British rule was better

IN a long and pitiful lament, poorly disguised as tongue-in-cheek humour, Tom Cooper (Letters, June 30) once again rehashes our ghastly history as though the privations of the 19th century were somehow unique to Ireland.

Life in mid-19th century England and France was far worse for ordinary folk than it ever was for the Irish under British rule, with the exception of the Great Famine years.