Among the groups with the strongest case for exclusion from any reparations liability are the Irish and their descendants. The Irish have their own history with Britain that makes the idea of them compensating Caribbean nations for British colonial wrongs particularly hard to sustain.
Ireland was itself a colony. The Plantations of Ulster in the seventeenth century displaced the native Irish population in favour of English and Scottish settlers. The Penal Laws imposed severe legal disabilities on Catholics, restricting their right to own land, practise their religion, and participate in public life. The Great Famine of 1845 to 1852 killed around a million people and drove another million to emigrate, in circumstances where British government policy ranged from indifferent to actively harmful, with food exports continuing from Ireland throughout the famine.
If we are applying the logic of intergenerational responsibility for historical wrongs, the Irish have at minimum as strong a claim to be on the receiving end of it as anyone in the Caribbean. On what moral basis do reparations advocates include the Irish in the levy? The answer, if one is ever given, is that they are white. Which confirms again that the proposed mechanism is racial, not historical.
