Tonight.
Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin
Via Irish Socialist Republicans:
Earlier this evening Ani Imperialist Action and Macradh activists unveiled a large banner on the ‘Victoria Monument’ in Dún Laoghaire that reads ‘Tear Down the Genocide Queen’.
Victoria, the English monarch presided over the Irish Genocide of the 1840s and the execution of the Fenian Prisoners. It is shameful to have a monument glorifying English Imperialism
Torn down by local Republicans in the 1980s, the monument was shamefully rebuilt by a pro imperialist Fine Gael council in the early 2000s.
Irish Socialist Republicans believe it’s long past time that the monument and all symbols of British Colonialism are torn down.
In the coming weeks the Campaign Against Colonialism will continue to be built.
FIGHT!
Yesterday: Meanwhile, On Sfort Road
Are Anti Imperialist Action prepared to offer a trade?
Sean Russell for Victoria ?
It has been suggested that Russell went to Germany to try to convince Frank Ryan to accede to the Nazi’s inveigalations to raise an Irish Republican Brigade to fight against the British in the 2nd world war . Much to Ryan’s credit he refused , he had , after all , been captured whilst fighting for the antifacist side in the Spanish civil war.
Every building in Dublin worth keeping is a far bigger symbol of colonialism than that yoke.
Are we to knock the city down too? Blow up the GPO ourselves?
Oh wait, sorry, they’re being selective about what is and is not symbolism…
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Carry on, numpties.
In fairness there’s a difference between a monument that’s only function is to celebrate someone and an actual functional dwelling or structure.
They call for “all symbols”, they may yet.
The world doesn’t need any more statues to Victoria, or any other imperial tyrant.
The Famine wasn’t genocide in as much as it wasn’t something that was intentionally set in motion.
In point of fact a genocide would have meant the British at least cared enough to try to kill us off en masses, instead Irish people dying by the hundreds of thousands wasn’t important enough for them to loft a finger.
All that aside that monument is part of our history for better or worse, plus a shed load of money was spent a few years ago fixing it up.
The Famine wasn’t deliberate?
Strange how many times famine happened under the British Empire. The Highland clearances, 31 times in the British Raj, etcetera.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Starvation-Is-an-Imperial-Resource-for-Britain-20161121-0009.html
While the British Empire was never noted for it’s caring and nurturing nature there has always been famines across the world . It has only been in relatively recent times that development in fertilisers and insecticides and robust strains of crops has virtually eliminated famine from the world . And these developments have led some people to believe that the natural world has become unbalanced and it will end badly for humans and other animals which evolved as part of an ecosystem.
If you’re going to be a picky eater.
at the end of the day, you will pay the price if you’re a fussy eater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3gfjpcgZmw
Nullzero if I may suggest a great book, “The Curse of Reason, The Great Irish Famine” by Enda Delaney, it gives a very detailed account of the the thinking behind some of the main actors of the time from Archbishop John Hale to Trevelyan, I can assure you part of the problem was the attitude that the lazy Irish Catholic deserved to starve, where “bad tenants” not like the industrial prods, and infact the whole workhouse was based on the thinking that to feed the Irish for free was counter productive.
Anyway a great book and one that really goes into the details of legislation and thinking, it left me in no doubt about using the word genocide.
the poor laws in themselves are a fascinating view of how the peasantry were viewed and you can still see echoes of that thinking among modern day welfare and homeless legislation; for example, the workhouses were designed as a place of punishment for the ‘sturdy beggar’; lads who were fit enough to do a days work but were caught begging or stealing. the workhouses also provided a guilt-free option for a landlords, who could evict without impunity knowing that a family was to be looked after.
then the famines hit and the workhouses were swamped. the crown, having provided a ‘solution’, never felt the imperative to do anything else.
the echos of which are alive and well today
oh you said that ;)
there is a marked mass grave in Cellbridge right beside the old poorhouse building, I cannot run past those thousands in that plot without a chill at what a horrendous avoidable inhumane period of our history that was and how many today it would seem in our government have the same mindset
“We” were supposedly equal subjects, under the protection of Her Majesty. The richest country/empire in the World could have fed everyone in Ireland. They chose not to.
exactly so
Really? Ireland had a population of 8.5 million;
England, Scotland and Wales had 19 million;
Was there surplus food available to feed ⅓ of her population?
Was there the infrastructure available to collect, ship, and distribute the food to feed 8.5 million people?
How did the landlords representatives get fed, to keep them fit to evict? They lived in the same areas as the 8-odd million. Plus it wasn’t everyone of the 8-odd million who starved either.
Point taken. There was some food.
About 3 million people starved or emigrated. So the shortfall was ~3,000,000 people…at an average of 9lbs of potatoes each – that was a shortfall of just shy of five million tons (ten billion pounds) of potatoes per year.
Which would fill 540 forty-foot shipping containers with potatoes.
Each and every day.
Cian there was plenty of food, availability wasn’t the problem it was riding costs of said availability, check out that book I recommend Nullzero, a lot had to do with the concept of free trade and hoarding played a huge part too with a view to selling at raised prices
* rising
“plenty” of food? Enough food to fee the 3-million odd that starved or emigrated?
I’d agree with “some”, not “plenty”.
enough
there is also the issue of punishments for being caught hunting or fishing, as the rights to do both were heavily sanctioned by the crown.
Perhaps I should start again.
The British didn’t do enough to help during the Irish Famine. The could (and should) have done more, but I don’t know if they could physically have done enough.
Ireland exported food during the famine 400,000 tonnes at the height – (we also imported food) but Ireland was 5,900,000 tonnes short of food that year. .
The food that was exported wasn’t destroyed – it fed other people; if that had been kept in Ireland then other people would have starved.
you are spectacularly missing the point, this crisis was not just about crop failure or lack of food, but about land grabs to make bigger more “productive” farms, absenteeism, trade laws, legislation and a general attitude to the Irish,
certain areas did not feel the famine in at all the same way due to the occasionally responsible landlord or the little known Quakers soup kitchens, if that was possible in some communities, it was possible in all
Holland had no problem banning all exports, same with France who had the same crop failures
the Brits imported a pittance of Indian corn from America that didn’t cause any competition to their grain trade, it took a long time to get here and was unsuitable, but hey it didn’t upset business, a corn the Irish didn’t know how to prepare properly and without prep it rips the stomach out of you
If you’re going to be a picky eater.
From personal experience, there is an element in that constituency who would regard the old regime in romantic terms – FG like to scoop up their votes each election, see the cynical RIC commemoration/debacle and “conversations” about joining the british commonwealth by local TD’s, for further details..
The commemorative pile pictured, specifically designed to praise and show admiration for the english monarch during a genuinely traumatic period in our history and the history of many of her unwitting subjects globally, is something that should be seen as an aberration, the oft heard deference and fear of offence is difficult to understand considering all the historical evidence of the period.
Campaign Against Colonialism .. C.A.C ?? that fairly much sums up the ‘campaign’
Yes, let’s venerate Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in its place – and perhaps another somewhere for those responsible for making sure The Disappeared remain disappeared. Down with that particular thing I disagree with because my Intagramwagon or TikToken says so.
You know it is going to happen. It is just a matter of time. Irish people need to remove it, to show that the whole ‘royalty’ concept is repulsive. The British masses can be ill-educated enough to think a random family are somehow special. Ireland doesn’t need that levle of stupidity.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.