I have had a comment from someone called Joe Daly about my post on Did The English Ban Irish:
you dont take in to account the fact that kids where beat in school for specking Irish. while they might not have passed a law banning it their attitude towards the Irish did the same thing . even goin so far as to ban Catholic children from goin to school. Under the penal codes imposed by the British, the Irish Catholics were not allowed to have schools. and so started the rise of Hedge schools.
I am well aware of the history of education in Ireland. I know about the bata scóir and the scoileanna scairte. I have said repeatedly that the English were no friends to the Irish language. In the early 17th century, almost nobody spoke English in Ireland. People like myself who speak Irish on a daily basis are now a tiny minority, and that is a direct result of policies designed to elevate the status of English at the expense of Irish. As I said in the article: The fact is, of course, that the English administration in Ireland was no friend to the Irish language. Irish was progressively squeezed out of any realm of life which would have given it power or influence. I am not defending the English here.
What I am saying here (and I can’t think of any way to make it clearer) is that the Irish language was not illegal in Ireland. It wasn’t encouraged or promoted or helped to survive in any way, but it was not made illegal, probably because the inhabitants of Langerland didn’t care a damn what shepherds and woodmen and fishermen spoke amongst themselves, as long as they paid rent and taxes and tithes to a foreign ascendancy.
With regard to Irish history, the English are as guilty as hell. Why does anyone need to invent extra crimes to make them look worse?
cassidyslangscam 
Let us recall the colonization of Africa, India, a good part of Asia, the Middle Easterm parts of Asia, got Eastern Asia hooked on opium and for longer than that they harassed Ireland.
England. Bad.
Thanks for the comments, Neil. I don’t think many Irish people would disagree with you there. England has an appalling history. However, a point we do need to remember is that many of our people were part of that imperial project. Often, they were willing accessories to it. The reason why I mention this is Liam Hogan’s campaign against the Irish Slaves meme. He has demonstrated that many Irish people became slave owners or worked in the slave trade, a fact which modern Irish-Americans and Irish people are trying to airbrush out of the record.