Exclusive Interview with Tim Pat Coogan - A policy of ethnic cleansing? Who’s to blame for the Irish Famine?

I assume you have read the book, ToryTory? Based upon the nearest contemporary source, Gildas, there was an ethnic cleansing of the indigenous britons by the anglo-saxons. This is consistent with the genetic evidence, which establishes Offa's Dyke as a type of genetic/geographic barrier.

How dare the Irish feel aggrieved by the death of two million people and the decimation of the nation through starvation, disease and emigration. ToryTory you tell them! They should stop 'emoting' over such catastrophic losses and takes their lumps. Britain had an empire to run and need not have concerned itself with a shiftless dependency full of good for nothing Micks. Does that about cover it?

PhlutiePhan - typical 'Irish' American imbecile. Put aside your vapid ethnic grudge; stop feigning to vicariously 'feel' your ancestor's 'pain'. Such trite from these 'Irish' Americans write. The contemporary Irish are more like mainland Britons than you could ever care to know.

CitizenWhy - you're uneasy with the term 'genocide' because the event fails every meaningful criteria of that emotively charged statement. The famine has been done to death by other historians - this is just a polemic.

What a farce. Coogan has penned a discursive exegesis on the famine, he's written a political polemic. This guy is a popular historian, nothing more, nothing less; he hasn't contributed anything new to the corpus of Irish history, barring of course his ludicrous claim that the famine was orchestrated 'genocide'. What a joke.

@slainte9: very interesting comment.

Couldn't figure out what force was after him and it appeared to be nothing more than "Coogan's Bluff". Now, the truth is there. It is because of this book on "The Great Famine". As an Irish-American on the side of my mother, I know all about the trampling of the Irish through my third grade educated grandmother. Her name was Breslin and her uncle changed the name to Brice because he killed a Black-and-Tan. The Brits had been subjugated by the Romans and their cruelty evolved into suppression of the Irish and the use of them as serfs with no rights.

"Extremes" as in torturing and sexually abusing prisoners who were not convicted of any crimes? Opening up on unarmed protesters with automatic weapons? Colluding in the assassination of civil rights attorneys?

Stop going to extremes curtis like a good man..

" I think some here are over-reacting by getting too emotional." British patriotards get hysterical about the IRA and they are choir boys in comparison to the worldwide atrocities of the british terror state.

I think some here are over-reacting by getting too emotional. Keep an objective critical eye on all this please..

They Haven't Left you Know ? In my family’s case they confiscated more than farm equipment & seeds, they took the lot. Farmhouse and 100 acres in Glenogue and cast my great,great grandparents on the side of the road with there 10 children in 1875. One George F Brooke took possession of there homestead along with many others on a beautiful hillside over looking Coolgreany Co. Wexford. Brooke was protected by the :Coercion Act” introduced by the Chief Secretary for Ireland Arthur Balfour. As you may know the people of Palestine are suffering to this day from the Zionist Balfour,s dirty deeds “ the Balfour Declaration” The palestinians are suffering a modern version of what our people went through. The Brooke’s were and still are members of Masonic Order of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. One of his descendants Raymond F Brooke was “Most Worshipful Brother” Grand Master from 1948 to 1964 and Governor of Bank of Ireland. History is repeating itself my friends, here in Ireland the banks are repossessing farms, homes and business across Ireland, nice assets for the “Most Worshipful Brothers” What’s the bets that Kenny & Gilmore are the “ Most Treacherous Brothers”.

TPC"s grip on history is commendable cannot wait to read his book on the famine. He's has put into words and pointed the finger at those responible and they are still embarrrassed at what they had done.

I am uneasy with the term genocide. Britain acted on an economic theory similar to that of Paul Ryan, exonerating government for any obligation to the poor and the distressed in favor of limited government and policies that ensured the privileges of the propertied classes no matter what the cost to other classes. There was no systematic effort to kill the Irish Catholics, as there was was in Turkey to kill Armenian Christians in Turkey and in Nazi Germany. to kill all the Jews. As in the Scottish clearances, immigration and forced exile were the preferred solutions. Those clearances too were economic in motivation, the lairds desiring to maximize profits by replacing people with sheep, a motivation not too different from employers in the USA. Those in the British government who favored public relief for the starving Irish at first insisted that there could be no relief until "Irish Property" (large landlords) were made to pay for the relief since it was they who caused the problem. There were many Irish Catholics who, although tenant farmers, were on permanently renewable 99 year leases, paid their rents in cash, kept the value of the improvements they made to their farms, and accumulated capital over generations. And there were many reports of "learned helplessness" where whole villages starved with the barns in the area stuffed with cash crops - wheat (corn), oats, etc. Many of the poor tenants did not know how to convert these grains into food, but many others must have refrained from taking the available food due to fear or learned helplessness.

Nowhere in the article or comments is there any mention of the types of ethnic cleansuing that occured in Ireland in the early 1970s. At lest 3such events happened in the northern part of the country, the worst beinh in erry in late January 1972, when 13 Civil Rights marchers were shot dead by British soldiers. About 5 months prior to that, 9 Nationalists were killed by the Brits in Ballymurphy on the 2nd weekend of August, 1971. Then in early July of '72, 5 innocent civilians were gunned down in the Ballymurphy area. The dead included a Catholic priest and 3 children, the youngest of whom was a 13-year old girl. Some would probably consider these killings ethnic cleansing, but hard core Partitionists regars Belfast and Derry as British cities.