gTpbsMe8

1* = Italic
2** = Bold
3
4
5Normans are responsible for introducing the Jews to the British Isles. Before the year 1070, when William the Conquerer introduced some Jews from Normandy and France with him there had been no prior record of a Jewish presence in the British Isles, even in Roman times. After the Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxon English, the Jewish presence spread. It is unclear how they infiltrated Scotland, but it appears to have been following the Norman inspired Davidian Revolution, where they are first mentioned in 1190. In Ireland too, there had been no Jewish Problem until the coming of the Norman baronial invaders. A group of five Jews had tried to infiltrate from Normandy in 1079, but the Gaelic High King of Ireland, Turlough O'Brien forbade them to enter and sent them back over the sea.
6
7Quotes
8
9We Aryans must admit that we have our own psychopaths too; the Khazars (Ashkenazi Jews) are not the only ones. What happened after 1066, when the Normans, who were French-speaking former Vikings who had "adopted Christianity," is that, just like William of Orange 600 years later, the ruthless Normans brought in Jews as their even more ruthless money men. And as Stalin also realized, if you want to crush a people, Jews are happy to assist you in crushing them because of their rancor against all “gentiles.” They make good evil assistants. No, what is especially unique about England was that these brilliant, brave but psychopathic French-speaking former Vikings – barely converted, on paper, to Christianity -- joined with Jews to transform England into their slave colony.	”
10— John de Nugent, castigating his own ancestors, in The Normans: England's Blessing and Curse.
11
12
13--------------------------------------------------------
14
15The earliest reference to the Jews in Ireland was in the year 1079. The Annals of Inisfallen record "Five Jews came from over sea with gifts to Toirdelbach [Toirdelbach Ua Briain, the king of Munster], and they were sent back again over sea".They were probably merchants from Normandy
16
17 The Annals of Inisfallen, author unknown, translated by Seán Mac Airt 1951
18
19
20
21Jews were directly involved in financing the Norman conquest of Ireland which led to the destruction of the Gaelic High Kingship of Ireland and the enslavement of the nation for 800 years. Specifically, we have records of a Jew by the name of Josce of Gloucester✡ (Jew) funding the main leader of the first wave of the Norman invasion, Richard Strongbow de Clare in 1170: this fact is openly admitted in the Jewish Enclyclopedia. A mere hundred years earlier, five Jews from Rouen had attempted to infiltrate Ireland, but the High King Turlough O'Brien sent them away. It is unclear if their involvement in the Norman conquest was a form of revenge.
22
23The Norman bandits who created and ran the Lordship of Ireland have the eternal sin upon their heads of letting the Jews into Ireland for the first time in history. During the times of the High Kingship of Ireland, the nation was pure, holy and racially Gaelic, with not a single solitary Jew to be found. The first instance we hear of them is in the Annals of Inisfallen of 1079, where five Jews, perhaps from Rouen, attempted to infiltrate Ireland, baring trinkets. The High King, Turlough O'Brien, was having none of it and firmly sent them away. "Coincidentally", when the Norman invaders came they brought their Jewish pals to help plunder the country from the natives. Josce of Gloucester✡ (Jew) funded the initial invasion under the leader Richard Strongbow de Clare in 1170.[3] Henry III Plantagenet in 1232 granted one of his robbers Peter de Rivaux control of the Royal Exchequer in Ireland and custody of "the king's Judaism in Ireland", showing that they held a prominent role in the Norman society in Ireland. Later, when Edward I Plantagenet expelled the Jews from England in 1290, this also applied to Ireland.
24
25
26The first authentic mention of Jews in Ireland is a record, dating from 1079, that "five Jews came over the sea bearing gifts to Fairdelbach [Hua Brian], and were sent back over the sea." No further reference is found until nearly a century later, in the reign of Henry II. of England. That monarch, fearful lest an independent kingdom should be established in Ireland, prohibited a proposed expedition thither. Strongbow, however, went in defiance of the king's orders; and, as a result, his estates were confiscated. In his venture Strongbow seems to have been assisted financially by a Jew; for under date of 1170 the following record occurs: "Josce Jew of Gloucester owes 100 shillings for an amerciament for the moneys which he lent to those who against the king's prohibition went over to Ireland" (Jacobs, "Jews of Angevin England," p. 51).
27
28No further reference is found until the 1169 Norman invasion of Ireland launched by Strongbow (Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke) in defiance of a prohibition by Henry II of England. Strongbow seems to have been assisted financially by a Jewish moneylender, for under the date of 1170 the following record occurs: "Josce Jew of Gloucester owes 100 shillings for an amerciament for the moneys which he lent to those who against the king's prohibition went over to Ireland".[2]
29
30[2]  Frassetto, Michael (2006). Christian attitudes toward the Jews in the Middle Ages. CRC Press,. p. 178. ISBN 978-0-415-97827-9.
31https://books.google.ie/books?id=OiIpCRWAEwgC&pg=PA178&dq=loans+from+Josce+to+Fitz+Gilbert&redir_esc=y&hl=en
32
33An entry dated 1225 shows that Roger Bacon had borrowed considerable sums from English Jews in connection with his mission on the king's service in Ireland.
34
35The last mention of Jews in the "Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland" appears about 1286. When the expulsion from England took place (1290), the Irish Jews had doubtless to go as well. At any rate, there is no further mention of them until the period of the Commonwealth, when the resettlement of the Jews in England under Cromwell led to resettlement in Ireland also. From investigations made by Lucien Wolf, it would appear, however, that as early as 1620 one David Sollom, a Jewish merchant, purchased some property in Meath which is still in the possession of his descendants.
36
37Jews are first heard of again in Dublin; and there is reason to believe that they were among the Dissenters who came after Cromwell's conquests. It is even stated that some Portuguese Jews settled in Dublin on Cromwell's invitation, and that theysoon became opulent merchants. They established a synagogue in Crane lane.
38
39Source:
40http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8143-ireland
41
42
43=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
44
45>The Desmond Rebellions were 16th century risings under the FitzGeralds with the support of Spain and the Papal States against the Elizabethan Protestant state in Ireland. While the FitzGeralds were Catholic and somewhat Gaelicised culturally, they were racially impure, of Norman origin, so this incident isn't as important as others, but is still revealing and warrants a mention. The commander of the Tudor garrison in Youghal, County Cork who militarily fought against the Catholic FitzGerald rising was Francis Annyas (Ãnes)✡ a Sephardic Jew who was mayor of the town. He also worked as a spy for the Rosicrucian, Sir Francis Drake and the Empire in the Azores.
46
47--------------------
48
49Jews were certainly living in Ireland long before Oliver Cromwell in 1657 revoked the English Edict of Expulsion. A permanent settlement of Jews was definitely established in the late fifteenth century. Following their expulsion from Portugal in 1497, some of these Sephardic Jews settled on Ireland's south coast. One of them, William Annyas, was elected mayor of Youghal, County Cork, in 1555. Francis Annyas (Ãnes), was a three-time Mayor of Youghal in 1569, 1576 and 1581.[5]
50
51[5] Cookes Memoirs of Youghal written in 1749 Archived 17 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine. Published by the Journal of the Cork Archaeological & Historical Society, 1903 By Robert Day
52http://www.from-ireland.net/cor/hist/cookeyoughal.htm
53https://web.archive.org/web/20080517150139/http://www.from-ireland.net/cor/hist/cookeyoughal.htm
54
55-----------------------------
56
57In 1555 William Moses Annyas Eanes (Hebrew: Ben Yohanan, Arabic: Ibn Yahia) became the mayor of Youghal in County Cork. He was the first Jew to hold such an elected position in Ireland.[1][2][3]
58
59[1]Ireland. Dept. of Foreign Affairs (1987). Ireland today. Information Section, Dept. of Foreign Affairs.
60https://books.google.com/books?id=xhoiAQAAIAAJ
61[2] The Virtual Jewish History Tour - Ireland
62http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Ireland.html
63[3] Speech by the Taoiseach on visit to the Jewish Museum, Dublin". Department of the Taoiseach. 2006
64http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Government_Press_Office/Archived_Speeches_and_Press_Releases/2005/Taoiseach%27s_Speeches_Archive_2005/Speech_on_visit_to_the_Jewish_Museum,_Dublin.html
65
66--------------------------------
67
68In the town of Youghal in Cork County, the the first Jewish Mayor in Ireland, Mr. William Annyas, was elected in 1555.
69
70http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ireland-virtual-jewish-history-tour
71
72-----------------
73
74Cookes Memoirs of Youghal written 1749
75
76covering period 1542-1601
77
78
79Published Journal of the Cork Archaeological & Historical Society, 1903
80By Robert Day
81Incomplete
82
83Mary
841553. Wm. Annyas
85
861569. Frans. Annyas
87
881576. Francis Annyas (2nd time Mayor)
89
901581. Francs. Annyas
91Third time mayor. This town was a second time ransacked; the houses being almost destroyed.
92
93http://www.from-ireland.net/cookes-memoirs-youghal-cork-1749/
94
95----------------------
96
97>A permanent settlement of Jews was definitely established in the late fifteenth century. Following their expulsion from Portugal in 1496, some of these Marrano Jews settled on Ireland's south coast. One of them, William Annyas, was elected as mayor of Youghal, County Cork, in 1555, there was also Francis Annyas (Ãnes) a three time Mayor of Youghal in 1569, 1576 and 1581.
98
99https://www.geni.com/projects/Notable-Irish-Jews/14457
100
101---------------------------
102
103Did William Shakespeare ever visit Youghal ?  Could he have? Would he have ? There is not a shred of evidence available to suggest that he did , nothing to suggest that he even considered Ireland. Or , or , or is there some shred of a possibility within the legend itself? Shakespeare was friendly with Walter Raleigh, friendly also with Edmund Spencer.  He has a fair amount of Irish connections in his writings and perhaps depicted the first stage Irishman in his plays! One of the connections is the Annyas family –  William and Francis Annyas were Mayors of Youghal – Francis was Mayor in 1569, 1576 and 1581 while William Annyas was Mayor in 1553. Now Francis’ sister  – Sarah -married Rodrigo Lopez  and  many people believe Rodrigo was the person Shakespeare used as the model for the character Shylock ( the Merchant of Venice) – while also, obviously, being aware of Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta”. The Annyas family were probably hidden Jews, living as Christians but retaining their Jewish religion –  this was the accusation put to Rodrigo Lopez and his final words on the scaffold “I love Jesus Christ as much as I love her Majesty the Queen”  can be understood in various ways! In any case Rodrigo, the Jew, met his wife in Youghal.
104
105https://cycleyoughal.wordpress.com/tale-spins-of-the-spokesman/tracing-the-steps-of-the-old-countess/
106
107-------------------------------
108
109Another supposed Jew identified by evidence given to the Inquisition was Dunstan Ames or Anes (originally Añes), who died in 1594 and was buried under his pew at St Olave’s church in London. Ames, who was born into a converso family in Valladolid in Spain and brought to England as a child, was a wealthy merchant, a “purveyor and merchant for the Queen Majesty’s Grocery” and, eventually, a gentleman, having been granted his own coat of arms in 1568. His brother Francisco entered the military, commanded the English garrison at Youghal and later, as Francis Annyas, was three times its mayor. Sarah, the sister of Dunstan and Francisco, was to marry the prosperous doctor Roderigo Lopez (“one, that maketh as great account of himself, as the best: & by a kind of Jewish practis, hath growen to much wealth, & sum reputation”), who became the queen’s physician and who in 1594 was executed for plotting to poison her. He is also believed by many to have been a model for Shakespeare’s Shylock. Lopez maintained his innocence to the end, insisting on the scaffold that he “loved the Queen as well as he loved Jesus Christ; which coming from a man of the Jewish profession moved no small laughter in the standers-by”.
110
111http://www.drb.ie/essays/an-obstinate-people
112
113----------------------------
114
115In 1555 William Annyas (Anes) became the Mayor of Youghal in County Cork, he was the first person of the Jewish religion to hold such an elected position in Ireland or Britain. William Annyas was the grandson of Gil Anes of Belmonte, Portugal. Many of the first Jewish people to come to Ireland were Marrano merchants from the Iberian peninsula. 
116
117His daughter married Yacov Kassin (Shamus Ciosain) daughter of Yehuda Kassin (Juan Cassin) a Marrano merchant who had moved to Galway in Ireland. 
118
119His surname Annyas is sometimes written as Ãnes and anglicised to Ames, in some case the family may have used the surname Ennis. 
120
121There was a three-time Mayor of Youghal in 1569 and 1576 and 1581 called Francis Annyas, although the exact relation to William is unclear. He commanded the English garrison in Youghal during the Desmond Rebellions and had a colourful life working as a spy for Sir Francis Drake in the Azores.
122
123---------------------------------
124
125He recalled that the first Jews in Cork originated in Portugal and ended up in Youghal, where William Annyas was mayor in 1555 - the first Jew to hold public office in Ireland.
126
127https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/fall-off-in-number-of-jews-forces-only-cork-synagogue-to-shut-1.2527246
128
129-----------------------------------------
130
131Following their expulsion from Portugal in 1496, some Jews settled on Ireland’s south coast. One of them, William Annyas, was elected as Mayor of Youghal, County Cork, in 1555.
132
133http://www.jewishireland.org/irish-jewish-history/history/
134
135=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
136
137Cromwell
138
139Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army waged a war against Irish Confederate Catholics and English Royalists in Ireland as part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms between the years 1649 and 1653. Some of the most controversial aspects of this campaign were the Siege of Drogheda and Sack of Wexford, where massacres took place. Cromwell was anti-Irish and pro-Jewish; he let the Jews back into the British Isles and his activities were funded by Jewish bankers from Amsterdam such as Menasseh Ben Israel.✡ (Jew)
140
141As a result of the Cromwellian conflict in Ireland and when the enemy began to systematically steal Irish land, a few thousand Gaelic Irish prisoners of war were sent to the island of Barbados as slaves in 1662. Sephardic Jews had been involved in affairs on the island since 1628. Jews, who by 1679 constituted some 300 people, had "full political rights" as British subjects on Barbados and were very rich, heavily involved in the slave trade, the sugar and coffee plantations. The descendents of the Irish slaves of Barbados are known today as the Red Legs.
142
143--------
144
145When Charles I was in dispute with Parliament, a Jewish 'Money-Baron' in Holland, named Manasseh Ben Israel, had his agents contact Oliver Cromwell. 
146
147They offered him large sums of money if he would overthrow the British monarchy. 
148
149Manasseh Ben Israel, and other German and French moneylenders, financed Cromwell. 
150
151Fernandez Carvajal of Portugal, often referred to as The Great Jew, became Cromwell’s Chief Military Contractor. 
152
153Lord Alfred Douglas edited a weekly review called Plain English. 
154
155In an article, in the issue of 3 September 1921, he explained how his friend, L.D. Van Valckert of Amsterdam, had come into possession of a volume of records of the Synagogue of Muljeim. 
156
157One entry, dated 16 June 1647 reads : From O.C. (i.e. Oliver Cromwell) to Ebenezer Pratt. 
158
159“In return for financial support will advocate admission of Jews to England. This however impossible while Charles living. Charles cannot be executed without trial, adequate grounds for which do not at present exist. Therefore advise that Charles be assassinated, but will have nothing to do with arrangements for procuring an assassin, though willing to help in his escape.” 
160
161In reply to this dispatch the records show E. Pratt wrote a letter dated July 12th, 1647 addressed to Oliver Cromwell. 
162
163“Will grant financial aid as soon as Charles removed, and Jews admitted. Assassination too dangerous. Charles should be given an opportunity to escape. His recapture will then make trial and execution possible. The support will be liberal, but useless to discuss terms until trial commences.” 
164
165On November 12th 1647, Charles I was given the opportunity to escape.
166
167He was recaptured. 
168
169The majority in Parliament, on 5 December 1648, agreed “That the concessions offered by the king were satisfactory to a settlement.” 
170
171Cromwell ordered Colonel Pryde to purge Parliament of those members who had voted 
172in favour of a settlement with the King. 
173
174The conspirators couldn’t find an English lawyer who would draw up a criminal charge against King Charles. 
175
176Carvajal instructed a Jew, Isaac Dorislaus, Manasseh Ben Israel’s Agent in England, to draw up the indictment upon which King Charles was tried. 
177
178Charles was found guilty of the charges levelled against him by the International Jewish money-lenders. 
179
180On January 30th, 1649, he was beheaded. 
181
182The Jewish money-lenders had had their revenge because Edward I had expelled the Jews from England. 
183
184Oliver Cromwell received his Blood-Money. 
185
186At the siege of Drogheda in September 1649, Oliver Cromwell massacred nearly 3,500 people, including civilians, after the town's capture.[29]
187
188Drogheda in Ireland, 1649. 
189
190At the Siege of Wexford in October, another massacre took place, with up to 1,500 civilians murdered by Cromwell's men.[30] 
191
192At Drogheda, a group of defenders barricaded themselves in Millmount Fort. They negotiated a surrender, but were then disarmed and killed.
193
194Cromwell sent some of the Irish to the West Indies. 
195
196Sir William Petty wrote in his The Political Anatomy of Ireland (1672)
197
198"Widows and orphans... were kidnapped and transported by the slave trading merchants of Bristol..." 
199
200"Cromwell's puritan sensibilities did not hinder him from jumping to supply the colonists lust for fresh young white flesh - and making a good profit to boot. 
201
202"A Captain John Vernon, for example, was employed by the Commissioners for Ireland to kidnap 250 Irish girls around twelve years of age and transport them to Barbados. 
203
204"Once in Barbados they were raped by their English 'masters' and, later, forced to breed with Black men - as the English officers found the Irish girls 'cold' and they needed to be whipped into submission, where 'half caste' girls, who had been trained to their perversions from childhood, were much more to the English taste. 
205
206"It's estimated that tens of thousands of Irish children, both boys and girls, were kidnapped to supply this vile trade." 
207
208In 1661, Cromwell's corpse was removed from Westminster Abbey and then dangled from a gibbet at Tyburn. His head was displayed on a spike for 20 years. 
209
210Reportedly, in 1656, Cromwell let 300 Jews return.
211http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3625765/How-Cromwell-gave-us-Joan-Collins-and-other-luminaries.html
212
213-----------
214
215According to Captain A. M. Ramsay in his book, "The Nameless War,"
216
217Oliver Cromwell back in the 17th century, became a traitor when he acted as a paid agent of Edomite Jews who co-conspired with him to usurp the throne of England out from under King Charles the II.
218
219These so called "jews" were of the same ilk banished from England by King Edward back in the late 13th century. They were not of the blood line of Jacob/Israel but were in fact descendants of Esau/Edom as described in Genesis chapter 28. They were impostors who claimed to be of the house of Israel and are referred to in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9 as jews, "which say they are Jews, (of the tribe of Judah) and are  not, but do lie," and the lie continues up to this present day!
220
221Evidently Cromwell believed their lies and accepted bribe money when he re-admitted them in 1657. Soon, the economy of England began to suffer from the effects of Jewish usury, known as the thievery of fractional reserve banking. Since that fateful day, the British people have slowly been bled of all their wealth and their vast empire.
222
223--------
224
225
226Cromwell and the Jews
2272006 marks the 350th anniversary of the re-admission of the Jews into England. They were expelled in 1290 in the reign of King Edward Ist. Their re-admission in 1656 under the Cromwellian Protectorate is interpreted by some as evidence of Cromwell’s toleration and compassion. This is open to challenge on several points.
228
229Although the Jewish community at the end of the 19th century highlighted the anniversary, and linked it particularly to the mission of an Amsterdam based Rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel, there is evidence of an established Jewish community in London before 1655. Fearful of persecution they did not declare their identity, living as Spanish merchants. Whilst their commercial affairs were public their religion was private.
230
231There was interest in Jewish matters in the leadership of the Commonwealth and Protectorate for two reasons, one pragmatic and the other doctrinal. The pragmatic reason was that based on the international trade and commercial connections of the Amsterdam Jewish community it was recognised that a strong Jewish presence in London would be advantageous. With flourishing links to the East and West Indies and to the New World Jewish traders in London could make the city to Amsterdam as a commercial centre.
232
233The doctrinal reason was the belief amongst godly Protestants, including Cromwell, that the conversion of the Jews to Christianity was essential before Christ would return to reign on earth. 1656 was thought by some to be the actual year in which this would happen.
234
235The key figure for the celebrants of the 250th anniversary in 1906 was that of Menasseh ben Israel. He was born in Lisbon in 1604 settled in Amsterdam and became a Rabbi. He was a polymath: author, printer, publisher, bookseller and scholar who cultivated links with the new Commonwealth regime in England. It was his belief that the Jewish Messiah would only appear when the Jewish people had spread throughout the world. Establishing communities in England would help to bring about that second coming. Menassen ben Israel published a pamphlet in 1651 appealing to Cromwell
236
237http://www.olivercromwell.org/jews.htm
238------------------------
239An aside on Menasseh ben Israel
240http://cf.uba.uva.nl/en/collections/rosenthaliana/menasseh/19f5/index.html
241
242To his Highnesse The Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland
243The Humble Adresses of Menasseh Ben Israel
244
2454 ff. + 26 pp. 4°
246Probably printed in Amsterdam (1651) on the occasion of his visit to England. A second edition, printed in another printing offics, (4 ff. + 23 pp.) has probably been printed in Londen.
247
248Full text here:
249http://cf.uba.uva.nl/en/collections/rosenthaliana/menasseh/19f5/alles.html
250
251--------------------------------
252Continued on Cromwell and the Jews
253
254In September 1655 Menasseh ben Israel arrived in London with a delegation and members of his family and personally petitioned Cromwell for the readmission of the Jews. Cromwell met with him and a committee of the Council of State, and it was agreed that a conference should be convened to discuss the issues. The petition requested citizenship, freedom of worship, burial grounds, freedom to trade and the withdrawal of all laws against Jews.
255
256The conference met several times in December 1655 but was, in the end, inconclusive. There was no formal decision to allow readmission but it was soon evident that the presence of Jews would be more openly tolerated. Cromwell permitted Jews to worship in private as they had done prior to the petitioning, and within months a synagogue and burial ground were allowed.
257The significance of the mission by Menasseh ben Israel in achieving the level of toleration reached in 1656 is a continuing discussion. Similarly Cromwell’s motives for debating the issue openly may not have been the result of any desire for liberty of conscience as understood in the late 19th century or today, but it did lead to a significant advance in Anglo-Jewish relations.
258
259For these reasons marking the 350th anniversary is appropriate, even if there may be an element of overstatement, both of Cromwell’s and Menasseh ben Israel’s roles.
260--------------------------------------
261
262Menasseh Ben Israel biographical data
263
2641604	Menasseh Ben Israel was born at Lisbon into a family of Marranos. According to custom he got his godfather's name and was baptized Manuel Dias Soeiro. This name was also used later on in his family.
265During a stay in Spain his father was persecuted by the Inquisition and the family goods were distrained on, so his father and the rest of the family went into exile, first to La Rochelle in France, then to Amsterdam.
2661616	The family took an active part in Jewish life that was just starting in Amsterdam around that time and in this year both father and son joined a study-circle, Santa Irmandade de Talmud Tora, which had just been founded.
2671621	Menasseh writes his first book, a Hebrew grammar, entitled: "Safah beroerah".
2681622	Death of Menasseh's parents. He is involved in Hebrew primary education and becomes the rabbi of a local synagogue.
2691623	Menasseh marries Rachel Abarbanel, descendant of a famous Spanish-Jewish family. Three children are born: Gracia also known as Hanna, Joseph and Samuel.
2701624	Menasseh is appointed as a teacher of Talmud studies.
2711627	(1 jan.)-The first Hebrew book from the printing office founded by Menasseh is published. The Hebrew types were cast from a drawing by Michael Juda (Leon). With this Menasseh lays the foundations of the Hebrew printing offices that were to make Amsterdam famous in the Jewish community all over the world for more than a century and a half.
2721632	Among his writings is "Conciliador" (this book was an attempt to reconcile discordant passages in the Old Testament); it attracted considerable attention in non-Jewish circles and provided food for reflection, especially among Dutch Christians.
2731635	Caspar Barlaeus writes a Latin poem in praise of Menasseh, published in "De creatione problemata". This was amongst other things the reason why in the Netherlands, as was the case in other places, Jewish books were almost censored. Fortunately, this did not happen. What did happen was that the governors decided that they should give permission before any Jewish book could be published.
2741636	Rembrandt makes an etching representing Menasseh. This shows how widely known Menasseh already was at the age of 32 in non-Jewish communities.
2751639	Menasseh is appointed third Rabbin in the Rabbinate of the three Sephardic communities, united this year.
276Discord in the Rabbinate led up to Menasseh's excommunication for one day and he was not allowed to preach for one year. That is probably why he decided to emmigrate to Brazil, but this plan falls through.
2771642	Menasseh is appointed head of the Jesjiwah (School of the Talmud), founded by two brothers, Abraham and Isaac Pereira.
278Menasseh delivers a speech during the visit of the Prince of Orange, Frederik Hendrik and Mary, Queen of England to the synagogue at the Houtgracht.
2791644	The printing office of Menasseh passes into the hands of Ella Aboab, probably due to financial problems. Menasseh, however, stays on as a corrector.
2801646	The management of the printing office passes to Menasseh's son Joseph, and after his death in 1648 to his second son Samuel. In 1652 Menasseh takes charge again.
2811655	Menasseh leaves for England. There he argued his cause for the formal recognition of Jewish settlement in England. This action was preceded in 1651 by an open letter to the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.
2821656	Menasseh publishes in Londen his well known book "Vindiciae Judaeorum", (Vindication of the Jews), which was to influence the later Jewish emancipation movement tremendously.
2831657	Without having seen any direct results of his efforts with the English authorities, Menasseh dies on 20th November 1657 at Middelburg, where he had buried the mortal remains of his son Samuel, who died in England.
284
285http://cf.uba.uva.nl/en/collections/rosenthaliana/menasseh/biography.html
286
287-------------------------------------
288
289Cromwell and the ‘readmission’ of the Jews to England, 1656
290By Barbara Coulton, Lancaster University
291
292http://www.olivercromwell.org/jews.pdf
293
294On 5 February 1906 a banquet was held by the Anglo-Jewish Historical Society at the
295Hotel Grand Central in London, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Whitehall
296Conference of December 1655. At that time 4 February was observed, mistakenly, as
297‘Resettlement Day’. A letter had been received from Theodore Roosevelt who had
298addressed the sister society in America on the 250th anniversary of Jewish settlement
299there. A toast to the king was proposed by the chief secretary for Ireland, James
300Boyce: ‘At no time is this toast a mere formality in the Anglo-Jewish community, but
301tonight this great festival of Religious Liberty invests it with special significance.’
302Without apparent irony, the loyal toast prefaced speeches in praise of Oliver
303Cromwell, the saviour of Anglo-Jewry, and the ‘great moral awakening’ of which the
304Whitehall Conference was a manifestation. The banquet, the idea of the society’s
305founder Lucien Wolf, was in honour of two men: ‘Cromwell, the great-hearted
306Protector, and Menasseh ben Israel [of Amsterdam], the devoted Jew.’ They were
307‘twin champions of a wronged people, and heralds of a free state’. Speeches by Chief
308Rabbi Adler and Lord Rothschild followed, Rothschild speaking of ‘the Jews who
309have lived in England and become Englishmen’. Sir Edward Sassoon MP, a
310Sephardic Jew, paid tribute to ‘that sagacious and far-seeing statesman, Cromwell’.
311Robert Crewe-Milnes, earl of Crewe, a descendant of seventeenth-century London
312Jews, described Cromwell as ‘no doubt part idealist and part man of business’; he
313praised him for his treatment of the Jews. Another speaker, Dr G.W. Prothero, evoked
314the image of Cromwell, like the Israelites of yore, going into battle ‘with the name of
315Jehovah on his lips’. J. M. Hillesum of Amsterdam sent a message congratulating the
316Society, ‘from Holland, the classic land of religious liberty’.1
317
318
3191
320 Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England [hereafter JHSE],
321V(1908), pp. 276-98. The Jews had been expelled from England in 1290.
322
323
324The Jewish Historical Society of England was inaugurated in 1893 at another eatingplace,
325the rooms of the Maccabeans, a dining club founded two years earlier by
326Jewish professional men. In an early address Lucien Wolf declared that the tracing of
327Anglo-Jewish history was a religious and moral task, ‘for it stands in the same
328relation to a community that personal repute does to an individual.’ There would also
329be a search for founding fathers. The Whitehall Conference was assembled by
330Cromwell to discuss readmission of Jews, which he favoured, hence his role,
331acclaimed in 1906, as ‘saviour’. Numerous modern accounts refer to readmission as
332an event of 1656, the consequence of the mission of Rabbi Menasseh, but this version
333is now in need of revision. In fact, Lucien Wolf’s pioneer research revealed the
334existence and importance of a community of crypto-Jews already in seventeenthcentury
335London: ‘they have a right to be honoured as the founders of our
336Community’. At the same time, Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler paid ‘Homage’ to
337Menasseh ben Israel whom he claimed ‘as the virtual founder of our London
338community’. In 1896 the then president of the Society, Joseph Jacobs, commented on
339Wolf’s paper ‘The First English Jew’: ‘Without detracting at all from the high
340services rendered by the Amsterdam rabbi who was the spiritual founder of the
341London Hebrew Community, Mr Wolf has shown that Antonio Fernandez Carvajal [a
342crypto-Jew] must be regarded as its material and actual founder.’ Thus were
343established alternative narratives which will be seen to pervade Anglo-Jewish
344historiography; these will have to be disentangled.2
345
346
3472
348 JHSE, I (1893-94), pp. 1-7, 47, 66-7, 160-1; JHSE, III, p. 13 (Joseph Jacobs’s
349address). 
350
351
352Rabbi Adler compared Menasseh to Moses: neither reached the promised land, but
353this was no failure; he went so far as to claim that Menasseh ‘obtained for his brethren
354the privilege of readmission into England’. This interpretation will be shown to be
355inaccurate, yet, over a century later, it is still advanced, for example by Amy Sturgis:
356‘Menasseh ben Israel fought for and won de facto Jewish readmission into England’.
357A major historian in this mode of interpretation, centred on the millenarian ideology
358of Menasseh ben Israel, is David Katz. Katz has lamented the fact that ‘mainstream
359English historians consistently demonstrate a blind spot about Jewish themes’, but his
360own preoccupation with ‘Jewish themes’ and with philosemitism has led him to give
361undue emphasis to that aspect of the ‘readmission’. ‘It is quite clear that motives of
362economics or trade had little to do with the readmission of the Jews to England’, he
363has stated; and, ‘without the firm basis of philo-Semitism … the mission of Menasseh
364ben Israel would have been an utter failure’. This attitude has reinforced what we may
365call the Menasseh narrative. At a conference on Menasseh in the 1980s some speakers
366referred to ‘our rabbi’ with a passion like that of Rabbi Adler in the 1890s. The recent
367editors of Menasseh’s Hope of Israel sum up that rabbi’s role in a way reminiscent of
368Rabbi Adler: Menasseh ‘led the Jewish people out of their isolation, heralded the
369imminent coming of a new era, and set out the divine plan for the destiny of the
370House of Israel which would be one day, according to Isaiah, the light of the world.’3
371The year 1656 was indeed an important one for Jews in England, but the other
372narrative, that of the crypto-Jews, needs to be reinstated; Cromwell’s role must also
373be considered.
374
375
3763
377 A. Sturgis, ‘Prophecies and Politics: Millenarians, Rabbis and the Jewish Indian
378Theory’, The Seventeenth Century XIV (1999), p. 21; D. Katz, in Tony Kushner
379(ed.), The Jewish Heritage in British History (London, 1992), p. 61; D. Katz, The
380Jews in the History of England 1485-1850 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 109, 114; Y.
381Kaplan, H. Mechoulan and R.H Popkin (eds), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World
382(Leiden, 1989); Henry Mechoulan and Gerard Nahon, Menasseh Ben Israel. The
383Hope of Israel Oxford, 1987), p. 95.
384
385
386The context for the actions of Cromwell and Menasseh involved Protestant
387millenarianism and Jewish messianism, religious toleration, and the good of the state.
388Belief in the millennium and in the Second Coming of Christ was long-standing but
389received fresh impetus after the Reformation. A leading millenarian in seventeenthcentury
390England was the Cambridge scholar Joseph Mede (1586-1638) whose
391interpretation of the Book of Revelation traced the historical application of
392apocalyptic prophecy. Other Biblical works such as Zechariah and Daniel contained
393passages which Mede applied to the Jews, comparing their expected conversion to
394that of Paul; their conversion would be a witness to Christ, and a reproof to the church
395of Rome; it would herald or coincide with the Second Coming. On the other hand,
396some Jews believed that their messiah would appear when they had been scattered
397throughout the world; they would be gathered again and led to Sion; Menasseh ben
398Israel held this belief. The return of the Jews to England was important to both sides:
399the new chosen people, Protestant England, would convert them; their reaching
400England would help the progress of Jewish messianism. (The two aims were of course
401incompatible.) Another factor in the acceptance of the Jews was the interest of puritan
402divines in the Hebrew language and its religious literature. In an extreme form this
403could lead to ‘judaising’ practices such as observing the Jewish sabbath; in general it
404took the form of ‘philosemitism’, examples of which will be cited.4
405
406
4074
408 R.G. Clouse, ‘The Rebirth of Millenarianism’, in Peter Toon (ed.), Puritans, the
409Millennium and the Future of Israel (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 56-65; The Jewish
410Encyclopaedia (12 vols, New York, 1901-6), under ‘Messiah’ and ‘Manasseh [sic]
411ben Israel’; D. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England
4121603-1655 (Oxford, 1982)
413
414
415Despite the lack of information about Cromwell’s early life, the period is not an entire
416vacuum. John Morrill, in an essay on ‘The making of Oliver Cromwell’, has identified
417a preacher referred to in a letter of Cromwell’s in 1636: ‘Dr Welles, a man for
418goodness and industry, and ability to do good every way, not short of any I know in
419England; and I am persuaded that sithence his coming, the Lord hath by him wrought
420much good amongst us’. This was Dr Walter Welles, preacher at Godmanchester near
421Huntingdon, who had studied at Leiden and was an acquaintance or friend of two very
422influential foreigners in England, Samuel Hartlib and John Dury. (Dury’s father
423Robert had been minister to the Scottish church at Leiden; John had studied there and
424at Sedan.) These reformists had among their patrons Cromwell’s kinsman Oliver St
425John. It was in a letter to Mrs St John in 1638 that Cromwell referred to his own
426‘conversion’ (at a date unspecified): ‘I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me …
427pray for me, that he who hath begun a good work would perfect it to the day of
428Christ’. That last phrase is suggestive of the millenarian beliefs shared by many,
429including members of the Hartlib-Dury circle. Writing of this group, Hugh TrevorRoper
430has pointed out that Cromwell’s intellectual world was largely theirs; while
431Charles Webster has illustrated Cromwell’s support for the group’s plans for
432educational reform, particularly the founding of Durham College. Webster also shows
433the importance of millenarianism to reformers and puritans.5
434
435
4365
437 John Morrill (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Harlow, 1990),
438pp. 38-40, 34; W.C. Abbott (ed.), The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell
439(4 vols, Cambridge, Mass., 1937-47), I, 80-81, 96-7; Dictionary of National
440Biography [hereafter DNB], ‘Robert Durie’, ‘John Durie’, ‘Hartlib’; R.L.Greaves
441and R.Zaller (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth
442Century (3 vols, Brighton, 1982-84), ‘Dury’, Hartlib’; H.R. Trevor-Roper,
443Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (2nd edn, London, 1972), p. 281;
444Webster, The Great Instauration (London, 1975), pp. 233, 19-31.
445
446
447The lawyer John Sadler, closely associated with the Hartlib-Dury circle, was, like
448Dury, a key figure in the story of his friend Cromwell and the Jews. In his 1649 tract,
449Rights of the Kingdom, he declared his millenarian belief in the fifth monarchy
450prophesied by Daniel, the reign of Christ:
451
452I did, and still doe, believe there may, and shall, be such a Monarchy ere long,
453through All the World … I hope and believe, that God will come, and appear,
454ere long, to dwell in the World … I could desire Him rather (if He pleased) in
455the still quiet Voyce, then in the rushing Wind, or Fire, or Thunder Claps.
456
457Sadler, a noted Hebraist, was associated with the phenomenon of ‘philosemitism’.
458This was also part of the Hartlib-Dury programme, described by Richard Popkin as
459aimed at making ‘Christians more aware of what Jews actually believed and practised.
460This, in turn, would make Christianity “less offensive” to the Jews.’ An Amsterdam
461rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel, was nominated for a chair at the proposed Jewish college
462in London (an unfulfilled design), part of a reformed university according to the
463Hartlib scheme. As Popkin remarks, it seems odd that the rabbi should have
464considered joining a venture aimed at converting Jews, but he had difficulties with his
465own synagogue, partly because of his association with Christians. While in Holland in
466the 1640s Dury, who wished for the conversion of the Jews as well as the
467reconciliation of all Protestants, met Menasseh; he corresponded with him in 1649 on
468reports that the legendary ‘lost tribes’ of Israel had been identified in the Americas;
469this was important to the messianic dream of Menasseh and other Jews. Another
470philo-semite, the English baptist divine Henry Jessey, addressed his book The Glory
471and Salvation of Jehuda and Israel to the ‘dear’ and ‘eminent’ nation of the Jews, in
472particular Menasseh. Jessey drew on rabbinic and kabbalistic prophecies to prove that
473these authorities supported Christian views about the Messiah; he believed that the
474Jews would be converted by 1658. He corresponded regularly with Menasseh who
475sent him a copy of his book Esperanca de Israel – The Hope of Israel; this work, also
476drawing on prophecy, aimed to show ‘that the day of the promised [Jewish] Messiah
477unto us doth draw near.’ Both books were published in 1650.6
478
479
4806
481 John Sadler, Rights of the Kingdom (1649), p. 49; Richard H. Popkin, ‘Hartlib,
482Dury and the Jews’, in M. Greengrass, M. Leslie and T. Raylor (eds), Samuel
483Hartlib and Universal Reformation (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 119, 123-5; E.G.E.
484Van Der Wall, ‘A Philo-Semitic Millenarian … Henry Jessey’, in D. Katz and J.
485Israel (eds), Sceptics, Millenarians and Jews (Leiden, 1990), pp. 161-84; D. Katz,
486‘Henry Jessey and the Jews’, in Kaplan et al, Menasseh Ben Israel and His World,
487pp. 117-38; Lucien Wolf (ed.), Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell
488(London, 1901), xvii, xxvi.
