So a Two Part question there, @Wolfgirrl. It's hard to know where to start on dismantling your misplaced assumptions.
A good deal of facing up to the past undoubtedly involves the history curriculum. An overhaul of what is taught under the flag of 'history' in UK schools might be well overdue, if this thread is any indication.
The new curriculum would cover the slave trade in detail, of course, including the origins of the cotton that was spun in the mills of Lancashire and the working conditions of those who produced the raw material for that. Right now, what tends to be spouted about here is that Britain led the charge to abolish the slave trade, with the rest of Britain's involvement conveniently forgotten.
Also prominent should be the history of the British Empire, including Britain's vast and impressive contribution to the art and science of total war - concentration camps, aerial bombing of civilian populations, burning of cities, approach to famine (see Ireland, India), ethnic cleansing, penal colonies overseas, and the list goes on.
The curriculum would include Ireland from 1800 to 1922 since Ireland was an integral part of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during those years. This bit might be a real eye opener.
It should also include the history of the oppression of women in the four nations of the UK. You gloat that the UK is somehow more progressive than Ireland on this score but fail to note, as with the abolition of slavery, that women didn't actually have it so good in the UK until relatively recently - hence the need for 'progressive' policies to address past wrongs. You seem either resistant or maybe just unaware of the fact that membership of the EEC spurred a lot of progressive legislation in the UK since joining in 1973, including the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. Advances in UK social policy and workers' rights since joining the EEC would be a cool topic to explore. Was it 1991 when raping your wife became a crime? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum - I have yet to hear any hue and cry about the thousands of British women incarcerated in these institutions over the 200 or so years they operated in Britain.
The curriculum could move on to the treatment of British children in 'care' during the 20th century, after noting child labour in mines and mills and as chimney sweeps, etc., during Britain's industrial heyday. Especial mention could be made of the export of c. 150,000 of the children of the British poor to Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia, and Canada between 1920 and 1970. The aim of this monstrous endeavour was to help populate the Commonwealth with good white stock, and maybe the implications of this policy could be examined in the context of the decline of Empire and attitudes of the British Establishment toward the British poor, men and women, girls and boys alike. I do remember hearing a little about the treatment of children a few years ago, mainly from Australian reports. Sadly, those left behind in British institutional care fared little better.
Funny how the current Cambridge A and AS level syllabus omits specific reference to Ireland, Northern Ireland, India and Pakistan, but does Hitler in depth. It's up to individual teachers to take their own approach with the syllabus as a guideline, I suppose, but the omissions are glaring.
'Ireland' and the slave trade - a bit of a contradiction there since Ireland had disappeared as a political entity by the time the slave trade started gathering steam. I suppose it suits your purposes to make distinctions that are not based on historical fact between Ireland and Britain when you wish to cast aspersions on Ireland, yet to insist on common cause in other circumstances. Do you devote any energy to fulmination and outrage about 'Scotland and the slave trade' or 'Wales and the slave trade' or 'England and the slave trade'?
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Pu8W4uE8Eht6OjBDiCC1TULLZw3L4zXPpHA1d4D_1mw/edit#gid=1035370983
List of compensated enslavers with residences in Ireland (whole island).
About 100 different individuals, either born or based in Ireland, benefited directly from compensation for loss of income from enslaved people; (compared to approximately 36 from Wales, 394 from Scotland and 1,879 from England). [from an article by Liam Hogan].
The vast majority of these people would have slapped you upside the head if you had called them Irish. If slavery benefited Irish society so much, please account for levels of poverty in Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries. Maybe you believe in trickle-down-economics?
As for facing up to 'Ireland's' profit from slavery, I suppose Irish cities could now rename all the streets which still commemorate enslavers or prominent supporters of slavery after whom they were named. Westmorland Street in Dublin springs to mind. It's named after the 10th Earl of Westmorland, John Fane, a staunch defender of slavery. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1789 to 1794. It might be necessary to eliminate all traces of the La Touche family from public view too. But would that be seen as offensive point-scoring? Unreasonable antipathy to all things English? The symbolic value of toppling statues or changing street names cannot be denied, or can it?
historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/slavery-and-british-country-house/slavery-british-country-house-web/
The great Irish country houses can be included in this account. They were established in the same era, by the same sort of people.