Famine apology an exercise in moral vacuousness

Describing the apology offered by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for Britain’s role in the Irish potato famine as a complete exercise in moral vacuousness suggests that BBC journalist/presenter Jeremy Paxman is ignorant of the difference between the failure of the potato crop and the Irish Famine.

There was no shortage of food in Ireland during the Famine years. Indeed, heavy-laden ships freighted with food, which was sown and reaped by people too poor to purchase it for themselves, left Irish ports daily.

It is patently probable that the British government of the day deliberately pursued an ethnicity-based policy aimed at destroying the indigenous Irish people by means of mass starvation, an act which amounted to a form of engineered genocide. It was widely believed and promulgated worldwide at the time that the Irish people were racially inferior to their colonial masters and therefore responsible for their own circumstances. I remain indifferent to Mr Paxman’s remarks and as for Mr Blair’s apology for Britain’s role in the Famine, I accepted it in the same spirit that it was given.