489
490
491Cromwell (guided by ‘providence’) was now a leading figure in national affairs. At a
492meeting of the General Council of the Army in November 1648 he dwelt on God’s
493part in current events, with examples from the history of the Jews of the Old
494Testament. ‘The end is to deliver this nation from oppression and slavery, to
495accomplish that work that God hath carried us on in, to establish our hopes of an end
496of justice and righteousness in it.’ That same month he advised his friend and kinsman
497Colonel Robert Hammond, governor of the Isle of Wight and custodian of the king:
498‘seek to know the mind of God in all that chain of providence’. In another letter to
499Hammond he stated: ‘I have waited for the day to see union and right understanding
500between the godly people (Scots, English, Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians,
501Independents, Anabaptists and all).’ In December 1649, following the regicide and the
502setting up of a republic, Cromwell wrote from Ireland to his ‘very worthy friend’ John
503Sadler: ‘That a Divine Presence hath gone along with us in the late great transactions
504in this nation, I believe most good men are sensible of.’ He hoped for peace and for
505God’s ‘bringing in that Kingdom of glory and peace which He hath promised.’ (That
506promise was to be found in the New Testament, echoing Daniel: ‘the Son of man shall
507come in the glory of his Father with his angels’.) More apocalyptic prophecies could
508be found in the Book of Revelation. It was in his 1649 letter that Cromwell offered
509Sadler the office of Chief Justice of Munster, which he declined; instead, he became
510master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in August 1650, a position which would
511later prove helpful to the Jews in London. 7
512
513
5147
515 Christopher Hill, God’s Englishman (London, 1970), pp. 220-8; Abbott, Writings
516and Speeches, I, 540-51, 696-9; II, 186-7; DNB and Greaves and Zaller,
517Biographical Dictionary, ‘Sadler’.
518
519
520In that year Menasseh dedicated the Latin version of his book, Spes Israelis, to the
521new government of England and to Cromwell: ‘it is made known to me, and to others
522of our Nation [the Jewish community in Holland], by them who are so happy as near
523at hand, to observe your apprehensions, that you do vouchsafe to help us, not onely by
524your prayers’. Dury distributed copies of this Latin version, while an English
525translation was made by Moses Wall, millenarian friend of Hartlib. Cromwell’s
526personal involvement is attested later in a petition (on behalf of Menasseh’s widow)
527by John Sadler to Richard Cromwell:
528
529by some letters of your late royall father and others of note in this nation some
530of their synagogs were encouraged to send hither one of their cheife rabbines,
531Menasseh Ben Israel, for admittance and some freedome of trade in some of
532these ilands.
533
534The importance of the Jewish community to Dutch commercial ascendancy in the
535seventeenth century has been shown by Jonathan Israel; from 1648 they were ‘one of
536the vital components in the imposing edifice of Holland’s global commerce.’ In the
537spring of 1651 an important embassy went to Holland, in hopes of effecting a close
538Protestant alliance. At this time, as Timothy Venning points out, Cromwell was not in
539full charge of policy, but ‘as Commander-in-Chief he had the major responsibility for
540national security, and was in control of the men who would have to carry out the
541Rump’s decisions.’8
542
543
5448
545 Wolf, Menasseh’s Mission, xxvii, lxxxvii, p. 4; Mechoulan and Nahon (eds), The
546Hope of Israel; Jonathan I. Israel, Empires and Entrepots. The Dutch, the Spanish
547Monarchy and the Jews, 1585-1713 (London, 1990), 418; Timothy Venning,
548Cromwellian Foreign Policy (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 38-9.
549
550
551The ambassadors to the United Provinces were Walter Strickland, who had been the
552agent there of the Long Parliament, and Oliver St John, a political lawyer with no
553experience of foreign affairs. Their secretary was John Thurloe, who had several
554meetings with Menasseh. The purpose of the embassy, St John told the General
555Assembly of the States General, was ‘to enter into a more intimate alliance, and
556nearer union, whereby a more real and intrinsic interest of each other may be
557contracted for their mutual good.’ Several historians have stressed economic motives,
558but Steven Pincus notes that ‘those who played the largest role in formulating the
559Rump’s foreign policy at this stage were committed to a godly and republican
560alliance.’ As evidence for the ideological motivation for the mission he comments on
561the choice of Oliver St John: ‘His religious commonplace book, his patronage of
562Samuel Hartlib, and his letters to Oliver Cromwell leave little doubt that he was a
563Protestant apocalyptic.’ The proposed alliance would bring political and religious as
564well as commercial benefits. Jonathan Israel comments: ‘Everywhere there was
565debate and discussion over both the economic and religious implications of Jewish
566admission.’ He sets the English initiative in a broader context: ‘This was precisely the 
567time when the influx of Marrano refugees from Spain, and Sephardi exiles from
568Brazil, into Holland, was at its height and Dutch Sephardi Jewry at its most
569preoccupied with schemes for Jewish colonization.’9
570 The presence of a Sephardic
571merchant centre in England would benefit Dutch Jewry; it would also help English
572commerce – as Cromwell well knew.
573
574
5759
576 DNB and Greaves and Zaller, Biographical Dictionary, ‘Strickland’, ‘St John’,
577‘Thurloe’; Steven C.A. Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism (Cambridge, 1996),
578pp. 24-5; Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550-1750
579(Oxford, 1989), pp. 154, 158-9: this author differentiates between ‘New Christian’
580descendants of medieval Iberian Jews, and ‘Marranos’ – ostensible Christians who
581were crypto-Jews: ibid, pp. 3-4.
582
583
584Since before 1640 there had been established in London a small colony of Sephardic
585Jews, marranos or crypto-Jews, passing as Spanish merchants. The leader of the
586London group was Antonio Fernandez Carvajal whose history began with his leaving
587Portugal, possibly for the Canaries; trading interests brought him to London where he
588settled in the 1630s. By 1643 he had a position of importance, with a house and
589warehouse in Leadenhall Street; he traded with his own ships to the East and West
590Indies, Brazil, and other remote regions; his agents operated in all the mercantile
591centres of Europe. In 1643 he petitioned the House of Lords for payment for a
592shipment of gunpowder from Amsterdam; in 1649 he was one of five merchants to
593whom the Council of State gave the army contract for corn. As well as exotic imports,
594his trade in British manufactures brought in huge amounts of bullion, at a rate of
595£100,000 a year; this was particularly attractive to the government. Following S.R.
596Gardiner (a fellow-member of the Council of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Society),
597Lucien Wolf commented: ‘It was really the deficiency of bullion in the country which,
598as early as 1643 … suggested to Cromwell the desirability of settling Jewish
599merchants in London.’ The presence of Carvajal and his associates in London,
600worshipping as Jews in the privacy of their own homes, adds a further dimension to
601the question of the ‘readmission’ of Jews to England. (When in 1645 Carvajal and his
602household were denounced for not attending church, proceedings were quashed.)10
603
604
60510
606 Lucien Wolf, ‘The First English Jew’, JHSE, II (1894-5), pp. 14-23; Wolf,
607‘Cromwell’s Jewish Intelligencers’, in Cecil Roth (ed.), Essays in Jewish History
608(London, 1934), p. 104; Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism, pp. 26-8.
609
610
611It was possibly at the time of the embassy to Holland that Menasseh was encouraged
612to draft his ‘Humble Addresses’ for a proposed visit to England. As Lucien Wolf
613observed, ‘the faithfulness and profitableness of the Jewish people were likely to
614weigh more with Cromwell than the relation of their dispersion to the Messianic age.’
615The case for readmission was argued almost exclusively on grounds of political
616expediency. Although Cromwell appears to have shared Protestant millena rian hopes,
617his immediate concern was to legalise Jewish residence in England. That would have
618come about as a consequence of the proposed alliance with Holland; but negotiations
619broke down. Soon after the return of the ambassadors to England the Council of State
620received a letter from Menasseh, the text of which does not survive. Anti-Dutch
621propaganda also followed the return; the Orangist support for Charles Stuart was
622perfidious, but God’s mercy was soon evident in Charles’s defeat at Worcester on 3
623September 1651. Ralph Josselin, an Essex clergyman, wrote in his diary on 21
624September: ‘The Lord is to be feared for his judgments which he executeth, when the
625Hollander rejoyced in the false news of our fall, the enemy fell at Worcester ... oh
626feare, England, and honour god, least he turne the wheele upon thee also’. Only two
627days earlier he had expressed a millenarian belief (although in no way a radical): ‘I
628am perswaded the present dispensacon is the breaking in pieces the kingdoms of the
629earth which god is entring on, and some time when this worke is advanced, will the
630Jewes appeare; and then comes in the happy season of the flocke.’ He shared the
631belief that 1656 might be the apocalyptic year.11
632
633
63411
635 S.R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (4 vols, London,
6361903), I, 329; Wolf, Menasseh’s Mission, xxx-xl; Alan Macfarlane (ed.), The
637Diary of Ralph Josselin 1616-1683 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 257, 360.
638
639
640After Worcester, as John Dury explained to a newly-arrived German diplomat in
641September 1651, Cromwell alone held the direction of political and military affairs.
642Hermann Mylius, representing the count of Oldenburg, kept a diary while he waited
643for the Council of State to deal with his affair (renewal of a safeguard of neutrality).
644He had documents to be translated from Latin, which Dury undertook to do, discreetly
645so as not to transgress protocol: ‘as an Ecclesiastical Person who does not meddle in
646secular matters, he also avoids affairs of state.’ Dury was now in charge of the library
647at St James’s House (Palace), with lodgings there, across the park from Whitehall.
648Like Hartlib he was part of an unofficial ‘secretariat’ which helped with translation of
649official documents. Another visitor to London was Roger Williams, founder of the
650colony at Providence, Rhode Island, friend of the native American Indians, and a
651proponent of complete religious toleration, in the hope that non-Christians would be
652won to participate in God’s grace and mercy. Williams was staying near Charing
653Cross (possibly with his old friend Sir Henry Vane the younger). He wrote in April
6541652: ‘It hath pleased the Generall himself to send for me and to entertain many
655Discourses with me at Severall Times’; later he referred to Cromwell’s interest in the
656American Indians. In 1652 Williams was re-working an earlier book, in response to
657further criticism by John Cotton of Boston. The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy
658reiterated the case for religious freedom. In the preface addressed to the parliament of
659the commonwealth, Williams cited the case of Holland: 
660
661State-necessity compelled the States of Holland to a prudent permission of
662different consciences … Those prudent and prosperous States have gone far
663… in taking off the yoak from the necks of Dutch and English, French yea,
664Popish and Jewish consciences. For all which (though but Mercy, though but
665Justice and humanity to fellow mankind) he that runs may read the truth of
666Gods never failing Promises, Blessed are the Mercifull for they shall obtain
667Mercy
668
669Why should England not follow this precedent: ‘which may make your faces more to
670shine … with a glory far transcending all your fairest neighbours Copies’? It is likely
671that this issue was touched on in the discourses with Cromwell, since the Dutch
672ambassadors were then in England and the mission of Menasseh was still under active
673consideration. In November 1652, with John Thurloe now secretary of state, a pass
674was issued by the Council ‘for Menasseh ben Israel, a Rabbi of the Jewish nation,
675well reported of for his learning and good affection to the State, to come from
676Amsterdam’. The failure of the Anglo-Dutch negotiations and the ensuing war
677delayed the mission. 12
678
679
68012
681 Leo Miller, John Milton and the Oldenburg Safeguard (New York, 1985), pp. 49-
68254; DNB, ‘Williams’, ‘Vane’; The Complete Writings of Roger Williams (7 vols,
683New York, 1963), III, 92-4, IV, 8-10; G.W. La Fantasie et al., (eds), The
684Correspondence of Roger Williams (2 vols, 1988), I, 358, II, 409; Calendar of
685State Papers Domestic [hereafter CSPD] 1652-53, p. 38.
686
687
688According to newsletters of July 1653 there were consultations in the new parliament
689(the Nominated Assembly, nicknamed Barebone’s Parliament) ‘for bringing the Jews
690again into England, especially in hopes of converting them.’ John Thurloe wrote, on
69129 July, that among the motions in the House were some that ‘the Jews might be
692admitted to trade as well as in Holland; … but there is nothing yet done therein’. This
693parliament proved a disappointment to those hoping for a godly reformation; it
694resigned on 12 December. Four days later Cromwell accepted the role and title of
695Lord Protector; he would still need the approval of a conservative Council of State for
696measures he wanted to adopt, such as admission of Jews; there was also anti-semitism
697in London with which he would have to contend. In 1653 James Howell wrote to a
698friend at Amsterdam: ‘touching Judaism, some corners of our city smell as rank of it
699as doth yours there.’ The next move came from Amsterdam Jewry when Manuel
700Martinez (David Abrabanel) Dormido came to London in the autumn of 1654; he was
701accompanied by Menasseh’s son Samuel. Jonathan Israel describes Dormido as ‘an
702influential figure in the western Sephardic world’. He may already have served
703Cromwell by passing intelligence from Amsterdam during the Anglo-Dutch war
704(which ended in April 1654). Dormido presented two petitions, endorsed by
705Cromwell: ‘His Highnes is pleased in an especiall manner to recommend these … to
706the speedy consideracon of the Councell, that the Peticion may receive all due
707satisfaction, and withall convenient speed.’ The endorsements bear the signature of
708John Sadler, then acting as private secretary to Cromwell. One petition was personal,
709concerning Dormido’s attempt to get compensation for losses in Brazil; the Council
710declared that it could not act as Dormido was a Dutch national; Cromwell later wrote
711on his behalf to John IV of Portugal. The second petition was for admission of Jews –
712Dormido declared himself to be ‘of the Hebrew nation’ – ‘to be dwellers here with the
713same eaquallnesse and conveniences which your inland subjects doe enjoy’. This was
714rejected by the Council as unlawful, but Dormido remained in England. Another
715member of Carvajal’s group, Simon de Caceres, helped Cromwell in 1654 in his
716enterprise in the West Indies, furnishing Thurloe with ‘notes on Jamaica’ and offering
717to engage young Jews secretly for an attack on Chile (an offer not taken up). In July
7181655 Cromwell granted denizenship to Carvajal and his two sons; that December
719Carvajal asked the Protector to order his men-of-war to safeguard his ships.13
720
721
72213
723 ‘Memoranda concerning the Resettlement of the Jews in England’, JHSE, I, p. 47;
724Wolf, ‘Crypto-Jews Under the Commonwealth’, ibid., p. 56; Jonathan Israel, ‘The
725Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement’, in Kaplan et al, Menasseh Ben Israel
726and His World, pp. 154-60; CSPD 1654, pp. 393, 407; Wolf, Menasseh’s Mission,
727xxxvi, and ‘The First English Jew’, JHSE, II, p. 45; CSPD 1661-62, p. 214; T.
728Birch (ed.), Collection of State Papers of John Thurloe (7 vols, London, 1742), IV,
72961-2; CSPD 1655-56, pp. 60, 161.
730
731
732Menasseh arrived in England in September 1655; there is no evidence of contact with
733Carvajal. With him were his wife, his son Samuel, and certain Dutch Jewish
734merchants. A contemporary described him as ‘of middle stature and inclining to
735fatness … his demeanour graceful and comely, his habit plain and decent, he
736commanded an aweful reverence’. The English project was particularly important to
737him, and he had a sense of destiny to equal Cromwell’s: ‘the Lord who often works
738by naturall meanes, might have design’d, and made choice of me, for bringing about
739this work’. He was given lodgings in the fashionable and expensive Strand
740(presumably as a guest of the English government) where he received supporters,
741some of them belonging to the Hartlib circle. John Dury was absent on the continent,
742but he was kept in touch with events by Hartlib, then living at Charing Cross. John
743Sadler probably served as intermediary between the rabbi and the Protector. When
744Menasseh first visited Whitehall, with his ‘Humble Addresses’, Cromwell was not
745present; the Council instructed its clerk ‘to go forth and receive the said books’; other
746business was then discussed. But a fortnight later Cromwell brought to the Council a
747petition ‘which had been handed to him by the Jewish Rabbi, in which were set forth
748categorically the several “graces and favours” by which it was proposed that the
749Readmission of the Jewes should be effected.’ As Gardiner pointed out: ‘All that was
750required for the toleration of the Jews was the laying aside of ill-founded prejudices.’
751Cromwell apparently had another conference with Menasseh when a committee of the
752Council of State and others, mostly divines, were present. It was agreed that
753Menasseh’s proposals should be taken into consideration. 14
754
755
75614
757 Rev. Dr Adler, ‘A Homage to Menasseh Ben Israel’, JHSE, I (1893-4), pp. 25-42;
758Cecil Roth, ‘New Light on the Resettlement’, ibid., XI, p. 119 and n. 8; Wolf,
759‘Menasseh Ben Israel’s Study in London’, JHSE, III (1896-8), pp. 144-50; Popkin,
760‘Hartlib, Dury and the Jews’, p. 128; Wolf, Menasseh’s Mission, xxix, xliv, p. 38;
761Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate IV, 18; II, 3; Abbott, Writings and
762Speeches, IV, 45
763
764
765The petition presented in November by Menasseh ‘on behalf of the Hebrew nation’
766asked that the Jews be accepted as citizens under the protection of Cromwell; that
767they be allowed public synagogues, their own cemetery, and the practice of their
768Mosaic law; that they be granted freedom of trade; that all laws against the Jews be
769revoked. Cromwell wanted immediate consideration of the petition so seven members
770of the Council were asked to report, which they did next day. The calendared petition
771is followed by the ‘report’. Lucien Wolf and Samuel Gardiner, who were both
772studying the documents in the late 1890s, agreed that the heading was a statement of
773the motion, not a recommendation: ‘That the Jews deserving it may be admitted into
774this nation to trade and trafficke and dwel amongst us as providence shall give
775occasion’. The points of discussion minuted were not promising: Menasseh’s
776arguments (depending on prophecies of the Jewish messiah) were held to be sinful to
777Christians; there would be the danger of seducing people in matters of religion; open
778Jewish worship would be scandalous; Jewish marriage practices, and divorce, were
779unlawful; trade by native merchants would be harmed. The committee could not in
780conscience make a favourable decision; if the Jews were admitted there would have to
781be stringent regulations. To advance the discussion, Cromwell ordered the president
782of the Council, Henry Lawrence, to meet with three other members, those most likely
783to support him, Lisle, Wolseley and Pickering, to choose ‘a certain number of
784persons’ to meet with the committee at Whitehall on 4 December: ‘to the intent some
785proposalls made to his Highness in reference to the nation of the Jewes may be
786considered’. So the famous Whitehall Conference was convened.15
787
788
78915
790 CSPD 1655-56, pp. 15-16; Wolf, Menasseh’s Mission, xlvi, lxxxiv-v; Gardiner,
791Commonwealth and Protectorate IV, 13-14
792
793
794There was considerable popular excitement when the Conference met at Whitehall on
795the first Tuesday in December. The assembly included various members of the
796Council; Walter Strickland (but not Oliver St John); Chief Justices Sir John Glynne
797and William Steele; merchant aldermen, and Sir Christopher Pack, a leading
798mercantile authority; sixteen divines including Henry Jessey, whose ‘Narrative’ is our
799main source of information on the Conference. Despite the presence of many
800supporters of the Jews, and the attendance of Cromwell, a decision in their favour was
801not reached, apart from an initial legal ruling by Glynne and Steele: that, since the
802banishment of 1290 was an exercise of royal prerogative and not an act of parliament,
803‘there was no law which forbad the Jews’ return into England.’ The second question
804formulated by Cromwell was: ‘If it be lawful, then upon what terms is it meet to
805receive them?’ There were arguments in favour of readmission: the debt owed by
806Christians to the Jews, brethren of the same spiritual descent from the patriarchs;
807common humanity; sympathy for Jews suffering in various countries; the special role
808of England as a Protestant nation which could be instrumental in converting the Jews.
809Jessey wrote that some, ‘though desiring heartily the Jews conversion’, feared that
810they would subvert many, as the quakers and ranters were doing. During the meetings
811on 7 and 12 December the feeling of the clergy was apparently against Menasseh; so
812Cromwell added more Judeophiles, notably Hugh Peters who had advocated the cause
813of the Jews as early as 1647. At an extra meeting on 18 December, open to the public,
814some merchants protested against any concessions, fearing that English trade would
815suffer, but others argued that the possible lowering of prices of commodities to be
816exported would benefit English manufacture. A newly-drafted tract by the lawyer
817William Prynne inflamed anti-Jewish feeling. After private discussions were
818conducted a proposal was made by Jessey that Jews should be admitted only to
819decayed ports and towns and should pay double customs. If that resolution had been
820voted in the crypto-Jews of London would be under threat. In Jessey’s account,
821Cromwell ‘professed that he had no engagement to the Jews, but only what the
822Scripture holds forth’. The preachers had not helped him ‘as to conscience’; he would
823do nothing rashly ‘and had much need of all their prayers, that the Lord would direct
824them [Protector and Council], so as may be to his glory, and to the good of the
825nation.’ So the Whitehall Conference was dismissed without coming to a decision. 16
826
827
82816
829 [Henry Jessey], A Narrative of the late Proceedings at Whitehall concerning the
830Jews (reprinted in Harleian Miscellany VI, (London, 1810), pp. 445-53); Wolf,
831Menasseh’s Mission, xlvii-liv; DNB, ‘Hugh Peters’; Albert M. Hyamson, A History
832of the Jews in England (2nd ed., London, 1928), pp. 149-61; Katz, Jews in the
833History of England, pp. 119-27
834
835
836The Conference caused a stir, with information leaking before it ended. John Evelyn’s
837diary entry on 14 December: ‘Now were the Jewes admitted’, must refer to the legal
838ruling. An Admiralty commissioner at Portsmouth, Captain Francis Willoughby,
839wrote on 10 December to a colleague in London: ‘I observe the great business of the
840Jewes is under consideration’; he was concerned ‘whether a nation shall be suffered
841by a law to live among us to blaspheme Christ.’ On 17 December he wrote: ‘It is a
842business of no small concern; they are a people to whom many glorious promises are
843made, but they are as full of blasphemy as any under the sun; a self seeking
844generation’. On 31 December a royalist intelligencer commented on the latest rumour:
845‘The Jews, we hear, will be admitted by way of connivancy, though the generality
846oppose.’ Ambassadors reported on the issue, Peter Coyet to Charles X in Sweden, for
847example. On 7 December he wrote of the petition ‘from some Jews, led by Rabbi Ben
848Israel of Amsterdam … in the hope that this may lead to their conversion, which is
849earnestly prayed for.’ On 14 December: ‘The question of giving the Jews liberty to
850trade has been debated for more than a week by the protector and his council’; and on
851the 28th: ‘No decision yet about the Jews. The protector proceeds very cautiously: the
852theologians strongly oppose it, from every pulpit.’ There was evidently concern in
853Holland that the economy there might be harmed; Menasseh was summoned by the
854Dutch ambassador Willem Nieupoort who reported home on 31 December that the
855rabbi had assured him ‘that he doth not desire any thing for the Jews in Holland, but
856only for such as sit in the inquisition in Spain and Portugal.’ The Tuscan envoy,
857Francesco Salvetti, seems to have had inside information, possibly from the Livorno
858Jew Raphael Supino, then in London and probably in contact with the marrano group.
859On 28 January 1656 Salvetti reported to the Grand Duke that the Jews ‘may meet
860privately in their houses, but they have not yet established a synagogue’. This must
861refer to the crypto-Jews whose anxiety had doubtless been aroused by the
862controversy. On 4 February Salvetti reported: ‘It is thought that the Protector will not
863make any declaration in their favour, but tacitly he will connive at their holding
864private conventicles, which they already do, in their houses to avoid public scandal.’
865(This was later taken to indicate ‘Resettlement’.)17
866
867
86817
869 E.S.de Beer (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (Oxford, 1959), p. 365; CSPD 1655-
87056, pp. 51, 57-8, 82; Michael Roberts (ed.), Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s
871Court 1655-1656 (Camden Society, 4th ser., XXXVI, 1988), pp. 215-24; Roth,
872‘New Light on the Resettlement’, JHSE, XI, pp. 120-4.
873
874
875Menasseh continued to place his hopes in the Protector, although others lost heart. We
876learn from his Vindiciae Judaeorum, written that spring in answer to Prynne’s
877Demurrer, that the rabbi’s companions had left England:
878
879Insomuch, that as yet, we have had no finall determination from his most
880Serene Highnesse. Wherefore those few Jewes that were here, despairing of
881our expected successe, departed hence. And others who desired to come
882hither, have quitted their hopes, and betaken themselves some to Italy, some to
883Geneva [Genova?], where that Commonwealth hath at this time, most freely
884granted them many, and great priviledges.
885
886 Menasseh prayed that God would influence ‘the mind of the Prince’, the Protector,
887and the Council to determine what would be best. He quoted Zephaniah, 3:
888‘Therefore, wait ye upon me, saith the Lord … I will gather them that are sorrowful
889for the solemn assembly’. He was still faithful to his Jewish messianic dream, but
890certain Christians had other hopes for the year 1656, calculating according to numbers
891in Daniel, or from the date of the Flood, 1656 years after Creation. (John Evelyn had a
892visit from the mathematician William Oughtred in 1655: ‘He had strong
893apprehensions of some extraordinary event to happen [in 1656] from the Calculation
894of coincidence with the Diluvian period … possibly to convert the Jewes by our
895Saviours visible appearance or to judge the world’.) Jessey wrote of Menasseh’s wait
896that ‘other great affairs being now in hand [such as war with Spain], and this being a
897business of very great concernment, no absolute answer is yet returned to him’; he
898dated his tract ‘vulgarly the first of April … but, according to the Holy Scripture, the
899fourteenth or fifteenth of Abib, the first month … at which time the Jews feast of
900passover was to be kept’. Menasseh signed his Vindiciae on 10 April ‘in the year from
901the creation 5416, and in the year, according to the vulgar account, 1656’.18
902
903
90418
905 D. Katz, ‘Henry Jessey and the Jews’, in Kaplan et al, Menasseh and His World,
906pp. 126-7; Jessey, Narrative, p. 451; William Prynne, A Short Demurrer to the
907Jews long discontinued Remitter into England (1656); Menasseh Ben Israel,
908Vindiciae Judaeorum (1656), reprinted in Wolf, Menasseh’s Mission, pp. 144-5; de
909Beer, Diary of John Evelyn, p. 362.
910
911
912What actually happened in 1656 was more prosaic, although some might have
913interpreted events as the work of providence. The crypto-Jewish group had tacit
914permission from Cromwell to worship privately, but their public persona was that of
915Spanish merchants – and England was at war with Spain, so their goods could be
916forfeit. An informer brought a case against one of the group, Antonio Robles, who
917declared: ‘I am a Portuguese Jew’, in a petition in March for restitution of his goods;
918this was granted by the Council in May. Investigations revealed that over twenty
919Jewish families lived in London, many of them resident for years. In view of the
920Robles affair, Carvajal and other leaders of the community, in conjunction for once
921with Menasseh, presented a second petition to the Protector, from the ‘Hebrews at
922Present Residing in this citty of London’; Abraham Israel Carvajal, Jahacob de
923Caceres, and four others signed, after Menasseh ben Israel. Although this has been
924claimed as the rabbi’s petition it did not echo that of November 1655; it was, rather, a
925formal request by the crypto-Jewish group who thanked Cromwell for the favour
926already granted, to worship privately in their own homes; they now prayed for
927protection in writing; they also wished to acquire their own burial place outside the
928city. Cromwell endorsed the Jews’ petition on 24 March, and again on 26 June, but
929there is no record of written permission. Nevertheless, events prove that two
930privileges were granted to the London group: permission for a religious meeting-place
931and for a burial ground. A large house in Creechurch Lane became a private
932synagogue; Carvajal was a leading ratepayer in the parish of St Katherine Cree; the
933‘superior landlord’ was the master of Magdalene College, Cambridge – John Sadler.
934The use to which the house was to be put was known to the parish authorities who
935mentioned in their accounts for 1656 work ‘in building the Jewes Synagogue’.
936Carvajal brought over from Hamburg a cousin, Moses Athias, to be chief minister or
937hazan. By the beginning of 1657 Carvajal and Caceres (as wardens or parnassim of
938the synagogue) had taken out a lease for a burial ground at Mile End. Apparently,
939Menasseh had no role in this community; he came to feel friendless among strangers.
940Some scholars have speculated about his personality. Cecil Roth described him as ‘the
941self-important, erudite, quarrelsome Amsterdam Rabbi’. S.R. Gardiner was more
942moderate in his description of the ‘enthusiastic but somewhat dreamy Amsterdam
943rabbi and physician who took the cause of all Judaism upon his shoulders’; he
944described Menasseh as being insensitive ‘to the danger of challenging public opinion
945by undue demonstrativeness.’ 19
946
947
94819
949 Wolf, Menasseh’s Mission, lx-lxviii, lxxxv-vi (petition of marranos), and ‘CryptoJews’,
950JHSE, I, pp. 61-8; CSPD 1655-56, pp. 227, 247, 274, 316, 325-6; A.M.
951Hyamson, The Sephardim of England 1492-1951 (London, 1951), pp. 12-19
952(including a contemporary account of the synagogue); Roth, ‘The Resettlement of
953the Jews’, in V.D. Lipman (ed.), Three Centuries of Anglo-Jewish History
954(Cambridge, 1961), pp. 1-25; S.R. Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate IV,
95512-16.
956
957
958The failure of Menasseh’s campaign leads to a consideration of the term
959‘readmission’: the rabbi’s petition of November 1655 asked for admission of Jews on
960an equal footing with native English citizens, public synagogues, rights to their own
961law code, and freedom to trade. Jews from various parts of the world, especially those
962subject to persecution, were meant to benefit. Following this definition we must
963concede that readmission was not achieved. This has been acknowledged by certain
964historians since Lucien Wolf. Albert Hyamson wrote in 1928 that ‘the goal to which
965Menasseh ben Israel … had directed his efforts … was unattained’. In 1957 Israel
966Finestein’s judgement was that the ‘readmission’ of the Jews ‘took the form of an
967acknowledgement … and an authorisation of their Jewish worship … There was no
968“recall” of the Jews’. The authorisation was granted, as we have seen, to the existing
969crypto-Jewish community. Two modern London rabbis sum up events following the
970Whitehall Conference: Cromwell ‘gave de facto permission to the existing marrano
971community … to continue undisturbed with its mode of worship. In this pragmatic
972way recognition of Jewish settlement was granted’. This narrative of Anglo-Jewry,
973beginning with the pragmatic Lucien Wolf, corrects the ‘Menasseh version’.20
974
975
97620 Hyamson, A History of the Jews in England, p. 166; I. Finestein, A Short History of
977Anglo-Jewry (London, 1957), p. 45; David J. Goldberg and John D. Rayner, The
978Jewish People (London, 1989), p. 123.
979
980
981To pick up a vital thread in the pattern of events we must return to December 1655.
982For five years Cromwell had shown a favourable attitude towards the Jews,
983recognising the mercantile advantages of their presence as well as religious reasons
984for welcoming them. Carvajal had been endenizened, and was at this time asking for
985protection for his ship coming from the Canaries – there is no suggestion that he allied
986himself to Menasseh. Cromwell’s responsibilities as head of state were augmented by
987his sense of being an agent of God’s will, and many people looked to 1656 as a year
988of apocalyptic importance. The divines at the Whitehall Conference proved unhelpful,
989but one divine was absent: John Dury. Early in 1654, Cromwell had sent him to the
990leaders of the Swiss cantons to continue his lifelong efforts at ‘procuring harmony and
991fraternal union in the profession of the truth’. Cromwell described him, in the papers
992of credence, as ‘that devout and learned man … minister of God’s word and dear to
993us’. Dury was now in Hesse, where he received from Samuel Hartlib a letter asking
994his views on the questions posed by Cromwell: was it lawful to admit Jews into a
995Christian state, and if so on what terms? Dury replied from ‘Cassel, in haste, Jan. 8th
996,
9971656’; a second letter followed. Dury addressed Cromwell’s questions: ‘I know none
998of the reformed churches or divines, who make their admission to be unlawful; but it
999is a work which the civil magistrate takes wholly into his consideration’. He cited
1000Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians at length, concerning lawful and expedient
1001actions. He concluded that Jews could be admitted into a Christian commonwealth,
1002but restraints should be imposed. Dury added a significant postscript: ‘Our state doth
1003wisely to go warily, and by degrees, in the business of receiving them. Menasseh Ben
1004Israel’s demands are great, and the use, which they [the Jews] make of great
1005privileges, is not much to their commendation here [in Germany], and elsewhere.’21
1006
1007
100821
1009 Abbott, Writings and Speeches, III, 236-8; S. Levy, ‘John Dury and the English
1010Jewry’, JHSE, IV, pp. 76-82; A Case of Conscience, Whether it be lawful to admit
1011Jews into a christian commonwealth? Resolved by Mr. John Dury: written to
1012Samuel Hartlib, esq., in Harleian Miscellany, VI, 438-444.
1013
1014
1015Dury’s letters would have helped Cromwell: they would have reinforced his caution
1016about Menasseh, while the advice about the lawfulness of admission with restraints
1017would also have reassured Cromwell that his favours to the crypto-Jews were justified
1018since Carvajal and his associates were discreet and unlikely to cause trouble. Dury
1019advised that there should be no blasphemy of Christ, nor attempts at proselytising, nor
1020dishonouring of any of the ordinances of Christianity. If this were achieved, ‘then the
1021first rule of expediency will be observed’. There should also be instruction of the Jews
1022in the Christian religion, but this issue seems in practice to have been sidestepped.
1023This treatment of the Jews would be a mark of Christian love and serve to the glory of
1024God. For their part, the Jews should live by themselves and worship in their own
1025tongue; and ‘insolencies’ from both sides should be prevented by laws and special
1026orders. The matter of trade Dury was content to leave to the wisdom of the state. The
1027substance of his letters was edited into a pamphlet by Hartlib, and published in June
10281656. None of this would be of any consolation to Menasseh who had been hoping all
1029spring for a favourable response to his own petition – especially as the postscript
1030referring to him was published. The rabbi himself was now a forlorn figure. A petition
1031to Cromwell (of 1656 or 1657) reveals him as ill and in need of money: ‘I make moan
1032to your Highnesse, as the alone succourer of my life, in this land of strangers …
1033havinge had great experience of your greatnesse in compassion as well as in majestie’.
1034Cromwell ordered the grant of a pension of £100 a year, part of which was paid
1035before another petition was presented by the rabbi in September 1657: his son Samuel
1036had died and had wished to be buried in Holland; Mena sseh asked for £300, offering
1037to surrender his pension seal. A grant of £200 was authorised, as we see from John
1038Sadler’s petition to Richard Cromwell on behalf of Menasseh’s widow. Sadler
1039described the rabbi’s disillusioned state of mind at the end of his stay in England: ‘at
1040length with his heart ever broken with griefe on losing heer his only sonne and his
1041presious time with all his hopes in this iland’, he reached Middelburg with his son’s
1042body, and himself died there in November 1657 (Kislev 5418). He was buried at
1043Amsterdam with an epitaph in Spanish to ‘the honoured Hebrew’.22
1044
1045
104622
1047 A Case of Conscience, pp. 441-4; JHSE, V, pp. 280-1; Wolf, Menasseh’s Mission,
1048lxxxvi-viii; Nathan Adler, ‘Homage to Menasseh’, JHSE, I, p. 39.
1049
1050
1051Cromwell was the saviour of the first modern Anglo-Jewish community in London at
1052a time when their legal position was anomalous; there was no ghetto, but unless they
1053were endenizened they had no political status. Under Cromwell’s protection the
1054synagogue in Creechurch Lane became, in Lucien Wolf’s analysis, ‘a duly organised
1055public body’, increasing by 1660 to thirty-five families. Its officials included Rabbi
1056Moses Athias. Their accounts were kept in Portuguese by the treasurer; the surviving
1057Libro, from 1663, was probably not the first. Their activities in the City were
1058indicated by the membership of the Exchange granted in 1657 to Solomon Dormido.
1059A visitor to the synagogue in 1662 was told that ‘one year in Oliver’s time, they did
1060build booths on the other side of the Thames, and keep the Feast of Tabernacles in
1061them’. (This was a kind of harvest festival, a joyous week-long celebration.) The
1062importance of Cromwell’s protection is attested by events as soon as he was dead.
1063Thomas Violet laid a case against the Jews in 1659; the City Corporation also
1064presented a petition against the Jews in 1660. Amid all the accusations against the
1065Jews were some against Cromwell, ‘the late Usurper’, for admitting them to a free
1066habitation and trading, and allowing them liberty to practise their religion ‘to the great
1067dishonour of Christianity and public scandal of the Protestant religion’. In 1660 the
1068Jews held a meeting at the house of Senora Carvajal to draw up a petition to the king
1069for protection. Charles II had his own commitment to Jews who had helped him in
1070exile, so he asked the privy council to consider the community’s protection. When the
1071Jews in London had to petition again for protection in 1664, the king minuted the
1072document himself: that ‘they may enjoy the same favour as before, as long as they
1073demean themselves peaceably and obey the laws’. The Cromwellian privileges were
1074preserved. It was, wrote James Parkes, ‘surely the simplest charter of settlement in all
1075Jewish history.’23 Ultimately, it was the policy of Cromwell and the discretion of the
1076Jewish community in London which established this settlement, rather than the
1077mission of Menasseh ben Israel.
1078
107923
1080 Wolf, ‘Status of the Jews in England after the Re-Settlement’, JHSE, IV, 177-93
1081(including texts of petitions against Jews), and ‘The Jewry of the Restoration 1660-
10821664’, JHSE, V, pp. 5-33; Lionel D. Barnett (ed.), El Libro de los Acuerdos 1663
1083to 1681 (Oxford, 1931), viii; Hyamson, Sephardim of England, p. 19; CSPD 1663-
108464, p. 672; James Parkes, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations in England’, in Lipman,
1085Three Centuries of Anglo-Jewish History, p. 157.
1086
1087-----------------------------
1088
1089As Lord Protector, Cromwell was aware of the Jewish community's involvement in the economics of the Netherlands, now England's leading commercial rival. It was this—allied to Cromwell's tolerance of the right to private worship of those who fell outside Puritanism—that led to his encouraging Jews to return to England in 1657, over 350 years after their banishment by Edward I, in the hope that they would help speed up the recovery of the country after the disruption of the Civil Wars.[122] There was a longer-term motive for Cromwell's decision to allow the Jews to return to England, and that was the hope that they would convert to Christianity and therefore hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, ultimately based on Matthew 23:37–39 and Romans 11. At the Whitehall conference of December 1655 he quoted from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 10:12–15 on the need to send Christian preachers to the Jews. Cromwell's long-term religious motive for readmitting the Jews to England should not be doubted; after all, he was serious enough to ban Christmas as a pagan festival. William Prynne the Presbyterian, in contrast to Cromwell the Congregationalist, was strongly opposed to the latter's pro-Jewish policy.[123][124][125]
1090
1091[122] Durston, Christopher (1998). The Fall of Cromwell's Major-Generals in English Historical Review 1998 113(450): p. 137, ISSN 0013-8266
1092[123] Coulton, Barbara. "Cromwell and the 'readmission' of the Jews to England, 1656" (PDF). The Cromwell Association. Lancaster University.
