St. Kitts was once the jewel of England's possessions in the New World as its shipping hub and largest sugar producer. 25,000 Irish men and women shipped in bondage as slaves by Cromwell to St. Kitts worked on these sugar plantations long before five star meals and Pina Coladas were being served.

Never before exposed to tropical heat, sun, and insects after being torn from whatever was left of their families after Cromwell's army ravaged the country, the Irish faced misery as slave labourers.

English shipping of Irish slaves to the New World earlier in the 1600s has been documented in many works. In 1612 Irish people were sent to the Amazon River settlements. An English Proclamation of the year 1625 urges banishment overseas of dangerous rogues (Irish political prisoners).69% of all white people on the island were Irish.

By 1650 during Cromwell's unfathomable reign of terror in Ireland the numbers of Irish sent into slavery were unlike anything previously experienced. Remember that in 1641 Ireland had a population of 1,466,000 and by 1652 the population was down to only 616,000. According to Sir William. Petty, ``850,000 were wasted by the sword, plague, famine, banishment during the Confederation War 1641-1652.'' By the end of the war estimates vary from 80,000 to 130,000 of Irish men, women and children captured for sale as slaves to labour in England's expanding empire. The English were quite proud of these accomplishments as can be noted in Prendergast, ``Thurloe's State Papers'' (published in London in 1742), ``It was a measure beneficial to Ireland, which was thus relieved of a population that might trouble the planters; it was a benefit to the people removed, who might thus be made English and Christian, a great benefit to the West Indies sugar planters, who desired men and boys for their bondsmen, and the women and Irish girls to solace them''. Under James I, Cromwell burned the Irish forests to prevent people hiding from banishment as well as clearing the countryside for pasture land to feed cattle for English beef.

Over 100,000 young children who were orphans or had been taken from their Catholic parents, were sent abroad into slavery in the West Indies, Virginia, and New England. Many of the 25,000 Irish slaves on St. Kitts died from tropical heat, disease, or overwork.

Sure tell you what, we will just over look this one.Good enough for the paddies, better still, maybe it didn't happen.