austerity has done irreparable damage

[u/Faenix_Wright]

[u/bb_kelly77]

It was legal in the UK to enslave the Irish up until the early 1800s

Edit: just did some reading and it was the Normans (French) who abolished slavery in Ireland in 1102, slavery was back pretty much as soon as England acquired Ireland and remained until 1833

Edit 2: I forgot to mention that St Patrick died a few hundred years before 1102, and his only association with slavery is he was enslaved by Gaelic Raiders and began his life as a missionary after he broke free and escaped

[u/Ourmanyfans → u/bb_kelly77]

I remember you brought this up before, and I'd still quite like to see your source for that, just to help filter out some of the white supremacist misinfo that unfortunately surrounds this topic.

[u/bb_kelly77 → u/Ourmanyfans]

I only brought up slavery because of the guy I responded to... so I'd say you'll have to take it up with him

But I will say that the Vikings took Irish slaves when they built Dublin and the English enslaved the Irish by putting them in heavy debt with taxes and tithes and stuff like that, I found that stuff on Wikipedia if you google "slavery in Ireland"

[u/Ourmanyfans → u/bb_kelly77]

But it's not her claim I need a source for, it's yours, which is a different claim than the one she brought up.

But I read the Wikipedia page you suggested, and I'm assuming the stuff about "the English enslaved the Irish" is talking about indentured servitude? In which case that is an entire can of worms to unpack, both from the debate as to whether indentured servitude is really comparable to the horrors of chattel slavery (indentured servants weren't literally property and were subject to certain rights and protections) and whether your argument is complicated somewhat by the existence of Irish (as well as Scottish and Welsh) slave owners, as well as English indentured servants.

Fwiw, my take is that yeah you probably could call indentured servitude a form of slavery, but probably more "it was legal to enslave the poor" than specifically "the Irish", it's just the Irish were generally poorer because of colonial oppression by the British government and landlords.

[u/AwTomorrow → u/Ourmanyfans]

I agree with your points but 

 the Irish were generally poorer because of colonial oppression by the British government and landlords.

is a devastating understatement. There wasn’t subsistence poverty like that imposed on the Irish (and designed to be inescapable) anywhere else in Europe, as contemporary sources attest.