Sir, – I find it difficult to understand Dr Deborah E Lipstadt’s doubts about the victims of the Famine not being classifiable as victims of genocide by the UN definition (August 23rd). The latter says, inter alia, that: “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
As she accepts that the Famine “could have been prevented had there been the will to aid the victims” I cannot see her difficulty.
The Lord Lieutenant at the time, Clarendon, wrote to the prime minister, Russell: “I do not think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination.” (April 26th, 1849).
I think he would have no difficulty in describing it as genocide if that was the language of the time and there is no reason to believe he had any particular axe to grind on behalf of the native population.
Dr Lipstadt gives a precise figure of one million victims but they were never counted at the time. However, The Timesreported on 15 March 1847: "The workhouses are full and only hold 100,000 while 4,000,000 are starving."
In view of the fact that the blight returned for two more years and that the new Liberal government later that year abandoned food and relief works, as a matter of principle, I cannot imagine how the vast majority of those starving at that time could have survived. – Yours, etc,