However, the official warned of the danger of endorsing “the revisionist view. . . that government action to assist the famine victims was simply alien to mid-Victorian thinking”. Canavan nurtured “the strong suspicion that London would have reacted differently to a similar agricultural catastrophe in Wiltshire”..
Sutherland recommended the idea of a service in Liverpool: “It would be an effective way of acknowledging the past without engaging in a fruitless exercise of apology.”, who felt it “might do a lot of good”.As time went on the mood began to change, however, and on January 16th, 1996, NIO official Peter Bell informed colleagues that he regarded the proposal with “dismay”.
This development, coinciding with the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire at Canary Wharf, prompted the Northern Ireland secretary to withdraw his support. In a letter to Rifkind’s private secretary, Dominick Chilcott, dated February 1996, Mayhew’s private secretary stated that not only was Lord Eames opposed to the service but he feared that the Bishop of Liverpool would favour a highly “penitent” service with HMG [her majesty’s government] taking the role of penitent.
The ambassador saw the force in Doyle’s arguments, but made it clear that inviting British ministers would not be appropriate “particularly given recent events in Northern Ireland”. Sutherland said she herself would be willing to attend, subject to approval from London.
With a little foresight they can readily intuit the extent of Irish discomfort at commemorating partition of Ireland. What could be called a constitutional famine.
Fanine? Genocide you mean.
Unionists were starved and evicted as well?
Must remember to leave in my will a reminder for my offspring a century from now not to believe that Britain was responsible for covid 19.