As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.......
In the potato famine of Ireland which was spawned by a wet summer, where nothing dried in the fields, it is an astounding thing of 1880 in the transition of the Conservative Government of Lord Beaconsfield to the liberal Government of Mr. Gladstone, that it was only a letter from Beaconsfield which was dismissed as "covering up Conservative rule affairs" that no one even bothered to think of Ireland, the poor English cousin.
The Queen in her address mentioned nothing of Ireland. Prime Minister Gladstone had thought the issue was put to rest in the Church Act of 1869 and the Land Act of 1870.
The entire empire was more focused on things of:
"Politicians were absorbed by controversies upon foreign and colonial affairs, upon Turkish atrocities, Afghan disasters, and South African annexations."
Winston Churchill. Lord Randolph Churchill
.....And of course the Parliamentarians were all in excitement over the Berlin Treaty settling more continent questions, so that the coursing of hares and foxes were the pleasant conversations of the ruling class of London.
For three years the crops had failed in Ireland. Land foreclosures had risen. Unrest was running through the land, and no matter the good graces of the Duke of Marlborough and his wife in charitable work, would be enough to stem one of the worst disasters in human history.
The Fenians had long been the leading movement in Ireland. There burned within them the long hatred of past English crimes and were an immense silent army. In all of this they remained silent and allowed the British rule to dominate and pound the citizenry to a class somewhere between Americans and Aboriginals.
The Irish would pass from Parliamentarians in Mr. Butt, to the agitator Mr. Parnell and finally to Michael Davitt with his agrarian agitation. As Winston Churchill would note, "The cause of national identity might excite the heart of the educated revolutionist, but the pinch of famine is required before the humble tiller of the soil can be enlisted in his thousands".
"A political movement to be dangerous must find it's substance in social evil".
"Scarcity and poverty supplied the impulse, and misery brought forth her progeny of outrage."
Winston Churchill. Lord Randolph Churchill
That fag digitalism on Masterpiece Theater called Downton Abbey or whatever that tripe is, is a fiction, as the Churchill's were of that class, and their idiot Irish son in law, espoused none of the realities of events of 30 years before the Great European War. If the British cineman and American propagandist would do more to focus on real history, instead of promoting the British fag as a foreigner to the Obama fag messiah savior of the world, it would dose them with a much needed familiarity with the human drama.
1098 evictions took place in Irish farmers in 1878. By 1879 the entire island was inflamed with fury. 1880 saw 1000 evictions in the first 6 months, and the British response was to not renew the Peace Prevention Act which allowed arming of the Irish for security.
Crime was now rampant in the rural areas, and a better crop in 1880 had done nothing to stop the tension.
Lord Randolph Churchill who was the son of the Viceregal the Duke of Marlborough in administering Ireland, rose at the time and the English answered with food, clothing and seed in a monumental effort, but so was the monumental fraud involved.
All this answered in the winter of 1880 with:
"Evictions led to riots; tenants who took the places of evicted occupiers were assaulted, their ricks were
burned, their beasts were mutilated; arms were stolen from a vessel in Queenstown Harbour; and rumours of secret brotherhoods and of dynamite conspiracies were rife."
Ireland was at war with herself. Her numbers had been eliminated in starvation and immigration to America and the year 1881 dawned with a special cruelty.
10,847 Irish families were evicted.
The Irish answered with "isolating" those enforcing the evictions, with shunning and more destruction of animals.
"Cattle were houghed and maimed; tenants who paid unjust rents or who took farms from which others had been evicted were dragged from their beds, assaulted, sometimes forced to their knees while shots were fired over their heads, to make them promise submission to the popular desires in future. Bands of peasants scoured the country, firing into the houses of obnoxious individuals. Graves were dug before the doors of evicting landlords. Murder was committed. A reign of terror had in truth commenced."
What British rule had fostered, famine had birthed and Ireland was busy eating itself alive.
Ireland in 1880 was in worse condition than any place or people in the world.
From this the Irish only murdered 7 people, they instead issued 1300 threats. It was deemed that if the village ruffians could be arrested then the terrorism would end.
Without meaning to, the events in South Africa became again a fixation. The Transvaal was annexed in 1879. The Zulu War would break the Zulu and their threat.
The Boers would be annexed, but move north from the British rule, as they like the Americans could not see a connection between British protection and their obedience.
Soon enough, the attributes of the Dutch Boer would become a rude awakening to the British red coats in the marksmen who would send numbers of them to their graves.
By December 1880, most of the males in the Transvaal were under arms, and another war erupted. The Boers suggestion box was was delivered with centerfire rifles at Bronker's Spruit.
The Boers kicked the hell out of the British and sent them fleeing. While Ireland had nothing of value, the South Africans would be found to have diamonds and gold in their wastes, and this would bring another bloodly war of British conquest 15 years later.
1881 would arrive with the Queen's speech containing nothing but Ireland in the context. The Parliament swept away endless debate by the Nationalists and Mr. Foster, was armed with his new found powers to tame Ireland, he rounded up several hundred village ruffians as they were termed, and then proceeded to have them hold court in receiving vistors and being fed. The Irish detention camp was one of martyrs in quaint surroundings.
Ireland was ripe with sedition, and with liberals in power, all parties united to beat down, crush a poor, defenseless starving nation.
England arose to demand in Coercision Laws more draconian measures than Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington or Lord Grey ever requested for their domains.
Parnell of Ireland was soon arrested as a Member of Parliament for resisting the Government. 1881 saw the evolution of the "outrages" which transformed from the Irish pen to a tripling of murders and attempted murders. Violence in Ireland against people had come of age.
The fury of Ireland was no ablaze. Parnell imprisoned no longer was there to breach the gap. He treated to be released and was in being an agent of Britain to slow down the agitation, but it was too late. An entirely new Irish underground had formed as was busy with sedition.
On May 2nd, Frederick Cavendish, the new Chief Secretary and Mr. Burke, the permanent under secretary were murdered in Phoenix Park.
With Mr. Foster, the Irish Secretary removed, he passed from power, but remained in Parliament to become one of it's most savage foes. He was as Sir Winston Churchill stated, not the first nor the last politican crushed between the Irish and English.
In all of this the British Parliament under liberal rules, attacked itself, limiting free speech and implementing cloture or the closing of Parliament under a 2/3rd majority vote.
In order to deal with Ireland, England overthrew laws from the time of Henry IV.
There is an examination in this, in the Boer pioneer was an armed fighter, hunter and agrarian. The Irish peasant was a farmer, a milker and an agrarian. The Boer was remembered for a fight and the Irish which were left in Ireland were remembered for written threats. One armed with rifles and the other with pens.
One penned in at Parliament and the other free in the thorny wastes.
Sometimes stories do not have grand endings. Ireland remains a divided land yet, as does South Africa which is now experiencing the genocide of the whites there.
Starvation and immigration killed more Irish than any uprising, while war killed more Boers than the wilds.
Lessons are gleaned in this for the astute.
agtG
