In the early 19th century a crime of gigantic proportions of which few others save perhaps the settling of the
Americas or the Holocaust can compare. The genocidal tactics of the British were beyond insidious for in their
infamy they delivered a killing blow to the reeling Gaelic order. Byron said of the Act of Union, " it was the union of a
shark with its prey." For the British had tired of the teeming population of papists at its back door fomenting
rebellion with their pretender kings. In the 1941 census the population was set at 8 million, denser than China.
Something had to be done to convert them to Protestantism or force them to flee their land, and with the potato
blights of 1845-47, the stage was set for a callousness that is unbelievable.
The Irish were in a marginal space after centuries of Machiavellian tactics by the British to break the backbone of
the Gaelic culture and force it to submit to the crown of Great(er) Britain. Absentee landlords collected three quarters
of the gross national product for rent in order that they, the landlords could build ostentatious palatial country
estates. Coupled with this was the tithe to an alien Anglican Church who in many instances did nothing to merit
these monies. The Irish were British subjects according to the Act of Union; that is they were citizens on a political
and economic level as long as they were supplying the British with their produce. On a social level though, they were
below the level of other British citizens, regarded as semian and bestial, less than human. With three-quarters of
the workforce unemployed the famine could only turn into a catastrophe of epic proportion.
In a despicable representation of governmental inaction, instead of reacting swiftly to what was described as a "local"
problem, the British authorities kept the ports open and continued to suck the life out of the people. What could have
been just another crop failure turned into the great hunger, starving millions. One of the most powerful images of t
he effects of this calamity was a rock cairn on the shoreline, white bones of human skeletons in a mass grave
sticking out from between the rocks. These mass graves push the point home that what occurred was a genocidal
destruction of an indigenous population for the benefit of foreign conquerors' pockets. It is for this reason that a
comparison with the Nazi Holocaust and the current ethnic cleansing' in the former Czech Republics and central
African nations is appropriate. The Irish courts made an attempt to bring the responsible parties to task for their
willful indifference to the Irish plight. Lord John Russell was indicted for the willful mass murder of thousands of
Irish and as an accessory to the murder of millions more.
It wasn't until the presses of the world began to publish stories on the criminal negligence of the British government
towards its own citizens that they scrambled to appear more hospitable to their subjects. By that time several other
world governments had attempted to come to the aid of the starving Irish. As political pressure was brought to bear
on the British they finally chose to open the Irish ports to other countries ships. Where before all produce bound for
Ireland, even if it was famine aid had to go through British ports, paying British duties and British shipping fees; a
further example of the ineptness of their handling of this devastating horror. They of course saw the whole thing as
providence solving a long-standing difficulty of colonial governance.
"We must not complain of what it is we want to obtain," how these words put the British inaction in to bright relief.
Their utmost desire was to remove the surplus Irish population. It was providence for them, but not in the character
they attempted to portray it, perhaps beneficial would be more apt. For in this natural disaster the final and lethal
blow was delivered to the Irish who had here to fore been an embarrassing thorn in Mother Britain's side. Two and a
half million Irish emigrated in the decade between the years 1845 and 1855. It was characterized as an inverted
form of natural selection. The best and brightest, the few workers with money or skills enough to be useful were
forced to flee for their own survival out of a country ravaged by famine and disease; a country that would sorely miss
their youth and vitality. It was said that if there were crosses placed along the routes of emigration from Ireland for
every person who died in passage, the entire path of these emigrant 'coffin' ships would be clogged by the white sea
of markers. It is another indictment that the British ships were some of the worst to book passage on, the
callousness with which the British government acted was in turn mirrored by the uncaring crews of these ships.
Especially after these crews had made several of these voyages and the depth of impoverishment and destitution of
the emigrants was seen again and again.
Leon Uris says in Trinity that we should "shout truths into a tornado of illusions." The horror of the British
inaction as they watched millions leave Ireland and still more die of a starvation order to protect their 'economic
necessity' inflicted on the Irish was one of these painful truths we must state in the face and shout out to the world.
This genocide is only the culmination of centuries of destructive governmental practices towards the Irish by the
British. Few people would use the word fascist to describe the British, but few instances in our World History
encompass the inequity with which the Irish were treated by their conquerors. it was said that the food that Britain
allowed the Irish to have during the famine would not even be fit for the animals of the British landlords.
Patrick brought a little relief from the heaviness of the material when he discussed the idea that history should not
be a shackle. More importantly though he brought out the point that there is no such thing as selective compassion.
Michael Fox's spiritual lessons animals teach and the model of Green Martyrdom seem ill at ease in context to the
horrors of the great hunger. Yet in these are the lessons we need to accept if we are ever to avoid its repetition. For
wasn't it the British who characterized the Irish as animals and less than human? The Green Martyrs held that the
creatures and themselves were in a discipleship of equals, every creature providing its role to the whole. The self
and not self were not in a state of feud but in a loving symbiosis, neither one holding power over the other, instead
holding power in common with each other. It is as Cavanaugh puts it so succinctly, "Humanity is the one terrible
art of creation privileged to refuse its own flowering." It is a common generalization to think of the British as
gardeners, If Ireland was one of their gardens, instead of caring for it they dumped poisons and refuse on it,
neglected and ignored it until it was choked with weeds and desolation.