Wednesday 5 December 2012

Lest we forget, lest we forget

When we were growing up we learned that the real wrong of the Famine of 1845-50 was that Irish goods and food were shipped abroad while the people of Ireland starved.
We swore - and we believed our own swearing - that such a thing was unconscionable, and it could never happen again. Yet this year alone, €20 billion was paid out to banks abroad by the Irish government while the budget imposes increasing need, deprivation and hardship on the people of Ireland. We are doing exactly the same again.
Here's a contemporary quote, from May 1, 1846, from the Anglo Celt newspaper in Cavan:
It is indeed painful to consider the state of Ireland. In a land teeming with plenty and abundance we have a famine. More than two million Irishmen are starving while we export more provisions than would feed five times our population. Out state would be much improved were those who derive large incomes from this country to expend at least a portion of it among the people from whom they receive it.

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