On The Shoulders Of Giants . . . 'They Or We Must Quit This Island' - James Fintan Lalor
An Gorta Mór, otherwise known as The Great Hunger, was the single most devastating and important event in Irish history. Over one million, predominantly Irish-language speaking men, women and children died of starvation and disease between 1845 and 1850. Millions more fell victim to enforced-emigration as the British state oversaw a sustained period of ethnic-cleansing of the indigenous population.
In the midst of this suffering and starvation, virtually every Irish family not protected by any wealth and connections suffered the loss of close family members through death or emigration.
In the midst of this genocide, and in the aftermath the horrors of Black ‘47, James Fintan Lalor used the pages of ‘The Irish Felon’ to make an urgent call for a revolutionary uprising against the landlord class and British rule.
Lalor understood the injustices of British rule and that the exploitation of Irish peasants and workers could not be imposed without the cooperation and willing collaboration of an indigenous propertied class. That Ireland would never be free until that gombeen class had been removed from power.
Today, as part of our On the Shoulders of Giants series we republish an article Lalor wrote for ‘The Irish Felon’ in 1848.
The prospect of starvation faced families all across Ireland
They Or We Must Quit This Island
They or we must quit this island. It is a people to be saved or lost; it is the island to be kept or surrendered. They have served us with a general writ of ejectment. Wherefore I say, let them get a notice to quit at once; or we shall oust possession under the law of nature.
There are men who claim protection for them, and for all their tyrannous rights and powers, being “as one class of the Irish people”. I deny the claim. They form no class of the Irish people, or any other people.
Strangers they are in this land they call theirs – strangers here and strangers everywhere; owning no country and owned by none; rejecting Ireland and rejected by England; tyrants to this island and slaves to another; here they stand, hating and hated – their hand ever against us as ours against them, an outcast and ruffianly horde, alone in the world and alone in its history, a class by themselves.
They do not now, and never did, belong to this island at all.
Tyrants and traitors, have they ever been to us and ours since they first set foot on our soil. Their crime it is and not England’s, that Ireland stands where she does today – or rather it is our own, that have borne them so long.
Were they a class of the Irish people the Union could be repealed without a life lost. Had they been a class of the Irish people that Union would have never been. But for them we would now be free, prosperous and happy. Until they be removed no people can ever take root, grow up and flourish here.
The question between them and us must, sooner or later, have been brought to a deadly issue. For heaven’s sake and Ireland’s let us settle it now, and not leave it to our children to settle. Indeed, it must be settled now; for it is plain to any ordinary sight that they or we are doomed.
A cry has gone up to heaven for the living and the dead – to save the living and avenge the dead.