1093http://www.olivercromwell.org/jews.pdf
1094[124] Carlyle, Thomas, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches with Elucidations, London, Chapman and Hall Ltd, 1897, pp.109-113 and 114-115
1095[125] Morrill, John (editor), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, 1990, pp.137-138, 190, and 211-213
1096
1097-----------------------------------
1098
1099n 1653, at Oliver St John’s suggestion, Cromwell issued an official directive to authorise, “Menasseh ben Israel, a rabbi of the Jewish nation, well respected for his learning and good affection to the State, to come from Amsterdam to these parts.” Fearing local anti-English opinion so soon after war, ben Israel turned down the invitation. But by the middle of the decade, Cromwell was taking advice from Marrano trader Simon de Caceres. At de Caceres suggestion, Cromwell dispatched Marrano physician Abraham de Mercado and his son Raphael to Barbados (which a few years previously had already started admitting Jews escaping from the Portuguese reconquest of Dutch Brazil), where he explored the possibility of Jews setting in Jamaica. There they would be offered full civil rights and even land grants.[24][25]
1100
1101[24] Sachar, Howard M. (1994). Farewell Espana: The World of the Sephardim Remembered p.313-314. Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 9780804150538
1102https://books.google.ie/books?id=2RowAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA313&redir_esc=y
1103[25] Stiefel, Barry L. (2014). Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World: A Social and Architectural History. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 9781611173215. p.128
1104https://books.google.com/books?id=mMu7BwAAQBAJ&pg=PT128
1105
1106
1107There is some difference of opinion as to Oliver Cromwell’s opinions regarding the readmission of the Jews. It has been pointed out that he held many of the same hopes regarding the readmission and conversion of the Jews as the millenarians. Paul Rycaut, later ambassador to the port of Smyrna recalled the Whitehall Conference, “When they all met, he (Cromwell) ordered the Jews to speak for themselves. After that he turned to the clergy, who inveigled much against the Jews as a cruel and cursed people. Cromwell in his answer to the Clergy called them ‘Men of God’ and desired to be informed by the whether it was not their opinion that the Jews were one day to be called into the Church? He then desired to know whether it was not every Christian man’s duty to forward that good end all he could?… was it not then our duty… to encourage them to settle ere where they could be taught the thuth…[sic]”[26] It has also been pointed out that Cromwell held more practical beliefs. Cromwell believed that Jews could be used as skilled purveyors of foreign intelligence (which would assist his imperial ambitions).[27] Further, toleration of Protestant sects made political sense for Cromwell as it prevented disorder and promoted harmony. He justified the readmission of the Jews using this same tolerant approach, as well as believing that it would improve trade (he saw the Jews as an important part of Amsterdam’s financial success).[28]
1108
1109[26] Scult, Mel (1978). Millennial Expectations and Jewish Liberties: A Study of the Efforts to Convert the Jews in Britain, Up to the Mid Nineteenth Century. Brill Archive. P.30
1110https://books.google.com/books?id=1tQUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA18
1111[27]  Fraser, Antonia. (1973). Cromwell, Our Chief of Men. Hachette. 2011. ISBN 9781780220697 This view first appeared in Lucien Wolf’s essay Cromwell's Jewish Intelligencers: A Paper Read at Jews' College Literary Society, May 10th, 1891.
1112https://books.google.com/books?id=1iiWzpYwfCcC&pg=PT484&lpg=PT484
1113[28] Sharp, David (2003). Oliver Cromwell. p. 67-68. Heinemann. ISBN 9780435327569
1114https://books.google.com/books?id=j1Vj6dH1PxAC&pg=PA67
1115
1116
1117Competition with the Dutch for trade and the increasingly protectionist commercial policy that led to the Navigation Act in October 1651 made Oliver Cromwell want to attract the rich Jews of Amsterdam to London so that they might transfer their important trade interests with the Spanish Main from the Netherlands to England. The mission of Oliver St John to Amsterdam, though failing to establish a coalition between English and Dutch commercial interests as an alternative to the Navigation Act, had negotiated with Menasseh Ben Israel and the Amsterdam community. A pass was granted to Menasseh to enter England, but he was unable to use it because of the First Anglo-Dutch War, which lasted from 1652 to 1654.
1118
1119The years 1655 and 1656 were to prove decisive in the history of the resettlement of the Jews in England. The first of these was the visit of Menasseh ben Israel and the second was the case of the Murrano trader Antonio Rodrigues Robles.
1120
1121Menasseh Ben Israel's petition
1122Menasseh ben Israel’s son Samuel had arrived in England accompanied by trader David Dormido[29] in 1653 to investigate the possibility of the resettlement of the Jews. In May 1655, he was sent back to Amsterdam in order to try to convince his father to visit England. The rabbi came to England in September 1655 with three other local rabbis, where they were lodged as guests of Cromwell.[24] There he printed his "humble address" to Cromwell.[note 2] (When ben Israel began his stay in London it is reckoned that there were about 20 New Christian families living in the city.)[30] As a consequence, a national conference was summoned at Whitehall in the early part of December, which included some of the most eminent lawyers, clergymen, and merchants in the country. The lawyers declared no opposition to the Jews' residing in England, but both the clergymen and merchants were opposed to readmission, leading Cromwell to stop the discussion to prevent an adverse decision.[31][note 3] Nonetheless, some change to official policy must have occurred, because the diarist John Evelyn wrote in his diary on 14 December, “Now were the Jews admitted”. [note 4] Ben Israel stayed in England until September 1657, during which time he met and engaged with a number of influential people.[35] Although he did not achieve a legal ruling on the resettlement of the Jews, his presence gave prominent Englishmen a positive impression of learning and virtue among Jews.[36]
1123
1124[29] Rubinstein, William D.; Jolles, Michael and Rubinstein, Hilary L. (2011). The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History - Dormido, David Abrabanel. Palgrave Macmillan. p.227
1125https://books.google.com/books?id=hJc8afOZV0QC&pg=PA227
1126[24] Sachar, Howard M. (1994). Farewell Espana: The World of the Sephardim Remembered p.313-314. Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 9780804150538
1127https://books.google.ie/books?id=2RowAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA313&redir_esc=y
1128[Note 2] ben Israel’s petition was titled ’To His Highness the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the Humble Addresses of Menasseh ben Israel, a Divine, and Doctor of Physick, in behalf of the Jewish Nation’. The document argued that the Jews contribute to the wealth of the nations in which they dwell and are loyal to their host’s rulers. Further the negative accounts of the Jews are untrue. He concluded by asking for the Jews to be allowed to settle in the commonwealth.
1129[30] Edelman, Todd M. (2002). The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520935662 pps.26
1130https://books.google.com/books?id=RNyvgPAuvhAC&pg=PA26
1131[31]  Sigal, Philip (1986). The Emergence of Contemporary Judaism, Volume 3: From Medievalism to Proto-Modernity in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9780915138579 p.175
1132https://books.google.com/books?id=KM1JAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA175
1133[Note 3] Judges John Glynne and William Steele declared that “there was no law which forbade the Jews’ return to England” because their original expulsion had been by royal decree, rather than parliamentary vote.[32][33]
1134[32] Menasseh ben Israel - 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 18 Wikisource.org
1135https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Menasseh_ben_Israel
1136[33]  Green, David B (18 December 2016)/ On This Day in Jewish History haaretz.com
1137http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/this-day-in-jewish-history/1.759284
1138[Note 4]John Evelyn’s diary entry for 14th December 1655.
1139I visited Mr. Hobbes, the famous philosopher of Malmesbury, with who I had been long acquainted in France.
1140Now were the Jews admitted.[34]
1141[34] The diary of John Evelyn ed. Bray, William. p.307
1142https://archive.org/details/diaryofjohnevely01eveliala
1143[35] Katz, David S. (1989). Menasseh Ben Israel’s Christian Connection: Henry Jessey and the Jews pps. 117-119 in eds. Qaplan, Yosef; Popkin, Richard Henry; Mechoulan, Henry Menasseh Ben Israel and His World, BRILL, ISBN 9789004091146
1144https://books.google.com/books?id=4v5wRSYnT0kC&pg=PA117
1145[36] Sigal, Philip (1986). The Emergence of Contemporary Judaism, Volume 3: From Medievalism to Proto-Modernity in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9780915138579 p.175
1146https://books.google.com/books?id=KM1JAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA182
1147
1148
1149The Robles case
1150Early in the following year (1656), the question came to a practical issue through the declaration of war against Spain, which resulted in the arrest of Antonio Rodrigues Robles, one of the community of Iberian New Christians who traded between London and the Canary Islands.[37] Robles petitioned for the return of his seized property on account of his being ‘of the Hebrew nation’ rather than Spanish. At the same time six leading members of the New Christian community petitioned Cromwell for permission to gather to worship and acquire a burial ground. Although no formal permission was granted, some assurances must have been given because in the summer Menasseh asked for the Torah scroll to be sent over from Amsterdam, and in the autumn Moses Athias moved from Hamburg to act as religious preceptor. By December 1656 they had rented a house for use as a synagogue, and services began in January of 1657.[38] In February of 1657 the new community, represented by Antonio Fernandez Carvajal and Simon de Caceres, acquired land near Mile End for use as a Synagogue. Historian Todd Endelman makes the point that it is unlikely this activity could have happened without Cromwell’s permission that they could live as professing Jews. The informal nature of the resettlement also meant the forces ranged against it had no target and never united to form any significant opposition. Further, at a later date it meant there were no restrictive laws to repeal when Jews wanted fuller citizenship rights. By the end of the decade the number of Jewish families had risen to thirty five.[39] In 1557 Solomon Dormido, a nephew of Menasseh Ben Israel, was admitted to the Royal Exchange as a duly licensed broker of the City of London, without taking the usual oath involving a statement of faith in Christianity, (when he was finally sworn in in 1668, the oath was changed for him).[29] Carvajal had previously been granted letters of denization for himself and his son, which guaranteed certain rights of citizenship.
1151
1152[37] Samuel, Edgar. "Robles, Antonio Rodrigues". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/71429. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
1153https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography#Oxford_Dictionary_of_National_Biography
1154https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fref%3Aodnb%2F71429
1155[38]  Jewish Community and Records - Creechurch Lane Synagogue
1156http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/London/city_creechurch/index.htm
1157http://www.jewishgen.org/
1158[39] Edelman, Todd M. (2002). The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520935662 pps.26-27, 29
1159https://books.google.com/books?id=RNyvgPAuvhAC&pg=PA26
1160[29] Rubinstein, William D.; Jolles, Michael and Rubinstein, Hilary L. (2011). The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History - Dormido, David Abrabanel. Palgrave Macmillan. p.227
1161https://books.google.com/books?id=hJc8afOZV0QC&pg=PA227
1162
1163---------------------------
1164
1165Readmission
1166It was Oliver Cromwell who orchestrated the Jews' return after he came to power. He was influenced in this by Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam, the Jewish ambassador to the Gentiles. On 31 October 1655, Cromwell submitted a seven-point petition to the Council of State calling for Jews to return to Britain.
1167
1168Cromwell met with resistance at the Whitehall Conference in December that year but resolved to authorise an unofficial readmission.
1169
1170At that time, the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community had been expelled from Spain. Many exiled Jews headed to Amsterdam, helping to turn it into one of the world's busiest ports. Cromwell saw that the return of the Jews would bring great financial benefits to England.
1171
1172In 1656 Cromwell made a verbal promise, backed by the Council of State, to allow Jews to return to Britain and practise their faith freely.
1173
1174As a result, Jews from Holland, Spain and Portugal came to Britain. They became more and more integrated into British society.
1175
1176For a time, England was one of the most religiously tolerant countries in Europe. But it wasn't until 1858 that English Jews received formal emancipation.
1177
1178After resettlement
1179Jewish resettlement in Britain marked the beginning of a new era in Jewish/Christian relations, putting an end to centuries of estrangement.
1180
1181It also paved the way for the setting up of the Council of Christians and Jews during the Second World War in 1942, bringing new hope to Jews suffering terrible persecution at the hands of Nazi Germany.
1182
1183During 2006, 350 years after their return to the UK, Jewish communities throughout the country celebrated "Three and a Half Centuries of British Jewish Life".
1184
1185Readmission of Jews to Britain in 1656
1186By Tara HolmesLast updated 2011-06-24
1187
1188This article examines events leading up to the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and their readmission in 1656.
1189http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/history/350.shtml
1190
1191-----------------------------------
1192
1193Jewish Virtual Library entry on Oliver Cromwell
1194
1195Oliver Cromwell
1196(1599-1658)
1197
1198CROMWELL, OLIVER°, Lord Protector of *England , 1653–58. Cromwell was largely responsible for the readmission of the Jews to England. His puritan views, based largely upon the Old Testament, and his tolerant nature predisposed him to regard the Jews with favor; he was also quick to realize the material advantages of readmitting them. It was to Cromwell that *Manasseh Ben Israel presented his "Humble Addresses," petitions concerning the return of the Jews to England, and he was responsible for convening the Whitehall Conference in December 1655. When it became apparent that readmission would only be recommended under the most unfavorable conditions, Cromwell dissolved the conference after its fourth meeting. It was expected that he would issue a favorable reply to Manasseh Ben Israel on his own authority. However, in view of public opinion, Cromwell preferred to adopt an informal arrangement. The London Marrano community had to be satisfied with a favorable reply to a modest petition in which they merely requested authorization for the establishment of a cemetery and continuance of their freedom of worship. Cromwell's personal sympathies were manifested in the pension of £100 granted to Manasseh Ben Israel. His favorable attitude toward the Jews was so marked that, according to his enemies, Jews regarded him as their Messiah.
1199
1200Sources:L. Wolf, Manasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell (1901); Roth, in: JHSET, 11 (1924–27), 112–42; Roth, England, 156ff.; idem, Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History (1962), 86–107; Katz, England, 107–40, index; T.M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656–2000 (2002), 15–27; E. Samuel, "Oliver Cromwell and the Readmission of the Jews to England in 1656," in: At the Ends of the Earth: Essays on the History of the Jews in England and Portugal, (2004), 179–89; C. Hill, God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (1972); ODNB online.
1201
1202[Cecil Roth]
1203
1204Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.
1205
1206http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/olviver-cromwell
1207
1208------------------------------
1209
1210CROMWELL WELCOMES JEWS
1211DAN GRAVES, MSL
1212
1213The first large groups of Jews came to England from France in 1066 at the invitation of William the Conqueror. He felt that Jews, with their crafts and financial skills, would boost the English economy. Because it was considered wrong for Christians to engage in money lending, the role fell to the sons of Israel. In the years that followed, ruthless kings taxed Jews unmercifully, forcing them to raise the interest they charged on loans. This led to resentment on the part of borrowers.
1214
1215In outbreaks of anti-Semitism Jews were accused of blood rituals and massacred. Their lending records were conveniently destroyed during these outbreaks. In 1217, they were forced to wear yellow badges. By 1290, they had been taxed so heavily that they were no longer of use to Edward I, who could, in any case, now do business with the Knights Templars. Edward expelled the Jews from England.
1216
1217For 365 years, it was illegal for an Israelite to live in England. A few Marranos (Portuguese converts to Christianity) reentered the country in the early 1600s. The Marranos flourished and sought to change the restrictive law.
1218
1219When Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel approached Oliver Cromwell with a seven-point plan in November 1655, the Protector determined to ask for readmission of the Jews. He recognized their benefit to English commerce and intelligence- gathering.
1220
1221Cromwell asked his Council to decide the issue. The Council established a committee. The committee invited a number of ministers, merchants and justices to help them with its decision. Between December 4 and 18th, this Conference met in Whitehall. Cromwell attended each session and expressed himself in favor of readmitting the Jews.
1222
1223Most of the members of the committee, including the clergy, resisted Cromwell. However, two judges gave it as their opinion that the law did not forbid Jews to settle in England.
1224
1225By this day, December 14, 1655, it was evident the committee would never come to a decision. On the 18th, Cromwell dismissed it, letting its members know that he intended to admit the Jews unofficially if necessary. All the committee managed to do was to draw up a paper recommending that if Jews were readmitted to England, they be prevented from defaming Christianity or working on the Lord's day. They should not hold office, employ Christian servants or seek to convert Christians to Judaism. None of this became law.
1226
1227After that, the Semites came to England in increasing numbers. Their population has reached as many as a quarter of a million. For the most part, Britain's Jews have been well-treated since 1656.
1228
1229According to scripture (Zachariah), whoever touches the Jews, touches the apple of God's eye. Does this also mean that those who help the Jews prosper? Jews have benefited Britain. Many served in Parliament and one, Benjamin Disraeli, became a notable Prime Minister. More to the point, British Jews helped fulfill Bible prophecy. English Jews, such as Moses Montefiore, were strong supporters of the Zionist movement which resettled Jews in Israel, and Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the state of Israel, was British.
1230
1231Bibliography:
1232
12331. Allen, John. One Hundred Great Lives. New York: Journal of Living, 1944.
12342. "Cromwell, Oliver." Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 1921 - 1996.
12353. Drinkwater, John. Oliver Cromwell. New York: George H. Doran, 1927.
12364. Hill, Christopher. God's Englishman; Oliver Cromwell and the English revolution. Harper and Row, 1970.
12375. Russell, Bertrand. Wisdom of the West. New York: Fawcett, 1964; p. 252.
12386. Smellie, Alexander. Men of the Covenant. Revell, 1903. Source of the image.
1239Last updated May, 2007.
1240
1241Originally published April 28, 2010.
1242
1243https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1601-1700/cromwell-welcomes-jews-11630127.html
1244
1245-----------------------------------------------
1246
1247Jews and crypto-Jews in sixteenth and seventeenth century England
1248Far, far too long to put here. Here's a link instead.
1249
1250http://www.fupress.net/index.php/cromohs/article/view/13673/12738
1251
1252----------------------------------
1253
1254Jewish Encyclopedia
1255
1256CROMWELL, OLIVER
1257By: Joseph Jacobs, Victor Rousseau Emanuel
1258
1259Silver Salver Bearing the "Arms of the Tribe of Judah."Said to have been presented to Oliver Cromwell by Manasseh ben Israel.(In possession of Sir Samuel Montagu.)Petition of the Jews of England to Olivfr Cromwell, Dated March 24, 1655.(In the Record Office, London.)
1260Lord Protector of England; born April 25, 1599, died Sept. 3, 1658. Cromwell favored readmission of the Jews into England, partly in the hope of thereby fulfilling the Messianic prophecy, but mainly because they had aided him as "intelligencers," and he foresaw that, with their control of the Portuguese and Spanish trade, and their large commercial interests in the Levant, the Hamburg Bank, and the Dutch East and West Indies, they would be of service to him in his expansionist policy, and would bring wealth into the country. There were at this time (1653) about twenty Marano families settled in England, who had fled from Spain through fear of the Inquisition. To all appearance Spanish merchants, and attending mass at the chapel of the Spanish ambassador, they were nevertheless known to Cromwell and a few others to be crypto-Jews. Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, a Portuguese merchant in London, had been of financial assistance to the Parliament, and had also, through a relative in Holland and a servant named Somers, or Butler, secured for Cromwell information regarding the Royalist intrigues with Spain. At the time of the Dormido mission to England to negotiate for readmission, Carvajal actively supported the petition, and it was favorably received by Cromwell. At this time, however, the anti-Jewish prejudices had become strong, and the Council would not consent (1654). Cromwell then sent for Manasseh ben Israel, and a motion was introduced in the Council in 1655, "That the Jews deserving it may be admitted into this nation to trade and traffic and dwell among us as Providence may give occasion." The motion was referred to a committee, and a conference was finally arranged to consider the question, the members being appointed by three of Cromwell's most devoted political adherents. The conference met in the Council Chamber at Whitehall, Dec., 1655. It consisted of representatives of the army, the law, the trading interests, and sixteen divines, the majority of whom Cromwell had carefully selected on account of their supposed approval of religious toleration.
1261
1262The Whitehall Conference.
1263The first question which arose for consideration was whether there existed any law forbidding the readmission of the Jews, and this was settled by the decision that the expulsion of 1290 had never been valid. When the terms of admission were discussed, a distinctly hostile spirit manifested itself, and the mercantile interests and the clergy united in opposition. To secure a favorable vote the Protector added some more members who were thought to approve of the proposal, but they also ranged themselves with its opponents. Finally, on Dec. 18, a hostile crowd thronged into the Council Chamber, and it was obvious that Cromwell's project could not be carried except under the most extreme restrictions.
1264
1265Cromwell now saw that his whole scheme would be thwarted if a vote were not prevented. With characteristic promptness he began at once to review the differences of opinion revealed by the various speakers. Protesting that he had no obligations to the Jews beyond those imposed by the Scriptures, he insisted that, "since there was a promise of their conversion, means must be used to that end, which was the preaching of the Gospel, and that could not be done unless they were admitted where the Gospel was preached." Then, turning to the objecting merchants, he said: "You say that they are the meanest and most despised of all people. But in that case what becomes of your fears? Can you really be afraid that this contemptible and despised people should be able to prevail in trade and credit over the merchants of England, the noblest and most esteemed merchants of the whole world?" Finally, having announced that nothing was to be hoped from the conference, and that he should use his own judgment in acting for the glory of God and the good of the nation, he vacated the chair and brought the proceedings to a close. The conference was cowed, and dissolved without a word of protest.
1266
1267What finally precipitated the solution of the difficulty was the outbreak of the war with Spain. The Spanish Maranos were no longer able to live in England as Spanish citizens, and in 1656, relying upon the decision that the expulsion of 1290 was no longer valid, they openly threw off their disguise and assumed the position of Jews.
1268
1269In the following year, probably on Feb. 4, 1657, Cromwell in a public meeting made a "seasonable benefaction" to Carvajal, perhaps a verbal assurance that the Jews would not be disturbed in the exercise of their religion. He had previously made a grant of £100 to Manasseh ben Israel. Altogether Cromwell's action enabled the Jews to live as such in England at a time when there was sufficient opposition to them on the part of the clergy and the mercantile classes to have prevented their residence, if the government had been weak or ill-disposed toward them.
1270
1271Bibliography:
1272Manasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell, edited by Lucien Wolf, London, 1901.
1273
1274http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4772-cromwell-oliver
1275
1276----------------------------
1277
1278In the 1650s, Menasseh Ben Israel, a rabbi and leader of the Dutch Jewish community, approached Oliver Cromwell with the proposition that Jews should at long-last be readmitted to England. Cromwell agreed, and although he could not compel a council called for the purpose in December 1655 to consent formally to readmission, he made it clear that the ban on Jews would no longer be enforced. In the years 1655–56, the controversy over the readmission of Jews was fought out in a pamphlet war. The issue divided religious radicals and more conservative elements within society. The Puritan William Prynne was vehemently opposed to permitting Jews to return, the Quaker Margaret Fell no less passionately in favour, like John Wemyss, a minister of the Church of Scotland. In the end, Jews were readmitted in 1655, and, by 1690, about 400 Jews had settled in England.[13]
1279
1280[13]  Shira Schoenberg. "The Virtual Jewish History Tour of England (Chapter 5: Readmission)". Retrieved April 21, 2012.
1281http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/England.html
1282
1283----------------------------
1284
1285The most notable contribution made to 17th century England by the Jewish population was by Fernandez Carvajal, also known as ‘The Great Jew’, who organised an armed militia of 10,000 operatives to march on London, who also distributed pamphlets and leaflets to supposedly stir up the conditions that led to the civil war. Carvajal, along with a group of powerful Dutch Jews in Amsterdam, then financed Cromwell’s ‘New Model Army’ throughout the English civil war, suggesting they favoured an end to the current monarchy. It must be stressed that there is no suggestion the entire crypro-Jewish population of England desired civil war or a victory for Cromwell, but the influence of the powerful Carvajal is quite clear, along with the foreign Jewish elements in continental Europe.
1286
1287The Jews from The Netherlands are particularly relevant in this chapter of their history, for it is they who petitioned Cromwell to lift the provisions under the Edict of Expulsion (1290) and allow the Jewish people to return to England. The leader of these Dutch Jews, Manasseh Ben Israel, wrote to Cromwell on multiple occasions offering further financial favours in return for the lifting of the ban. Cromwell duly obliged and the proof of this is in correspondence between himself Ebenezer Pratt of the Synagogue of Mulheim, Germany:
1288
1289Oliver Cromwell to Ebenezer Pratt, 16th June 1647:
1290
1291“In return for financial support will advocate admission of Jews to England: This however impossible while Charles living. Charles cannot be exectured without trial, adequate grounds for which do not exist at present. Therefore advise that Charles be assassinated, but will have nothing to do with arrangements for procuring an assassin, though willing to help his escape.”
1292
1293Ebenezer Pratt to Oliver Cromwell, 12th July 1647:
1294
1295“Will grant financial aid as soon as Charles removed and Jews admitted. Assassination too dangerous. Charles shall be given an opportunity to escape: His recapture will make trial and execution possible. The support will be liberal, but useless to discuss terms until trial commences.”
1296
1297Before King Charles was tried and executed, it is said that there was not an Englishman in the land who was prepared to draw up a charge sheet against their King. However, one was eventually provided by the Dutch Jew Isaac Dorislaus. Charles was charged before the High Court who’s members were made up primarily by (over two thirds) Levellers, who were an ‘informal alliance of agitators and pamphleteers, who predated the Jacobins and Bolsheviks’.
1298
1299In December 1655, ‘The Protector’ Oliver Cromwell held a conference to get approval for a mass influx of Jews. The attendees, mainly priests, lawyers and merchants who supported Cromwell, were in the main against any Jewish immigration, yet Cromwell pushed ahead with the policy as per his agreement with the European Jewish community that financed his successful attempt to win power. The first Jews landed on England’s shores did so in 1656 and this was significant for they were the first who openly practised Judaism to return to England since the Edict of Expulsion in the 13th century. By all accounts there were strong protests by certain sections of society, but they fell upon deaf ears. By 1690, however, only 400 ‘overt Jews’ had returned to England.
1300
1301England’s Jews, Part 1: Usury, Expulsions and William of Orange
1302https://britishobserver.uk/2016/12/17/englands-jews-part-1-usury-expulsions-and-william-of-orange/
1303
1304=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
1305
1306William III Orange-Nassau is enthusiastically funded to the sum of two million gelders by Amsterdam based Francisco Lopes Suasso✡ (Jew) to overthrow the Stuart monarchy in Ireland, England and Scotland during 1688. James II Stuart who he overthrew was sympathetic to Irish Catholics and after the supression of the Tudor period had begun to assimilate them into the governance of the kingdom. As a result of the Dutch-Jewish-Whig coup, the bulk of the native Irish from 1691 onwards were placed under the Penal Laws, to try and destroy or reduce them to extreme poverty. These would not be repealed until the 1800s with Daniel O'Connell.
1307
1308------------------
1309
1310Further financial support was obtained from the most disparate sources: the Jewish banker Francisco Lopes Suasso lent two million guilders;[37] when asked what security he desired, Suasso answered: "If you are victorious, you will surely repay me; if not, the loss is mine."[38]
1311
1312[37] Jardine, Lisa (2008). Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory. Harper. ISBN 978-0-00-719734-7. p.52 one of the few scholarly studies that sides with James II and denounces the episode as a Dutch invasion and British defeat
1313[38] Swetschinsky, Daniël; Schönduve, Loeki (1988). De familie Lopes Suasso: financiers van Willem III. Zwolle. ISBN 978-90-6630-142-9. p. 53
1314
1315--------------------
1316
1317A notable instance of the support of the house of Suasso to the Dutch stadtholders is the loan of two million guilders which Suasso made to William of Orange in 1688 in support of his invasion of England to claim the thrones of King James II.[1] The story is told that William asked Suasso what he wanted as collateral for the millions, to which Suasso replied: "If thou art felicitous, I know thou wilt return them to me; art thou infelicitous, I agree to having lost them." However, this may be apocryphal.[1] Suasso was responsible for a number of elements of the invasion, and through his father-in-law in Hamburg he was able to make speedy arrangements for the transport of Swedish and Pomeranian troops provided in November 1688 by Charles XI of Sweden to assist William.[6] The coffer in which William repaid the loan to Suasso is today on display in the Willet-Holthuisen Museum in Amsterdam.[1]
1318
1319[1] Francisco Lopes Suasso at jhm.nl (in Dutch)
1320http://www.jhm.nl/cultuur-en-geschiedenis/personen/l/lopes+suasso,+francisco
1321[6]  Jonathan I. Israel, The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and Its World Impact (Cambridge University Press, 2003) p. 440
1322https://books.google.com/books?id=NCvyi5_m6ScC&pg=PA440#v=onepage&q&f=false
1323
1324-------------------------
1325
1326Jewish Encyclopedia
1327
1328
1329Antonio (Isaac) Lopez Suasso:
1330Resident of The Hague. For services rendered to King Charles II. of Spain, that monarch in 1676 created Suasso a baron, his estate of Avernas de Gras in Brabant, now called "Cras Avernas," being made a barony. He was one of the most ardent supporters of the house of Orange; and when William III. undertook his expedition to England in 1688, Suasso advanced him 2,000,000 gulden without interest and did not even ask for a receipt, merely saying: "If you are successful you may repay me; if you are not successful, I will be the loser." Frederick II. of Prussia commemorates this instance of self-sacrifice as the act "of a Jew named Schwartzau" ("Å’uvres Historiques," i. 152).
1331
1332http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14093-suasso
1333
1334--------------
1335
1336Jews Land and House of Orange
1337
1338Too long and rambling to post in full, here are some excerpts
1339
1340Yesterday I noticed that the Mendes da Costa family are kin to the de Rover (Roover) family who married into the Rosemont family, and were members of the Swan Brethren of which William of Orange belonged. William was made a loan by the famous banking family of Suossa in order to launch his invasion of England in what is called ‘The Glorious Revolution’ that evangelicals claim has come to America, and one day will establish a theocratic state vs. a democracy.
1341
1342Christian authors in England and Europe were indentifying 1666 as an
1343appocolyptic year. No doubt this was due to the numbers 666 which denotes `The
1344Beast’ in Revelations. It is suggested the Sephardic Messiah, Sabbatai, believed
1345in this prophecy, or, if he was a false-Messiah, exploited it. History tells us
1346Mennesseh ben Israel exploited English Millenarianism when he appealed to
1347Cromwell to let the Sepharid Jews return to England. Ben Israel (son of Israel)
1348dedicated his book `The Hope of Israel’ to Cromwell. In this work of prophecy
1349Ben Israel claims Messianic redemption would come to the Jewish people only when
1350they are scattered to all the corners of the world, and especially England from
1351where they were bannished. Did some Christian leaders believe this Jewish
1352Messiah would be the second coming of Jesus?
1353
1354The Puritans subscribed to what is called Judeo-centrism that considered the
1355prophecies of Ben Israel and the Sepharid Messiah, Sabbatai. Cromwell was a
1356Puiitan who let the Jews back into England at Ben Israel’s urging. However,
1357there was another motive, Cromwell wanted the backing of the Sephardic Jewish
1358bankers. He got it. These bankers produced large sums of money to put down the
1359Jacobites in 1748.
1360
1361https://rosamondpress.com/2012/04/20/jews-land-and-house-of-orange/
1362
1363---------------------------------
1364
1365in 1660, following the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the monarchy was restored in England. However, there was more turbulence to come from across the channel. Willem of Orange, who was to become King William III of England, Scotland and Ireland, landed in South-East England 5th November 1688 and proclaimed “the liberties of England and the Protestant religion I will maintain“. King James’ armies were superior to those of Willem of Orange, but he was ‘discouraged from attacking after John Churchill*, first Duke of Marlborough suddenly deserted him’, so there was not much in the way of a struggle for the Crown of England at this point. Whilst William had his own motives and of course, there was dissatisfaction with the pro-Roman Catholic tendencies of King James II, there was another driving factor which is relevant to the history of the Jews in England, namely that of Willem of Orange’s financial backers.
1366
1367* “According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Churchill subsequently received an annual stopend of £6,000 from the Dutch Jew Solomon Medina in payment for his treasonous conduct” – S. M. Goodson, A History of Central Banking, Ch 2, p 36.
1368
1369It was the wealthy Jewish banking community of Amsterdam that financed the invasion and seizure of English crown, in return for a favour that was to change the course of history. This favour was the surrender of the Royal Prerogative to issue England’s money free of debt and interest to a consortium known as The Governor and Company of the Bank of England. This was the precursor to the establishment of the central bank, the first of which was the Bank of England, which would be used as a model for the creation of central banks all across the western world. This was essentially the end of England’s policy of outlawing usury.
1370
1371A. N. Field, All These Things:
1372
1373“Thirty-three years after Cromwell had let the Jews into Britain, a Dutch Prince arrived from Amsterdam surrounded by a whole swarm of Jews from that financial centre. Driving his royal father-in-law (James II) out of the kingdom he graciously consented to ascend the throne of Britain. A very natural result following on this event was the inauguration of the National Debt by the establishment of the Bank of England for the purpose of lending money to the Crown. Britain had paid her way as she went until the Jews arrived. The pawnshop was then opened…
1374
1375“The history of the second Jewish settlement in Britain is one long trail of parchment bonds shackling the nation in debt. Every step in the ascent of the Jew in the nation’s affairs has been marked by the increase and multiplication of debt.”
1376
1377England’s Jews, Part 1: Usury, Expulsions and William of Orange
1378https://britishobserver.uk/2016/12/17/englands-jews-part-1-usury-expulsions-and-william-of-orange/
1379
1380=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
1381
1382During the Gordon riots of 1780 in the United Kingdom, various acts of violence including the burning of Irish neighbourhoods in Moorfields and churches took place. The British government had repealed some parts of the Popery Act 1698 as a means to enlist Catholics in the American Revolutionary War. Ostensibly the riots were against the repeal; the main ringleader of the so-called Protestant Association was one Lord George Gordon, scion of the Lowland Scots aristocratic family who were Dukes of Gordon. He was raised a Presbytarian but in 1787 converted to Talmudic Judaism taking the name Yisrael bar Avraham. Gordon was known to have connections to Kabbalistic Freemasonry and Rabbi Samuel Falk,✡(Jew) the Baal Shem of London; a Jewish occultic magus of international infamy.
1383
1384------------------
1385
1386Rabbi Dr Hayyim Samuel Jacob Falk (1708—17 April 1782) also known as the Baal Shem of London, Doctor Falckon or simply Samuel Falk, was a Jewish rabbi, Practical Kabbalist and alchemist, who played a significant role in the para-political and masonic alligned occultic underground of Europe during the 18th century. His birthplace is obscure, but he fled Westphalia in 1742 on account of him being accused of sorcery—a capital punishment offense—and moved to London, where he spent the rest of his life.
1387
1388From his new base in London, he had an alchemical laboratory and established a secret judeo-masonic organisation, with gentile affiliates. According to Nesta Webster, "Falk indeed was far more than a Mason, he was a high initiate – the supreme oracle to which the secret socieites applied for guidance."[1] He allegedly introducted the Kabbalah to the self-styled Count Cagliostro and Emanuel Swedenborg.[2][3] Some other Jews, ie — rabbi Jacob Emden, claimed that Falk was a crypto-Sabbatian, a follower of the doctrines of Sabbatai Zevi.
1389
1390[1] Webster, Nesta Helen (1924). Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Boswell Printing & Publishing Co. p. 189
1391[2] Lachmann, Gary (2005). A dark muse: a history of the occult. Basic Books. ISBN 1560256567. p. 19
1392[3] Don Karr (1995). "The Study of Christian Cabala in English
1393http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/karr/ccinea.pdf
1394
1395Tales of Falk's magical activities drew decadent aristocrats and adventurers from far and wide. He was particularly close to Theodor von Neuhoff, who had usurped Genoa in Corsica and set himself up as king, inviting Jews to settle there.[4] It is claimed that he made a Kabbalistic talisman in the form of a ring, for the Duke of Orléans, with the promise that his line would ascend to the throne of France; this was passed on to his son, the first Orléans monarch Louis Philippe I.[5] Falk was backed financially by fellow Jewish freemasons, such as the wealthy Boas family of Amsterdam and the Goldsmid family of London.[6]
1396
1397[4] Goldish, Matt (2001). Millenarianism and messianism in early modern European culture: Jewish messianism in the early modern world, Book 1. Springer. ISBN 0792368509. p. 212
1398[5] Jewish Encyclopedia (22 June 2011). "FALK, ḤAYYIM SAMUEL JACOB
1399http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=18&letter=F
1400[6] Ruderman, David B (2000). Jewish enlightenment in an English key: Anglo-Jewry's construction of modern Jewish thought. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691048835. p. 159
1401
1402=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
1403
1404The first Jew elected to Congress in the United States, Lewis Charles Levin,✡ incited sectarian communal violence, known as the Philadelphia Nativist Riots in 1844. This led to the burning down of churches associated with ethnic Irish communities, such as St. Augustine's Church. Levin and his collaborator Samuel R Kramer✡ were arrested and fined for "exciting to riot and treason".
1405
1406---------------------------
1407
1408Lewis Charles Levin✡ (10 November 1808—14 March 1860) was the first Jew to be elected as a Congressman in the United States, where he served in the House of Representatives. He was active as a politician in Philadelphia and served three terms between 1845–51, for the Pennsylvania 1st District. Levin was born in Charleston, South Carolina and graduated from South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina) in 1828. Levin is best known for his involvement in the Know Nothing movement and his agitation against Catholics (particularly those of Irish descent) in the United States.
1409
1410Despite the fact that he was not a nativist himself in that he was strongly in favour of immigration—unlike many in the Know Nothing movement—he was opposed to the immigration of Catholics specifically (at the time quite a few from Germany and Ireland were arriving). Christian sectarianism in Pennsylvania had traditionally being minimal, prior to Levin's activism. He also managed to exploit historic rivalries between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. His agitation led to the Philadelphia Nativist Riots in which churches were burned down. Levin and his collaborator Samuel R Kramer were arrested and fined for "exciting to riot and treason".
1411
1412=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
1413
1414Nassau William Senior,✡ an economist whose family were Sephardic Jews in ancestry,[note 1] during the Great Irish Famine of 1845 stated that it "would not kill more than one million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do any good." This Jewish statement, was echoed by similar ones from The Economist of Lowland Scot, James Wilson, and other laissez-faire advocates which opposed any serious government intervention. Many of these were also Malthusian inspired, claiming Ireland was "overpopulated". (150 years later the descendants of these same Jews who claimed Ireland was "overpopulated" would flood it with mass immigration of nonwhites from the Third World as a form of genocide.)
