Tet Talk: Let's talk about settler colonialism
Originally issued 19 July 2024
In 1801, there was an Act of Union that brought Ireland into Great Britain. There's a bit to unpack there that is never discussed.
In 1798 there was a rebellion against the British by what was known as the Society of United Irishmen. This was mainly about land control, agrarian discontent and a wish to be free of 400 years of English oppression. It was of course put down brutally. This led the British Parliament to answer the Irish question with what they thought was a permanent solution. What this really meant was that Britain annexed Ireland, pulled apart it's customs and culture, suppressed and overtaxed its Catholic occupants, overwrote its legal system, demonised those who valued their 'Irishness' and imposed British law enforced by British troops and police and enacted by British landowners, politicians and judges.
Britain had been an occupying force that brought in settler colonials in since the 13th Century, including many Scots. These settler colonials were afforded more rights than the indigenous Irish and the indigenous Irish were often brutally suppressed, later these Settler Colonials would adopt Protestantism and oppress the indigenous Irish, who on the whole remained Catholic on Sectarian grounds.
We can of course draw uncomfortable modern parallels with Palestine. Between 1845-1852, from a population of 8 million, around a million Irish died in what is known as the Great Famine. Although this famine was as a result of the food staple, potatoes, succumbing to a blight - while millions starved food continued to be exported in large volumes from Ireland to England. It was a political choice to allow so many people to die. That this is called a famine is not factually correct. It was a genocide. Again, there are parallels with Palestine - the same is happening in Gaza right now.
We learned at school that there was a potato famine in Ireland that led to mass emigration: 2 million people left Ireland, mostly to the United States or to the slums of London and other big cities on the British mainland. What we weren't taught was WHY there was a famine, and who financially benefited from it: the Tory Government and their supporting Irish Landlords, quite a few of whom were actually in the Government.
The actions of the British Government in and following the famine and the subsequent low level oppression and suppression of rights of Irish Catholics created only more resistance which fermented and grew within the Victorian and Edwardian period, ultimately leading to the Easter Rising in 1916 and the creation of the Free State in 1922.
As a child attending an English school, When we were taught about the Easter Rising, or even the troubles in Northern Ireland, none of the back story was taught. It was almost as if the Irish had done this on a whim and that there was no justification for any form of resistance to the British Empire. As if it all happened in a vacuum. Of course the British Empire was portrayed as a force for good: a shining light of freedom, benevolence and the rule of law - that's of course when it wasn't murdering on an industrial scale, addicting whole populations to opium, running a successful and profitable slave trade, conducting state sponsored piracy, stealing land and resources and tying Sepoys to cannons to execute them.
So why aren't we taught key points in our history like this? Education is subjective. We learn what the state wants us to learn. They know how powerful knowledge is. It is important to be aware of history in order not to repeat it. This is why history is always suppressed by those who wish to benefit from their people being ignorant of it and not learning the lessons from it.
