The Irish holocaust - An droch shaol
The Irish Holocaust, an artifical famine created by the English
parliament's economic policy and their domination of Ireland was
the greatest social catastrophe of 19th Century Europe. The
reality of it is so appalling that there is no need for inflated
statisitics. The Great Famine as it is popularly known began a
process of depopulation which transformed the Irish physical,
political, social and cultural landscape. The loss of three
million people in five years 1845-'50 through death and
emigration in effect removed an entire class - the landless rural
labourer.
In a series of articles Aengus O Snodaigh in this the 150th
anniversary looks at the various aspects of the Great Hunger: the
potato, death, fever, workhouses, coffin ships, relief works and
the response, or lack of it, from Ireland's imperial masters.
Blatant anti-Irish racism
The Famine did not occur in a vacuum, and the lack of urgency by
the English government in tackling it can be attributed to many
factors not least of which were racism, free market capitalism
and the changed position of Ireland after the Act of Union 1800.
Having lost its `own' parliament Ireland had less representatives
per head of population than England, its MPs were in the main
Protestant landed gentry who had England's not Ireland's
interests at heart.
Providence sent the potato blight, but England made the Famine
James Connolly
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Throughout the Famine all legislation and policy emanated from
Westminster, while dire warnings from relief commissioners and
others were ignored. After 1847 they threw the financial burden
for Famine relief exclusively onto the Irish taxpayers - thus
washing their hands of it. They were in fact adhering to the
views of The Times which argued that `English' taxpayers' money
spent on Irish Famine relief was money wasted.
The difference of attitude and implementation of Poor Law in
England and Ireland was commented on by a committee of inquiry in
County Clare in 1848.
``Whether as regards the plain principles of humanity, or the
literal text and admitted principle of the Poor Law of 1847, a
neglect of public duty has occurred and has occassioned a state
of things disgraceful to a civilised age and country, for which
some authority ought to be held responsible, and would long since
have been held responsible had these things occurred in any union
in England.''
While the enormity of the task facing any government is to be
appreciated when attributing blame for the deaths and destruction
in Ireland the British government stands condemned by its
genocidal tactics regarding Ireland in those years.
One fact can demolish any sympathetic hearing which they or their
supporters later sought. The sum total of the humanitarian or
Famine relief by the English government represented one half of
one per cent of Britain's GNP (gross national product) or less
than 3% of their expenditure.
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Grain imports and exports 1844-'48
|
| Year | Exports (tons) | Imports (tons)* |
| 1844 | 424,000 | 30,000 |
| 1845 | 513,000 | 28,000 |
| 1846 | 284,000 | 197,000 |
| 1847 | 146,000 | 909,000 |
| 1848 | 314,000 | 439,000 |
*Mainly Indian meal (maize) and wheat. Source: Bourke, 1993
Approximately £7 million was provided by Westminster during the
Famine years, a figure which drew Archbishop McHale of Tuam to
draw the unfavourable comparison with the £20 million they paid
in compensation to slave owners when slavery was abolished in
1836, or the £70 million spent within a few years on the futile
Crimean War.
The attitude and the blatant racism of many of the English
decision makers and their total adherence to free market
capitalism left people to starve. Laissez-faire economic
principles, yesteryear's Thatcherite policies, dictated that
intervention would upset the equilibrium of the market. This
policy meant that merchants exporting food from Ireland sought
the markets for their produce where the price was highest -
overseas. Despite what revisionists would have us believe vast
amounts of food left Ireland annually (see table).
Protected by the over 100,000 soldiers quartered in Ireland
convoys of food were transported to markets overseas. Millions of
tons of flour, grain, meat, poultry and dairy products were
`escorted' under gunpoint away from the starving millions. The
Waterford Harbour British army commissariat officer wrote to the
British Treasury on April 24 1846:
``The barges leave Clonmel once a week for this place, with the
export supplies under convoy which, last Tuesday, consisted of
two, 50 cavalry, and 80 infantry escorting them on the banks of
the Suir as far as Carrick.''
Even those who took the initiative of arranging their own
imports, smuggling, suffered at the hands of an English
government which would not tolerate any interference in their
economic policy. In January 1849 the Coastguard seized the
Belmullet fishing fleet for off-loading flour from a passing
ship. The relief from famine which fishing gave the people of
Belmullet, Country Mayo, was now denied them.
In times past in Ireland, and in other arenas of their imperial
adventure, the English were more than willing to set aside their
principled stand on laissez-faire economics, as Trevelyan himself
was to do later in India when faced with a similar crisis.
It is this willingness or unwillingness to intervene in market
policies which raises the question of blatant anti-Irish racism.
Key figures in the British establishment regarded the wholescale
starvation, death and emigration of the Irish as an economic and
political bonus. They could achieve the clearing of land,
consolidate estates, and quash a rebellious people.
The English were in their own eyes a civilising force on Earth
and as the Times eloquently put it in February 1847:
``Before our mercifully intervention, the Irish nation were a
wretched, indolent, half-starved tribe of savages, ages before
Julius Caesar landed on this isle, and that, notwithstanding a
gradual improvement upon the naked savagery, they have never
approached the standard of civilised world.''
economic advisor to the government, Nassau Senior, is reported
as saying: ``that he feared the famine of 1848 in Ireland would
not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be
enough to do much good''.
By Aengus O Snodaigh
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