Senate Bill 2724

    Florida Senate - 1998        (NP)                      SR 2724

    By Senator Forman





    32-2230-98

  1                    Senate Resolution No.     

  2         A resolution commemorating the Great Irish

  3         Famine and recognizing the many Irish-Americans

  4         and others living in Florida who support peace

  5         in a united Ireland.

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  7         WHEREAS, in 1169 Britain invaded Ireland and because of

  8  their religion, language, and race the Irish people were

  9  exploited, discriminated against, and subjugated, and

10         WHEREAS, in 1704 the Penal Laws deprived Irish

11  Catholics of their civil rights and education, reducing them

12  to a condition of extreme and brutal ignorance, and

13  furthermore outlawed their religion and robbed them of their

14  land, which was the only means of employment, profit, and

15  subsistence for the people of Ireland, and

16         WHEREAS, in 1845, the year of the potato blight, the

17  economy of Ireland was artificially designed for sole

18  dependence on the potato by three million Irish who were

19  forced to surrender all of their crops to the British

20  government to be sold for profit, and

21         WHEREAS, Irish Catholics were forced to tithe and

22  otherwise support the state church, thereby bankrolling their

23  own oppression, and

24         WHEREAS, between 1845-1850 in The Great Famine - The

25  Irish Holocaust, over one and a half million people died from

26  starvation, fever, cold, and execution for stealing food and

27  approximately two million more emigrated while thousands of

28  starving men, women, and children were imprisoned or deported

29  for stealing food, and

30         WHEREAS, sufficient food to abundantly feed every

31  person in Ireland was exported for profit and starving men

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    Florida Senate - 1998        (NP)                      SR 2724
    32-2230-98




  1  were forced to load the cargo ships that would carry away the

  2  food that could have saved their families' lives, and

  3         WHEREAS, during the harvest of death and eviction,

  4  members of the British Parliament proclaimed that property

  5  rights took precedence over the Irish peasants' right to

  6  survive and the British official in charge of Irish Famine

  7  relief professed that the Famine was "divine judgment on a

  8  wicked and perverse people" and was an Act of God meted out to

  9  a lazy and indolent Irish peasant population, and

10         WHEREAS, British economists advised against assisting

11  the Irish agrarian system and the "surplus" population was

12  urged to emigrate and public funds were used for senseless

13  projects like building roads that lead nowhere while the

14  starving Irish were committed to workhouses that were soon

15  closed, leading to soup kitchens where Catholics were promised

16  food in return for denouncing their religion, and

17         WHEREAS, many of these immigrants died at sea in

18  wretched coffin ships or in quarantine camps and were buried

19  at sea or in unmarked graves while the remaining arrived

20  without food, clothing, resources, or employment potential,

21  products of the British immigration projects, and yet their

22  contributions in industry, labor, arts, education, the

23  military, and government have not been surpassed, and

24         WHEREAS, because of a shortage of experienced ship

25  pilots, many more died from shipwrecks, or ironically, landed

26  on uninhabited islands and died from starvation, and

27         WHEREAS, so unnatural was the concept of emigration to

28  the Irish that their language had no word for it, the closest

29  meaning was "exile or one who has been banished", and

30         WHEREAS, in 1847, known as Black '47, British landlords

31  evicted over 500,000 starving and sick families from their

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    Florida Senate - 1998        (NP)                      SR 2724
    32-2230-98




  1  homes without notice by British landlords, for nonpayment of

  2  exorbitant rents, and many of them died from cold and fever,

  3  while their homes and possessions were destroyed to prevent

  4  their further use, and

  5         WHEREAS, 150,000 Irish immigrants fought and died in

  6  the American Civil War for a country and cause they hardly

  7  knew, and

  8         WHEREAS, historians, philosophers, and humanitarians

  9  agree that we have learned less than we should have learned

10  from the Great Irish Famine, and

11         WHEREAS, British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in

12  apologizing to the Irish people proclaimed:  "Those who

13  governed in London at the time failed their people through

14  standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human

15  tragedy", NOW, THEREFORE,

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17  Be It Resolved by the Senate of the State of Florida:

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19         That the Florida Senate commemorates the 150th

20  Anniversary of THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE which was a genocide

21  against the Irish people and joins British Prime Minister Tony

22  Blair in celebrating the "resilience and courage of those

23  Irish men and women."

24         BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Florida Senate joins

25  the four million Irish-Americans in Florida and all Floridians

26  in the dream for peace with justice in a united Ireland.

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