Blaming ourselves for the famine is nonsense

I CANNOT let your columnist Ryle Dwyer away with the assertion (January 12) that the Irish were to blame for the Great Famine.

As Mr Dwyer admits, “this island continued to export food even though tens of thousands of people died of starvation, malnutrition and rampant disease.”

Why was this the case? The people at the head of the government of the then British empire did not want to damage the competitiveness of British industry by diverting food to the starving Irish.

They were not even willing to contribute taxes collected on the British mainland to fund relief works in Ireland. They decreed that the whole cost of the famine would be borne by Ireland. The imperial exchequer received more from Irish taxation than it spent in Ireland and was, therefore, a net gainer throughout the famine. This happened nearly a half a century after Ireland was united with Britain under the Act of Union.

As a consequence, theoretically every Irish person had rights equal to those of every British citizen. In fact, as was admitted by some of the public servants who resigned in disgust at the time, what was practised was a policy of extermination.

The imperial government did not cause the famine, but they used it ruthlessly to ethnically cleanse a colony close to the centre of what was the most powerful empire in the world at the time.

Ryle Dwyer should read his history.

Anthony Leavy

1 Shielmartin Drive

Sutton

Dublin 13