1415
1416[Note 1] According to page 153 of Economic Thought Before Adam Smith by Murray Rothbard✡; "Senior's ancestors had been prosperous merchants. His grandfather, Nassau Thomas Senior had converted from Judaism to Christianity in the mid-eighteenth century. Nassau Thomas' father, Moses Aaron Senior, had emigrated from Hamburg in the 1720s; he had come from a long line of Spanish-Portuguese Jews who had been merchants and financiers in Spain and had emigrated to Amsterdam and Hamburg.
1417
1418----------------------------
1419
1420George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, a cockroach with a human face, whose ancestors invaded Ireland from Dorset in the 17th century and stole landscape in County Mayo especially, was known as "The Exterminator" during the Irish Famine. He systematically evicted 400 native Irish families (accounting for some 2,200 people) from the Mayo estates to almost certain death. "Coincidentally," this very same Protestant weirdo Bingham, was the man who as an MP came up with an idea for Jews to sit in the House of Commons (they had previously been barred due to having to swear on the "faith of a true Christian"). Lionel Nathan Rothschild✡ was sworn into Parliament on 26 July 1858.
1421
1422=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
1423
1424The Irish Holocaust (often called the by euphemism Potato Famine) was an intentional forced systematic starvation of the Irish people in Ireland between 1845 and 1852.
1425
1426Period	1845–1852
1427Total deaths	Estimates range from 2 million to 5.16 million[1][2]
1428Observations	Policy failure, potato blight, Corn Laws, British Anti-Catholicism
1429Relief	Quakers (see below)
1430Impact on demographics	Population fell by 20–25% due to mortality and emigration
1431Consequences	Permanent change in the country's demographic, political and cultural landscape.
1432
1433Near-extinction of the Irish language.[3]
1434
1435[1] Thomas Gallagher, Paddy’s Lament: Ireland 1846-1847, Prelude to Hatred, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 8.
1436[2] Chris Fogarty, “The Mass Graves of Ireland: 1845-1850,” Oct. 26 and Nov. 2, 1996, Irish People, NYC.
1437[3] http://www.irishidentity.com/extras/heritage/stories/language.htm
1438
1439The English government ruled Ireland at the time and only decades earlier, the Rothschild crime family had taken over the English goverment by gambling on its bond market amidst The Battle of Waterloo. The Irish farmers were cottiers (or tenant farmers), forced to rent a cottage and farm on someone else's land and to grow only what someone else wanted to grow so had no choice but to grow potatoes. The rents were extremely high to keep them in extreme poverty so they could not afford even a backyard garden for other crops.[4] Potatoes were not the only crop in Ireland and [5] during the potato blight, farmers produced enough non-potato food to to feed several times its population including corn, wheat, barley, and beef but it was taken from them by this cottier system, caused by the Judeo-Protestant oligarchy controlling Britain. Ireland starved because the British military robbed its food by force, taking 40 to 70 shiploads per day. Britain robbed from Irish farmers tens of millions of head of livestock, tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry and dairy products-enough to sustain 18-million people, far in excess of Ireland's population--it instead went to sustain England's population and mostly to the British wealthy who would waste it and throw most of it out while the Irish starved. 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia, battleships, excise vessels, Coast Guard and by 200,000 British soldiers (100,000 at any given moment) robbed this food at gunpoint.[6] This food was carted away by the British government past the starving millions of men women and children and then taken to the wealthy in England.[7]
1440
1441[4] A Dictionary of Irish History, D.J.Hickey & J.E.Doherty, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1980. Pp. page 98-99. ISBN 0-7171-1567-4
1442[5] http://yournewswire.com/britains-secret-history-the-irish-holocaust/
1443[6] http://www.irishholocaust.org/britain%27scoverup
1444[7] http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm
1445
1446--------------------
1447
1448Death count
1449During the genocide, over 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland,[8] a white-on-white genocide not seen again until Eisenhower's death camps. The systematic starvation of the Irish people caused the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.[9] Thomas Gallagher estimates 2 million died from the starvation.[1] Writer Chris Fogarty, however, places the numbers “murdered at approximately 5.16 million because there is evidence that the British faked the 1841 census to underestimate the real Irish population of over 12 million. He calculated a total population reduction of about 6 million with about 1 million emigrating”[2][7][10], which is a higher death toll than the lower estimate of 5.1 million by kosher-approved historians (historians that Europe says is legal to cite) for Jewish casualties during World War II.[11] A later engineered famine, The Holodomor, was 16.5 million.
1450
1451[8] Ross, David (2002), Ireland: History of a Nation, New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset, ISBN 1-84205-164-4. p. 226.
1452[9] Kinealy, Christine (1994), This Great Calamity, Gill & Macmillan, ISBN 0-7171-1881-9. p. 357.
1453[10] http://henrymakow.com/2015/06/irish-potato-famine-was.html
1454[11] http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007272
1455
1456----------------------------
1457
1458Events beforehand
1459
1460
1461The Irish were the first slaves in the Americas and they were sold as slaves from 1600-1800. The British government has never apologized for this.
1462
1463
1464For a century leading up to the genocide, the English government ruled Ireland and the Irish people had no rights. They could not own land, vote, hold political office, obtain education, live in certain areas, or have a profession other than things like farming. By the time the potato blight began, these restrictions had lessened but not much.[12] The English government also for centuries had been kidnapping the Irish people and sending them off as slaves where they were treated far worse than any black slaves because during that time the average life expectancy of a white person who went into Subsaharan Africa was 11 months, dying from disease, predators, and hostile natives. So black slaves were bought and the selling rate was about 6 times the rate of an Irishman. During colonial times in the USA, it was common to see slaves with red hair in the Americas.[13] The Irish lived as serfs on lands that they farmed while land owners and middle men collected rent. Those who could not pay were thrown into debtor's prison.[14]
1465
1466[12] MacManus, Seamus (1979), The Story of the Irish Race, The Irish Publishing Company, retrieved 20 September 2010. pp. 458–459.
1467[13] The Truth About Slavery: Past, Present and Future, Stefan Molyneux
1468https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31E1gHowYcA
1469[14] Kinealy, Christine (1994), This Great Calamity, Gill & Macmillan, ISBN 0-7171-1881-9. p. 47.
1470
1471Centuries before The Irish Holocaust, from 1649 to 1652, the British government destroyed one-third of the population of Ireland. William Petty, an English historian wrote, "660,000 Irish people were killed."[15] and "Twenty thousand Irish boys and girls also were sold into slavery to the West Indies. The Irish peasant farmers that survived were forced to pay rent to their usurpers. Once prosperous home grown industries were also destroyed because they “competed with British factories." Britain's parliament reacted to Oliver Cromwell’s crime against humanity in Ireland by simply passing a law that made this ethnic cleansing legal. It stated, "The House doth approve the execution done at Drogheda, as an act both of justice to them and mercy to others who may be warned by it."[16][7]
1472
1473[15] J. M., The Way of the Aggressor, p. 21.
1474[16] F. H., Cromwell, p. 149.
1475[7]Irish Holocaust. Ethnic Cleansing in Ireland
1476http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm
1477
1478At the Battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690 William of Orange won control of England. This brought renewed disaster with more of the British government robbing the Irish people of their land followed and the adoption into law of the notorious "Penal Laws" in the late 1690s with, "The law does not presume any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic."[17]
1479
1480[17]  Robert Kee, The Green Flag, Volume 1: The Most Distressful Country, A (Penguin Book, 1972).
1481
1482
1483As a result of years of exploitation, the Irish survived as tenant farmers (or cottiers) and were never far from economic disaster. This system was basically like sharecropping in the United States, but much worse because the Irish were forced to exist on a single crop: the potato.[7]
1484
1485[7]Irish Holocaust. Ethnic Cleansing in Ireland
1486http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm
1487
1488--------------------
1489
1490Why the potato blight happened
1491
1492The official name of the disease was phytophthora infestans.
1493
1494Much like today's resistance to Cultural Marxism and Globalism, back then nationalists occasionally staged rebellions against British rule but they failed. In 1845, when Irish nationalist aspirations were at their lowest ebb, the potato crop was became diseased. The disease turned the potato into a foul slime, much like if you leave potatoes in a warm, wet environment with little air; they will rot and stink.[7]
1495
1496[7]Irish Holocaust. Ethnic Cleansing in Ireland
1497http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm
1498
1499The potato blight broke out in the United States spreading around North Carolina, Philadelphia, New York, Illinois, Virginia, and eventually to Nova Scotia and Ontario in Canada. It crossed the Atlantic Ocean with a shipment of seed potatoes for Belgian farmers in 1845.[18] It then spread around the north hemisphere for years, but nobody ever starved from it. No one was forcibly starving the people in other countries but Ireland.[19]
1500
1501[18] Reader, John (March 17, 2008), "The Fungus That Conquered Europe", New York Times, retrieved 2008-03-18
1502http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/opinion/17reader.html
1503[19]  http://yournewswire.com/britains-secret-history-the-irish-holocaust/
1504
1505The potato blight broke out because with too many people growing potatoes close together in a moist area so a disease broke out and killed the crops. Oatmeal (the food staple of Scotland) and rice can be stored for a long period safely, but potatoes are moist and go bad quickly, which makes it easy to get a disease started. England had an excessive, reckless potato dependency and the nation was far over-populated compared to its food supply (although it's nothing compared to Europe now that imports all the entire Third World in and has no room anymore at all but keeps importing people and has to import a lot of its food).[20]
1506
1507[20] http://www.irishholocaust.org/officialbritishintent
1508
1509When the blight happened, the British wealthy decided to simply demand the Irish produce as many potatoes as they could to the exclusion of other food. And not only this, but they increased the quota of potatoes partly for profit and partly to exterminate the people of Ireland.[20]
1510
1511[20] http://www.irishholocaust.org/officialbritishintent
1512
1513-------------------------
1514
1515Fishing?
1516
1517It's often brought up that Ireland was right by the sea so people could go fishing. However if a million people all go to the coastline and fish, all the nearby fish will be snatched up and soon go extinct. Not only that, but the British soldiers brought warships and would seize fish from Irish fishermen as soon as they were caught. Britain brought 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia, battleships, excise vessels, Coast Guard and by 200,000 British soldiers (100,000 at any given moment) robbed this food at gunpoint. And if they see someone fishing instead of trying to farm potatoes, they'd arrest them and turn them into slave labor.[21]
1518
1519[21] http://www.irishholocaust.org/britain%27scoverup
1520
1521The Irish only had three options:[19]
1522
15231. Starve on their farms, while selling their grain crops to pay their rent.
1524
15252. Report to the Public Works or the Poor Law workhouses to be worked/starved to death (as the Soviets did to the inmates of their gulags).
1526
15273. Emigrate and take the 50/50 chance of surviving the passage across the Atlantic.
1528
1529[19] http://yournewswire.com/britains-secret-history-the-irish-holocaust/
1530
1531-----------------------------------------
1532
1533Complicity
1534
1535The bulk of the English were not doing this to the Irish. During the Victorian era, most English were poor (described well by Charles Dickens) and to them life was so awful that being a thief was considered an honorable profession.[7][22]
1536
1537[7] Irish Holocaust. Ethnic Cleansing in Ireland
1538http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm
1539[22] http://theinfounderground.com/archives/2010-01-24_20091121_the_info_underground_radio_9272008__the_irish_holocaust.mp3
1540
1541Ireland's Catholic Church hierarchy could have stopped the genocide but they knowingly allowed it to happen.[23]
1542
1543[23] http://www.irishholocaust.org/complicity
1544
1545Queen Victoria's economist, Nassau Senior, said the genocide "will not kill more than one million Irish in 1848 and that will scarcely be enough to do much good." When an eye-witness urged a stop to the genocide-in-progress, Charles Trevelyan responded to him, "We must not complain of what we really want to obtain." Trevelyan pretended that all reports of starvation were exaggerated until 1847; afterwhich he then claimed the dying had ended and refused entry to the American food relief ship Sorciére.[20][10][24]
1546
1547[20] http://www.irishholocaust.org/officialbritishintent
1548[10] http://henrymakow.com/2015/06/irish-potato-famine-was.html
1549[24] http://ireland-calling.com/irish-potato-famine/
1550
1551British Coastguard Inspector-General, Sir James Dombrain, tried to give free food to the starving Irish people. Trevelyan publicly rebuked Dombrain for this.[19]
1552
1553[19] http://yournewswire.com/britains-secret-history-the-irish-holocaust/
1554
1555Thomas 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. Then in 1848, the newspaper's editorialists made comments like, "A Celt will soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as the red man on the banks of Manhattan."[20]
1556
1557[20] http://www.irishholocaust.org/officialbritishintent
1558
1559-------------------
1560
1561Foreign aid
1562
1563The immortal Society of Friends (or Quakers) did all in their power to save lives with food prepared in foreign aid. But in 1847 they gave up after learning that the British 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 the African genocides) it was an act of nature.[20]
1564
1565[20] http://www.irishholocaust.org/officialbritishintent
1566
1567---------------------------------
1568
1569Aftermath
1570
1571In the 1870s, after the potato blight had ending, British laws were enacted allowing the Irish to buy back the land of which Britain had robbed them. The British extracted from Irish farmers a huge, twice-yearly payment until the British claimed the Irish paid that "debt" off in the 1970s.[20]
1572
1573[20] http://www.irishholocaust.org/officialbritishintent
1574
1575The mass genocide during the Irish Holocaust also caused the Irish language to nearly go extinct.[3]
1576
1577[3] http://www.irishidentity.com/extras/heritage/stories/language.htm
1578
1579-----------------------
1580
1581Lack of recognition
1582
1583This intentional genocide is often called by the euphemism "potato famine" to lie about the fact that the Irish people had enough non-potato food but it was taken from them by force and they were forced to grow potatoes at gunpoint which had a disease.[7]
1584
1585[7] Irish Holocaust. Ethnic Cleansing in Ireland
1586http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm
1587
1588The Irish Holocaust has been compared to the Holodomor ("hunger plague") which was a systematic starvation of the Ukrainian people by the Jewish Communists around 1932.[25][26][27]
1589
1590[25] Holodomor and Gorta Mór: Histories, Memories and Representations of Famine in Ukraine and Ireland (Anthem Series on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies)
1591http://www.anthempress.com/holodomor-and-gorta-mor
1592[26] Holodomor, Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933: A Crime against Humanity or Genocide? Renate Stark. Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies Est 1998. Published by Social Care Ireland
1593http://arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1138&context=ijass
1594[27] Holodomor in Ukraine and Great Famine in Ireland.
1595http://www.widereurope.ie/news_events/55/holodomor_in_ukraine_and_great_famine_in_ireland.html
1596
1597
1598In 1996, Francis A. Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote a report commissioned by the New York-based Irish Famine/Genocide Committee, which concluded that the British government deliberately pursued a race and ethnicity-based policy aimed at destroying the group commonly known as the Irish people and that the policy of mass starvation amounted to genocide per the Hague convention of 1948.[28] On the strength of Boyle's report, the US state of New Jersey included the famine in the "Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum" at the secondary tier.[29] The subsequent row influenced the effort by New York to create a human rights curriculum in which lessons learned from the Irish Holocaust remain relevant to genocide and famine in the modern world.[30]
1599
1600[28] "Clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnic and racial group commonly known as the Irish People...Therefore, during the years 1845 to 1850 the British government knowingly pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland that constituted acts of genocide against the Irish people within the meaning of Article II (c) of the 1948 [Hague] Genocide Convention." Ritschel, Dan (1996), The Irish Famine: Interpretive & Historiographical Issues
1601http://web.archive.org/web/20090221122426/http://www.umbc.edu/history/CHE/InstPg/RitFamine/irish-famine-historiographical-issues.html
1602Department of History, University of Maryland, archived from the original on 21 February 2009
1603http://www.umbc.edu/history/CHE/InstPg/RitFamine/irish-famine-historiographical-issues.html
1604[29] Approved by the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education on 10 September 1996, for inclusion in the Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum at the secondary level. Revision submitted 11/26/98. -- Irish Famine Curriculum Committee (1998), The Great Irish Famine
1605http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/irish.pdf
1606[30] Tara Dougherty (2013). Irish America Magazine
1607
1608
1609The Holocaust memorial in Dublin, Ireland refuses to acknowledge the Irish Holocaust.[31]
1610
1611[31] http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Irish-back-down-in-face-of-anger-over-decision-not-to-mention-Israel-at-Holocaust-ceremony-384631
1612
1613------------------------------
1614
1615Another genocide plan in the 1980s
1616Documents declassified at the National Archives in Kew, West London in 2015, found that Britain had planned another Holocaust of the Irish people in the 1980s. It was limited to Northern Ireland because at that time, Britain only ruled some of it due to the Irish people revolting for their freedom. Northern Ireland today has a population of 1.8 million people and in 1983 it had about 1.5 million.[32] In 1983, English civil servants planned to import 5.5 million people from Hong Kong and put them all in Northern Ireland. The immigrants would be given full welfare and have everything paid for while the Irish people there would be crowded out and die.[33] Article 2c of the Genocide Convention defines an aspect of genocide as, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”[34] People who hate white people or just hate Irish people have been trying to pass this off as a joke just like how they passed off millions of British soldiers robbing the Irish people of food at gunpoint as a natural disaster.[35]
1617
1618[32] Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency: Chapter 1: Demographic Overview of Northern Ireland Page 6
1619http://www.nisra.gov.uk/archive/demography/publications/annual_reports/2010/Chapter1.pdf
1620[33] How Britain considered transplanting population of Hong Kong to new 'city state' in Northern Ireland during height of Troubles
1621http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/how-britain-considered-transplanting-population-of-hong-kong-to-new-city-state-in-northern-ireland-during-height-of-troubles-10361858.html
1622[34] Text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, website of the UNHCHR.
1623 Text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, website of the UNHCHR.
1624[35]Anti-Whites Claim a Plan to Move 5.5 Million Non-Whites Into Northern Ireland in The 80s was a “Joke”
1625https://dailystormer.red/anti-whites-claim-a-plan-to-move-5-5-million-non-whites-into-northern-ireland-in-the-80s-was-a-joke/
1626(if the stormer gets taken down again just google the heading and you'll find the article on another mirror)
1627
1628----------------
1629
1630Red Ice Radio - Chris Fogarty - The Irish Holocaust
1631
1632
1633Chris Fogarty was raised on farm in Ireland where he worked the land with his father, and later went on to reside in the US. Mr. Fogarty has been a regular Columnist for the past nineteen years in Irish American News and is a citizen-investigator of Chicago aldermanic crime. He is the author of Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it 'Perfect' and he is behind irishholocaust.org. Chris joins us to speak about the Irish Holocaust and the cover-up that is accomplished by the same British terrorism and bribery that perpetrated the genocide. He explains the dark time during 1845-1850 when Ireland starved because its food, from 40 to 70 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint by 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia. Chris describes how the British completely took over 95% of Ireland’s territory, extracting all goods and wiping out at least half of the indigenous population. We’ll discuss the lie of Ireland’s “potato famine,” the official story used to explain the deaths of over 5.2 million people, which is propagated to this day – even by the Irish government, academia, and the Catholic Church. Chris gives details of his extensive research into the locations of British food removal regiments and over 170 mass graves across Ireland. He’ll explain the fear of persecution and intimidation that continues to infect Irish society in modern times. We end by considering Ireland’s long history of ethnic cleansing, the role of the government and Catholic hierarchy, and the notion that the IRA are terrorists. 
1634
1635https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbAXsWU5G0Q
1636
1637----------------------
1638
1639More Fogarty on the radio
1640
1641https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OntFnOZjrk
1642
1643--------------------------
1644
1645https://redice.tv/red-ice-radio/the-irish-holocaust
1646
1647----------------------------
1648
1649On Chris Fogarty
1650
1651Christopher Michael Fogarty (born 1935), better known as Chris Fogarty, is an American former civil engineer, writer and political activist in the Irish American community. After retirement in the mid-1980s, Fogarty began to research the Great Hunger in Ireland of the 1840s and published a pamphlet identifying mass graves in Ireland. Fogarty refers to the event as the Irish Holocaust and operates the website IrishHolocaust.org which he created in 1995. Fogarty has worked for the Irish American News publication in Chicago. During The Troubles, Fogarty was the Vice President of the Friends of Irish Freedom.[1][2]
1652
1653Fogarty was born in Chicago in the United States, his parents were Irish. At the age of ten he moved to rural Ireland (Castlerea, County Roscommon) with his parents until returning to the United States at the age of eighteen.
1654
1655Great Hunger as Irish Holocaust
1656Fogarty is perhaps best known for his activism in the field of the Great Hunger in Ireland of 1845-1852. He became interested in the subject in 1983 after retirement, when he was researching the life of his paternal grandfather in the Public Record Office (what is now The National Archives) at Kew, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. His grandfather had served in the 40th Regiment of Foot of the British Army (which he had joined in 1857) and Fogarty claims to have discovered that this regiment had removed food crops in southern County Galway during the Hunger (in 1847 and 1848).[3] Fogarty continued to research this line and after returning to the United States published a pamphlet entitled The Mass Graves of Ireland: 1845-1850 in which he claimed that of the 130 regiments of the British Empire, 67 were in Ireland during the Hunger exporting meats, livestock, grains, dairy and poultry products out of the country for export. The pamphlet also featured a map locating 170 mass graves in Ireland, along with the locations of British regimental deployments of the time.[3]
1657
1658Fogarty's 1980s pamphlet was turned into a website on the internet in 1995, at IrishHolocaust.org which expanded on the information. Later, in 2015, he published a full length volume entitled Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it “Perfect”,[4] which was printed first in the United States and then later editions in Dublin. Fogarty has sought to raise awareness of what he describes as a genocide by the British government and seeks to challenge accounts which ascribe the Hunger simply to natural circumstances. He works with Ireland's National Graves Association in an effort to erect memorials at the mass graves from the Hunger-era that he identified on his original map.[5]
1659
1660Activism during the Troubles
1661Fogarty and his County Limerick-born wife Mary O'Sullivan (married in 1957) became prominent Chicago-based activists in the Irish-American community during The Troubles in Northern Ireland opposing what they regarded as British injustices. They took part in campaigns to free the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, as well as taking a stance against the 1972 US-UK Extradition Treaty (later replaced by the UK–US extradition treaty of 2003). In the Chicago City Council, Fogarty and his wife worked for the enactment of the MacBride Principles for Fair Employment in Northern Ireland, which later became federal law and dealt with how the United States approached Northern Ireland economically. The two also led the Illinois campaign to release Joe Doherty, a former volunteer with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, who was imprisoned in the United States in 1983 without trial and threatened with extradition to the United Kingdom for killing a member of the Special Air Service. Fogarty was chairman of the North Side chapter of the Irish American Unity Conference in 1990[6] and also worked as the Vice President of the Friends of Irish Freedom.[1] Fogarty's writings have featured in The Blanket and The Pensive Quill (Anthony McIntyre's website).[7]
1662
1663http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-07-04/features/9307040334_1_fbi-agents-tape-recorder-john-tuttle
1664
1665http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-08-15/features/9308150205_1_northern-ireland-fbi-irish-republican-army
1666
1667http://thepensivequill.am/2016/01/entirely-censored.html
1668
1669------------------------------------
1670
1671“MAKING HISTORY”  : A PAPER READ TO THE CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB
1672
1673 ON
1674
1675MONDAY, JANUARY 9, 2017
1676
1677 AT
1678
1679THE SKYLINE CLUB
1680
1681307 NO. MICHIGAN AVENUE
1682
1683CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
1684
1685 
1686
1687BY CHRISTOPHER M. FOGARTY
1688
1689 Writers, especially poets, strive for precision. An aspiring novelist guided by Shakespeare’s advice as to brevity, and advised to include sex, religion, royalty and mystery in his work, economically wrote: “’My God!’ said the king, ‘The queen’s pregnant! Who dunnit?’” While this paper contains few of these topics, that of mystery eventually predominates. Here goes:  
1690
1691My grandfather Fogarty and Britain’s National Archives. In the mid-1980s I researched for a biography of my grandfather, Kieran Fogarty (1839-1925). At Britain’s National Archives in Kew, Surrey, I found that the British army regiment he joined in 1857 had removed the food crops from So. County Galway in 1847 and 1848. In schools on both sides of the Atlantic I had been taught “famine” and had had no reason to doubt it, so I pursued this line of new information; ultimately finding that it took 67 regiments (more than half of Britain’s empire army of 130 regiments) to wrest Ireland’s agricultural production of meats, livestock, grains, dairy and poultry products away from its producers and to the ports for export. Upon return to the States I published a pamphlet headed “The Mass Graves of Ireland: 1845-1850.” Its map showed the locations of some 170 mass graves, and the deployment locations in Ireland of the regiments (each named) whose deeds had filled those mass graves. In or about 1995 that pamphlet became www.irishholocaust.org (The descriptive “Holocaust” is from published reports starting in 1847). When my web site did not complete the job, two years ago I compiled and published Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it “Perfect.” (I hold up a copy for the audience to see). It was printed in the US; its second and third printings were in Dublin in 2015 and 2016 despite governmental disapproval. A review of it in the 16 Sept 2015 Sunday Independent newspaper referred to it as “the definitive study.’
1692
1693Which led to…
1694
1695Irish Holocaust Awareness, and other Campaigns.
1696
1697Homicide records soon taught me that the main terrorists in Occupied Ireland are British, not Irish as I had previously believed. Taking a first-time interest in Irish human rights issues, my wife Mary and I joined the Chicago parts of national campaigns to free the tortured-into-“confessing” Birmingham Six and Guildford Four and to oppose the US/UK Extradition Treaty. Soon thereafter Mary and I led, i.e., performed most of the work through to enactment in Springfield and a Chicago City Council ordinance, of the MacBride Principles for Fair Employment in Northern Ireland (modeled on the Sullivan Principles for S. Africa). MacBride later became federal law. Mary and I similarly led the Illinois part of the campaign to release ex-IRA-volunteer Joe Doherty from federal prison where he had spent eight years without trial. (Despite some 135 congressional signatories, we failed.)
1698
1699Continues here
1700http://www.judecollins.com/2017/01/making-history-christopher-m-fogarty/
1701
1702-------------------------------------
1703
1704British Army’s role in the Famine
1705Sunday Independent (Ireland)11 Oct 2015
1706Sir – Attempting to deny Ireland’s 1845-1850 Holocaust, Ruth Edwards wrote (Sunday Independent, October 4): “The British government handled the catastrophe incompetently, and for doctrinaire but not ill-intentioned reasons changed policy to non-interference after two years, but there was no deliberate cruelty and no intention to kill anyone.”
1707
1708The catastrophe was created by deploying army regiments to Ireland where it competently removed, at gunpoint, the abundant agricultural output for export while its producers starved. More than half of Britain’s army participated. Ireland’s landlords were largely English, Protestant, and so powerful in Britain’s Lords and Commons they were able to control deployment of the army and leave hundreds if not thousands of mass graves across Ireland. On what basis does Ms Edwards claim Britain had “no intention to kill anyone?” How can starvation be “unintentional” if food is removed by violence?
1709
1710Christopher Fogarty; author of Ireland 1845-1850; the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it “Perfect”, Chicago,
1711
1712USA
1713
1714
1715http://www.pressreader.com/ireland/sunday-independent-ireland/20151011/282561607004931
1716
1717-----------------------------
1718
1719Behind the Headlines: Ireland's Holocaust - Interview with Chris Fogarty
1720Sott Editors
1721Sott.net
1722Sun, 05 Jul 2015 18:00 UTC 
1723Sott Talk Radio logoOur special guest this week on Behind the Headlines is amateur historian Christopher 'Chris' Fogarty. Fogarty was born in Chicago and raised on a farm in Ireland. He worked with his father on contract-plowing, meadow-mowing, and on a threshing mill. He has a degree in civil engineering and has worked around the world on major engineering projects. He served with the U.S. army in France. 
1724
1725He has spent years investigating the truth about the Irish 'famine' and runs a website where he exposes the truth that the deaths of up to 5 million Irish people in the 1840s was a result of systematic policy by the British to starve the "rebellious Irish". He has been a regular columnist for the past nineteen years in Irish American News, runs the web site www.irishholocaust.org and is the author of Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it 'Perfect'' 
1726
1727Chris has been a keen observer of the trials of Irish republicans in London, Dublin and the Cullyhanna reenactment/investigation. He was 'honored' by being framed by MI5 and the FBI for triple murder of the Langert family. Weeks prior to his trial he was warned by an FBI agent that British and US intelligence were planning to "silence him" because of his human rights advocacy on behalf of Irish Catholics in the north of Ireland. 
1728
1729Chris is the Chicago agent of the National Graves Association (Ireland) and is in the process of systematically installing grave markers over some of Ireland's hundreds of Holocaust mass graves. 
1730
1731Far too long to put on here, but worth a read or listen.
1732
1733https://www.sott.net/article/301466-Behind-the-Headlines-Irelands-Holocaust-Interview-with-Chris-Fogarty
1734
1735--------------
1736
1737He runs a facebook page here
1738
1739https://www.facebook.com/No.Famine/
1740
1741--------------------------
1742
1743More youtube interviews
1744
1745https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygMW4B3Odsc
1746
1747https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Smh1X4U79s
1748
1749https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNLsLx2DX78
1750
1751------------------
1752
1753Chris Fogarty's site, the mass graves of Ireland
1754
1755http://www.irishholocaust.org/1024-map.gif
1756
1757https://78462f86-a-968a7bca-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/irishholocaust.org/www/1024-map.gif?attachauth=ANoY7coIFncbddhFjXql9loyNN-jlpDcuvZBNfY-CVdHqoJWsnFUJksMY2JET-ap7uQgPQu8IHUn955Ai2-hYzprbbQCxSvdYLEhmWo3sz3ELgtgGExUOWN4fIgLtjt8PlhOBTGebCkjerjJWxCP0YyV1vXejUTf3olkQA1P3gfFUyxrj6Dl_D7_tsOy8ANojCfu31agtHEI3USJKY-ol0lnTANIKM99hQ%3D%3D&attredirects=0
1758
1759
1760A lot of this is extracts from his books:
1761The Mass Graves of Ireland: 1845-1850 (1980s)
1762Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it “Perfect” (2015)
1763
1764Irishmen and Irishwomen!
1765Read this site and weep.  Weep for the agonies and deaths of your people at the hands of genocidists.  The authorities who imposed the curriculum, the teachers and professors who funneled it into you, have carefully kept you uninformed as to which British regiment, or that any regiment, murdered your people.  Until now, that information was kept from you. You had no access to it.  You do now - you read it on your computer screen!  Commit the regiment's name to memory. 
1766
1767www.irishholocaust.org
1768
1769---------------------------------
1770
1771Britain's Cover Up
1772
1773Is Britain's cover-up of its 1845-1850 holocaust in Ireland the most successful Big Lie in all of history?
1774
1775The cover-up is accomplished by the same British terrorism and bribery that perpetrated the genocide.  Consider: why does Irish President Mary Robinson call it "Ireland's greatest natural 1 disaster" while she conceals the British army's role?  Potato blight, "phytophthora infestans", did spread from America to Europe in 1844, to England and then Ireland in 1845 but it didn't cause famine anywhere.  Ireland did not starve for potatoes; it starved for food. 
1776 
1777Ireland starved because its food, from 40 to 70 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint by 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia, battleships, excise vessels, Coast Guard and by 200,000 British soldiers (100,000 at any given moment)  The attached map shows the never-before-published names and locations in Ireland of the food removal regiments (Disposition of the Army; Public Record Office, London; et al, of which we possess photocopies).  Thus, Britain seized from Ireland's producers tens of millions of head of livestock; tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry & dairy products; enough to sustain 18 million persons. 
1778 
1779The Public Record Office recently informed us that their British regiments' Daily Activity Reports of 1845-1850 have "gone missing."  Those records include each regiment's cattle drives and grain-cart convoys it escorted at gun-point from the Irish districts assigned to it.  Also "missing" are the receipts issued by the British army commissariat officers in every Irish port tallying the cattle and tonnage of foodstuff removed; likewise the export lading manifests. Other records provide all-revealing glimpses of the "missing" data; such as: ...  
1780
1781[1] President Robinson's preface in the Strokestown "'Famine' Museum" book. 
1782
1783
1784
1785http://www.irishholocaust.org/britain%27scoverup
1786
1787----------------------------------
1788
1789The Food Removal
1790
1791From Cork harbor on one day in 1847 2 the AJAX steamed for England with 1,514 firkins of butter, 102 casks of pork, 44 hogsheads of whiskey, 844 sacks of oats, 247 sacks of wheat, 106 bales of bacon, 13 casks of hams, 145 casks of porter, 12 sacks of fodder, 28 bales of feathers, 8 sacks of lard, 296 boxes of eggs, 30 head of cattle, 90 pigs, 220 lambs, 34 calves and 69 miscellaneous packages. On November 14, 1848 3, sailed, from Cork harbor alone: 147 bales of bacon, 120 casks and 135 barrels of pork, 5 casks of hams, 149 casks of miscellaneous provisions (foodstuff); 1,996 sacks & 950 barrels of oats; 300 bags of flour; 300 head of cattle; 239 sheep; 9,398 firkins of butter; 542 boxes of eggs. On July 28, 1848 4; a typical day's food shipments from only the following four ports: from Limerick: the ANN, JOHN GUISE and MESSENGER for London; the PELTON CLINTON for Liverpool; and the CITY OF LIMERICK, BRITISH QUEEN, and CAMBRIAN MAID for Glasgow. This one-day removal of Limerick's food was of 863 firkins of butter; 212 firkins, 1,198 casks and 200 kegs of lard, 87 casks of ham; 267 bales of bacon; 52 barrels of pork; 45 tons and 628 barrels of flour; 4,975 barrels of oats and 1,000 barrels of barley. From Kilrush: the ELLEN for Bristol; the CHARLES G. FRYER and MARY ELLIOTT for London. This one-day removal was of 550 tons of County Clare's oats and 15 tons of its barley. From Tralee: the JOHN ST. BARBE, CLAUDIA and QUEEN for London; the SPOKESMAN for Liverpool. This one-day removal was of 711 tons of Kerry's oats and 118 tons of its barley. From Galway: the MARY, VICTORIA, and DILIGENCE for London; the SWAN and UNION for Limerick (probably for transshipment to England). This one-day removal was of 60 sacks of Co. Galway's flour; 30 sacks and 292 tons of its oatmeal; 294 tons of its oats; and 140 tons of its miscellaneous provisions (foodstuffs). British soldiers forcibly removed it from its starving Limerick, Clare, Kerry and Galway producers. 
1792 
1793In Belmullet, Co. Mayo the mission of 151 soldiers 5 of the 49th Regiment, in addition to escorting livestock and crops to the port for export, was to guard a few tons of stored meal from the hands of the starving; its population falling from 237 to 105 between 1841 and 1851. Belmullet also lost its source of fish in January, 1849, when Britain's Coast Guard arrested its fleet of enterprising fishermen ten miles at sea in the act of off-loading flour from a passing ship. They were sentenced to prison and their currachs were confiscated.
1794 
1795The Waterford Harbor British army commissariat officer wrote to British Treasury Chief Charles Trevelyan on April 24, 1846; "The barges leave Clonmel once a week for this place, with the export supplies under convoy which, last Tuesday, consisted of 2 guns, 50 cavalry, and 80 infantry escorting them on the banks of the Suir as far as Carrick." While its people starved, the Clonmel district exported annually, along with its other farm produce, approximately 60,000 pigs in the form of cured pork. ...
1796
1797[2] Paddy's Lament; by Thomas Gallagher; p. 149.
1798[3] Ireland; A History; by Robert Kee; p. 100.
1799[4] Limerick Intelligencer; July 29, 1848.
1800[5] Where the Sun Sets; by Fr. Seán Noone; ps. 14, 76, 103.
1801
1802http://www.irishholocaust.org/thefoodremoval
1803
1804-----------------------------
1805
1806Voices in the Wilderness
1807
1808There were many "Voices in the Wilderness" risking all to stop the genocide. For example; Wexford-born Jane Wilde, mother of Oscar and poetess, wrote under the nom de plume "Speranza," in the United Irishman newspaper the following (verses 1 and 6 printed here) during the depths of 1847 re the British genocidists and the innocents they were exterminating: 
1809 
1810THE FAMINE YEAR
1811Weary men, what reap ye? "Golden corn for the Stranger."
1812What sow ye? "Human corpses that await for the Avenger."
1813Fainting forms, all hunger-stricken, what see you in the offing?
1814"Stately ships to bear our food away amid the stranger's scoffing."
1815There's a proud array of soldiers what do they round your door?
1816"They guard our masters' granaries from the thin hands of the poor."
1817Pale mothers, wherefore weeping? "Would to God that we were dead"
1818Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread!"
1819
1820"We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride,
1821But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died.
1822Now is your hour of pleasure, bask ye in the world's caress;
1823But our whitening bones against ye will arise as witnesses,
1824From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffined masses,
1825For the Angel of the Trumpet will know them as he passes.
1826A ghastly, spectral army before God we'll stand
1827And arraign ye as our murderers, O spoilers of our land!"
1828
1829 
1830Mrs. Wilde evidently knew that British arms controlled every field of Ireland. Small detachments resided as far away as 40 miles from their garrisons shown on the map. The absence of army garrisons in Co. Derry, etc., indicates that its royalist militia adequately reinforced its constabulary. Bayonets, cannons, rifles, the lash, eviction and the gallows were freely used to seize Irish food (on the pretext that it was "the property" of some English "owner"-by-robbery; nearly all of whom were absentees). But Wilde couldn't have known each regiment's identity. We discovered them in the Public Record Office, Kew Gardens, London in 1983 while researching material for my paternal grandfather's biography. It was just as available to Irish government-subsidized authors and academicians. Their Big Lie campaign is shocking. Perhaps this brochure will encourage them to finally tell the truth; that Britain perpetrated a Holocaust in Ireland. ... 
1831
1832http://www.irishholocaust.org/voicesinthewilderness
1833
1834--------------------------------------
1835
1836Official British Intent
1837
1838Official 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 ... 
1839
1840[6] The Great Hunger; by Cecil Woodham-Smith; p. 373 (cap. xvii; sect. 3; pp. 1; penult. sentence).
1841[7] The Great Hunger; by Cecil Woodham-Smith; p. 369
1842[8] Atlas of Ireland; by The Irish Academy; p. 91 (Folk Tradition; distribution of flail types). 
