clare. Limerick had piggeries, toffee (cleeves), clothing company, and timber manufacturing. All poorly paid work. People lived in tenaments and everyone rented. Most rented accommodation was owned by absentee landlords...based in the UK
The biggest thing to happen in Clare was the Shannon electric scheme and German workers came over to build it because there weren't enough skilled Irish workers. Between the early days of the republic and the 1990s, if you lived outside the pale and you had work at all that was not on a farm you were extremely lucky....

The majority of workers were unskilled. You mention the Dublin lockout. Irish unskilled workers living in tenements that were horrendous. Widespread TB. Very high mortality rates...it was more than a "working class" issue.... It was an entire mass group of people living in abject poverty. This happened all over Ireland... Not much in terms of steel works or coal mining...Most jobs were in low paid manufacturing..
Bit really there were very few work options for the majority of people.

Hence the mass emigration...that has gone on since people could get on a boat and leave

For those who think Irish people were living good lives in the 20th century? They were fucked. People left in droves ... 30s...40s...50s...60s...70s...80s..
90s...And again recently. The difference now is that the peoole leaving are skilled educated workers...leaving because there is not enough work for them here.

What happened in Ireland was much more than just class systems. It was abject discrimination and slavery...by a dominant foreign power. The country was left in a dreadful state...And it has taken a century to get something half decent..And that's not to say it's perfect...it isn't. Not at all. Class structure implies that you have some inkling of your potential rights. Unfortunately Ireland's history is one of a country full of people who had no rights and were so oppressed as to not know they could have rights...just basic human rights...let alone workers rights. A nation treated like animals.....used and abused.

Someome called me a nationalist and implied that it's a dirty word ...a slur...
Nationalism here is not like British nationalism. A nationaliat herr can also hold a view of peace and wanting cooperation
If you or anyone else cannot understand that then you'll never ever understand or appreciate what happened in our combined histories.....I know exactly how degraded in every way the Irish populace was at the hands of another country. And I take a sense of pride in the fact that most of the country is independent of that situation now. It does not mean that I want a war or a return to the troubles....it does not make me a radical republican to be proud of the Republic...or even knowing my own language...or indeed calling the country I live in Eire...because that's it's name. Some people here would say "you're a sympathiser" just because you remember Bloody Sunday as a fact.

Eta
Actually...I've just read the latest posts now.
What the fuck?

I guess this illustrates yet again the problem with having a primarily nationalist based outlook rather than a class based one

 

[Baronage-Phase]

Maybe the problem is that you only see class?
I see a history of deprivation and slavery...a sub class.
Maybe you should think about that?

 

[Pickman's model]

Like I said....
There were the poverty striken...
Then the "working class" who were also poverty striken. And then the Anglo Irish wealthy business people and big landowners. You ask me why that was? Because those wealthy individuals supported and were supported by a system that maintained its wealth even after the country became a republic. Nothing I wrote suggests that they didn't exist as a "class". But it was more than that. It was to do with priveledge and money. They were still very tied into the British wealth systems.

As for the comment about working class industrial movements.. made by another posted.. .nothing I wrote runs contrary to that history. You think I don't know about Larkin ? Connolly? Just because I am sharing what happened to poor Irish people does not mean that my views are only reflecting "nationalism". The country was full of extremely poor people. High mortality rates. Extreme TB contamination. Horrendous tenements and the highest rates of emigration.
Why doubt history and make my comments political just because I point the finger at those who had governed Ireland for hundreds of years and left it in a deplorable state. They left it with two distinct groups. A massive group of deprived poverty stricken people with very little and a very small group of extremely well off people who had been very connected to those in

Outside of Dublin in the countryside there was also extreme poverty.

As regards my family history?
I have no family history in Dublin pre 1965... Mine comes from Monaghan and Tryrone down to Clare and Limerick.
Industry didn't happen in Clare. Limerick had piggeries, toffee (cleeves), clothing company, and timber manufacturing. All poorly paid work. People lived in tenaments and everyone rented. Most rented accommodation was owned by absentee landlords...based in the UK
The biggest thing to happen in Clare was the Shannon electric scheme and German workers came over to build it because there weren't enough skilled Irish workers. Between the early days of the republic and the 1990s, if you lived outside the pale and you had work at all that was not on a farm you were extremely lucky....

The majority of workers were unskilled. You mention the Dublin lockout. Irish unskilled workers living in tenements that were horrendous. Widespread TB. Very high mortality rates...it was more than a "working class" issue.... It was an entire mass group of people living in abject poverty. This happened all over Ireland... Not much in terms of steel works or coal mining...Most jobs were in low paid manufacturing..
Bit really there were very few work options for the majority of people.

Hence the mass emigration...that has gone on since people could get on a boat and leave

For those who think Irish people were living good lives in the 20th century? They were fucked. People left in droves ... 30s...40s...50s...60s...70s...80s..
90s...And again recently. The difference now is that the peoole leaving are skilled educated workers...leaving because there is not enough work for them here.

What happened in Ireland was much more than just class systems. It was abject discrimination and slavery...by a dominant foreign power. The country was left in a dreadful state...And it has taken a century to get something half decent..And that's not to say it's perfect...it isn't. Not at all. Class structure implies that you have some inkling of your potential rights. Unfortunately Ireland's history is one of a country full of people who had no rights and were so oppressed as to not know they could have rights...just basic human rights...let alone workers rights. A nation treated like animals.....used and abused.

