officialbritishintent Official British Intent

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Page List: Introduction

Britain's Cover Up

The Food Removal

Voices in the Wilderness

Official British Intent

Toll of Holocaust

Complicity

What We Must Do

Lisnabinnia Memorial

Liverpool, Great Hunger

Sister Jean Marie Official British intent at the time is revealed by its actions and enactments. When the European potato crop failed in 1844 and food prices rose, Britain ordered regiments to Ireland. When blight hit the 1845 English potato crop its food removal regiments were already in Ireland; ready to start. The Times editorial of September 30, 1845, warned; "In England the two main meals of a working man's day now consists of potatoes." England's potato-dependence was excessive; reckless. Grossly over-populated relative to its food supply, England faced famine unless it could import vast amounts of alternative food. But it didn't grab merely Ireland's surplus food; or enough Irish food to save England. It took more; for profit and to exterminate the people of Ireland. Queen Victoria's economist, Nassau Senior, expressed his fear that existing policies "will not kill more than one million Irish in 1848 and that will scarcely be enough to do much good."6 When an eye-witness urged a stop to the genocide-in-progress, Trevelyan replied: "We must not complain of what we really want to obtain."7 Trevelyan insisted that all reports of starvation were exaggerated, until 1847. He then declared it ended and refused entry to the American food relief ship Sorciére. Thomas Carlyle; influential British essayist, wrote; "Ireland is like a half-starved rat that crosses the path of an elephant. What must the elephant do? Squelch it - by heavens - squelch it." "Total Annihilation;" suggested The Times leader of September 2, 1846; and in 1848 its editorialists crowed "A Celt will soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as the red man on the banks of Manhattan." The immortal Society of Friends, the "Quakers," did all in their power to save lives. But in 1847 they despaired and quit, upon learning that the Crown planned to perpetuate the genocide's pretext; the British claim of "ownership" of Irish land. Quakers refused to facilitate the genocide by pretending (as Concern does re African genocides) it was an act of nature. In the 1870s; too late; British laws were enacted allowing the Irish to buy back the land of which Britain had robbed them. Twice-yearly payments were extracted from Ireland's farmers until that "debt" was paid off in the 1970s. Ireland's diet, since pre-history, has been meat, dairy products, grains, fruit and vegetables; latterly supplemented by potatoes. Central to its ancient legends are its livestock, reaping hooks, flails,8 querns, and grain-kilns and -mills. The many Connacht grain-kilns and -mills shown on the Irish Ordnance Survey Map of 1837-1841 operated continually prior to, during the Starvation, and subsequent to it until the 1940s when I observed them still working. Local farmers dried and milled their grain - not potatoes - in them, and this oatmeal and flour were seized and exported by British forces. The "potato famine" Big Lie was underway and already denounced by John Mitchel in his United Irishman in 1847 (he was soon sent in chains to a Tasmanian death camp; but escaped). Fifty years later G.B. Shaw wrote in Man and Superman: "Malone: 'My father died of starvation in Ireland in the Black '47. Maybe you've heard of it?' Violet: 'The Famine?' Malone: (with smoldering passion) 'No, the Starvation. When a country is full of food and exporting it, there can be no Famine."' But he kept mum on the British army's role; Ireland's whole-truth-tellers don't receive Nobels. To date, the Big Lie prevails. It started in 1846 when, while the British government genocidally stripped Ireland of its abundant foodstuffs, internationally it was begging help for the "starving Irish." John Mitchel remonstrated; "Many will, perhaps, be surprised to learn neither Ireland, nor anybody in Ireland ever asked alms or favors of any kind, either from England or from any other nation or people. On the contrary, it was England herself that begged for us, asking a penny, for the love of God, to relieve the poor Irish. And further, constituting herself the almoner and agent of all that charity, she, England, took all the profit of it." Mitchel again; 'Thus any man who had a house, no matter how wretched, was to pay the new tax; and every man was bound to have a house; for if found out of doors after sunset; and convicted of that offence, he was to be transported for fifteen years, or imprisoned for three - the court to have the discretion of adding hard labor or solitary confinement. This law would drive the survivors of ejected people (those who did not die of hunger) into the poorhouses or to America; because, being bound to be at home after sunset, and having neither house nor home, they would be all in the absolute power of the police, and in continual peril of transportation to the colonies (Australian slave labor camps). By another act of parliament the police force was increased, and taken more immediately into the service of the Crown; the Irish counties were in part relieved from their pay; and they became, in all senses, a portion of the regular army. They amounted to twelve thousand chosen men, well armed and drilled. The police were always at the command of sheriffs for executing ejectments; and if they were not in sufficient force, troops of the line could be had from the nearest garrison. No wonder that the London Times, within less than three years after, was enabled to say; 'Law has ridden roughshod through Ireland, it has been taught with bayonet, and interpreted with ruin. Townships levelled with the ground, straggling columns of exiles, workhouses multiplied, and still crowded, express the determination of the legislature to remove Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant the institutions of this more civilized land' (meaning England!)" Mitchel also wrote; "Steadily, but surely, the 'Government' was working out its calculation; and the produce anticipated by 'political circles' was likely to come out about September (of 1847), in round numbers - two millions of Irish corpses." 9 ... Continue