1843[9] History of Ireland; by John Mitchel; p. 204 
1844
1845http://www.irishholocaust.org/officialbritishintent
1846
1847--------------------------------------
1848
1849Toll of Holocaust
1850
1851Toll of Irish Holocaust. The 1841 census of Ireland revealed a population of 10,897,449. This figure includes the correction factor established by that year's official partial recount. When, between 1779 and 1841, the U.S. population increased by 640 percent, and England's is estimated to have increased, despite massive emigration to its colonies, by 100 percent, it is generally accepted that Ireland's population increase was 172% 10. The average annual component of this 172% increase is x in the formula (1+ x)62 = 1 + 172%; thus 0.0163, or 1.63%. Accepting that this 1.63% rate of annual population increase continued until mid-1846 (one human gestation after the late-1845 beginning of removal of Ireland's food), the 1846 population was 11,815,011. 
1852Assuming that rate continued, the population in 1851, absent the starvation, would have been approximately 12,809,841. However; the 1851 census recorded a population of 6,552,385; thus there was a "disappearance" of 6,257,456. This population-loss figure of 6,257,456 is scarcely susceptible to significant challenge, being derived directly from the British government's own censuses for Ireland. It is reasonable to assume that the rigor established in the recount of 1841 became the standard for the 1851 census; so that any residual undercount would be systemic, affecting 1841 and 1851 proportionately (and, if known, would increase the murder total). These 6,257,456 include roughly 1,000,000 who successfully fled into exile and another 100,000 unborn between 1846 and 1851 due to malnutrition-induced infertility. Of the 100,000 who fled to Canada in 1847, only 60,000 were still alive one month after landing.11 Among the 40,000 dead was Henry Ford's father's mother who died en route from Cork or in quarantine on Quebec's Grosse Ile.
1853Thus; though from 1845 through 1850, 6,257,456 "disappeared," the number murdered is approximately 1.1 million fewer; i.e., 5.16 millions. Consequently; if Britain's census figures for Ireland are correct the British government murdered approximately 5.16 million Irish men, women and children; making it the Irish Holocaust. This number, 5.16 million, exceeds the high end of the range (4.2 to 5.1 million) of serious estimates of the number of Jews murdered by Nazis. The least reliable component of the foregoing arithmetic is the number assumed to have successfully fled. If the fleers who survived prove to number, say, 900,000 instead of 1,000,000, the murder count will have to be corrected from 5.16 to 5.26 millions. This amount of adjustment, up or down, of the 5.16 millions murdered is determinable by sensitive review of the immigration records of the U.S., Canada, Argentina, and Australia; and of government records on the Irish who fled to Britain at the time. We invite bona fide documentation of the foregoing; whether in confirmation or rebuttal. Economists and historians are disqualified if their published work on the events of 1845-1850 covers up the British army's central role therein. Such individuals lack the standing to participate in this truth-quest. 
1854 
1855To our knowledge nobody else has ever published the above arithmetic or named the food removal regiments and battleships. Evidence that other truth-telling accounts exist would be greatly appreciated. Irish academia shuns and slurs Tom Gallagher's Paddy's Lament and Englishwoman Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Great Hunger for mentioning the Food Removal. Woodham-Smith fudged, but not enough to satisfy the cover-up cabal. For example; she reported that the 1841 partial recount established a correction factor of one-third for the 1841 census figure; but she used the uncorrected figure to calculate! By this and other fudges she arrived at a population-loss of only 2.5 million. She allocated only half a page to the core facts of the Genocide; the food removal data, while using some two hundred pages to describe British government "relief measures" as if they were something other than cosmetic exercises; a cover-up. But just as Telefis Eireann out-Britished Yorkshire TV by refusing to co-premiere the latter's 1993 exposé of the 5/17/74 British bombings of Dublin/Monaghan streets that murdered 33 and maimed 253; and as the Irish police menace the survivors of that bombing instead of arresting the known British perpetrators; so do Irish historians out-British Woodham-Smith by ostracizing her for exposing the Food Removal. They out-do themselves in describing the "benefit" of the Irish Holocaust; how Britain reduced poverty in Ireland ( by murdering those it had impoverished! They promote the notion that only the blighted potato crop belonged to the Irish while Ireland's abundant livestock, grains, etc., all "belonged" to mostly absentee English landlords. By that insane standard all of the property and production of Europe and Asia, excepting starvation rations for workers, would belong to W.W.II GIs and their heirs (or to the Axis had it won). 
1856 
1857Irish are not guilty. Though many Holocaust Irish, like many, say, Auschwitz Jews, took deadly advantage of their own weakest, neither the Irish nor Jewish communities had hand or part in the conceiving and planning of the genocides from London and Berlin; respectively. But, the German government repented and paid $100 billion (dollars) reparations to Jews while the British government and its Dublin surrogates still use terror and slander against those who commemorate the Irish Holocaust. It is still dangerous - after 150 years - to reveal the truth of it. ... 
1858
1859[10] The Great Hunger; by Cecil Woodham-Smith; ps. 24 and 409; also "Information Please" Almanac; p. 796
1860[11] The Great Hunger; by Cecil Woodham-Smith; ps. 24 and 409; also "Information Please" Almanac;  p. 234. (final pp. of cap. XI). Other works show the mortality rate far exceeded 40%. 
1861
1862Note: I know what you're thinking, muh 6 gorillion million. Look past that (Fogarty's a boomer) and at the true topic here.
1863
1864http://www.irishholocaust.org/tollofholocaust
1865-----------------------------------
1866
1867Complicity
1868
1869Complicity of the Catholic Hierarchy with London's planned genocide is, sad to say, well recorded. London, prior to removing Ireland's food, appointed a few Irish Catholic Bishops to a Dublin Castle commission and awarded a £30,000 lump sum to Maynooth while increasing its annual grant from £9,000 to £26,000!12 Before British troops began starving Ireland the London parliament enacted a law to return some of the seized foods in the form of rations to all of Ireland's Catholic hierarchy down to the level of, but not including, curates. Faced with residual hierarchical disquiet, M.P.s amended the law to include curates. This ended episcopal objections to the Irish Holocaust; it proceeded efficiently thenceforth. An Irish poet subsequently wrote; "...for the spire of the chapel of Maynooth is the dagger at Ireland's heart." A Munster bishop thanked God that he "lives in a country where a farmer would starve his own children to pay his landlord's rent"! For two centuries until 1795, priests in Ireland were felons a priori. The government paid a 5 shilling bounty for each severed head. In 1795, British ministers decided that to completely subjugate Ireland the collaboration of the Catholic Church was indispensable. Britain thus stopped murdering priests and founded and funded Ireland's national seminary; Maynooth. The tactic worked; the Irish Catholic Church became London's tool. 13 It facilitated the Irish Holocaust; it sided with Britain in the Risings of 1798, 1848, 1867 and 1916, destroyed Parnellite democracy in 1890 (traumatizing James Joyce) 14 and it has facilitated Britain's vestigial genocide in the Six Counties since 1922. Cardinal Daly recently went so far as to "beg England's forgiveness for the centuries of suffering inflicted upon it by the Irish!" Yet; isn't Catholicism as gloriously redeemed by its persecuted Fr. Wilsons and Sr. Sarah Clarkes of today as by its earlier millions of saints martyred by Elizabeth I, Cromwell, Anne, George III, Victoria, et al? 
1870 
1871Irish Starvation Martyrs. Honorable Irish people everywhere are commemorating Ireland's Holocaust of 1845-1850 by learning the truth of it. Thus, only dupes of British propaganda still refer to "The Irish Famine," as nobody died of lack of potatoes; but over five million Irish Catholics died of starvation or of malnutrition-induced disease when British troops removed their meats, grains, dairy products, etc. Britain could have removed food enough to sustain 13 million (but not 18 million) without starving Ireland.  No Protestant starved in Ireland 15 Britain didn't target them. 
1872 
1873The Truth Outs as we, the descendants of the survivors of that starvation will no longer be silenced. We denounce Ireland's Strokestown "Famine Museum," for its shameless "bait and switch" scam. Visitors seeking details of one of history's worst genocides are subtly invited to admire the genocidal landlord's grandiose taste in architecture and furnishings; all looted from the unpaid labor and land of the Irish families he murdered. It is highly unlikely that a Jew exists so depraved as to establish a Jewish Holocaust museum that similarly invites the visitor to slur the victims and admire, say, Goering's taste in looted Jewish property. How dare President Robinson say "the famine shames the Irish"? It is her cover-up that shames the Irish! As Holocaust guilt is Nazis', not the victims', so the guilt for 1845-1850 is the British perpetrators' and the above cover-up artists'; not ours and not their murdered victims'. Irish-America must tell the truth of it because in Ireland it is still too dangerous. The Irish government has announced that in June, 1997 it will end the "Irish Famine commemoration" in a "wake cum musical celebration to bury the ghost of the famine." Thus; the Irish government advertises its quisling status by ending the commemoration prior to the anniversaries of the murders of more than half of the 5.2 millions. What else can one expect from the government whose Consuls spoke in Illinois' State Legislature in opposition to the McBride Principles for Fair Employment in Northern Ireland? They pose as anti-terrorists while collaborating with the British terrorists who, since 1969, have murdered over six times16 as many noncombatants as have the IRA. An Irish bureaucrat recently joined our campaign to get the Irish Holocaust graves monumented, fenced and consecrated. He tells us that he will be fired or worse if his superiors learn of his involvement. He echoes another Irishman who, two centuries ago, observed; "Having a natural reverence for the dignity and antiquity of my native country, strengthened by education, and confirmed by an intimate knowledge of its history, I could not, without the greatest pain and indignation, behold ... the extreme passiveness and insensibility of the present race of Irish, at such reiterated insults offered to truth and their country: instances of inattention to their own honor, unexampled in any other civilized nation." 17
1874 
1875Dishonored Martyrs; their Mass Graves. The discovery of mass graves resulting from genocide always causes international outcry. But the mass graves of the Irish genocide are unmarked and unmourned by the world at large. Why? Because the Truth was interred in those pits along with the martyrs. The bones of the murdered 5.2 million are scattered across Ireland, the Atlantic sea-floor and North American littorals; but they are concentrated in mass graves the permanently-abandoned state of which eloquently reveals the genocidists' power. It was also mass martyrdom; as the victims could have saved their lives by renouncing their Faith. Food crops that civil law had forced them to tithe (before soldiers took the rest) to the local English State Church parson was on offer to whoever would renounce Catholicism and become Anglican. But they died for Faith and Freedom, and their mass graves are Ireland's holiest places (excepting, perhaps, the graves of those who died resisting). Yet, the souls of these murdered millions still cry to us for justice. After 150 years their murders remain misattributed and the mass graves containing their sacred remains are still unfenced, unmarked and even unconsecrated. It is not the Irish people who are such brutes. The condition of the mass graves reveals the brutal extent of English control of Ireland today; how unfree Ireland actually is. But America is free; Britain's MI6 can slur us but cannot murder us with the impunity they do in Dublin, Monaghan, the Occupied Six Counties, and as did British guards who entered the Maghaberry prison cell of Irishman Jim McDonnell on 3/30/96 and kicked him to death for asking to go to his father's funeral. British terrorists, however, are operating in the U.S. In Valhalla's Wake, authors McIntyre & Loftus report that, according to CIA sources, an MI6/SAS team of assassins murdered an American, John McIntyre, in Boston a decade ago. Five US citizens have been murdered by British terrorists in Ireland; none by the Irish. A law-abiding FBI agent alerted us a few years ago that some of his fellow agents; British-bribed; were planning MI6-type "dirty-tricks" crimes against us and that he was powerless to arrest them. Soon thereafter, FBI gangs, led by agent Edward P. Buckley, conducted five armed raids upon us, incarcerated me and my wife and two others, and fabricated evidentiary tape and committed perjury in an attempt to imprison us. 18 The FBI also framed me for the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Langert in Winnetka; but the actual murderer, David Biro, saved my life by confiding his crimes to school friends who informed the police. Biro, a 16-year-old, got life without parole. I would have gotten lethal injection. I knew nobody involved; had never heard of them in my entire life until the reports of the murders. Our attorneys photocopied the signed, FBI-fabricated police report that framed me. FBI/IRS crimes against us started shortly after we began exposing Britain's Big Lie re Ireland. American democracy is, we sense, less violated by these FBI/IRS crimes than by the fact that law enforcement, pols and the news media have all, British-style, knowingly covered them up and that the legal profession is cowed. The FBI criminals' British handlers tried to "take us out" to stop our support for basic rights in Ireland. The FBI later fabricated a malicious "immunity certificate" for me and my wife (making us appear to be FBI collaborators) and leaked it to an FBI asset for publication. 19 ... 
1876
1877[12] The Making of Modern Ireland; by J.C. Beckett; p. 329. 
1878[13] A Wounded Church; by Fr. Joseph McVeigh.
1879[14] James Joyce; by R. Ellman; ps. 16, 19, 24, 31-4, 40-1, 55-6, 153-4, 161, 266, 303, 331, 347, 349, 547, 761, 784.
1880[15] Chicago Sun-Times Magazine; 2/23/86 (a British government press release).
1881[16] An Index of Deaths from the Conflict In Ireland; 1969-1993 by Malcolm Sutton. Confirmed by other works. 
1882[17] An introduction to the Study of the History and Antiquities of Ireland; Sylv. O'Halloran; Dublin; 1772.
1883[18] Final Motion of US Case No. 91 CR 911; Chicago. The case records prove FBI crimes. We possess copies. 
1884[19] Lumpen Times magazine ; June '93, August '93, July '96, and August, 1996. The Irish Echo refused to run it.
1885
1886
1887http://www.irishholocaust.org/complicity
1888
1889-----------------------------
1890
1891What We Must Do
1892
1893What We Must Do.
1894Let us now; finally; come what may; summon our integrity to accomplish four Irish Holocaust goals; as follows: 
1895 
18961) Educate: Photocopy this and distribute it among your relatives, friends and acquaintances. Discuss it with them. Challenge Robinson-type "famine" lecturers who don't identify the perpetrating regiments. Click here to download a text version of this brochure, a HTML printable version from the web site. 
1897 
18982) Help get the Irish Genocide Taught in Public Schools as Slavery and Nazi Holocaust are now. Get your State Rep and Senator to support an Irish Genocide Education Bill. 
1899 
19003) Canonization of the Starvation Martyrs: Contact Hibernians (fax 407/254-2255) or us for canonization petition forms. 
1901 
19024) Help to install a fence and monuments memorializing the Starvation Martyrs of the mass grave nearest your ancestral homeplaces (see attached map). You can help by phoning (312/664-7651) in your $160 toward the specific Mass Grave you choose. For each donation sent to Ireland, a brass plate will be installed on a donors' wall at the Mass Grave. The plate will be engraved with your name or that of someone you wish to memorialize. All overhead costs of each volunteer will be at his/her personal expense (just as we who researched, printed, and distributed this flyer paid all the related expenses personally). Each Mass Grave district committee will be comprised of similarly self-funded volunteers. Accounting controls will ensure that donations go exclusively to fund carefully-awarded design, construction and landscaping contracts.
1903 
1904Volunteers From Each Mass Grave District will organize an architectural competition to design its memorial. They will research its old work-house records, etc., to collect data on the Martyrs. The overall design of each mass grave memorialization will be decided by the district committee and its architect. Ideally it will include a fence, walks, benches and a soaring monument with a prie-dieu facing it. It will include, as gaeilge, each Martyr's name, age, townland, date of death, etc., to the extent possible. It will name the regiment(s), its British home-base town, and the quantity of livestock and tonnage of each kind of foodstuff it removed from that mass grave's district. Where appropriate it will memorialize the righteous Quakers, Choctaws, DeKay, the Martins, et al. 
1905 
1906Ireland's Personifications of Truth. Dates of each mass-grave consecration/inauguration will be publicized well in advance to allow overseas visitors to attend. The consecrations shall be performed by Ireland's living Saints; by such personifications of Truth as Frs. Desmond Wilson, Píaras O Dúill, Pat Ryan, Joseph McVeigh, Maurice Burke, Ray Murray, Sister Sarah Clarke, the Rev. Dr. Brian Murphy, the Presbyterian Rev. Dr. Terence McCaughey and Anglican Bishop Austin Baker. Local organizers will consider inviting mayors of the corresponding regimental headquarters towns to their memorial consecration/inauguration in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. For example; South Galway organizers could invite the mayor of Taunton, Somerset, the home base of the regiment (see map) that starved it; the then 40th "Duke of Somerset's Own" Regiment of Foot. If, by the inauguration dates, the British government has ended its Irish genocide's final vestige in the Six Counties, has released all Irish political prisoners and repents publicly of its centuries of genocide and torture in Ireland it would make national forgiveness possible, and English Cabinet ministers could be invited. 
1907 
1908Then, at each mass-grave consecration/inauguration and on behalf of its Martyred Dead and of all of us the Fr. Wilsons of Ireland will Forgive the English people; Unreservedly. At the sides of those mass graves we will, all of us, in the name of those Irish Martyrs, vow to do all in our power to stop any government from ever again inflicting artificial famine. Likewise at those grave-sides we will vow to thenceforth respond to true famines and unstoppable artificial ones by uniting to promptly buy foodstuff and ship it to where needed. Those martyred souls whose unheeded cries for justice have haunted the virtuous Irish psyche for the past 150 years will be finally vindicated and canonized. Their sacrifices will redeem the Irish people who will break London's control of Ireland's government, academia, news media and Catholic hierarchy. Then, Forthrightness, that admirable quality that characterizes all free peoples will, after centuries, blossom fully again in Ireland. For the next millennium we Irish families of the Diaspora will return to kneel at the mass graves of Ireland's Starvation Martyrs. We will there renew our commitments to feed the hungry. Through prayerful contemplation of the Martyrs' sacrifice the Irish will finally become whole. 
1909 
1910Let us create truth-telling, reverent memorials at each of the 170 mass graves of Ireland's Holocaust. The list of $160 pledges grows. Artists and curators from each Irish-American population center are needed to help select monument designs. E-mail fogartyc@att.net or write to: Irish Holocaust Graves - USA; 900 No. Lake Shore Dr., #1507; Chicago, IL 60611 Tel. 312/664-7651; Fax 312/664-3401 2/1/95. Reaugmented 7May97. 
1911 
1912© 1995 Fogarty
1913At least 950,000 copies of this are now in circulation. This website, in pamphlet form, has been adopted as history course material in scores of universities, colleges and high schools. Right to photocopy this work is hereby granted but only in its entirety, with no change(s), and only for gratis distribution for educational purposes. The attached letter from the James Larkin Association is not included in my copyright. 
1914 
1915
1916The following postscript added in 1997:
1917Truth Arises. The Brit/Irish government is intensifying its cover-up efforts. The British Consulate's p.r. specialist Gaynor demanded that we cease distribution outside Chicago's Old St. Patrick church, saying; "How dare you? Your pamphlets are contradicting my Irish Potato Famine display inside!" Her Irish Holocaust Cover-up tour of the US was fronted in Chicago by the Irish Consul, the AOH, Catholic priests, et al. To co-opt our bill to mandate Irish Holocaust awareness in Illinois schools Irish Consul General Sheridan is promoting a parallel "Potato Famine" one. Irish Teachta Dala (M.P.) Avril Doyle recently promoted that "famine" lie across the U.S., including at Notre Dame U. The Brit/Irish government got massive space for her on National Public Radio, Irish-American radio, and mainstream and Irish-American newspapers. All news outlets who disseminated her untruths ban this pamphlet's truths. Shades of 1847 of which Mitchel wrote in p. 229 of his History of Ireland; "But there was a secret and underground machinery. The editor of the World (newspaper) was now on full pay; and on terms of close intimacy at the Castle and Viceregal Lodge." However; other truth-tellers exist. See attached copy of letter in Saoirse that reveals what awaited the Holocaust Irish in Liverpool. 
1918 
1919The Workhouses operated as diabolical factories. The sign out front might as well have read "Queen Victoria's Title Guarantee Co." They produced clear titles to Irish land for English landlords, as follows; the starving Irish (raw material) entered the workhouse as claimants to the lands of their ancestors and to land they improved. As a condition of entry they had to sign away their claim to all of it but a quarter-acre. Once this was done the starvelings became the "factory's" waste product; and were moved nearer to the Dying Room as they weakened. In the Castlerea workhouse, and presumably in many or most others, the Dying Rooms were located at the back end of the workhouse on the upper floor adjacent to a wall opening where, when the deed was done, the corpse was pushed through the opening and slid down a chute into a mass grave outside the building. Thus, landlords' titles were guaranteed and the waste product was disposed of efficiently. Most of the mass graves located on the map are those dumps; unchanged from 150 years ago except for the overgrowth of grass and weeds. Not one of the 170 of them has a marker that identifies the regiment that removed its district's foodstuffs. FIN
1920
1921http://www.irishholocaust.org/whatwemustdo
1922
1923I know more boomer poor jews stuff, Fogarty is a good man he just cares about nothing other than Ireland.
1924
1925-------------------------------------
1926
1927Lisnabinnia Memorial
1928
1929Lisnabinnia Holocaust Memorial Consecration
1930
1931Ballyglass, Ballymoe, County Galway
1932
19332PM, Sunday, July 2, 2000
1934
1935 
1936
1937Father Conway; Parish Priest, Ballymoe: Officiant
1938
1939 
1940
1941        Gratitude to Fr. Conway (and any other clergy present) and to Tom Egan and Family.  Today, finally, 150 years after the fact, we assemble here to provide truthful witness to Ireland's Holocaust* of 1845-1850.  We affirm the dignity and humanity of the martyrs buried here and repudiate those who disposed of them as sub-humans.  We affirm the existence of Lisnabinnia here before us and that of nearby Parkgarve and note that, by 1851, nothing remained of either village but a mass grave.  On 28Apr99, Tom Egan of Ballyglass stopped me to ask if I authored the "Mass Graves of Ireland: 1845-1850" pamphlet.  Upon my confirming it, he said, "Then there is something I'd like to show you."  It turned out to be the Lisnabinnia mass grave.  We thus celebrate Tom's integrity.  He possesses the character to be troubled by the mass murder once perpetrated here and to remember for life what his equally humane father, Martin (RIP), confided to him.
1942
1943         Locating the Mass Grave.
1944
1945        Father had informed son that, about 1906 when this land was being returned to the people, he and his "ditch"-building gang dug into a mass grave.  Rather than offset the "ditch" (sod fence), the ganger decided to continue it across the grave, but dug the sods elsewhere to avoid further uncovering the Dead.  Tom doesn't remember his father pointing out the precise spot, but believes it to be located where shown on the map, alongside one of the two bohers off the junction at the karstic pit that drains Killsallagh bog.  It was there, "back of beyond" that we intended to erect this memorial.  A few days later, as suggested by Glenamaddy Prof. Tom Fahy, I visited the Ordnance Survey offices in Phoenix Park and reviewed the 1840 map of this area.  It was a shock to find that an entire village, Lisnabinnia, had existed and was gone by 1851.  There being no other houses it had to be the source of the bodies.  Because Kilcroan graveyard was less than a half-mile from Lisnabinnia by road, it seemed likely to me that its mass grave would be located within Lisnabinnia and that the only reason for such unconsecrated burial was that the half-mile carry to Kilcroan was too much for the near-dying.  Also, during those years thousands of families were cremated in their houses by neighbors who, upon finding them dead would torch the house rather than risk disease.  It is possible that the mass grave was such a partly-cremated family, and would thus be at one of Lisnabinnia's houses shown on the map.  In any event the weakened villagers would not willingly carry their dead to unconsecrated ground as distant as, but across fences and in opposite direction to, Kilcroan graveyard.  Also, the horror of Tom Egan's knowledge could confine itself to a remote corner of memory, suggesting to him a geographically remote mass grave.  For these reasons we located the memorial near the houses.
1946
1947        Since its erection further horrifying information has become available, as follows: The Garranlaghan Parish historical record and other sources assert that priests routinely denied Christian burial to Holocaust victims.  In 1845, the London gov't enacted a law providing food rations to all of Ireland's Catholic clergy from what its army would seize from the crops of Ireland's Catholics.  Thus, Irelands priests, though well-fed, mostly preached "God's Will" to their parishioners targeted for extinction.  In refusing to provide the starvelings with Extreme Unction or Christian burial, Ireland's hierarchy not only backed Britain's contention that the Irish were sub-human, but that they lacked a soul and would not enter eternal life.  The Lisnabinnia mass grave will be found, perhaps under one of the ditches under Lisnabinnia.  But if Tom Egan's contention proves accurate, the bodies will have been carried with difficulty as far to unholy ground as to Kilcroan graveyard.  If that occurred it will prove conclusively that Christian burial was denied to them.  We pray that the mourners were spared such cruelty.  These were the blood relatives of many of us and we affirm today that they were murdered because they were landless and were landless because Britain had robbed them of it.
1948
1949        Prof. Cormac O'Grada's recent book, "Black '47..." quotes "an anonymous Ballymoe source" asserting that, "the famine barely affected Ballymoe parish."  By using such a "source" O'Grada spreads the lie that the Holocaust was mild.  But for Tom Egan, O'Grada's lie would have prevailed.  Today in the heart of Ballymoe parish, on behalf of the murdered of Lisnabinnia and Parkgarve, we denounce O'Grada and his cover-up cabal.  A decade ago his "The Great Irish Famine" was lauded by Prof. Christine Kinealy in Fortnight magazine.  She gushed, "O'Grada's book essentially demolishes the myth of food leaving Ireland during the famine."  Today, this memorial names the two British regiments that starved this district.  Yet, the Big Lie reigns supreme in Irish and British academia.  Meanwhile, Bishop Jones of Elphin has erected a cover-up "famine" memorial in Roscommon town and he and Bishop Finnegan of Killalla have both sponsored books that cover up the truths that we affirm here today.  Why?  Is it still too soon to tell the truth?  After 150 years?
1950
1951 
1952
1953        In the name of the starvelings of Lisnabinnia and Parkgarve whose deaths are marked by this Holocaust memorial unique in its truthfulness, let us go and erect like memorials to the innocents in all three hundred mass graves across Ireland.
1954
1955 
1956
1957* referred to as "Holocaust" in the Cork Examiner in 1847, in Michael Davitt's works published a century ago, and by others of Ireland's conscience.  People of intellect and integrity reject the "famine" lie.
1958
1959http://www.irishholocaust.org/lisnabinniamemorial
1960
1961Lisnabinnia Map
1962http://www.irishholocaust.org/lisnabinniamap
1963
1964Lisnabinnia Memorial Marker
1965http://www.irishholocaust.org/lisnabinniamemorial2
1966
1967Mass Grave Marker
1968http://www.irishholocaust.org/massgravemarker
1969
1970----------------------------
1971
1972'The Great Hunger' -- How Many Died?
1973by Mike McCormack
1974
1975Jan 20, 2015
1976
1977The Great Hunger was a natural calamity which was made into an appalling disaster by a selfish lack of assistance on the part of the British Parliament. Their disregard for large-scale human suffering in the land that they had made part of their empire only 44 years earlier bears witness to their true concern for the Irish people, whom they allowed to sink to the brink of starvation before the blight even struck. Millions of men, women and children starved to death or fell victim to preventable diseases in a land that exported hundreds of tons of food annually. The number who died would be a measure of that horror, but sadly, that number eludes us. The Census Commission in 1841 recorded 8,175,000 while in 1851 it was recorded at 6,552,385. Amateur historians subtract and claim a toll loss of 1.62 million which they divide between died and emigrated. That is totally wrong!
1978
1979The question then is how to estimate the scope of the disaster. Since births and deaths were not recorded until 1864, the census was the only indication of population, but the census of 1841 was inaccurate as attested to by census officials at the time. They estimated that millions hid from the census to avoid being registered for tithes and taxes, and some census takers refused to venture into woods, bogs, and hills to tally the Irish. They estimated that the actual population was 25% higher than recorded – and that is conservative because, in one district in Co Clare it was actually found to be 33% higher. In addition, the 1841 census was an increase of 172% over the previous census, and the population continued growing at that rate until 1845. Therefore, if the population were 25% higher than stated, and still growing at the alarming rate of 2% per year, the 1845 population would have been more then 11 million. The post- hunger census of 1851 which recorded 6,552,000, was inaccurate in the opposite way since people registered in the hope of receiving relief. Officials at that time complained that family sizes were overstated and some even registered several times. These figures then (the Crown’s own figures) indicate that about 5 million souls were lost to Ireland through emigration, disease, and starvation. One memorial stone erected at the lost town of Lisnabinnia in Galway recorded 5.2 million dead and 1 million emigrated (see picture). The Census Commissioners wrote in their final report:
1980
1981We feel it will be gratifying to your excellency to find that although the population has been diminished in so remarkable a manner by famine, disease and emigration between 1841 and 1851, and has been since decreasing, the results of the Irish census of 1851 are, on the whole, satisfactory, demonstrating as they do the general advancement of the country.
1982
1983Some historians view that concluding sentence, so full of bureaucratic good cheer, as indicative of Parliament’s overall response to the Irish tragedy. The true number lost lies somewhere in between 2 and 6 million, but the saddest part is that we can never know how many or who perished.
1984
1985What we do know are the lasting effects for, in addition to the incredible number of fatalities by one of the slowest and most painful of deaths, it altered the personality of the Irish for generations  -- we might even recognize some of the effects from our own grandparents or great aunts and uncles. After the Great Hunger, the Irish no longer married young. The humiliation of being unable to provide for one's family, coupled with the pain of burying one's children must be partly responsible for that. For generations after the Great Hunger, the Irish, no matter how ill, could not be enticed to enter hospital, believing that one only went there to die. The unsanitary and overcrowded government hospitals and workhouses during the Great Hunger, which offered little more than the opportunity to contract disease, contributed to that distrust. The legendary hospitality of the Irish also fell victim to the Great Hunger when the destitute population, still inclined to share what little they had, realized that by inviting strangers into their homes, they had exposed their own families to disease. The most enduring legacy however, is the endowment of hatred that has prompted generations of exiled Irish to pool their resources toward freeing their native land from British domination, and no matter how hard we try to understand the nationalist mentality of some Irish, we cannot hope to do so without an understanding of the Great Hunger.
1986
1987This remains the strongest legacy since the other effects are finally beginning to fade. One hundred and seventy years after the Great Hunger, the Irish are marrying young again; today Ireland has some of the finest hospitals and medical schools in Europe; and the hospitality of the Irish has made a comeback to the point where it is now one of the highlights of any visitor's stay. But the passion to free Ireland from English domination, which the English hoped would deteriorate with the demise and scattering of the Irish, found a new strength with the freedom they found in other lands, and it returned to haunt the Crown. It also put an end to the hunger, for the emigrant Irish in other lands sent record assistance back to those they were forced to leave behind; and thus it was the Irish themselves who concluded this pitiful chapter of their history.
1988
1989How many died in forty five,
1990the first year of the hunger, 
1991when starvation cursed the old ones first,
1992and then tormented the younger?
1993
1994How many fell sick in forty six
1995when the potato failed again,
1996and malnutrition on frail conditions
1997claimed children, women and men?
1998
1999Then, dear God in heaven, came black forty seven;
2000a year that in horror still stands,
2001for the crown ordained that the landlords maintain
2002the tenants who lived on their lands.
2003
2004Then came the date in forty-eight
2005when the landlords, cruel and clever,
2006to avoid being forced to absorb further cost
2007discarded their tenants forever.
2008
2009Then came the time in forty-nine
2010when God-fearing men grew critical,
2011and loudly decried such genocide
2012for reasons that were only political.
2013
2014So They dispersed our kin to the stormy winds
2015but that became our salvation;
2016for although they tried to commit genocide,
2017they failed to achieve liquidation.
2018
2019Then to our defense came our own emigrants,
2020now scattered all over the earth;
2021who'd improved their lot, but never forgot
2022the land that had given them birth.
2023
2024Sisters and brothers wrote back to their mothers,
2025or anyone they had left living;
2026each letter returning as much of their earnings
2027as they could afford to be giving.
2028
2029Today we recall the memory of all
2030the disease, the starvation and sorrow;
2031and those who perished for the faith that they cherished
2032in the hope of a better tomorrow.
2033
2034But let not your fate, be guided by hate,
2035for the Lord will have taken fair vengeance.
2036Remember instead, our own Irish dead
2037and say a prayer in silent remembrance!
2038
2039http://thewildgeese.irish/m/blogpost?id=6442157%3ABlogPost%3A138786
2040
2041-----------------------------
2042
2043Liverpool And The Great Hunger
2044
2045A chara
2046
2047Where does the Irish Free State government get off taking it upon itself to thank Liverpool for its benevolent role towards the Irish refugees that arrived in the port of Liverpool during the 'famine' years. "It is keen to acknowledge the city's special role in accepting and caring for Irish immigrants" - Avril Doyle TD, Irish minister for state.
2048
2049Their praise conjures up pictures of these starving and dying refugees being rushed to Emergency Ward Ten on arrival, awash with Live Aid concerts. As is known the truth was far from that! These starving people were left mainly to fend for themselves, countless thousands died in appalling conditions; 40 or 50 deep in Liverpool's pestilent cellars. These 'dungeons' had already been condemned in 1842 after another Irish influx from hunger, and bricked up thanks to the work of the famous Dr Duncan of Liverpool. Our people had to smash their way into these cellars because them was no other place for them.
2050
2051The living were left to lie with the dead in these hell-holes. Disease was rampant. At the same tine, British merchant ships stuffed tight with quality foodstuffs arrived at Liverpool from Ireland throughout the 'famine' years while this dispossessed Irish  mass perished a couple of yards from where these ships berthed with food destined for the belly of the British bourgeoisie. In fact both food and starving refugees were shipped out together from Ireland bound for Liverpool.
2052
2053Dr Duncan became the fist Medical Officer of Health ever to be appointed in Britain from 1847-1863. His appointment was as a direct result of the horrors of British rule in Ireland exploding onto the streets of Liverpool, horrors that were seeping into the wealthier districts of this city.
2054
2055England 'was' a socially backward country compared to other European nations of that time. The English working class of Liverpool lived and worked in the most horrendous conditions, the worst in Britain. The British army complained after rejecting 75% of the city's working-class men on health grounds that they 'were unfit to be shot at'. It is hard to believe that people could live in worse conditions, but they did. "It is they [the Irish] who inhabit the filthiest and worst of these unventilated courts and cellars." (Dr Duncan of Liverpool speaking in 1842.) Much worse was to come with the advent of the Great Famine looming in Ireland
2056
2057The only reason the 'kindly' city fathers didn't close off the Port of Liverpool to the Irish as did the Isle of Man authorities was Liverpool was the ex-African slave capital of the world; it was well used to shipping millions of humans in stinking fever-ridden holds of its ships across the Atlantic. There was much money to be made for the powerful ship owners etc.
2058
2059To say people chose to stay on in Liverpool, rather than cross the Atlantic, is laughable. Liverpool was the most hostile place the Irish could possibly find themselves in. Media outlets ran intense anti-Irish feeling to prevent any solidarity there may have been with the Irish from the English working class. Vicious Orange Lodge attacks were common on the vulnerable, murders and suicides wore near daily occurrences. Corpses were fished out of the Mersey daily. Then the final insult: the bodies would be put on display naked to the public from behind bars that opened on to the street known as the 'Drowned, House'. No, this was the flight of the very poor, many having been given the small amount for the crossing by landowners' agents to clear them off the land once and for all. Others were carried as live ship's ballast; they wanted only to be fed. Decades after the 'famine' the Liverpool Irish ghettos were a death trap; 64% of its children never reached the age of nine compared to 39% in London. For the rest of working-class in Liverpool it was 49%.
2060
2061During the 'famine' years Liverpool's answer wasn't medical help or sufficient food. In fact, Martial Law was called for from certain quarters. Many arrests and deportations took place. Two thousand fully armed soldiers were sent north from London, 800 Cheshire Yeomanry, 700 Auxiliary men arrived and three war ships sailed for Liverpool and anchored in the Mersey.
2062
2063Twenty thousand, mainly from the lower middle-class, many of them Orange Lodge members were made special constables to bolster the already 800-strong Liverpool police force, for the sole duty of keeping these destitute Irish contained.
2064
2065They may have also been used to dig the secret mass graves that have been unearthed in the city and recently came to light, the latest in 1973 containing 3,561 bodies stacked in order of presumed age that were secretly incinerated before tests could be carried out. This was on British Home Office orders which it now denies knowledge of. It is now known as the 'Mystery' Mass Grave, It took eight years before this mass grave was reported in the press and then only in the Catholic Pictorial (September 6,1981).
2066
2067Those Irish who escaped the typhus infection in Ireland and paid passage to the Americas too had reason to 'thank' Liverpool for its benevolence. Three quarters of the human traffic to cross the Atlantic sailed from Liverpool; 95% of which were Irish. Dr Douglas, the Medical Officer at Grosse Isle, Canada stated in his report that in his opinion "the filthy Liverpool slums, where poor emigrants were forced to lodge before embarking, were one of the main causes of the ship fever disaster." (The Great Hunger p 278.)
2068
2069It has been estimated, though not widely known, that 100,000 Irish souls were swept away in Liverpool during the genocidal years of the Gael (Pardon and Peace by Rev Friel). This is a city that up until today has no memorial to those who perished in its guts nor has much consciousness of this trauma, much to our shame. The schools of the city teach the descendants of the banished Gael who survived this Holocaust only the 'glorious' ride of the British Empire, not the fact that it tried to wipe them out.
2070
2071The truth about this British manufactured 'famine' tragedy has never really been told.  And if this revisionist tampering carries on, it never Will.
2072
2073Just for the record, Ms Avril Doyle, the first relief ever organized in Liverpool for Irish 'famine' victims was by Irish navies who were building a railway from Liverpool to Bury, Lancashire. They donated a day's pay each. This is in stark contrast to the 'Honourable' James Lawrence, the Tory Lord Mayor of Liverpool in 1845 and local booze baron, who refused to hold any conference on relief for the Irish.
2074
2075A book that is a must to be read on this Holocaust is The End of Hidden Ireland by RJ Scally
2076
2077S Ryan
2078DO hEANACHAIN
2079James Larkin Association
2080Liverpool
2081
2082*SAOIRSE - Eanair / January 1997
2083
2084http://www.irishholocaust.org/liverpoolandthegreat
2085
2086------------
2087
2088Sister Jean Marie
2089
2090Sister Jean Marie of Haringuey, London, informed us of the two mass graves on Achill Island and of a religious service conducted at a recently-discovered Irish Holocaust mass grave in Islington, London. She also writes: "The Coast Guard also prevented fishermen from fishing. Confiscated their currachs and nets! The landlord of the Falcarragh area of Donegal used to send his agent out to the islands, even during storms, at the risk of the agents life, to ensure that the islanders were not eating any of the rabbits that abounded there. This is recorded in writing by a Tory Islander and has appeared in the book; Toraigh na dTonn."
