Originally Posted by
bazzacat
Engels description of the Irish is the dismay of many a budding Marxist- but no doubt he wrote as he saw it, and his mistress was Irish too, so I see no evidence for a deep seated grudge..
Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845
Irish Immigration
We have already referred several times in passing to the Irish who have immigrated into England; and we shall now have to investigate more closely the causes and results of this immigration.
These people having grown up almost. without civilisation, accustomed from youth to every sort of privation, rough, intemperate, and improvident, bring all their brutal habits with them among a class of the English population which has, in truth, little inducement to cultivate education and morality. Let us hear Thomas Carlyle upon this subject:
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"For when, in almost every great city, a fifth or a quarter of the workers are Irish, or children of Irish parents, who have grown up among Irish filth, no one can wonder if the life, habits, intelligence, moral status -- in short, the whole character of the working-class assimilates a great part of the Irish characteristics.
It is clear they regard the Irish as an underclass because of their ways and habits. It is clear both regarded the working class Irish as uncivilised and dirty. Neither is complimentary of them. They are a gregarious race who even in the USA stuck together mainly in the eastern cities.
It must be something in the culture of them. They have never been renowned as bright or progressive people, probably with some justification. Yet, those who settled in the USA became quite the opposite, so it is not in genes, more in the culture.
At the time of the famine the Irish were regarded as lazy. They only grew one crop, the potato and most had a still going. The diet was of spuds and alcohol for many of them. When that failed there was little else to fall back on. Their limited diet reduced their growth and resistance to illness too. The Irish were always small people to the English. A kid being brought up in the middle of Ireland would not know anything else in life.
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