When the US wanted to control communism within this country, it did; now they are in the government.
The “native” Irish themselves wanted nothing short of independence; the transplanted Protestants from the island of Britain (a small minority) wanted “home rule” within the UK. In the end, England could only hang onto the part where the transplants were a majority (the north), and even that balance was later upset by the native birthrate. The Protestants are an alien presence on the island; it isn’t their only colony in Europe (see Gibraltar).
That’s the propaganda line. I learned in history class over there (not sympathetic to Britain) that before 1916, the demand of the Irish was for home rule, not full independence; it was the rapid summary execution of the (many, but not all communistic) rebels that swayed sympathies for the cause of independence.
Given that the Scots are themselves Celts, and that they also spoke (and speak, in many parts of Alba still) a form of Gaelic, how “foreign” were they, really? And also, back in the times of Henry II, how foreign was Catholicism, never mind the subsequent Protestantism? Was Protestantism “foreign” in the lands where it first arose? Is it “foreign” in the USA, where it predominates?
Speaking of “Europe” as an entity indicates sympathy for the European Union, an anti-American entity.