Our changing world - We’d be fools to dismiss food threat

Anyone who has even casually studied how our Great Famine needlessly became the devastating catastrophe in our history cannot but be appalled at how British civil servants and politicians used starvation and the denial of food aid — life — to try to advance inhuman political and social philosophies.

Even at this remove, and even in the light of very welcome new and warm relationships across these islands, that grossly immoral behaviour still stands as a grand crime against humanity.

One of the many reasons that something around one million people died because of hunger or disease is that it took far too long for British officials, especially the cold-hearted champions of the free market in the exchequer, to grasp the gravity of the crisis. Another is that because of crop failures right across Europe alternative foods became scarce and hence very expensive.