The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #150911   Message #3617298
Posted By: Jim Carroll
10-Apr-14 - 12:56 PM
Thread Name: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
No food whatever should have been exported between 1845 and 1850 - it was.
The warehouses contained plenty of food - they were locked and guarded
There was enough under lock and key to relieve the worst aspects of the famine
The already overcrowded workhouses were closed, relief schemes abandoned and feeding the starving became the responsibilities of charities like the Quakers.
In 1847 (Black '45) the relief scheme was abandoned and the British Government ordered that all Famine relief should be "sold at market prices" so as not to interfere with the laissez-faire policy.
Relief ships were being intercepted at the ports at the height of the Famine and sent back and forth to England in order to inflate the price the good old laissez-faire policy again.
The Government ordered that rent arrears should be acted on, those not able to pay rents should be evicted and the dwellings destroyed so nobody could move back into them - many thousands were forced to live in the fields, some burrowing into the earth as a protection from the elements
The police and the army, along with demolition teams, were provided to facilitate the evictions.
The evictions remained a major part of Irish life to the end of the century.
Stop bluffing - read what has already been put up and justify the actual events - stop retreading something that has is fully documented and accepted
Jim Carroll