The Great Starvation as Opportunistic Genocide (Did the British commit genocide in Ireland?)

Ping!

"The killer was known but there wasn't enough evidence to get past the keen eye of the defense attorney." That means that a less competent solicitor would have not have secured the freedom of a client. Does that mean Nelson's real crime seems to be that she was a good solicitor. Given that she was defending her clients against the notoriously corrupt diplok court system, this was some achievement. Your accusation of guilt by association regarding one of the Bogota 3 is extremely tenuous. This sort of name blackening is not based on fact, only innuendo.

It just meant that the killer was able to continue killing people. Doesn't say much for the justice system, does it, when politically motivated lawyers can frustrate justice?

How many innocent people would have to die before you said enough was enough? We already have too much of a Mafia society in NI without the help of attorneys.

Her associations were with a lot more republican thugs than just one of the Bogota three as the collective condolences demonstrates.

Have a look at this Sinn Fein - IRA entry in the Register of Member's Interests for the Belfast Assembly.

MURPHY, Conor (Newry and Armagh)

Director of Cumann Na Meirleach Ard Mhaca Theas Ltd.

These people are all intimately related to republican terrorism but not to the cause of Justice and Peace.

So far you have attacked Rosemary Nelson and Daneil Berrigan because they were or are associated with the organization responsible for the article I posted. It is likely that the politics of both are far to left of mine. I don't know enought about Nelson to comment.

However what does that have to do with the facts as presented in the article? Speak to the issue rather than attacking the messengers.

The problem with the article is that the facts have been contaminated by republican propaganda - fact has become faction.

This is a fairly old and hot debate - a fellow named Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote a book called The Great Hunger in 1963 which details many of these claims of genocide. The problem is that he, and the screed above, left out some pretty important details in an effort to give extra weight to their accusations.

For one thing, primogeniture was not an Irish custom in terms of land inheritance; instead, parcels owned by a father were apportioned equally to all sons, and they to theirs. By the 1840s this resulted in a plethora of very small holdings which were only barely capable of supporting their families, and this (among other reasons, including dietary changes) resulted in an overdependence on a single, relatively new, and not genetically diverse, food-crop, the potato. When the Blight came around (no mention of that above, incidentally...) the Irish were far more vulnerable to a single crop failure than their immediate ancestors were.

For another, and the British certainly aren't devoid of blame here, the custom of absentee landlordship meant that management of these small-holdings was conducted by agents of agents, and the real human cost was not well communicated to the actual land-holder once the tenant got behind in the rent. Eviction was a cold, mechanical process of economics, and the bodies alongside the road weren't visible to the British, Scots, or Scots-Irish landlords. And it took awhile for the magnitude of the problem to be evident over the religious and political partisan screaming, much of which was even worse than the stuff quoted above.

There's a pretty good book that examines the claims made in The Great Hunger against the intense criticism it engendered, and against what has been learned since of such matters as grain exportation and relief efforts. It's here:

Click here

My own opinion - insensitive, surely. Hateful, definitely. Organized genocide, probably not. IMHO, of course.

One other thing - call me a pedant, but this usage irritates me:

Taylor’s analysis of the Great Starvation seems to beg the question - was it genocide?

This is NOT "begging the question" although it may raise the question. Begging a question is a logical fallacy which results when an assumption is made that a question has already been answered. "When did you stop beating your wife" 'begs the question' of whether the person ever started. Harrumph!

Thanks as usual for your informative comments. I am familiar with The Great Hunger, but it's been several years since I read it, and I no longer own a copy of it. I will check out your recommendation.

As I have said on another thread, I would hesitate to use the word genocide to describe British policy during the famine, mostly because of the political connotations the word usually has today. Irish customs regarding primogeniture may have been a contributing factor to the famine, but I think that English laws that forbade Irish Catholics from entering professions and that discouraged the growth of industry in Ireland should also be examined.

I guess my bottom line is that when people are starving, you feed them. The famine to me is the perfect example of theory (laissez-faire capitalism) gone wild. It also shows how extreme bigotry can distort one's moral reasoning.

Thanks for the ping! Will read later when I have the time.

The laws also affected Presbyterians. Catholic emancipation came in 1829 but Presbyterians had to wait until about 1846.

There might be an additional religious dimension at work. Some sects could well have believed that the famine was God's judgement on Ireland. These sort of ideas probably still prevail.

I don't think there was a uniform system of land tenure. For example, there was something called Ulster Custom where I think tenants could benefit financially from improvements made during the tenure of a lease. It may not have been widespread even in Ulster.