2091
2092"An t-Athair Peadar 0 Laoire (Fr. Peter O'Leary) recorded in his autobiography that the landlord used to come into the 0 Laoire house to examine the cooking pots on the fire. Once he took Peadar himself, the baby of the family, to question him whether he had ever eaten meat. Peadar said he remembered having eaten a piece of meat 'a long time ago;' just once. The family resumed breathing - they were saved. This is related in P. 0 Laoire's book; "Mo Sceal Fein." (22Aprl997)
2093
2094http://www.irishholocaust.org/sisterjeanmarie
2095
2096------------------------
2097
2098Wrong by any name.
2099The Irish Holocaust* is known by many names including The Irish Genocide, The Great Hunger, The Great Famine and The Potato Famine. It all depends on who you ask and which truth you believe.
2100
2101To the Irish it is called "An Gorta Mor" meaning "The Great Hunger"
2102
2103From 1846 to 1852 the Potato Blight or "Phytophthora infestans" in Ireland was blamed for millions of Irish deaths and was the cause of over a million more Irish leaving Ireland.
2104
2105The Potato Blight was first recorded in the United States, in Philadelphia and New York City in early 1843. Winds then spread the spores, and in 1845 it was found from Illinois to Nova Scotia, and from Virginia to Ontario. It crossed the Atlantic Ocean with a shipment of seed potatoes for Belgian farmers in 1845.
2106
2107You may wonder how could so many people die from the lack of a potato? They didn't, they died from lack of food. Although their diet was mainly potato other types of food were grown throughout Ireland and readily available from 1846 to 1852. Unfortunately none of it was given to the starving Irish, instead it was taken from farmers, at gunpoint, by the British Military. Ships carrying butter, vegetables, grains, livestock, whiskey and other provisions were regularly exported to England during the "Great Famine" as England likes to call it.
2108
2109* Referred to as "Holocaust" in the Cork Examiner in 1847.
2110-------------------------
2111
2112Genocide mural
2113
2114https://extramuralactivity.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/2015-05-18-massgravesabove.jpg
2115
2116http://c8.alamy.com/comp/A3AJ73/irish-famine-republican-wall-mural-whiterock-road-west-belfast-northern-A3AJ73.jpg
2117
2118----------------------
2119
2120https://hubpages.com/travel/Irish-Holocaust-Memorials-Around-the-World-Ireland-No-Ireland
2121
2122Coothill, Co. Cavan, Ireland
2123A 'famine' monument marking a large burial mound is located in Coothill, Co. Cavan.
2124
2125The plaque reads: "In memory of the large unknown number of people buried here 1842 - 1903. May they rest in peace"
2126
2127--
2128
2129Ennistymon, Co. Clare, Ireland
2130This was the first memorial in Ireland to honor those who suffered and were lost during the Great Famine. It is erected on the grounds of an abandoned workhouse where an estimated 20,000 Irish died and a mass graveyard for children who perished and were buried without coffins. It was dedicated on August 20, 1995, the 150th anniversary of the tragedy.
2131
2132The monument was designed by an artist from Co Kerry and depicts an account found in the Minutes of the Meetings of the Boards of Guardians for Ennistymon Union held in the County Archives. The account centered on a note that was pinned to the torn shirt of a barefoot orphan boy who was left at the workhouse door on the freezing cold morning of February 25, 1848.
2133
2134The note read:
2135
2136"Gentlemen, There is a little boy named Michael Rice of Lahinch aged about 4 years. He is an orphan, his father having died last year and his mother has expired on last Wednesday night, who is now about to be buried without a coffin!! Unless ye make some provision for such. The child in question is now at the Workhouse Gate expecting to be admitted, if not it will starve. -- Rob S. Constable''
2137
2138One side of the memorial depicts a child standing before the workhouse door, while across from that is the head of an anguished mother and two hands clenched in frustration or anger above the sorrowful text of the pleading note.
2139
2140--
2141
2142Skibbereen, Co. Cork, Ireland
2143The town of Skibbereen is the most southerly town in Ireland and is the site of the Famine Burial Pits at Abbeystrowery. It was one of the hardest his areas of The Great Hunger and it has been estimated that between 8,000 and 10,000 victims of were buried at this site. For that reason it was selected as the focal point for Ireland's first National Famine Memorial Day on May 17, 2009.
2144
2145--
2146
2147Ballymoe, Co. Galway, Ireland
2148Lisnabinnia was a village near Ballymoe, Co. Galway that existed in 1840 along with Parkgarve and Ballygrass. By 1851 the entire villages of Lisnabinnia, Pargarve and most of Ballygrass were gone. The Lisnabinnia Holocaust Memorial Consecration was erected in the name of the starvelings of Lisnabinnia and Parkgarve.
2149
2150Memorial Inscription:
2151
2152Lios Na Binne
2153Under the ditch enclosing this field or a nearby one to the south lie the remains of Lisnabinnia starvelings of 1845-1850. The villages of Parkgarve, Lisnabinnia and most of the rest of Ballyglass's homes were erased by genocidists including Britain's 49th and 68th Reg'ts (regiments) who removed the local livestock, grain, and meal. Only now is this truthful memorial permitted. May it be emulated at the hundreds of other Holocaust mass graves to commemorate the 5.2 million murdered Martyrs and the other million who successfully fled.
2154
2155Grave Marker Inscription:
2156
2157We were Lisnabinnia
2158In this field, northward, our bones lie, discarded
2159Our Crops Distrained
2160Our Persons Defamed
2161Our Corpses Profaned
2162Our Souls Disdained
2163We await Judgement Day
2164
2165--
2166
2167Killary Harbor, Co. Galway, Ireland
2168At right is what is known as "Famine road" and is located above Killary Harbor. The road is overgrown now but you can still see the retaining walls built by starving locals during the famine. The road wasn't needed at the time but English landowners would only feed the locals if they worked on the road. If they didn't they weren't fed.
2169
2170----------------
2171
2172
2173
2174http://www.irishidentity.com/extras/heritage/stories/language.htm
2175
2176-----------------------------
2177
2178Happy St. Patrick's Day: The Irish Holocaust, an untold history lesson
2179By Gary Boyle
2180Mon, 16 Mar 2015
2181
2182
2183In [*The Secret History of the World*][1], my Irish ancestors, the Celts, are described as:
2184
2185...proud, imaginative, artistic, lovers of freedom and adventure, eloquence, poetry and the arts... and were VERY suspicious of any kind of centralized 'authority'.
2186
2187
2188Most knowledgeable among them were the Druids, who placed great value in living harmoniously with nature, in developing memory-based records, and who adhered to the principles of the 'Third Force' - simply put, there is good, bad and the specific situation that determines which is which'. 
2189
2190
2191When I was younger I never really saw the relevance of history. It had no meaning in my life - no place in my 'history'. It was interesting to some extent, but I failed to appreciate its importance. What does the oft-quoted saying, 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it', actually mean? If we reflect on our own personal histories, we see that we learn our most important life lessons from making mistakes that invariably produce suffering, for ourselves and others. Yet how many times do we, or did we, keep making the same mistakes? 
2192
2193
2194Sometimes we suppress painful episodes, but they can 'come back to haunt us' and negatively affect our present health. Gabor Mate explores this mind-body connection in [*When the Body Says No*][2], which provides transformative insights into how disease can be the body′s way of saying 'No!' to what the conscious mind cannot or will not acknowledge. Regardless of what country we hail from, access to our true national history may enable us to learn, and therefore heal, collective wounds on this larger scale.
2195
2196
2197**Skellig Michael (Sceilig Mhichíl in Irish Gaelic, meaning Michael's rock), County Kerry, Ireland. The Irish Celtic monastery was built in ca. 7th Century.**
2198https://www.sott.net/image/s11/234046/full/skelligmichael_2008pano.jpg
2199
2200--
2201
2202**Historical Revisionism**
2203
2204
2205In a wider context, knowledge of our national, planetary and perhaps even cosmic history is important for us to gain understanding of "*ourselves and our wider environment*," [as Lobaczewski put it][3]. I recently listened to this SOTT Radio show: '[Behind the headlines: Historical Revisionism in the 20th and 21st centuries][4]', which reminded me of an episode of modern Irish history that I was never taught when attending school in Ireland, namely the 1845-1850 Irish Holocaust, or the 'Great Famine' (Irish potato famine), as it is still euphemistically termed. 
2206
2207
2208Before I get into that, what is [Historical Revisionism][5]? According to Wikipedia it is:
2209
2210...either the legitimate scholastic re-examination of existing knowledge about a historical event, or the **illegitimate distortion 
2211of the historical record.**
2212
2213
2214The latter is also sometimes called *negationism*. There are various techniques used to enable this distortion of history, mostly that of deception and denial:
2215
2216The specific techniques of historical revisionism vary from using forged documents as genuine sources (or inventing reasons to distrust genuine documents), to **exploiting opinions by taking them out of their historical context**. Other techniques include manipulating statistical series to support the given point of view, and deliberately mis-translating texts into other languages. Instead of submitting their work to peer review, revisionists rewrite history to support an agenda, and often use fallacies to obtain the desired results.**Because historical revisionism can be used to deny, deceive, or influence explanations and perceptions, it can be regarded as a technique of propaganda**. Finally, techniques of historical revisionism operate within the intellectual battlespace in order **to advance an interpretation or perception of history**.
2217
2218
2219**Irish famine memorial in Ireland.**
2220https://www.sott.net/image/s11/234002/full/irish_famine_1847_lg.jpg
2221
2222-
2223
2224**The Great Famine myth - or Irish Holocaust**
2225
2226
2227What I was taught, and what my nephews in Ireland are learning nowadays, is that the [Great Famine][6] (Irish: *an Gorta Mór*) was fundamentally caused by dependency on the potato crop, which was decimated with blight - a natural phenomenon:
2228
2229...a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. It is sometimes referred to, mostly outside Ireland, as the **Irish Potato Famine** because about two-fifths of the population was solely reliant on this cheap crop for a number of historical reasons. During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland,causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.
2230
2231
2232A prominent Irish author and journalist, Tim Pat Coogan, explores this [shameful chapter][7] in Ireland's rich history in his book [*The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy*][8]. In the final chapter, he recalls the xenophobic images and words commonly used to caricature the Irish in Victorian England. Colonial Administrator (and obvious psychopath) Charles Trevelyan, and other architects of the 'famine response', had a direct hand in filling the newspapers with the "*oft-repeated theme that the **famine was the result of a flaw in the Irish character*."** And *Punch*, an English 'satirical' magazine, regularly portrayed "'*Paddy' as a simian in a tailcoat and a derby, engaged in plotting murder, battening on the labour of the English workingman, and generally living a life of indolent treason*," explains Mr Coogan. The result of such **dehumanising propaganda was to make unreasonable policy seem reasonable and just** - historical revisionism in action! 
2233
2234
2235**An Irishman, depicted as drunk, sits atop a powderkeg threatening to destroy the U.S.**
2236https://www.sott.net/image/s11/234008/full/132.jpg
2237
2238
2239Indeed, anti-Irish racism and anti-Catholic discrimination were an inherent part of British colonial rule in Ireland.
2240
2241
2242The official [narrative][9] of those dark days in 19th century Ireland could be summed up in these words from Punch and the Great Famine by Peter Gray:
2243
2244Like Sir Charles Trevelyan, the assistant Secretary to the Treasury, *Punch* regarded the **continuation of famine conditions in Ireland after this time as entirely due to indigenous moral and not biological failures.** Ireland had been warned of the folly of potato dependence by a 'natural' disaster, but had **perversely chosen to ignore the danger; no further responsibility could be undertaken by the 'imperial' government.**
2245
2246
2247**"The Pig and the Peer". This cartoon shows a life-size pig with an Irish accent pleading with the English Prime Minister. During the Famine thousands of Irish peasants were evicted to make way for animals that could "pay rent".**
2248https://www.sott.net/image/s11/234004/full/pig.gif
2249
2250
2251It was not blighted potatoes that caused the [Irish genocide of 150 years ago.][10] Yes, there was potato blight at the time. It struck harvests in the autumn of 1845, and had begun in North Carolina, then spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere for several years - **yet it did not cause famine or mass death anywhere, except in Ireland.** Why was that? 
2252
2253
2254Nor were potatoes the only major produce of Irish agriculture at the time; they were just **the only produce which the Irish** - 75 percent of whom were feudal tenants of mostly tyrannical British landlords, fanatical preachers of 'free trade' - **were *allowed* to eat or to feed to their livestock!** As the historian [Arthur Young][11] wrote, the Irish tenant farmers were, like so many others, effectively slaves.
2255
2256"A landlord in Ireland can scarcely invent an order which a laborer, servant, or cottier [tenant farmer] dares to refuse... He may punish with his cane or his horsewhip with the most perfect security. A poor man would have his bones broken if he offered to lift a hand in his own defense."
2257
2258
2259**'Free trade' decreed that no government surplus food - no 'welfare' - be given to the starving, in order to leave the market for food undisturbed.** *"We do not propose*," Prime Minister Lord John Russell told the House of Commons, "*to interfere with the regular mode by which Indian corn and other kinds of grain may be brought into Ireland." *
2260
2261
2262**A Family Evicted During the 'Great Famine' or the Irish Holocaust as it should be known.**
2263https://www.sott.net/article/293934-Happy-St-Patricks-Day-The-Irish-Holocaust-an-untold-history-lesson
2264
2265
2266Essentially, 'free trade' gave Irish farm families three choices when the potato crops failed:
2267
2268starve on their farms, while selling their grain crops to pay their rent
2269
2270report to the Public Works or the Poor Law workhouses to be worked/starved to death
2271
2272emigrate and take the 50/50 chance of surviving the passage across the Atlantic.
2273
2274
2275According to the definitions of the [Geneva Convention][12], **what happened in Ireland between 1845-50 was** ***Genocide***. During those 'potato famine years' - [food was systematically removed][13] from the shores of Ireland, a policy conducted in full awareness that it was starving the population. The result was a million deaths, with two million more emigrating.
2276
2277Ireland starved because its food, from 40 to 70 shiploads per day, **was removed at gunpoint by 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia, battleships, excise vessels, Coast Guard and by 200,000 British soldiers (100,000 at any given moment)** The attached map shows the never-before-published names and locations in Ireland of the food removal regiments (Disposition of the Army; Public Record Office, London; et al, of which we possess photocopies). Thus, Britain seized from Ireland's producers **tens of millions of head of livestock; tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry and dairy products**; ***enough to sustain 18 million persons.***
2278
2279
2280At the time, the population of Ireland was about 8 million. 
2281
2282
2283In other words, the history still being taught to Irish children is a gross distortion of the facts. [In a letter he wrote to an Irish peer][14] - the 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer - Charles Trevelyan described the famine as an ** *"effective mechanism for reducing surplus population" as well as "the judgement of God"* **. In recent years, former U.S. Secretary of State [Madeleine Albright][15] expressed similarly unconscionable sentiments regarding the economic siege of Iraq in the 1990s. Here's another quote that embodies the psychopathic nature of Trevelyan, and the British Government he represented:
2284
2285"*British Coastguard Inspector-General, Sir James Dombrain, when he saw starving paupers, ordered his subordinates to give free food handouts. For his attempts to feed the starving, Dombrain was publicly rebuked by Trevelyan...*" 
2286
2287The Trevelyan quote is: ** *"The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people."* **
2288
2289
2290This tragedy is beautifully captured in the Irish folk ballad, The [Fields of Athenry][16], with its painful, haunting [lyrics][17] eloquently expressing those terrible times: 
2291
2292Ann Breen ~ The Fields Of Athenry
2293https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwt3IYAaimA
2294
2295---
2296
2297Emigration - the 'coffin ships' 
2298
2299
2300[Emigration was thus a desperate necessity.][18] On some of the 'coffin ships' the death rate was 30% or more. Besides overcrowding, starvation and disease, the dangers included, for those attempting to use the Liverpool route, unscrupulous middlemen and landlords, thieves, con men, and the extortionate tactics of ships' agents and owners. Exactly the same despicable tactics being used by 'people traffickers' of desperate people these days. Still, with the only other alternative being a slow death at home, hundreds of thousands faced, and largely overcame, these horrifying obstacles. 
2301
2302
2303**History repeating itself. Depiction of life on a 19th Century 'coffin ship'.**
2304https://www.sott.net/image/s11/234027/full/coffin_ship_2.jpg
2305
2306-
2307
2308Learning from history 
2309
2310
2311Is it really any wonder that the same human rights abuses continue today when such horrific acts of genocide have been excised from the history books and the knowledge of them [denied even to the descendants of those who suffered so terribly?][19] It's an appalling travesty. Until we research objectively, uncover these horrific lies, and demand their inclusion in mainstream history books and the school curriculum - learn the lessons of history, in other words - absolutely nothing will change. We will continue to see the same agendas play out, just on a slightly different stage. 
2312
2313Perhaps this St Patrick's Day we can make a concerted effort to pass on knowledge of this despicable period in Irish history, sign the petition ['WHEN GENOCIDE BECAME 'FAMINE': IRELAND, 1845 - 1850'][20], and celebrate those 'Celtic qualities' we may have forgotten or lost, but which we have in common with other ['tribes'][21] worldwide. Perhaps this St Patrick's Day we can remember our shared suffering with all humanity - whatever their nationality, creed or colour - under the [Global Pathocracy][22]'s relentless [war against the weak][23].
2314
2315**"Our modern civilization suffers from amnesia. The psychopathic elites have stolen our heritage: the wisdom of our ancestors who knew about the cyclical nature of cosmic events and the role played by corruption in those catastrophes."**
2316
2317
2318*Only Our Rivers Run Free* is a song written by [Mickey MacConnell][24] about the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. I feel the lyrics are relevant everywhere in this world though, as the "*cold chains of bondage*" take many different forms, perhaps the strongest being those that remain unseen because people do not know their true history. 
2319
2320Only our rivers run free 
2321
2322When apples still grow in November 
2323When Blossoms still bloom from each tree 
2324When leaves are still green in December 
2325It's then that our land will be free 
2326I wander her hills and her valleys 
2327And still through my sorrow I see 
2328A land that has never known freedom 
2329And only her rivers run free 
2330
2331I drink to the death of her manhood 
2332Those men who'd rather have died 
2333Than to live in the cold chains of bondage 
2334To bring back their rights were denied 
2335Oh where are you now when we need you 
2336What burns where the flame used to be 
2337Are ye gone like the snows of last winter 
2338And will only our rivers run free? 
2339
2340How sweet is life but we're crying 
2341How mellow the wine but it's dry 
2342How fragrant the rose but it's dying 
2343How gentle the breeze but it sighs 
2344What good is in youth when it's aging 
2345What joy is in eyes that can't see 
2346When there's sorrow in sunshine and flowers 
2347And still only our rivers run free
2348
2349Christy Moore - Only Our Rivers Run Free
2350https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PySL__Kg33Y
2351
2352[1] Secret History of The World
2353https://www.redpillpress.com/shop/secret-history-of-the-world/
2354[2] When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection
2355https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Body-Says-Stress-Disease-Connection/dp/0470923350
2356[3] Political Ponerology by Andrew M Lobaczewski
2357http://www.ponerology.com/
2358[4] Behind the Headlines: Historical Revisionism in the 20th and 21st centuries
2359http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sottradionetwork/2015/03/08/behind-the-headlines-historical-revisionism-in-the-20th-and-21st-centuries
2360[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_negationism
2361[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29
2362[7] Opening old wounds
2363https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/12/irish-famine
2364[8] The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy
2365https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Famine-Plot-Englands-Irelands/dp/1137278838
2366[9] Punch and the Great Famine By Peter Gray
2367http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/punch-and-the-great-famine-by-peter-gray/
2368[10] SCHILLER INSTITUTE, How British Free Trade Starved Millions During Ireland's Potato Famine
2369http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/nbw/pot_famine95.html
2370[11] A Tour in Ireland, with general observations on the present state of that kingdom in 1776–78
2371https://celt.ucc.ie/published/E780001-001.html
2372https://archive.org/details/b28759072
2373[12] The Great Irish Famine Was Genocide
2374http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-great-irish-famine-was-genocide/18156
2375[13] http://www.irishholocaust.org/thefoodremoval
2376[14] Proving the Irish Famine was genocide by the British
2377https://www.irishcentral.com/news/proving-the-irish-famine-was-genocide-by-the-british-tim-pat-coogan-moves-famine-history-unto-a-new-plane-181984471-238161151
2378[15] END WAR: Madeleine Albright Says Deaths Of 500,000 Iraqi Children Is Worth It; UN Sanction Genocide
2379https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0WDCYcUJ4o
2380[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fields_of_Athenry
2381[17] http://celtic-lyrics.com/lyrics/195.html
2382[18] http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/emigration/famem.htm
2383[19] Hunger: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools 
2384http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30825.htm
2385[20] WHEN GENOCIDE BECAME "FAMINE" : IRELAND, 1845 - 1850
2386https://www.petitions24.com/when_famine_became_genocide_ireland_1845_-_1850
2387[21] A famine-time kindness repaid in Cork to Native American Indians
2388http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/a-famine-time-kindness-repaid-in-cork-to-native-american-indians-315377.html
2389[22] Global Pathocracy, Authoritarian Followers and the Hope of the World
2390https://www.sott.net/article/285142-Global-Pathocracy-Authoritarian-Followers-and-the-Hope-of-the-World#
2391[23] War Against The Weak
2392https://www.sott.net/article/277134-War-Against-The-Weak#
2393[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_MacConnell
2394
2395-------------------------------------------------------------
2396
2397
2398The Great Irish Famine Was Genocide
2399By Francis A. Boyle
2400Global Research, March 16, 2010
240117 March 2010
2402
2403Some controversy has surrounded the use of the word “genocide” with regard to the Great Irish Famine of 160 years ago. But this controversy has its source in an apparent misunderstanding of the meaning of genocide. No, the British government did not inflict on the Irish the abject horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. But the definition of “genocide” reaches beyond such ghastly behavior to encompass other reprehensible acts designed to destroy a people.
2404
2405As demonstrated by the following legal analysis, the Famine was genocide within the meaning of both United States and International law.
2406
2407The United States Government is party to the 1948 Convention On The Prevention And Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“Genocide Convention”). As a Treaty of the United States , the Genocide Convention is therefore “the Supreme Law of the land” under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Government has also passed implementing legislation which substantially adopts the Genocide Convention and makes any violation of the Convention punishable under federal law. 18 U.S.C. § 1901.
2408
2409Article II of the Genocide Convention provides:
2410
2411In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
2412
2413(a) Killing members of the group;
2414
2415(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
2416
2417(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
2418
2419(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group;
2420
2421(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
2422
2423(emphasis supplied)
2424
2425From 1845-50, The British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical and racial group known as the Irish People. This British policy caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Irish People within the meaning of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This British policy also deliberately inflicted on the Irish People conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction within the meaning of Article II(c) of the Convention. Therefore, from 1845-50 the British government knowingly pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland which constituted acts of Genocide against the Irish People within the meaning of Article II(b) and (c) of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
2426
2427While there are many legitimate subjects of debate surrounding the Famine, there is no doubt that the British Government committed genocide against the Irish People. This particular “debate” should therefore come to an end.
2428
2429(See Irish Echo, Feb.26-March 4, 1997 at page 7 for the list of 125 distinguished signatories)
2430
2431The original source of this article is Global Research
2432Copyright © Francis A. Boyle, Global Research, 2010
2433
2434http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-great-irish-famine-was-genocide/18156
2435
2436----------------------------------------------
2437
2438“The Graves are Walking” by John Kelly, a historian and popular science writer, is an engrossing narrative of the famine, vividly detailing Victorian society and the historical phenomena (natural and man-made) that converged to form the disaster. The decimation of the potato crop in the 1840s brought on the danger of mass starvation, but it was the British response that perpetuated the tragedy. The hand of nature, as illustrated in both books, caused only part of the problem.
2439
2440Both authors describe the folly and cruelty of Victorian British policy towards its near-forsaken neighbour in detail. The British government, led by Sir Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary to the Treasury (dubbed the “Victorian Cromwell”), appeared far more concerned with modernising Ireland’s economy and reforming its people’s “aboriginal” nature than with saving lives. Ireland became the unfortunate test case for a new Victorian zeal for free market principles, self-help, and ideas about nation-building.
2441
2442Ireland still functioned as a basic barter economy—few hands exchanged money and the peasant population relied on their potato crops, which had failed. But rather than provide aid and establish long-term goals for recovery, Trevelyan and his cohorts saw a chance to introduce radical free-market reforms. As Mr Kelly notes, Trevelyan sent his subordinates to Ireland equipped with Adam Smith’s writings, like missionaries sent to barbarian lands armed with bibles. One absurd project to introduce a money economy was part of the public works scheme. Peasants were hired to build unnecessary roads in order to earn money to buy food. But wages were often not enough to match the high food prices enforced by Trevelyan as a measure to attract imports to Ireland, especially from America.
2443
2444The belief that the famine was God’s intention also guided much of Britain’s policy. They viewed the crop failures as “a Visitation of Providence, an expression of divine displeasure” with Ireland and its mostly Catholic peasant population, writes Mr Kelly. Poverty was considered a moral failure. Within a few years Irish immigrants flooded the port cities of Liverpool in England, Montreal and Quebec in Canada and New York. The emigrant was considered an object of horror and contempt, as Mr Kelly writes: “pedestrians turned and walked the other way; storekeepers bolted the door or picked up a broom; street urchins mocked his shoeless feet, filthy clothing and Gaelic-accented English.” Throughout the book, Mr Kelly bemoans the tragic effects of human folly, neglect and Victorian ideology in causing the famine and its aftermath. He rejects the charge of genocide. Tim Pat Coogan, however, takes a more radical view in “The Famine Plot”.
2445
2446Mr Coogan, an Irish historian and journalist, is, to many, the unofficial voice of modern Irish history. In the introduction to his polemical history of the disaster, he labels the famine genocide and criticises other Irish historians as revisionists who are sanitising the famine’s story. His previous books about the IRA and the reputation of Eamon de Valera, Ireland’s president in the 1960s, caused controversy, but his view of the Irish famine is more widely accepted. Like Mr Kelly, Mr Coogan blames the free market economics that Britain tried, and failed, to apply to Ireland’s problem, but believes that their negligent actions were deliberate. He also describes, in painful detail, the indignity and hardship suffered by the peasant population who were stigmatised by anti-Catholic prejudice and the belief that poverty was self-inflicted.
2447
2448His most compelling argument for British negligence is in the final chapter, in which he recalls the xenophobic images and words commonly used to caricature the Irish in Victorian England. Trevelyan and other architects of the famine response had a direct hand in filling the newspapers with the “oft-repeated theme that the famine was the result of a flaw in the Irish character.” And Punch, a satirical magazine, regularly portrayed “‘Paddy’ as a simian in a tailcoat and a derby, engaged in plotting murder, battening on the labour of the English workingman, and generally living a life of indolent treason,” explains Mr Coogan. The result of such dehumanising propaganda was to make unreasonable policy seem more reasonable and just.
2449
2450Mr Coogan’s opinion that the famine was genocide is clear.
2451
2452https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/12/irish-famine
2453
2454----------------------------------------------
2455
2456Was the Famine genocide by the British?
2457
2458As one of this country's most prolific and able writers, Tim Pat Coogan is critical of Irish historians as a class for their failure to do justice to the Famine. In his latest work, Coogan deploys the full range of his talents to passionately make the case that the Irish Famine was a deliberate act of genocide.
2459
2460The maxim of the Young Ireland leader John Mitchell was that "God sent the potato blight but the English created the Famine".
2461
2462Coogan's research gives credence to this view and he expertly catalogues a shocking combination of ambivalence, incompetence and malignance on the part of British policymakers.
2463
2464Rapid population growth was at the root of the catastrophe that devastated Ireland in the 1840s. Between 1741, the date of the last big Famine, and the coming of the blight in 1845, the population of Ireland had tripled.
2465
2466Feeding so many was already a problem before the Famine with bulk of the Irish population surviving on a subsistence diet.
2467
2468Coogan demonstrates that the British government was not oblivious to the plight of Ireland. The Whatley Commission on Irish poverty in 1833 had suggested that large-scale emigration to the colonies be encouraged and proposed that fisheries be developed and land be reclaimed among other measures.
2469
2470Had these recommendations been implemented, it would have done much to mitigate against the scale of the disaster which engulfed Ireland just over a decade later.
2471
2472If a misguided faith in a pro-cyclical economics has caused financial hardship for this generation then the fact that laissez-faire economics was en vogue in the Famine era significantly contributed to the huge death-toll in Ireland.
2473
2474Laissez-faire economics argued against the morality of assisting the poor because of the consequent risk of stultifying initiative and self-help among the Irish peasantry. One of laissez-faire's most influential proponents, Thomas Malthus, warned that extending relief would swallow the resources of the entire nation and consequently the poor had "no claim of right to the smallest portion of food".
2475
2476Coogan's research shows how too often British policymakers put an adherence to a callous economic theory above their humanitarian responsibilities.
2477
2478It would be a mistake to dismiss Coogan's work as a green-tinted history. He is not ungenerous to Robert Peel, the British prime minister at the time of the outbreak of the Famine and for so long the bête noire of Irish nationalists.
2479
2480Coogan suggests that Peel did, in fact, attempt to alleviate the horrific situation in Ireland by facing up to the challenge of Corn Law reform and by making £100,000 available for the secret purchase of Indian corn in America.
2481
2482Coogan also points out that Peel's successor, John Russell, was outraged by the "lynch law of Irish landlords" in ruthlessly pursuing evictions at a time when this was akin to a sentence of death.
2483
2484Russell's efforts to offer legislative protection to Irish cottiers were, however, stymied by a powerful cabal in his own cabinet of Lord Palmerstown, the Marquis of Clanricarde and Lord Lansdowne, all of whom owned huge estates in Ireland.
2485
2486This was a classic case of self-interest outweighing the public interest even though the lives of innocent people were in the scales.
2487
2488Coogan's work is a damning indictment of Charles Trevelyan, the assistant secretary to the Treasury, who was effectively in charge of Famine relief in Ireland.
2489
2490Trevelyan, today, is remembered more in sorrow than in anger in the classic song 'The Fields of Athenry', but he surely ranks alongside Cromwell as one of the greatest villains in Irish history.
2491
2492Trevelyan was motivated by racialism, laissez-faire dogmatism and anti-Catholicism. Coogan highlights in a variety of ways how Trevelyan's policies consigned a generation of Irish people to death or exile.
2493
2494But Trevelyan is most conclusively condemned in the dock of history by his own words.
2495
2496The man whose policies held sway over the fate of a starving population wrote : "The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated . . . the real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people."
2497
2498The Famine created an underbelly of resentment that helped poison Anglo-Irish relations until recent times.
2499
2500https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/was-the-famine-genocide-by-the-british-28954929.html
2501
2502-------------------------------------
2503
2504‘The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy ’ by Tim Pat Coogan and ‘The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People’ by John Kelly
2505
2506The Celtic Tiger is still a sick kitty. Ireland’s economic takeoff, which began accelerating in the 1980s, spun out of control early in the new millennium and was crashing even before the near-meltdown of the global financial system in 2008.
2507
2508Back in the late purple stage of the property boom, a nation besotted with an insanely over-confident real estate market seemed willing, even eager, to finally forget its history of subjugation, oppression, theft, poverty, famine and emigration. Who had time to brood over the potato famine when the aged parents’ wee house happened to be worth four times what it was five years ago?
2509
2510Those days are gone. And these days, as Tim Pat Coogan writes in “The Famine Plot,” “poverty and emigration [have] remained continuing themes in Ireland,” and the country has been learning all over again that “its defenses were too fragile to cope with the longstanding Irish vices such as clientalism and corruption.” What Coogan suggests — and this is just one of many intriguing points made in his book — is a linkage between the recent Irish collapse, Irish feelings of helplessness and that demographic and moral disaster of the Irish 1840s: the potato famine, otherwise known as the Great Hunger.
2511
2512What happened in 1840s Ireland, and why, and who was responsible, is also the subject of John Kelly’s cogent and forceful popular history, “The Graves Are Walking.” Kelly and Coogan have both written polemics against the British government of the day and its inadequate response to Ireland’s nightmare. They sustain their arguments with sound materials. Kelly, an American, is cool and prosecutorial in tone. He has the facts, ma’am, and his book is an accessible, engrossing history of horror. Coogan, the Irish author of controversial popular biographies of Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, as well as a history of the Irish Republican Army, is fiercer and angrier. He sounds like the witness who saw the crime.
2513
2514The Irish potato crop failed during a series of seasons in the 1840s. By 1851, Coogan writes, “the population of the country [had] been reduced by death and emigration from 8,175,000 to 6,552,000.” The country was changed. The changes were deep and sustained, and are felt to this day. Ireland’s population is smaller now than it was in 1845.
2515
2516A fungus, phytophthora infestans, ravaged the Irish potato crop. But potato crops were infected elsewhere in northwest Europe during that decade. There was phytophthora infestans, but no famine, in Belgium, France and Scotland. Why did Ireland starve while Belgium did not?
2517
2518Coogan’s pages spark and sputter with a deep, lingering, well-cherished rage at the British government and laissez-faire attitudes and policies adopted by Prime Minister Lord John Russell and civil servant Sir Charles Trevelyan . It was British reluctance to interfere with the supposed workings of the free-market economy that allowed famine to continue in Ireland at a time when the country was producing and exporting tons of food to England.
2519
2520Ireland’s history as a conquered nation shaped a disastrous system of land tenure, which resulted eventually in a large population dependent on a single crop. These were the conditions that turned crop failure into famine. But for many in London, it was the feckless Irish themselves — especially the proliferating, starving cottier class, crowded onto the most marginal lands in southwest Ireland — who were the core of the problem.
2521
2522The prevalent British view of the famine, Coogan writes, was that it resulted from “a flaw in the Irish character — the fecklessness and laziness that produced the potato economy also produced the other ills that afflicted the unhappy country.” Famine was horrible but seen from some corners of Whitehall as a necessary evil: a harsh but efficient solution to Irish overpopulation and disorganization, and the laziness supposedly inculcated by overdependence on the too-easy-to-cultivate potato. From London’s point of view, Ireland needed the taut discipline of a rigorously maintained free market — and a couple of million fewer Irish. Only then could the country’s disastrous system of landholding be straightened out, the “congested districts” relieved of population pressure and Irish society modernized along with Irish agriculture.
2523
2524It would have been politically unwise, and psychologically impossible, for British leaders to see mass starvation in Suffolk or Sussex as a solution instead of a problem. But the hillsides and workhouses of southwest Ireland were a long way from Westminster in 1846. There were no television screens transporting the agonies of Ireland into the homes of the British people.
2525
2526Kelly and Coogan cover the same ground when describing the horrors of the famine and the inadequate, irresponsible and sometimes brutal responses of the British government. According to Kelly, “bad luck, a primitive infrastructure, and a poverty bordering on immiseration can only explain so much. . . . British policy makers also bore much responsibly for what happened.” Coogan agrees that natural disaster was compounded and magnified by political carelessness and indifference, but he goes considerably further, insisting that what happened in Ireland during the famine conforms to the definitions of genocide in Articles 2 and 3 of the United Nations Convention on Genocide.
2527
2528https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-famine-plot-englands-role-in-irelands-greatest-tragedy--by-tim-pat-coogan-and-the-graves-are-walking-the-great-famine-and-the-saga-of-the-irish-people-by-john-kelly/2013/01/12/22971008-3d7b-11e2-a2d9-822f58ac9fd5_story.html
2529
2530---------------------------
2531
2532Ireland’s Great Famine ‘was British genocide’ claims Tim Pat Coogan
2533
2534THE IRISH Famine was an act of British genocide, Tim Pat Coogan has argued.
2535
2536In his new book, The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy, the historian offers a controversial perspective on one of the darkest chapters of Irish history.
2537
2538In chapter three entitled ‘A Million Deaths of No Use’ he writes: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
2539
2540The list of acts includes killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
2541
2542Citing Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, he comments: “The land of Ireland was dangerously overburdened by the weight of human stock.
2543
2544“What was needed to avert an inevitable disaster was a humane system of assisted emigration in combination with a sustained effort at reforming the land system, developing fisheries, and building Irish infrastructure such as roads, bridges, harbours, and canals.”
2545
2546He added: “A comprehensive report on ‘scarcity in Ireland’ was laid before both Houses of Parliament as the effects of the blight began to be felt, detailing the many occasions that relief had had to be administered between 1822 and 1839.
2547
2548“The various counties mentioned, Cork, Kerry, Galway, Mayo, Sligo, and many others, would all become places of horror during the Famine.”
2549
2550http://irishpost.co.uk/great-famine-british-genocide/
2551
2552------------------------------
2553
2554Tim Pat and 'Comrade' Kennedy
2555
2556Maybe you caught it yourself. I missed the first half of the Sunday Sequence debate,  so I went into the Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh site and listened to it all. It was like watching a couple of duellists, with a sword in one hand and a rapier in the other. I’ m referring, of course, to the debate on the Famine between Tim Pat Coogan and Professor Liam Kennedy from Queen’s University. 
2557
2558The point of difference was clear:  Kennedy figured Coogan had written a book (The Famine Plot) which was narrow in its “evidential sources”, a book that was “out-dated and out-moded” and in which it was “terribly difficult to find any redeeming feature”.  The rest of us, gentle souls that we are, would have fallen to the floor, skewered for keeps in the face of such an authoritative attack. Not Tim Pat.  He cited AJP Taylor  ( a historian, he suggested, who might carry a bit more authority than Kennedy) who said that the Famine made Ireland  a kind of Belsen. The British welcomed the Famine, and led by the London Times,   looked forward to the day when “the Celt will be as rare on the banks of the Shannon” as the Red Indian in the US.  
2559
2560Kennedy said this was misrepresenting the British, that it was in fact history as demonisation. He claimed that the British administrator Trevelyan acted “according to his own lights, trying to save as many Irish from starvation as possible”.  “I’m not defending the policies at the time” Kennedy concluded, which seemed a strange thing to say, since he’d been doing that with some energy for several minutes. 
2561
2562Tim Pat’s book, it seems, centres on the question of whether the Famine was an act of genocide. He argues that according to the UN Protocol on genocide, the Irish Famine “ticks all the boxes”.  The English saw the Famine coming and did nothing. When it arrived they didn’t close the ports - grain was being exported as people died on the roadside. Yes, the government established soup kitchesn - but one year later cancelled them. He also noted, significantly, that the Famine commemoration committee, set up by the Irish government and of which he was a member, were not able to hold a meeting north of the border, such was the animosity displayed by some there.  
2563
2564Who’s right? Well, maybe if you read Coogan’s book you can decide for yourself. Alternatively, you might like to read something on the subject by the man that Tim Pat referred to as ‘Comrade Kennedy’. That baffled me for a bit, until then I wondered if this  could be the Kennedy who ran with spectacular lack of success for the Conservative Party in North Down a few years back? Or maybe that was another of the Kennedys.