Someome called me a nationalist and implied that it's a dirty word ...a slur...
Nationalism here is not like British nationalism. A nationaliat herr can also hold a view of peace and wanting cooperation
If you or anyone else cannot understand that then you'll never ever understand or appreciate what happened in our combined histories.....I know exactly how degraded in every way the Irish populace was at the hands of another country. And I take a sense of pride in the fact that most of the country is independent of that situation now. It does not mean that I want a war or a return to the troubles....it does not make me a radical republican to be proud of the Republic...or even knowing my own language...or indeed calling the country I live in Eire...because that's it's name. Some people here would say "you're a sympathiser" just because you remember Bloody Sunday as a fact.

Eta
Actually...I've just read the latest posts now.
What the fuck?

Have you ever considered reading peter berresford ellis's 'a history of the irish working class'?

 

[Baronage-Phase]

Have you ever considered reading peter berresford ellis's 'a history of the irish working class'?

I will look it up. Thanks. I note after a quick Google that he quotes Shaw in his preface.

""A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation's nationality, it will think of nothing else but getting it set again."

 

[Pickman's model]

Things were shite for the vast majority of Irish people until relatively recently.
Millions of Irish left between 1920 and 1990 and indeed since then too when the economy crashed....
A whole generation of people left in the 80s.
It was not a country with a broad middle class. I'm not sure why people think otherwise? Ireland was not and is not an industrialised country. Wealth literally was in the hands of a small minority.

It was not in any way similar to the UK in terms of class strata.

Kind of amazed that anyone thinks Ireland pre 1990s was anything other than one very large group of people that would be classed as poor and pretty destitute and another group of workers who were also poor ..just not exactly destitite but as close to it as you could get.
Wealth was in a small few hands. Mainly the church...the big farm owners, absentee landlords and wealthy business owners. Many of the wealthiest lived in Dublin.

Between the 90s and 2006 the country boomed. People were able to save and have a decent income. Saving schemes were put in place where the government paid you to save x amount for 5 years.
Then came the collapse and people lost homes and jobs.

So yeah. There is a class strata now. It's still comprising of the "have nots", the "have some", and the "have a lot".
Most people I know and meet have a working class mentality.
Hard working people some of whom take on extra jobs just to get by.
People really think Ireland had a class system up to 1960?
Nah. The village priest, doctor and teacher were the "middle class. Everyone else was poor. Some a lot poorer than others. My dad did not consider himself from the poorest family....but he told me that he had no shoes til he was 13. I mean that's only back in the 1950s. He says that at the time everyone was the same. He grew up in a city.... with plenty communities connected to his.
People just didn't have much at all.

Ach. .I'm out of this thread now.

There has always been a class system in Ireland.

 

[teuchter]

Maybe the problem is that you only see class?
I see a history of deprivation and slavery...a sub class.
Maybe you should think about that?

Urban75 has a kind of hypervigilance to any denial or ignorance of the relevance of class and doesn't like to miss an opportunity to castigate and/or lecture people, sometimes based on stuff they didn't actually even say, or are perfectly well aware of already. That's all - just business as usual.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

There has always been a class system in Ireland.

If you count a sub class as part of a class system...and a tiny elite wealthy group at the other extreme owning everything and enslaving other people....then it resembled a class system..
If you mean it was a deliberate organisation of people then yes
.....ok call it a class system.
But to call it just that is to not recognise that slavery existed. The dehumanizing of the Irish populace was deliberately carried out.... a deliberate crushing of one group of people ...a deliberate abdication of any responsibilty for those people by its government.

Of course, there's a class system now and for the past 40 to 50 years. It's still not as rigid as in the UK...from what I can see. Not sure how "organised" or deliberate this class system is? Apart from the elite wealthy still up top...always there....no matter what the system. ..eh?
... it may be by education or social links...or location... inner city poverty vs suburban relative wealth.
Don't know.
There are middle class people eating in soup kitchens.
There are working class people living in mansions...
Really ... it's not so clearly defined..

 

[brogdale]

What, whether Dublin one of the sites of the most heroic of the classic industrial class struggles as well as one of the shining lights of labour history (The ICA) had any working class people living there? If it gets this nationalist mythory off this thread, then let's do it.

Sometimes I'm just too polite.

Anyway...thought that those discussing the pros & cons of Dublin becoming the new Canary Wharf might be interested in this from 1989...from that radical institution...the BoE...

 

[Pickman's model]

If you count a sub class as part of a class system...and a tiny elite wealthy group at the other extreme owning everything and enslaving other people....then it resembled a class system..
If you mean it was a deliberate organisation of people then yes
.....ok call it a class system.
But to call it just that is to not recognise that slavery existed. The dehumanizing of the Irish populace was deliberately carried out.... a deliberate crushing of one group of people ...a deliberate abdication of any responsibilty for those people by its government.

Of course, there's a class system now and for the past 40 to 50 years. It's still not as rigid as in the UK...from what I can see. Not sure how "organised" or deliberate this class system is? Apart from the elite wealthy still up top...always there....no matter what the system. ..eh?
... it may be by education or social links...or location... inner city poverty vs suburban relative wealth.
Don't know.
There are middle class people eating in soup kitchens.
There are working class people living in mansions...
Really ... it's not so clearly defined..

Yeh it's a really new creation

Race, Language and Social Class in Seventeenth-Century Ireland - Persée

 

[Patteran]

Have you ever considered reading peter berresford ellis's 'a history of the irish working class'?

Great book. Recommended reading in late 80s/early 90s RA/AFA circles.