2565
2566One thing’s for sure. The revisionist historians, exemplified by Kennedy, will find it harder to maintain the terrible-tragedy-nobody-could-have-averted line as more writers and historians like Coogan enter the field. 
2567
2568http://judecollinsjournalist.blogspot.com/2012/12/tim-pat-and-comrad-kennedy.html
2569
2570---------------------------------------
2571
2572Debate between Tim Pat Coogan and Comrade Kennedy on the Famine
2573
2574Was the Famine a Genocide?
2575
2576Liam Kennedy, emeritus professor of economic history at Queen’s University Belfast has sent us this transcript of a debate, which took place on BBC Northern Ireland’s Sunday Sequence radio programme on December 10th, last year, between himself and Tim Pat Coogan and was moderated by William Crawley. The debate is also on Youtube at 
2577
2578http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YTOXoyhXvY
2579
2580
2581Crawley: In his new book, The Famine Plot, Tim Pat Coogan has gone where others fear to tread. The Famine, he says, was an early example of ethnic cleansing and one of the first acts of genocide.
2582
2583Crawley (to Tim Pat Coogan): What’s the evidence that this was an act of genocide?
2584
2585Tim Pat Coogan: A large number of graves for one thing, and an awful lot more people living in another country than should have been through forced emigration.
2586
2587William Crawley: A million dead and a million more ...
2588
2589Coogan: Probably more, because modern scholarship points out to averted births and the [the fact that] families died and there was no one left to record the deaths. And anyway census-taking in the deserts of Mayo and people lived in bog caves and so on, it was nearly impossible to map how many people lived there in the first place. But probably it’s something nearer nine million than eight when the Famine broke out, and it came down to somewhere nearer six when the Famine was over in’51, and the Hunger continued, so probably a far greater impact. And you have to remember the impact on society was about nine million. Whereas you get these awful famines we see on television in Africa and it’s probably something in the order of 250,000 that die, a quarter of a million, and it’s a terrible loss but it comes from a population of 19 million.
2590
2591Crawley: There’s widespread agreement this was just an appalling tragedy, of course Tim Pat. Let’s go further than this, how we explain this tragedy.
2592
2593Coogan: Well it was the detritus of centuries - the land situation had three million peasants living in mud cabins mostly to the left of the Shannon. If you took a line from Dingle to the Foyle, to the left of that line. But they lived everywhere, tens of thousands of people died of famine and diseases in Dublin as well. Though people tend to say the Famine didn’t touch the East. And they lived on tiny plots which they rented out from what’s known as middle men, bigger landlords, many of whom were absentee landlords. The Act of Union had transferred the buzz and the government and the power to London and everyone of consequence had got out, the artist, the plumber, the politician, the poet, the publisher. There wasn’t a government. And there they were, on these tiny plots, living on potatoes, propagating, everything getting worse. When the blight came first, Peel, the conservative prime minister, tried to alleviate it and he actually, sub rosa, smuggled in grain, on ships, and symbolically the very first act of the Whigs who supplanted them was to turn the ships round, and Trevelyan, secretary of the Treasury and [who] became the architect of relief and had the ear of the cabinet, Charles Wood: he turned them round, and that was his attitude throughout. Famine relief, any kind of relief, had to have a repulsive element in it, as he called it. And they went from feeding them on soup and so on to shutting the food depots, to confining the relief to be paid on task work on roads, some of which would be under four foot of snow. You couldn’t work under those temperatures today, and people died before the work started. And the constant refrain, he coined a phrase, about natural causes, natural events, which became the mantra, and when, say, a humanitarian landlord like Lord Monteagle would complain about the effects of their policies they would say “We must leave it to natural events.” Well natural events are if you say evict a grandmother with her children, bare-footed, in rags, no rain gear in a January gale, natural events would take care of the surplus problem of population very quickly.
2594
2595William Crawley to Liam Kennedy: Does this add up to a deliberate policy of genocide in your mind?
2596
2597Kennedy: Well, I waited in this book to hear some great revelation and it just isn’t there. It’s anticlimactic. I could not see the great plot, and indeed there is no serious historian who …
2598
2599Coogan: None so blind as those who will not see.
2600
2601Kennedy: I can’t think of a single historian who has researched the Famine in depth – and Tim Pat has not researched it in depth. One of the striking things about this book is the narrowness of the evidential sources he uses and indeed they’re presented so badly. Titles are misquoted. You might even say the title of his own book, The Plot, is itself misleading, and indeed the subtitle, England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy. Well it was Britain, not the United Kingdom. That’s an old nationalist trope: England the neverending source of Ireland’s ills. I find it terribly difficult, and I’m not being unkind, to find any redeeming feature in this book. That’s its only point of originality. It’s outdated, outmoded, and could I say, I was pleased to see that at moments you did engage with some modern scholarship, like Joel Mokyr, the great Dutch historian … of the Great Famine. I don’t think you understood what he was saying. You have a phrase at one point – excess mortality – numbers per cent per thousand – that phrase means nothing. You clearly didn’t understand what he was saying. And when you talk about coffin ships, one of the searing images of the Famine – appalling – and of course I accept that the Great Famine was a vast catastrophe, that’s the title of one of my publications on this, but even when talking about coffin ships, surely you need to set that in context. The Grosse Isle experience was appalling, I’ve been to Grosse Isle, I’ve seen those graves, but that was not typical of transatlantic shipping during the Famine. If you had read Joel Mokyr and others, as your references seem to suggest, you would see quite clearly that Mokyr says that that first year of shipping particularly to the mouth of Saint Lawrence was untypical and that mortality on ships across the Atlantic was less than 5 per cent. Less actually than German emigrants migrating to North America in the same time period. So either you’re guilty of incredibly selective reading or, I just wonder, have you lost the plot? Did you really understand what you were reading at times?
2602
2603Coogan: Well I think what Mr Kennedy should have pointed out, by the way, from the start, was that one of my targets was the Irish academic historians, whom I say again, were guilty of colonial cringe, were largely trained in English universities, as Joe Lee has pointed out - Professor Joe Lee – and put this sort of emollient gloss on it that you’ve just heard. An even more eminent historian if there is such a thing possible, than Comrade Kennedy, was the late AJP Taylor, the English historian, who said that the Famine made Ireland a Belsen, a fairly strong term, and could not be termed other than a genocidal term in its import. I don’t know what he’s talking about new evidence. I have reproduced, I think, one of the most significant documents of the Famine, which is the article that caused Peel to fall out with Trevelyan. They had a very bad relationship for three years between 1843, when Trevelyan had visited Ireland for some six weeks, and came back, briefed to Peel, secretly, and then went out and published his findings in a quite hate-filled document, anonymously signed which showed a dreadful anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-Celt bias. The last man you would have wanted to be in charge of Irish relief. But he was ...
2604
2605Crawley: I don’t ... time.
2606
2607Coogan: May I finish my point?
2608
2609Crawley: All right go ahead.
2610
2611The second point I make, which I haven’t seen our contestant advert to was that one of the most powerful men, Palmerston for example, in the English Cabinet, at the table, were huge Irish landlords, and Palmerston said flatly one day, to his colleagues, when there was some perturbation about what was happening. He said “Look, don’t we all agree that the solution to the land problem is to get the surplus population off the land?” and it is recorded that “with a shudder” they went back to other business. These were the people who imposed the Opium Laws on the Chinese at the same time in Hong Kong. They were imperialists, they wanted to clear the land, to get rid of the people off the land, to bring on high farming and they wanted to instal cattle farming instead of the Irish pauper and peasant, and he hasn’t adverted at all to the publicity campaign they ran largely with the aid of the London Times to get public opinion round to that state of mind where they backed a policy which said – they welcomed the Famine – “We look forward to the day when a Celt will be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as a red man on the banks of the Hudson.”  Are you trying to tell me that that is an indication of benignity and trying to populate the land?
2612
2613Crawley: Well it sounds like bias, it sounds like an appalling anti-Irish perspective for sure and you had within that period a Malthusian sense of natural justice. And we also had mismanagement. There were also a lot of other factors going on. How does this tend to make an argument for genocide? A deliberate policy to remove by death Irish people from Ireland, Tim Pat?
2614
2615Coogan: Because he flatly said, I’m talking about Trevelyan now, he said this to Monteagle, I believe, how can you complain about our policies when we are actually achieving what we really want (and he talks about improving the land situation)? And he talks about how much it’s getting better, while people are dying in their thousands. We’re getting rid of the middlemen. The real thing was to cure the land situation, not to fix the appalling situation in the workhouses.
2616
2617Crawley: Liam Kennedy, is that the smoking gun then?
2618
2619Kennedy: Well that’s the problem with Tim Pat’s book, there is no smoking gun. It’s largely a misrepresentation of Trevelyan and because the argument is so weak, Tim Pat needs to go back again and again to the seventeenth century, to Oliver Cromwell, so Trevelyan becomes the Cromwell of the mid-nineteenth century. And that kind of demonisation runs right through the book. And, again I don’t mean it unkindly, there is so little evidence. And the crucial issue is of course, intentionality. If you look at the UN convention on genocide, the vital element is intentionality.
2620
2621Crawley: You can’t have an accidental genocide – there has to be a deliberate policy?
2622
2623Coogan: Either way … I quote the [protocol?] …
2624
2625Kennedy: Tim Pat, if I could finish the point …
2626
2627Coogan: If you can
2628
2629Kennedy: If you look at other aspects or other comments by Trevelyan during the course of the great Famine it’s quite clear that he was mistaken in many of the policies, too interventionist, but he was a workaholic, he was genuinely, according to his own lights (we need to see it in those terms in the context of his own time) he was trying to save as many Irish people from starvation as possible. Let me give one seasonal example. Trevelyan – and indeed it’s in your book, in fairness – censured one of his officials for taking Christmas holidays because, as he said, “When the lives of multitudes of people depend on your exertions.” And there is no case for genocide when you think of as part of British policy in Ireland, three-quarters of a million people were working on public relief schemes. That puts modern youth employment schemes in the halfpenny place – when you have three million people at one stage receiving soup from soup kitchens right across Ireland in their localities.
2630
2631Coogan: But they wanted to close them down. You’re talking absolute rubbish with all due respect. You do realise the British prime minister apologised for the policies that you are defending.
2632
2633Crawley: Tony Blair.
2634
2635Kennedy: Yeah, I’m not defending the policies at the time. We do need to bear in mind – it wasn’t actually obvious – what kinds of policies would initially work effectively to handle a crisis on this scale.
2636
2637Crawley: But why would you shut down soup kitchens?
2638
2639Kennedy: That goes back to economic constraints, it goes back to issues of economic ideology. It’s very difficult for us to understand now ...
2640
2641Coogan: Even more difficult for the people who were dying.
2642
2643Kennedy: Sure, I would accept that point. But you had, in the early 2000s, neo-conservatives in the United States, absolutely believing in an unregulated market system – that was laissez faire economics.
2644
2645Coogan: That doesn’t justify it. They used those policies to clear the land and I have quoted in full in the appendix, you can read the UN protocol on genocide – on every ground it ticks the boxes.
2646
2647Kennedy: It doesn’t ...
2648
2649Coogan: I know I did criticise academic historians for this bumbling attitude, obfuscating nomenclature, you couldn’t really blame them... it wasn’t really Malthusian, what they were really trying to do was create a nineteenth century version of the Scarsdale diet. In fact they presided from the year 1946 to ’51 over a continuous process of the elimination of the Irish peasant from the land.
2650
2651Kennedy: 1846, I think you mean.
2652
2653Crawley: A comment from Mary – she’s texted us – she says a British government document was discovered a few years ago that stated that the plan was to let the Irish starve, send the rest to America, leaving Ireland free to be planted by the English. Does such a document exist?
2654
2655Kennedy: No.
2656
2657Crawley: Part to the mythology then?
2658
2659Kennedy: One of the great problems of this whole area is that it generates all kinds of conspiracy theories, websites – I’ve found myself misquoted on some of these websites – there is a kind of Famine commemoration industry out there and Tim Pat has made an extremely undistinguished addition to this …
2660
2661Coogan: Could I put one point to you …
2662
2663Crawley: Let’s hear Liam’s point.
2664
2665Kennedy: The issue of intentionality is central to the whole discussion of genocide. In this book you have failed utterly to establish that there was intentionalilty and indeed the facts fly in the face of that. Misguided policy, certainly, but having three-quarters of a million people on public work schemes, having three million people receiving food rations, that is not consistent with a policy of genocide. And as an Irish revolutionary once put it, Ernie O’Malley, it’s easy to travel on another man’s wound. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re providing junk food for the wilder reaches of Irish America. What we need is real scholarship, not these outdated, outmoded, and frankly misleading commentaries.
2666
2667Crawley: A final point to Tim Pat Coogan.
2668
2669Coogan: I want to make a point about the Victorian Cromwell. That wasn’t my description. That was the description of a very renowned American scholar. The facts are as I’ve set them out, they can’t be denied, I suppose our friend is saying they didn’t really die, they were hidden some place. They knew in England for several years, long before the Famine, that the land was overpopulated. They had these distress committees set up in the House of Commons. People as far back as O’Connell said what had to be done. When the Famine broke out they should have closed the ports. You haven’t talked about the way food was exported all the way through it. He wanted grain distilling stopped, grain retained in the country – the soup kitchens you boast about – they had them for one year, and then cancelled it and put them back on the roads.
2670
2671Crawley: All that adds up to evidence that they didn’t do enough to stop ... It’s not evidence that ...
2672
2673Coogan: They wanted once and for all to grapple with the overcrowding on the Irish land and behind the cloak. The records of the London Times are there that I quoted. And I think it ill behoves an Irishman, which Mr Kennedy presumably is, to be going on with that sort of rubbish. To this day, to show you the position that the Irish Famine has left and a lot of Protestants thought it was providential to clear the Irish off the land. To this day it wouldn’t be possible for the National Irish Famine Committee of which I was a member, the government commission, to hold the commemoration for the Famine north of the border, because of the feelings there. And we had an example of those feelings from Comrade Kennedy’s corner this morning.
2674
2675http://www.drb.ie/blog/writers-and-artists/2013/02/25/was-the-famine-a-genocide-
2676
2677
2678The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy - Sunday Sequence Debate
2679
2680BBC Radio Ulster Programme "Sunday Sequence" debate between Queen's University Professor Liam Kennedy and Tim Pat Coogan author of the book "The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy"
2681Liam Kennedy was born into a farming family in Co Tipperary, and has held academic posts in Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Economic History at Queen's University, Belfast.
2682
2683https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YTOXoyhXvY
2684
2685-----------------------------
2686
2687Punch and the Great Famine By Peter Gray
2688
2689The real potato blight of Ireland
2690https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000pjj76M9fap8/s/900/720/Ireland-Irish-Cartoons-Punch-Magazine-1845-12-13-255.jpg
2691
2692The widespread use of Punch cartoons in books and teaching materials on nineteenth century history is hardly surprising: these often striking images are a convenient visual aid for understanding a period in which photography was in its infancy. Yet the use of this graphic record in an unreflective manner is fraught with difficulties and may detract from the material’s historical usefulness. Several illustrated texts, and at least one academic account of the Great Famine of 1845-50, have been guilty of this unimaginative use of sources, and consequently can be accused of having missed the point of the illustrations. The historical significance of Punch in the later 1840s lay as much in its aspiration and ability to mould public perceptions of events, as in its satiric commentaries on those events. The paper provided no direct record of the mass sufferings of the Irish peasantry (in contrast to the Illustrated London News’ graphic depictions), but Irish affairs occupied many of its pages in the famine years. Perhaps its greatest importance to the historian is as a simultaneous shaper and expression of British public opinion – a phenomenon vital to our understanding of the Famine as a whole.
2693
2694
2695Considerable political weight
2696
2697The Irish Cinderella and her Haughty Sisters, Britannia and Caledonia
2698https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000eCx3.uFyTag/s/900/720/Victorian-Ireland-Irish-Famine-Great-Britain-Scotland-Cartoons-Punch-Magazine-1846-04-25-181.jpg
2699
2700Founded in 1841, Punch sought to establish a new style of humorous journalism, more tasteful and restrained than the savage caricatures of Gillray and Cruikshank, but also more serious and campaigning than its comic rivals. From the start, it had a moralistic cutting edge, derived from its radical founders, Henry Mayhew and Douglas Jerrold. Even its more conservative contributors believed that humour should be about more than mere laughter. The novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, a regular writer from 1843 to 1854, expressed the view that humour ought ‘to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness; your scorn of untruth, pretension, imposture; your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy’. This was indeed the mission of the early Punch which led philanthropic assaults on sweated labour, poor law abuses, and terrible urban conditions. The paper’s radicalism was, however, distinctly middle- class in tone; while critical of Chartism, it threw itself whole-heartedly behind the free trade and financial reform movements. Already by the late 1840s, it was beginning a transition to the more complacent conservative stance it would adopt as a patriotic national institution in the mid-Victorian ‘age of equipoise’.Punch’s political weight was considerable. Its circulation, at around 30,000, was below that of many other journals and was largely concentrated in London, but it reached many metropolitan opinion-formers who set the tone of British middle-class attitudes as expressed nationally. It was read by politicians, and several cabinet ministers commented on its pronouncements in their private diaries. Most importantly, Punch existed as part of a network of similarly- oriented journals. Its authors were keen to take their line on public affairs largely from The Times, by far the most influential newspaper of the day. Indeed one contributor, Gilbert a Beckett, was simultaneously a leader writer for both The Times and The Illustrated London News. The power of these three papers taken together was considerable – each complemented the other by focusing on a different aspect of middle-class taste. This was all the more true in a period of party flux, weak governments, and a national radical middle-class mobilisation. Punch had a history of broad sympathy for the plight of Ireland, mixed with a mocking hostility towards Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal movement. In the early stages of the famine catastrophe, O’Connell was attacked for his alleged greed in collecting the ‘Repeal rent’ from the starving poor and for misleading his ignorant followers as to their real interests. [The Real Potato Blight of Ireland, 13 December 1845] Attention was thus directed away from the realties of the socio-economic crisis, to what were regarded in Britain as the ludicrous and seditious political antics of the Irish. Political and moral factors were to be relentlessly harped upon in the subsequent years as the true causes of Irish distress. While ‘Hibernia’ could be treated sympathetically as a feminised abstract, and her ‘Haughty Sisters, Britannia and Caledonia’ upbraided for their self-satisfied aloofness [The Irish Cinderella, 25 April 1846], Punch regarded the Famine more as an opportunity to ‘conquer’ Ireland ‘by food and education’, than as a case for simple charity. The excessive luxuries of the rich in Britain were a target more conducive to radical (and indeed evangelical) criticism than an inadequate relief policy.
2701
2702
2703Providence and the potato
2704
2705The paper mocked the antiCatholic interpretations of famine causation proposed by ultraProtestants, but it did not rule out the hand of God. Indeed it impliCitly gave credence to those providentialist views which saw the potato blight as a means of replacing ‘backward’ potatoes (and the social system their cultivation supported) with more ‘civilised’ foodstuffs. It agreed with The Times that ‘Providence, which made us and the land we till, evidently intended another subsistence’ than the potato, that ‘most precarious of crops and meanest of foods’. Ministers agreed that the introduction of cheap imported grain would transform the Irish character. Edward Cardwell argued:If. while they diffused among [the Irish] a taste for a higher kind of food. they could also introduce amongst them habits of industry and improvement calculated to furnish them with the means of procuring that higher food, they would be effecting one of the greatest practical improvements which this country was capable of accomplishing. This policy necessitated a strict adherence to free trade in food and bound up Ireland’s fate witb the repeal of the corn laws. From autumn 1846. British governments adopted a bi-partisan policy of minimal interference in the food trade. The collapse in the price of imported Indian meal the following summer appeared to vindicate this free trade dogma. but this was of little consolation to the hundreds of thousands who perished in the winter of 1846-7. The social costs of that year blunted but did not change the moralistic British critique of potato subsistence; Punch prematurely welcomed the apparent restoration of the potato to health in autumn 1847 (it failed again in 1848 and 1849). but only as a subsidiary to cheap bread. [Consolation for the Million: The Loaf and the Potato, 11September 1847] Like Sir Charles Trevelyan, the assistant Secretary to the Treasury, Punch regarded the continuation of famine conditions in Ireland after this time as entirely due to indigenous moral and not biological failures. Ireland had been warned of the folly of potato dependence by a ‘natural’ disaster, but had perversely chosen to ignore the danger; no further responsibility could be undertaken by the ‘imperial’ government.
2706
2707
2708Irish property, Irish poverty
2709
2710Union is Strength. John Bull. "Here are a few things to go on with, brother, and I'll soon put you in a way to earn your own living.".
2711https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000ZFR7X0bONXQ/s/900/720/Ireland-Cartoons-Punch-1846-10-17-161.jpg
2712
2713The relief of famine distress was bound up with ideological considerations. In the cartoon Union is Strength (17 October 1846), John Bull, the epitome of Englishness, presents his Irish ‘brother’ not only with food, but with a spade – to put him ‘in a way to earn your own living’. In the light of modern conceptions of the importance of development aid, the offer appears sensible but it must be understood in the light of the popularised versions of political economy current at the time. Thomas Campbell Foster’s analysis of the ‘Condition of the People of Ireland’, serialised by The Times in 1845-6, had stressed the essential fertility of Ireland and placed the blame for its backwardness on ignorance and a lack of enterprise. The idea that wealth could be created by industrious exertion alone (capital being merely ‘accumulated labour’) acquired considerable popularity. There was also a widespread belief, shared by some ministers, that Ireland possessed sufficient surplus in its ‘wages-fund’ to support its current population, if only this was diverted from landlord extravagance to productive use. While Punch acknowledged that the scale of the 1846-7 crisis necessitated some assistance, and rejected the crude Malthusianism of Lord Radnor, this feeling continued to lie at the root of its perceptions. With The Times, it advocated the early introduction of a permanent extended Irish poor law, which would make Irish property support Irish poverty. This ‘very bitter pill’, strictly administered as a moral spur to self-reliance on the part of all Irish classes, proved popular in Britain. By May 1847 Punch, was advocating total reliance on the government’s new poor law and leaving Ireland to ‘shift for herself for a year’. Two developments were cited for hardening Punch’s (and by extension, British public opinion’s) heart against Ireland. Both centred on the theme of Irish ‘ingratitude’. Within two months of ‘Union is Strength’, Punch had decided that the Irish were rejecting the proffered spade and relapsing into atavistic violence. In Height of Impudence (12 December 1846), John Bull is accosted by an Irishman begging alms to buy a ‘blunderbuss’. In contrast to the earlier cartoon, the Irishman is no longer ‘brother’, but bears the simianised features that were to become so familiar to Punch’s readers in later years. To some extent this shift reflected the views of the individual cartoonists; ‘Union is Strength’ was drawn by Richard Doyle, a Catholic and of Irish descent (although as strongly anti-Repeal as his father, John Doyle of Political Sketches fame). ‘Height of Impudence’ was by John Leech, Punch’s regular cartoonist in these years, and a man whose betes noires featured ‘Italian organ-grinders, Frenchmen and Hebrews’ as well as the Irish. The anthropological theories of ‘Celtic’ degeneracy which informed such stereotypes of ‘Paddy’ were by no means universally accepted in 1840s Britain, but were mobilised forcefully for specific purposes in Punch and The Times. This transition period between the dominance of environmentalism and racialism as the leading discourse regarding Ireland was particularly disadvantageous to the country: while brute enough to require coercion, the Irish were seen as sufficiently ‘normal’ to be expected to exhibit self-reliance, and were denied the paternalistic relief later doled out by Dublin Castle in the subsistence crises of the 1880s and 1890s. Punch came to support strict coercion of Ireland, the suppression of agrarian agitation, and the imprisonment of troublesome priests. Yet in line with its radical leanings, it expressed little sympathy for Irish landlords, who were depicted as ready to rob John Bull to line their own pockets and subsidise a lifestyle of cowardly absenteeism. The paper showed no sympathy for the developing campaign for tenant right, but – in the wake of The Times – moved towards advocating more drastic treatment of the Irish of all classes.
2714
2715
2716Mitchel as a monkey
2717
2718The second development increasing British antagonism was the growing political instability of Ireland. ‘Union is Strength’ had suggested an optimistic outlook on Anglo-Irish relations, and Punch had gloated at Daniel O’Connell’s apparent renunciation of Repeal and request for greater British aid shortly before his death in 1847. In this context, the increasingly vociferous militancy of the Young Irelanders provoked outrage and a further denunciation of the Irish as a whole. Leech went the full way with the simian stereotype by portraying the movement’s most extreme leader, John Mitchel, as a monkey – at once comic and dangerously incendiary – threatening a magisterial and contemptuous British lion. [The British Uon and the Irish Monkey, 8 April 1848] In the wake of the abortive 1848 rlsmg, Punch returned repeatedly to the theme of inveterate Irish barbarity and ingratitude. Agrarian unrest and political rebellion were rolled together (in a manner which Fintan Lalor and Mitchel would have envied had they been so in reality), and images of famine-related suffering were ignored. British policy appeared incapable of ameliorating the situation through conciliation. In Alfred the Small (16 September 1848), the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, is pictured visiting Ireland, only to find the primitive natives immersed in violence and idolatrously worshipping the totems of Repeal.
2719
2720
2721Thackeray: Hibernis Hibernior
2722
2723Height of Impudence. Irishman to John Bull. - "Spare a thrifle, yer honour, for a poor Irish lad to buy a bit of - a blunderbuss with."
2724https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000z83L7m5hMWQ/s/900/720/Victorian-Ireland-Irish-London-Cartoons-John-Leech-Punch-Magazine-1846-12-12-245.jpg
2725
2726The British Lion and The Irish Monkey. Monkey (Mr. Mitchell). "One of us MUST be 'Put Down.'"
2727https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000LmTZyyzeyKY/s/900/720/Victorian-Cartoons-Punch-1848-04-08-147.jpg
2728
2729If Punch ‘s main political thrust lay in its chief cartoon – the subject of which was decided weekly by the principal contributors – the paper was always more than its ‘big cut’. It carried numerous one-liners, squibs and articles on Irish subjects, as well as pieces of more sustained satire in verse and prose. W.M. Thackeray was the source of the bulk of its Irish pieces in these years. His Irish Sketch Book (1843), an impressionistic but largely critical account of an Irish visit, had proved a great success in England (not least for its strident anti-Catholicism). It was on the strength of this that he emerged as Punch’s Irish expert, often under the pseudonym ‘Hibernis Hibernior’, In ‘Mr Punch for Repeal’ (26 February 1848) Thackeray declared that he had made a personal contribution of £5 to the British Association relief fund in early 1847, but as reasons for giving no more, went on to cite the support of certain Catholic clerics for the tenant movement (which Thackeray interpreted as a murderous conspiracy), and John O’Connell’s criticism of the British state and press for failing to come to terms with the continuation of the famine. This clearly echoed the mood of British public opinion, for a second charitable appeal in October 1847 had proved an unpopular flop and no further substantial sums were raised. Thackeray also took up the cry for ‘Repeal’ in an ironic sense, as a means of protecting England from further Irish mendicancy. These themes were reiterated in the ‘Letters to a nobleman visiting Ireland’ (2 and 9 September 1848), in which Lord John Russell was upbraided for his previous political connections with the O’Connells, and Irish poverty was attributed to Irish wrong-headedness.
2730
2731
2732Manipulating British public opinion
2733
2734Punch regularly criticised Russell for having no Irish policy, but also staunchly opposed government expenditure in Ireland. In the wake of the financial crisis of autumn 1847, British industry and commerce underwent a period of depression: middle-class radicals responded by crusading against taxation and landlord privileges. The general election of 1847 gave a group of about 85 radicals, led by Cobden, Bright and Hume, the parliamentary balance of power. Both Russell and Lord Lieutenant Clarendon were aware of the vital need for increased relief, development and emigration assistance spending in Ireland but they failed to make headway, faced with ideological hostility from the advocates of ‘natural causes’ within the government and strenuous resistance from the commons. Punch expressed glee when Russell was forced to withdraw a proposed increase in the British income tax in his 1848 budget, and then outrage at every concession extracted to meet the extensive distress of the west of Ireland in 1848-9. Every loan to the ungrateful Irish, however small, was denounced as an additional burden on England’s respectable poor. [The English Labourer’s Burden, 24 February 1849] It was indicative of just how deeply divided the Whig-liberal cabinet was that such irresponsible press statements were welcomed and encouraged by some ministers. From late 1846 Charles Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, sought to undermine relief expenditure by stimulating a British backlash against the ‘monstrous machine’ of public works. He, Trevelyan and Colonial Secretary Lord Grey had close connections with Delane of The Times and exploited these for political ends.By autumn 1848, a broad swathe of British opinion was convinced that mass starvation was inevitable in Ireland, and should not be prevented. The diarist Charles Greville noted that the prevailing sense in London was ‘disgust … at the state of Ireland and the incurable madness of the people’. The press had done much to create this perception. The Prime Minister was obliged to admit that it was less the ‘crude Trevelyanism’ of his subordinates than feelings lying ‘deep in the breasts of the British people’ that had made substantive intervention impossible.
2735
2736
2737‘Biped livestock’
2738
2739The English Labourer's Burden; Or, The Irish Old Man of The Mountain. (See Sinbad the Sailor.
2740https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I000061BPeVzxh_w/s/900/720/Victorian-Cartoons-Punch-1849-02-24-79.jpg
2741
2742As if exhausted or secretly embarrassed by its sustained hostility during a period of acute suffering and mass mortality, Punch sought for signs of hope in 1849. Two events were highlighted. The ‘new plantation’ scheme proposed by elder statesman Sir Robert Peel was warmly welcomed. Peel suggested a commission with sweeping powers over the west of
2743Ireland that would pave the way for ‘new proprietors who shall take possession of the land of Ireland, freed from its present encumbrances, and enter into its cultivation with adequate capital, with new feelings, and inspired by new hopes’. Richard Doyle pictured Peel as ‘The New St Patrick’, driving the reptiles of ‘destitution’, ‘mortgages’ (depicted by a Jewish stereotype) and ‘famine’ out of Ireland. Leech welcomed Peel’s ‘panacea’ of ‘the sale of encumbered estates’ as the cure to Russell’s ‘dreadful Irish toothache’. The idea of a British economic ‘colonisation’, reclaiming the bogs of Connacht for civilisation, appealed strongly to the paper, and a mass removal of the ‘biped livestock’ by clearance and emigration was welcomed. [A Parallel between Peel and Caesar, 28 April 1849J Yet, like The Times, its support was primarily for ‘free trade in land’ rather than full-scale government intervention. Peel had advocated relaxation of the poor law and increased state investment, but moralist opinion remained adamantly opposed. The second event was the Queen’s visit to Ireland in August 1849. The unifying mystique of the monarchy was sufficient for Punch to restore the image of a poor but welcoming ‘Hibernia’, and to transform the threatening ‘Paddy’ into the comically harmless ‘Sir Patrick Raleigh’. [Landing of Queen Victoria in Ireland, August 1849J Punch put its faith in the royal visit as the most efficacious mode of anglicising the country and its people, imagining an Ireland of the future built on the suppression of its past: Let Erin look forward with faith sublime, Forgetting the days that are over; And allow the stream of a brighter time In oblivion the past to cover. [Ireland – a Dream of the Future, Sept. 1849]
2744This was wishful thinking, and the flood of private and corporate investment expected in the wake of the Queen’s visit failed to materialise. Plans by the City of London corporation to purchase large tracts of Connacht also fell through.
2745
2746
2747Conclusion
2748
2749Landing of Queen Victoria In Ireland. Sir Patrick Raleigh. "May it plase your majesty to tread on the tail of my coat."
2750https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000KVcVgN5VDhU/s/900/720/British-Royalty-Cartoons-Punch-1849-08-04-47.jpg
2751
2752The New Irish Still. Showing how all sorts of good things may be obtained (by industry) out of peat.
2753https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000SvcLrM8tlr4/s/900/720/Ireland-Cartoons-Punch-1849-08-18-67.jpg
2754
2755Punch’s vision of Irish prosperity arising simply from self-exertion – ‘new’ proprietors were primarily to provide entrepreneurial values rather than cash – proved illusory. Yet such was the depth of early Victorian liberal optimism that it refused to abandon the image of creating plenty through the application of industry to peat. [The New Irish Still, August 1849J The idea would be ludicrous, were it not for the fact that this illusion, and the moralistic outrage directed against the Irish when it was not realised, underlay the response not only of Punch, but of the dominant strand of British public opinion, to the Great Famine. The specific political circumstances of the later 1840s entailed that this opinion played a considerable part in limiting the options available to a weak and deeply divided government. The present debate amongst historians over whether and where moral responsibility for the famine can be attributed would be illuminated if such aspects were sufficiently taken into account. Too detailed an analysis can perhaps detract from the wit and humour of nineteenth-century cartoons and comic writing. Yet these were not merely intended as amusing frivolities. They had real political significance and should be treated as historical documents. We should beware of too hastily passing judgement on the people of the past but surely the performance of Punch can be evaluated in the light of its own critique of O’Connell in 1845: A joke is a joke, and nothing can be more pleasing … in its proper place – but not always. You wouldn’t cut capers over a dead body, or be particularly boisterous and facetious in a chapel or a sick-room; and I think, of late … you have been allowing your humour to get the better of you on occasions almost as solemn. For, isn’t Hunger sacred? Isn’t Starvation
2756solemn? When applied to Ireland, the answer appeared to be that it was not.
2757 
2758
2759 
2760
2761Peter Gray tutors in Irish history at
2762
2763 
2764
2765Queen’s University, Belfast.
2766
2767 
2768
2769 
2770
2771Further reading:
2772
2773 
2774
2775L. Perry Curtis, Apes and Angels: the
2776
2777 
2778
2779Irishman in Victorian Caricature
2780
2781 
2782
2783(London 1971).
2784
2785 
2786
2787S. and A. Briggs (eds.), Cap and Bell:
2788
2789 
2790
2791Punch’s Chronicle of English History in
2792
2793 
2794
2795the Making 1841-1861 (London 1972).
2796
2797 
2798
2799M.H. Spielmann, The History of Punch
2800
2801 
2802
2803(London 1895).
2804
2805 
2806
2807c. Woodham-Smith, The Great
2808
2809 
2810
2811Hunger: Ireland 1845-9 (London 1962).
2812
2813'
2814
2815http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/punch-and-the-great-famine-by-peter-gray/
2816
2817---------------------------
2818
2819Irish "Potato Famine" Was Deliberate Genocide
2820June 16, 2015
2821
2822(*left, location of mass graves in Ireland*)
2823https://henrymakow.com/upload_images/ireland%20massgraves.gif
2824
2825THE IRISH HOLOCAUST- (Irish: *an Gorta Mór*) or the Great Hunger was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration in Ireland between 1845 and 1852
2826
2827
2828According to historian Chris Fogarty,
2829the "Irish Potato Famine" which killed over five million people 
2830was not a famine but a deliberate British policy of starvation similar to the
2831Holomodor in the Ukraine in 1932-33.
2832
2833https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
2834
2835
2836
2837
2838"The truth is startling, 67 out of 130 regiments of Britain's Empire army were in Ireland in this period (100,000 at any one time). The troops were not on a humanitarian mission. Their job was to remove food by force."
2839
2840
2841*This is a summary of a Red Ice Radio broadcast supplemented by information from Chris Fogarty's website http://www.irishholocaust.org/. Chris is author of the book: Ireland 1845-1850:The Perfect Holocaust, distributed direct from the author in Chicago, USA.*
2842
2843https://youtu.be/cbAXsWU5G0Q
2844
2845http://www.irishholocaust.org/britain'scoverup
2846
2847
2848**by Richard Merriman 
2849(henrymakow.com)**
2850
2851
2852
2853**History is a big lie told by the victors.** The illuminati (jews, author is a boomer who won't name them) have almost perfected rewriting history to suit their own agenda.
2854
2855https://www.henrymakow.com/upload_images/irishpot.jpg
2856
2857I grew up thinking that the Irish famine was a natural catastrophe caused by crop failure; the Irish were guilty of only cultivating only one crop-- potatoes. 
2858
2859While Chris Fogarty was researching the biography of his paternal grandfather at the National Archives, he uncovered a policy of genocide . The truth is startling: 67 out of 130 regiments of Britain's Empire army were in Ireland during this period (100,000 at any one time). The troops were not on a humanitarian mission. Their job was to remove food by force. 
2860
2861The nation starved as its food was confiscated, 40-70 shiploads a day were removed at gunpoint assisted by British constables, militia and troops. They seized tens of millions head of livestock, tens of millions of tons flour, grains and poultry. These vast quantities were more than enough to feed 18 million people.
2862
2863The first lie was that the famine was due to the failure of the potato crop. When the quantity of exported Irish foodstuffs could no longer be concealed, the second lie was that the rich Irish were starving the poor Irish. G.B. Shaw wrote in *Man and Superman* 1897: "The Famine? No, the Starvation. When a country is full of food and exporting it, there can be no Famine."' 
2864
2865In *The Great Hunger* (1962,) British Historian Woodham Smith identified 13 of the food removal regiments. She became a pariah in British and Irish academia for the next 30 years. Academic historians maintain the lie that only one crop was cultivated, covering up the food removals and exportation to England. British and Irish academia won't approach the truth, and anyone bringing the genocide out in the open is smeared as a "republican" (implying a terrorist.)
2866
2867Former Irish President Mary Robinson referred to the genocide as "Ireland's largest natural disaster." In 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "Britain stood by while the Irish starved to death", but did not acknowledge role of the British Army in forced food confiscations. 
2868
2869The consequence of publishing the truth can be severe.  Chris Fogarty has been raided several times and charged by the FBI. He was told unofficially that British intelligence were involved. The charges were later proven to be fabricated and dropped. 
2870
2871
2872**THE HUMAN TOLL AND MOTIVE**
2873https://www.henrymakow.com/upload_images/redce.jpeg
2874
2875The 5.2 million death figure cited by Chris is higher than the official figures which only posit a 2M drop from 1841-51 due to natural famine and emigration. He believes the 1841 census underestimates the real population of over 12M.  He calculates a total population reduction of about 6 million with about 1 million  emigrating.
2876
2877The genocide was a deliberate attempt to exterminate the Irish people and their cultural and national identity.  Queen Victoria's economist, Nassau Senior, voiced 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." *The Times* leader in 1848 wrote "A Celt will soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as the red man on the banks of Manhattan." 
2878
2879During the "famine" years, Irish foodstuff received high prices on the agricultural and commodity markets of the world. The British Empire covered half the globe; why else would it keep half its armies in Ireland at great expense? 
2880
2881The Irish were an obstacle to Britain's world power. They were Celtic, Catholic with their own rich culture and traditions, namely strong: National identity, Family, Culture and Christian faith. The Irish have a strong Celtic consciousness giving the people the ability to think critically, morally and be self-sufficient and it's in our DNA cultural Marxism cannot extinguish it. 
2882
2883 Ireland like many European nations is undergoing the genocide by cultural Marxism, mass immigration of third worlders, minority rights of LGBT, feminists to undermine marriage, gender leading to moral collapse. 
2884
2885The Irish government minister Alan Shatter left, a Zionist Jew, accuses the people of not being sufficiently attentive to the Jewish Holocaust. The propaganda project is failing to mass indoctrinate the Irish. 
2886https://www.henrymakow.com/upload_images/shatter.jpeg
2887
2888Charity starts at home and our first duty is to be attentive to our own people's national tragedies before concentrating on another peoples. Shoahism has no place in Irish cultural life, as the nation and its people had no involvement in this event, so have no guilt or responsibility whatsoever.
2889
2890**Related-**
2891**How British Free Trade Starved Millions During Ireland's Potato Famine**
2892http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/nbw/pot_famine95.html
2893**Irish Food Exports During Famine Years**
2894http://www.usbornefamilytree.com/irishfoodexports.htm
2895**And Again**
2896https://www.ighm.org/exports-in-famine-times/
2897
2898*Ireland 1845-1850:The Perfect Holocaust and Who Kept it Perfect* 
2899Mr Chris Fogarty 900 North Lakeshore Drive Condo 1507 Chicago Illinois 60611
2900$20 , Add $3 in state postage within Illinois  email: fogartyc@att.net 
2901Readers in Europe can order copies to be posted (cheaper postage than from USA) from Ireland from johnrobinsonimports@eircom.net
2902
2903https://www.henrymakow.com/2015/06/irish-potato-famine-was.html
2904
2905------------------------------------
2906
2907FOOD EXPORTS FROM IRELAND DURING THE FAMINE YEARS  (1845-1849)
2908(Source: http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/irish_pf.html)
2909
2910The monetarist policy of the British Government of the 1840's known as "Laissez Faire" demanded no political interference with "the free market".
2911
2912In Ireland Before and After the Famine  Cormac O’Grada documents that in 1845, a famine year in Ireland, 3,251,907 quarters (8 bushels = 1 quarter)) of corn were exported from Ireland to Britain. That same year 257,257 sheep were exported to Britain. In 1846, another famine year, 480,827 swine and 186,483 oxen were exported to Britain.
2913
2914Cecil Woodham-Smith, considered the preeminent authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 that, "...no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation."
2915
2916"Although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population. But that was a 'money crop' and not a 'food crop' and could not be interfered with."
2917
2918According to John Mitchel, quoted by Woodham-Smith, "Ireland was actually producing sufficient food, wool and flax, to feed and clothe not nine but eighteen millions of people," yet a ship sailing into an Irish port during the famine years with a cargo of grain was "sure to meet six ships sailing out with a similar cargo."
2919
2920One of the most remarkable facts about the famine period is that there was an average monthly export of food from Ireland worth 100,000 Pound Sterling. Almost throughout the five-year famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food.
2921
2922Dr. Christine Kinealy, a fellow at the University of Liverpool and the author of two scholarly texts on the Irish Famine: This Great Calamity and A Death-Dealing Famine, says that 9,992 calves were exported from Ireland to England during "Black'47", an increase of thirty-three percent from the previous year. In the twelve months following the second failure of the potato crop, 4,000 horses and ponies were exported. The export of livestock to Britain (with the exception of pigs) increased during the "famine". The export of bacon and ham increased. In total, over three million live animals were exported from Ireland between 1846-50, more than the number of people who emigrated during the famine years.
2923
2924Dr. Kinealy's most recent work is documented in the spring, 1998 issue of "History Ireland". She states that almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. The food was shipped under guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland: Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Westport.
2925
2926During the first nine months of "Black '47" the export of grain-derived alcohol from Ireland to England included the following: 874,170 gallons of porter, 278,658 gallons of Guinness, and 183,392 gallons of whiskey.
2927
2928The total amount of grain-derived alcohol exported from Ireland in just nine months of Black'47 is 1,336,220 gallons!
2929
2930A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey, tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue and seed.
2931
2932The most shocking export figures concern butter. Butter was shipped in firkins, each one holding nine gallons. In the first nine months of 1847, 56,557 firkins were exported from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins were shipped to Liverpool. That works out to be 822,681 gallons of butter exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of "famine".
2933
2934If the other three months of exports were at all comparable, then we can safely assume that a million gallons of butter left Ireland while 400,000 Irish people starved to death!
2935
2936Dr. Kinealy's research proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there was sufficient food in Ireland to prevent mass starvation, and that the food was brought through the worst famine-stricken areas on its way to England. British regiments guarded the ports and warehouses in Ireland to guarantee absentee landlords and commodity speculators their "free market" profits.
2937
2938When Ireland experienced an earlier famine in 1782-83, ports were closed in order to keep home grown food for domestic consumption. Food prices were immediately reduced within Ireland. The merchants lobbied against such efforts, but their protests were over-ridden. Everyone recognised that the interests of the merchants and the distressed people were irreconcilable. In the Great Famine, that recognition was disregarded.
2939
2940Readers should note that the above is mostly extracted from educational websites produced by countries bound by law to teach "genocide studies". History is often more opinion than science. While most historians agree that between 1845 and 1850, one million Irish starved to death, the question of whether Ireland was a net exporter of food is contested. Ed.
2941
2942http://www.usbornefamilytree.com/irishfoodexports.htm
2943
2944-----------------------
2945
2946THE POETRY OF FAMINE
2947
2948"GIVE ME THREE GRAINS OF CORN, MOTHER."
2949By Amelia Blanford Edwards
2950
2951Give me three grains of corn, Mother,
2952Only three grains of corn;
2953It will keep the little life I have
2954Till the coming of the morn
2955
2956I am dying of hunger and cold, Mother,
2957Dying of hunger and cold;
2958And half the agony of such a death
2959My lips have never told
2960
2961It has gnawed like a wolf at my heart, Mother,
2962A wolf that is fierce for blood;
2963All the livelong day, and the night beside,
2964Gnawing for lack of food
2965
2966I dreamed of bread in my sleep, Mother,
2967And the sight was heaven to see;
2968I awoke with an eager, famishing lip,
2969But you had no bread for me
2970
2971How could I look to you, Mother,
2972How could I look to you
2973For bread to give to your starving boy,
2974When you were starving too?
2975
2976For I read the famine in your cheek,
2977And in your eyes so wild,
2978And I felt it in your bony hand,
2979As you laid it on your child
2980
2981The Queen has lands and gold, Mother,
2982The Queen has lands and gold,
2983While you are forced to your empty breast
2984A skeleton babe to hold
2985
2986A babe that is dying of want, Mother,
2987As I am dying now,
2988With a ghastly look in its sunken eye,
2989And famine upon its brow
2990
2991There is many a brave heart here, Mother,
2992Dying of want and cold,
2993While only across the Channel, Mother,
2994Are many that roll in gold;
2995
2996There are rich and proud men there, Mother,
2997With wondrous wealth to view,
2998And the bread they fling to their dogs tonight
2999Would give life to me and you.
3000
3001What has poor Ireland done, Mother,
3002What has poor Ireland done,
3003That the world looks on, and sees us starve,
3004Perishing one by one?
3005
3006Do the men of England care not, Mother,
3007The great men and the high,
3008For the suffering sons of Erin's Isle,
3009Whether they live or die?
3010
3011Come nearer to my side, Mother,
3012Come nearer to my side,
3013And hold me fondly, as you held
3014My father when he died;
3015
3016Quick, for I cannot see you, Mother,
3017My breath is almost gone;
3018Mother! Dear Mother! Ere I die,
3019Give me three grains of corn.
3020
3021
3022FAMINE AND EXPORTATION
3023By John O'Hagan 
3024
3025Take it from us, every grain,
3026We were made for you to drain;
3027Black starvation let us feel,
3028England must not want a meal! 
3029
3030When our rotting roots shall fail,
3031When the hunger pangs assail,
3032Ye'll have of Irish corn your fill --
3033We'll have grass and nettles still! 
3034
3035We are poor, and ye are rich;
3036Mind it not, were every ditch
3037Strewn in spring with famished corpses,
3038Take our oats to feed your horses! 
3039
3040Heaven, that tempers ill with good,
3041When it smote our wonted food,
3042Sent us bounteous growth of grain --
3043Sent to pauper slaves, in vain! 
3044
3045We but asked in deadly need:
3046'Ye that rule us! Let us feed
3047On the food that's ours' ~ behold!
3048Adder deaf and icy cold. 
3049
3050Were we Russians, thralls from birth,
3051In a time of winter dearth
3052Would a Russian despot see
3053From his land its produce flee? 
3054
3055Were we black Virginian slaves,
3056Bound and bruised with thongs and staves,
3057Avarice and selfish dread
3058Would not let us die unfed. 
3059
3060Were we, Saints of Heaven! were we
3061How we burn to think it -- FREE!
3062Not a grain should leave our shore,
3063Not for England's golden store. 
3064
3065They who hunger where it grew --
3066They whom Heaven had sent it to --
3067They who reared with sweat of brow --
3068They or none should have it now. 
3069
3070Lord that made us! What it is
3071To endure a lot like this!
3072Powerless in our worst distress,
3073Cramped by alien selfishness! 
3074
3075Not amongst our rulers all,
3076One true heart whereon to call;
3077Vainly still we turn to them
3078Who despoil us and contemn. 
3079
3080Forced to see them, day by day,
3081Snatch our sole resource away;
3082If returned a pittance be --
3083Alms, 'tis named, and beggars, we. 
3084
3085Lord! thy guiding wisdom grant,
3086Fearful counselor is WANT;
3087Burning thoughts will rise within,
3088Keep us pure from stain of sin! 
3089
3090But, at least, like trumpet blast,
3091Let it rouse us all at last;
3092Ye who cling to England's side!
3093Here and now, you see her tried.
3094
3095
3096THE FAMINE YEAR
3097By Jane Francesca Wilde
3098
3099Weary men, what reap ye? -- Golden corn for the stranger.
3100What sow ye? -- Human corpses that wait for the avenger.
3101Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see you in the offing?
3102Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger's scoffing.
3103There's a proud array of soldiers -- what do they round your door?
3104They guard our masters' granaries from the thin hands of the poor.
3105Pale mothers, wherefore weeping -- Would to God that we were dead;
3106Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread. 
3107We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride, But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died.
3108Now is your hour of pleasure -- bask ye in the world's caress;
3109But our whitening bones against ye will rise as witnesses,
3110From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffin'd masses,
3111For the Angel of the Trumpet will know them as he passes.
3112A ghastly, spectral army, before the great God we'll stand,
3113And arraign ye as our murderers, the spoilers of our land.
3114
3115http://www.usbornefamilytree.com/poetryoffamine.htm
3116
3117------------------------------
3118
3119**SCHILLER INSTITUTE
3120How British Free Trade 
3121Starved Millions 
3122During Ireland's Potato Famine
3123
3124by Paul Gallagher
3125May, 1995.**
3126
3127*This article was originally published in the New Federalist newspaper, American Almanac section, on May 29, 1995, while the author, a researcher, writer, and political associate of Lyndon LaRouche, was a political prisoner in Virginia's prison system. He has written on numerous topics, from the poetry of Keats and Shelley, the drama and method of Shakespeare, to studies on population in the Renassiance. Please click here for related articles.*
3128
3129
3130**150th Anniversary of Genocide:
3131How British Free Trade Starved Millions
3132During Ireland's Potato Famine**
3133
3134The May 24-26, 1995 White House Conference on the economic development of Northern Ireland, continues an important policy initiative by which President Clinton has already helped bring a season of peace to Ulster after 25 years of civil war. Further success would come by starting to connect Ireland, by tunnel, to new transport grids all the way across Eurasia: the "Eurasian Land Bridges" first proposed six years ago by Lyndon LaRouche and now under planning by leading governments. This would lead to development of new rails, power, and roads in Ireland, the country (North and South) with the least transport infrastructure and the most underdeveloped economy in Europe. This transport integration of Ireland would pass through Ulster and also help the wrecked British economy, if there were a British government which wished to do so.
3135
3136But the British Tory government of John Major, the moribund successor to Maggie Thatcher's 10-year rule of ruin, should not be allowed to contaminate President Clinton's Ireland development conference with the "free trade" ideology that has turned the British Isles into a post-industrial junk heap. A British "free trade" government can do nothing but more harm to its own economy and that of Ireland. The road to a stable peace in Ireland, as in other economically collapsed regions of the globe, will be built only on the foundation of government-directed infrastructure development.
3137
3138Beginning 150 years ago this fall, British "free trade" policy--the same policy Thatcher and her imitators still fanatically insist upon--caused the genocide of 2 million out of 8 million Irish subjects in four years. In contrast to the Nazis, the British perpetrators of this 1845-1849 genocide were not punished for their policies, nor did they change them in any way afterwards. In their quoted statements on that episode of genocide, presented below, you will recognize precisely the dominant British "free trade" policies of today, parroted by such as Milton Friedman and the "neo-Conservative revolutionaries" in our Congress.
3139
3140Ireland has never recovered from Britain's nineteenth century "free trade" rule. It has only 5 million citizens today, and its scant industrial and agricultural progress in the twentieth century is due entirely to the national institutions built by the Sinn Fein movement of 1902-1924, which explicitly opposed British free trade dogma.
3141
3142Contrary to the demands of John Major's government--breathing scandals and corruption when it breathes at all--Sinn Fein should participate fully in the White House conference. Major's government, and any British "free trade" government, in fact, has a good deal to learn from them.
3143
3144
3145**Not Potatoes, But Slavery**
3146
3147Any historian who has studied the subject further than former Vice-President Dan Quayle, knows that potatoes (or the lack thereof) did not cause the Irish famine and genocide 150 years ago. The potato blight which struck the harvest in autumn 1845, had begun in North Carolina, and spread to destroy potato crops throughout the Northern Hemisphere for several years; it did not cause famine or mass death anywhere except in Ireland. Nor were potatoes the only major produce of Irish agriculture at the time; they were just the only produce which the Irish--75 percent of whom were feudal tenants of British landlords, fanatical preachers of ``free trade"--were allowed to eat or to feed to their livestock. The historian Arthur Young had written, like many others, that the Irish tenant farmers were slaves in effect:
3148
3149
3150"A landlord in Ireland can scarcely invent an order which a laborer, servant, or cottier [tenant farmer] dares to refuse .... He may punish with his cane or his horsewhip with the most perfect security. A poor man would have his bones broken if he offered to lift a hand in his own defense."
3151Free trade exported or sold all the corn, wheat, barley, and oats Irish farmers grew, in order that they should pay their rents. All crops became cash crops--and there was nothing left for the farmer and his family to eat. British free trade tolerated no change in this situation while a million Irish starved to death, heavily deploying troops to protect the export ships. Free trade evicted instantly all farmers who stopped paying their rents, and the large landlords, led by British Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston, evicted their tenants more rapidly than before as they were starving in the 1840s, even evicting many who were still paying rent. Free trade decreed that no money would be spent on infrastructure projects such as drainage, harbors, fisheries, etc., though a committee of prominent Irish subjects led by Thomas Drummond had quickly surveyed what was most needed. Ireland at that time had 164 miles of railways; England had 6,621 miles.
3152
3153Free trade decreed that no government surplus food--"no welfare"-- be given to the starving, in order to leave the market for food undisturbed. "We do not propose," Prime Minister Lord John Russell told the House of Commons, "to interfere with the regular mode by which Indian corn and other kinds of grain may be brought into Ireland." Free trade insisted that the destitute work on the Public Works or in the workhouses, and that these hundreds of thousands should receive wages below the miserable levels prevailing, in order not to distort the labor market. Thus laborers died in large numbers "on the works" and in the Poor Law houses. ** *Free trade gave the Irish farm families three choices when the potato crops failed: starve on their farms, while selling their grain crops and paying their rent; report to the Public Works or the Poor Law workhouses to be worked/starved to death as the Nazis did to the inmates of Auschwitz; or emigrate and take a 50 percent chance of surviving the passage across the Atlantic.* **
3154
3155The Irish population was officially 8.1 million in 1845. Some 1.5 million human beings died of starvation and disease in Ireland in four years, while more than one million attempted to emigrate; of these, about 500,000 died--usually of typhus--in passage or in quarantine camps in Canada and New England. The Montreal Board of Health stated of those in the camps in 1847, ``It may well be supposed that few of the survivors could reach any other than an early grave." In that period, among the Irish emigrant population of Massachusetts, average life expectancy was estimated by Lemuel Shattuck at 13.4 years, with 60 percent dying by the age of 5: a level characteristic of Stone Age human societies.
3156
3157When it was "over," the British officials directly in charge of "Irish famine relief," particularly acting Treasury Minister Sir Charles Trevelyan, congratulated themselves and were decorated as Queen Victoria made her gala 1848 visit to Ireland. As 1847 ended, Trevelyan wrote:
3158
3159``It is my opinion that too much has been done for the people. Under such treatment the people have grown worse instead of better, and we must now try what independent exertion, and the operation of natural causes, can do.... I shall rest after two years of such continuous hard work in public service, as I have never had in my life."
3160
3161Then, having vacationed in France, he added: "[The] problem of Irish overpopulation being altogether beyond the power of man, the cure had been supplied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence."
3162
3163The British historian Charles Kingsley, who accompanied the Queen on her gracious and glorious visit, wrote:
3164
3165"I am daunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that 100 miles of horrible country. I don't believe they are our fault. I believe that there are not only many more of them than of old, but that they are happier, better and more comfortably fed and lodged under our rule than they ever were. But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much."
3166
3167However, Lord Clarendon, the British viceroy in Ireland during the famine, saw the situation more clearly. He wrote to Prime Minister Lord John Russell: "I don't think there is another legislature in Europe [other than the British] that would coldly persist in this policy of extermination."
3168
3169
3170**How It Was Done**
3171
3172British free trade had been working to create this disaster for a long time previously. The crucial period was the 1785-1845 policies of William Petty, the second Lord Shelburne, and Prime Minister William Pitt, who took over the British governments after the American Revolution, and for whom Adam Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations and other "free trade" tracts.
3173
3174The great Irish writer and leader Jonathan Swift had written already in 1730: ``One-half of all Irish rents is spent in England ... with other incidents, (it) will amount to full half of the income of the whole kingdom, all clear profit to England.... The rise of our rents is squeezed out of the very blood, and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars."
3175
3176During the same period, a Lord Chancellor Bowes in Dublin made a published ruling that ``the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic."
3177
3178However, in the eighteenth century, the condition of the Irish had improved for the first time since the Elizabethan and Cromwellian invasions (which explicitly intended genocide, but with less effective means than ``free trade" proved to be). This improvement was due in large part to the organizing efforts of Swift and his Leibnizian networks. In particular, the Irish merchant marine had been revived, her ports improved, effective taxes lowered, and the clothing, linen, and glass industries developed, and agriculture had been improved. The Penal Laws of the 1690s had been intended to insure that Irish Catholics would be reduced to potato culture on rented land. [fn1] But effective organizing of the large number of Scottish Protestant immigrant landlords, had allowed some development and led to a united Catholic-Protestant movement which gained the Constitution of 1782, during the American War of Independence. The Irish population had begun to grow rapidly.
3179
3180Prime Minister William Pitt's policy was described by Sinn Fein's founder and Ireland's first President, Arthur Griffith.
3181"On the 12th of May, 1785, Pitt's new proposals were introduced in the English Parliament. They provided, among other things, that Ireland should not trade with any country where its trading might clash with the interests of England's mightiest corporation--the East India Company ... and that the navigation laws which the British Parliament adopted should be accepted by Ireland."
3182To impose this "free trade" policy, Pitt eventually sponsored and repressed the Irish Uprising of 1798, to disarm the Irish Volunteers and introduce large numbers of British troops, and to force the 1801 Act of Union which annulled the Irish Constitution. (During the same period, the same policy of the same Pitt and Shelburne also reduced and impoverished Scotland, which had begun to industrialize at the time of the American Revolution.) In his political pamphlets, Arthur Griffith described in detail how Pitt after 1801 destroyed Ireland's new manufactures, particularly linens, by dumping British goods there, and rapidly eliminated independent Irish shipping. Even worse, was the collapse in land use under Pitt and Shelburne's "free trade" policy. By the 1820s, 80 percent of all Ireland's land was owned by British and Scottish landlords, and 25 percent of all land was completely unused for any purpose except real estate speculation. Some 75 percent of what was used, was in grain or horse/cattle pasture, most of this for export by merchants under London's domination. On the remainder, the Irish grew their potatoes; on perhaps two acres of rented land for each large family.
3183
3184All nineteenth-century accounts of those who saw both the Irish tenant farmers and African slaves in America and the Caribbean, agree that the Irish were far worse off. In 1845, a British government commission headed by the economist Nassau Senior counted up what free trade had done: Except during the brief potato harvest, there was no work at all for 2.4 million Irish adults; by today's calculations, 60 percent unemployment. Woolen, linen, poplin, furniture and glass manufacture had disappeared; fishing had nearly disappeared for lack of capital for boats, storage, etc. Even water-powered grain mills had disappeared, in the country which had introduced them to Europe 1300 years earlier. There were only 39 hospitals serving 8 million people. The famous Duke of Wellington wrote in 1829 that "there never was a country in which poverty existed to the extent it exists in Ireland."
3185
3186Senior's was not the first such commission, so the British government knew exactly what its "free trade" policies were creating in Ireland. In 1824, a previous commissioner was asked in Parliament: "Looking ahead to 15 years or more, what must this increase in population in Ireland, without any employment, end in?" He answered, "I don't know. I think it is terrible to reflect upon."
3187
3188Once the famine was underway, the same Nassau Senior wrote that he feared it would not kill more than a million people, which would scarcely be enough to eliminate the unemployment.
3189
3190But in 1842, 6 million pounds Sterling in rents were remitted out of Ireland to England, and a very large amount of real estate lending speculation in the City of London was based upon those rents. Much later, in 1898, an Irish commission calculated that, during the entire century of ``free trade" since Pitt's Act of Union of 1801, the net flow of wealth from Ireland to England had totalled 250 million pounds Sterling.
3191
3192
3193**Free Trade Without Money**
3194
3195Thus, when blight destroyed three-quarters of the potato crop of 1845, a sizeable majority of the Irish population owned no land, earned no wages, and paid as rent most or all of the proceeds of the sale of their grain crops. They had little or no money or means of raising it; nearly 2 million did not even sell their own produce, but turned it all over as rent in exchange for being allowed to grow potatoes on small strips of land.
3196
3197Sir Robert Peel was British Prime Minister for the first half of 1846 after the destruction of the first potato crop. Immediately, a committee of Irish citizens (rather, subjects) headed by Henry Drummond made urgent proposals:
3198
31991) stop the export of corn and the distilling of grain into spirits;
3200
32012) remove duties on food imports;
3202
32033) public works concentrating on rail and harbor (fishing) infrastructure and drainage projects;
3204
32054) relief committees funded in part by a 10 percent tax on landlords (20-50 percent on absentees); and
3206
32075) in part by a £1.5 million 10-year British loan on the security of Irish hardwood forests.
3208
3209Prime Minister Peel ignored all but 2), which he used as a pretext to push for repeal of the British Corn Laws making import of Irish corn into Britain much easier. Otherwise Peel's government bought, against a 3.5 million pound crop loss, a total of £100,000 worth of American Indian corn, purchased through Baring Brothers' Bank. The reason for the tiny amount, was that it was to be locked up in military storehouses in Ireland, under control of Relief Commissioner Col. Henry Routh, and used "only as a leverage stock for purposes of preventing, through occasional sales from these stocks, an overfast rise in the market of foodstuffs." Thirdly, Peel allowed formation of relief committees which could propose public works, but with no British government funds and solely voluntary (charitable) contributions from landlords in Ireland.
3210
3211Treasury Head Sir Charles Trevelyan became effective dictator of the "relief" of Ireland, and already in June 1846 he was writing to Colonel Routh:
3212
3213"The only way to prevent people from becoming habitually dependent on government, is to bring [relief] operations to a close. The uncertainty about the new crop [there were already signs of a second year of potato blight] only makes it more necessary.... These things should be stopped now, or you run the risk of paralyzing all private enterprise and having this country on you for an indefinite number of years."
3214Almost nothing of the tiny government "reserve stock" remained by then anyway. Baring's had one more ship on the way, but Trevelyan ordered that "the cargo of the Sorciere is not wanted; her owners must dispose of it as they think proper."
3215
3216In September, when the Irish had begun to die of starvation and there was plenty of evidence of the 100 percent failure of the second, 1846 potato crop, the Times of London added:
3217
3218"Such are the thanks that a government gets for attempting to palliate great afflictions and satisfy corresponding demands by an inevitable but ruinous beneficence.... It is the old thing, the old malady, the national character, the national thoughtlessness, the national indolence."
3219
3220Meanwhile, Peel's Tory government had been voted out for trying to repeal the Corn Laws--Great Britain's high tariffs on imported grain. Lord John Russell's Whig government replaced it and did get them repealed. During 1846, Ireland exported enough wheat, barley, oats, oatmeal, pigs, eggs, and butter to feed its entire population. Many modern historians have noted outrage at this export, which was heavily guarded by British troops against starving crowds. But few note that under British free trade policies, even more wheat was imported into Ireland that year than exported; however, at least half the entire Irish population was without any means to buy food; "free trade" dictated that none be given--"no welfare"--and the rate of evictions was growing with their destitution.
3221
3222Irish members of the British Parliament in London proposed the government buy stocks of grain otherwise to be exported, and sell it in the worst famine areas, especially in Connaught where starvation deaths were growing. The answer from Lord Russell directly was no: ``Purchase by government of any food in ordinary use is forbidden in order to avoid competition with private traders." Trevelyan and Colonel Routh agreed that "there must be a distinction clearly kept between the ordinary distress of the people, and that resulting from the losses of the potato crop, which alone it may be our object to relieve."
3223
3224Lord Russell's government added a Public Works program which was widespread but unfunded; local committees had to propose the works and sign a contract holding their members personally responsible to repay the British government 100 percent of the cost within two years, plus interest of 3 percent per annum! At first the government sometimes added partial matching grants for local money raised, but these were very difficult to qualify for, and were completely discontinued in 1847. During all of 1846, with 3 million Irish unemployed and selling everything down to their family beds for food, a total of 5,000 pounds-Sterling was expended for piers, harbors, drainage, navigation and water power projects combined: In other words, none were carried out.
3225
3226Russell and Trevelyan made a Public Works rule, which was later found as well in the Constitution of Jefferson Davis's Confederacy:
3227"Any public works done shall not be of a nature to benefit any individuals in any greater degree than all of the rest of the community."
3228To the despair of the better-off Irish farmers who were trying to save their countrymen, this rule eliminated all projects for drainage of bogs--the only way to rapidly increase food production--on the grounds that this would preferentially benefit those living nearest the bog being drained.
3229This was the common "free trade" argument against government infrastructure-building which was used against Abraham Lincoln's Illinois networks at the same time. As a result of this "rule," the Public Works during the Irish famine built only roads, which was the one kind of infrastructure which the country already had plenty of. The wages were supposedly set at subsistence levels, but as desperate people deluged the "Works," the wages were often paid weeks late, and many thousands starved to death "on the Works." Meanwhile, in the Workhouses (called Poor Houses the next year after passage of the Irish Poor Law), several hundred thousand elderly, infirm, and young children crowded, dying more slowly of malnutrition and disease.
3230
3231
3232**The Tavistock Grin**
3233
3234Lord John Russell evaluated the reports of the second consecutive complete failure of the potato crop as no reason to change policy. Lord Russell, the 6th Duke of Bedford, was known for his small stature and icy smile; he was so cold and arrogant that even his brother, the Marquess of Tavistock, told him he was offensive to his own Whig followers. By the winter of 1846-47, the Irish people had begun to die of starvation in large numbers.
3235
3236Lord Russell's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, announced that there would be no more government importation of Indian corn or any other food--private enterprise would provide it. He announced, that the problem in 1845-6 had been that "private trade had been paralyzed by government purchases," and that "merchants had declared they would not import food at all if the government were to do so." Public Works were to be limited to one year, and ended by Aug. 15, 1847, and their expense was "to fall entirely on persons possessed of property in the distressed district."
3237
3238Thus, Sir Charles Wood. In autumn 1846 crops failed in many European countries. French and German governments and bidders bought large amounts of grain from America and elsewhere, while the British government "sat it out." Food dealers in Ireland were now charging enormous prices, which Trevelyan welcomed in a letter to Colonel Routh:
3239"The high prices will have a regulating influence, as nothing is more calculated to attract supplies, and especially from America.... Do not encourage the idea of prohibiting exports (from Ireland): perfect Free Trade is the right course. Nothing ought to be done for the West of Ireland which might send prices, already high, still higher for people who, unlike the inhabitants of the West Coast of Ireland, have to depend on their own exertions."
3240Evictions were now going on massively and it was clear that wholesale starvation would take place in 1847. Colonel Routh sent out a memo to his relief officers:
3241
3242"represent to applicants for government supplies of food, the necessity for private enterprise and importations."
3243In December 1846 Whitehall ordered all Commissariat officers in Ireland to cease all food sales. Colonel Routh added in a memo:
3244"Even if it were practicable at the moment to open our depots [he knew they were actually empty] it would be prejudicial to owners of grain, inasmuch as at present extraordinary prices can be realized."
3245If this seems an egregious government endorsement of price gouging, Trevelyan repeated it himself: "If dealers were to confine themselves to what in ordinary circumstances might be considered fair profits, the scarcity would be aggravated fearfully...."
3246
3247Trevelyan added that the government would also do nothing about the new problem--the disastrous fact that all seed potatoes had been eaten and there was nothing to plant in 1847: ``The moment it came to be understood that the government would supply seed, the painful exertions of private initiative to preserve a stock of seed would be relaxed."
3248
3249No seed would be provided, and, as it turned out, the 1847 potato harvest was to be blight-free, but only 20 percent of normal anyway for lack of seed and the death, exhaustion, or illness of farm families. The chance was not to be repeated: The 1848 crop again was destroyed by blight.
3250
3251In January 1847, the British government smashed Circular #38, which the Irish Board of Public Works had issued, allowing "family task work" under a sensible emergency proposal of some large farmers. It would have paid farm families wages to work their own land, and more wages for also working on drainage projects. ``It is quite impossible," wrote Trevelyan, ``for my lords to give their sanction to parties being paid by public funds for the cultivation of their own land." That same month, Colonel Routh reported on Ireland's poorest county, Skibereen, that 50,000 pounds rent had been paid in 1846; there were only 12 landowners, all British lords and knights. The government also defeated a proposal of Lord George Bentinck in Parliament, for a railroad building act in Ireland funded by the British Treasury.
3252
3253Lord Russell's government did, however, make one refinement in their "free trade" policy toward the genocide now actually gathering speed in Ireland. They passed the Irish Poor Law to end all British Public Works in Ireland by August of 1847, and to establish instead soup kitchens at the existing Workhouses, and new Workhouses "to be built." What they intended was ``deregulation" of public works, leaving them entirely up to the initiative (and the financing) of the local ``Poor Law Unions" in Ireland, which were funded by local "rates" (taxes). What they produced, perhaps intentionally, was total chaos and despair, as Colonel Routh ordered the Poor Law Unions (which were all completely bankrupt) to replace (i.e., evict) the elderly and infirm from the Workhouses to make way for "able-bodied" skeletons who would report to work there in exchange for soup for their families. But since the British government was still expending a bit of public money in Ireland, Sir Charles Trevelyan wanted that wrapped up quickly: "the government would now be relieved," he announced, "from feeding the people through its officers." In a private letter of that month, February 1847, he added, "It is hard upon the poor people to be deprived of knowing that they are suffering from an affliction of God's Providence." And Trevelyan added threatening letters to Public Works head Colonel Jones and new Relief Commission head Sir John Burgoyne, telling them they were spending far too much money.
3254
3255
3256**Breakdown**
3257
3258In February-March 1847 came the final implosion and breakdown of "free trade": private food imports from America arrived in the amount of 100,000 tons; some never made it to markets for lack of infrastructure (carters had lost their workers and sold their equipment), and the rest couldn't be sold for lack of buyers with any money. The prices of grains now collapsed. Typhus began to spread in March, so that from that point onward, the better-off classes in Ireland also died in large numbers.
3259
3260As a kind of final "free trade" commentary, Trevelyan had his secretary send this statement to all Poor Law Unions in July, 1847:
3261
3262"There is much reason to believe that the object of the Relief Act is greatly perverted and that it is frequently applied solely as a means of adding to the comforts of the lower classes ... instead of being, as intended, a provision for the utterly destitute, and for the purpose of warding off absolute starvation.... The Commissioners cannot but complain of finding the demands for rations from many districts continuously increasing, and sometimes largely, without even a word of explanation to account for it."
3263Since now the entire cost of relief of the destitute and starving lay on the local "rates" paid by landlords, another side of the "rent bubble" of British "free trade" in Ireland now became exposed. Lord Mountcashel presented the following figures to the House of Lords: of the annual rent collection in Ireland of £13 million (a huge amount), the landlord class paid annually 10.5 million pounds-Sterling on "mortages and borrowed money" to the City of London bankers and speculators in real estate. Montcashel was making clear that an increase in rates, now planned by the British government, would siphon money off from mortgage payments, And, sure enough, in late summer 1847, the financial markets of London crashed, as the previous two years' speculation in rents, wheat, corn, and foreign railway shares collapsed.
3264
3265With that collapse, the British government "wound up" its public works loans and tiny relief expenditures in Ireland in August 1847. Only Lord Clarendon, the Viceroy for Ireland, remained the protesting voice:
3266
3267"What is to be done with these hordes? Improve them off the face of the earth, you will say, let them die. But there is a certain responsibility attaching to it.
3268
3269
3270**Lord Palmerston's Tenants**
3271
3272Landlords in Ireland now tried to evict all the tenants they could in order to reduce the number of local destitute, and therefore their rates (poor relief taxes). They began to get, not just evictions, but criminal judgments for non-payment of rent, throwing the fathers of families into jail. This--as the landlords intended--finally set off the migration across the Atlantic which became a flood of starving, dying typhus-carriers into Canada and then New England in 1848-9.
3273
3274Incredibly, large exports of foodstuffs from Ireland continued right through 1848 and 1849, which were the years in which the Irish population fell rapidly from 8 million to 6 million through death and emigration (and 40 percent of the emigrants died in crossing the Atlantic alone). In November 1848, exports of food from Cork in a single day, were 147 bales of bacon, 255 barrels of pork, 5 casks of hams, 3,000 sacks and barrels of oats, 300 bags of flour, 300 head of cattle, 239 sheep, 542 boxes of eggs, 9,300 firkins [about one-fourth of a barrel] of butter, and 150 casks of miscellaneous foodstuffs. But an inspector of the Public Works in Cork in the same month wrote about the public "workfare" rolls: "The lists are useless. No one answers their name. They have gone, or are dead."
3275
32761848 was the year in which "revolutions" and insurrections took place against those European governments targetted by the British, particularly France. Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston personally manipulated and directed the `"Young Europe" agents who fomented these insurrections. A very small and pathetic such "uprising" was apparently attempted that year by the "Young Ireland" movement; but in fact, Lord Russell had written to Palmerston three months earlier, acknowledging that this "Young Ireland" was controlled by Palmerston. "I am not yet ready to adopt, like Mr. Pitt, `ripening measures' to force on a rebellion," wrote Russell in December, 1847. Thus he was admitting, at the same time, that the Irish Uprising of 1798 had been sponsored and controlled by then-Prime Minister William Pitt, in order to force upon Ireland the ruinous rule of "Free Trade" in place of the Irish Constitution of 1782.
3277
3278Palmerston's main operation that year was the "1848 Revolution" in France, which overthrew Louis Napoleon because the French had been refusing to open their ports to British Free Trade.
3279
3280But he found time to evict nine shiploads full of his Irish tenants to Canada, 2,000 persons in all. As the ships arrived in New Brunswick, they raised storms of protest--on board children, elderly, and destitute were starving, many of they completely naked: "they had to be clothed by charity before they could, with decency, leave the ship.
3281
3282" The"Common Council of the City of St. John deeply regret that one of Her Majesty's ministers, the Rt. Hon. Lord Palmerston ... should have exposed such a numerous and distressed portion of his tenantry to the severity and privations of a New Brunswick winter ... unprovided with the common means of support, with broken-down constitutions and almost in a state of nudity."
3283The U.S. Congress at first passed emergency legislation to block the "typhus ships" of Irish immigrants from landing. Palmerston as foreign minister placed great pressure on the American government to open some of their ports to this particular human export of British Free Trade. Most Irish landed in Canada, but if they lived, they would not stay there. As Canada's Gov.-General Lord Dunham then admitted:
3284
3285"On the American side all is bustle and activity. On the British side of the line, with the exception of a few favored spots, all seems waste and desolation."
3286
3287So the Irish immigrants walked across the border to New England, where they continued to land, and to live in slums with Stone Age life expectancies for 20 years more.
3288
3289Between 1902 and 1921, Irish national independence from Britain was finally won by the Sinn Fein movement, which was built on the rejection of British Free Trade, and the embrace of the ideas of the "American System" economists Friedrich List, Matthew Carey and Henry Carey.
3290
3291The policies of William Pitt, Palmerston, Lord Russell and his heirs, including Lord Bertrand Russell, Charles Trevelyan et al. are precisely the policies of Margaret Thatcher and her Bush-league "neo-Conservative" free-trade followers today. British "Free Trade" dogma has no place at a White House conference on economic development.
3292
3293
3294**Note**
3295
32961. [return to text] See Radcliff Salaman, below.
3297
3298
3299**For Further Reading**
3300
3301Colum, Padraic, We Ourselves. New York and Dublin: Publisher, 1946.
3302Costigan, Giovanni, History of Modern Ireland. Cleveland, Oh: Western Publishers, 1959.
3303Curry, Eugene O., (ed.) Irish Historical Documents. Dublin: 1868.McFee, Robert, Ireland. New York: Allen and Unwin, 1962.
3304Griffith, Arthur, The Resurrection of Hungary: An Example for Ireland. Dublin: Sinn Fein movement, 1905 and 1914.
3305Salaman, Radcliffe, The History and Social Influence of the Potato. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
3306This volume supplies a year-by-year account of the potato famine in Ireland.
3307Woodham-Smith, Cecil, The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-49. London: 1962.
3308
3309----------------------------
3310
3311Continue from here