Tory Mp Irish famine

[Barill22]

Andrew Griffith is al over the news for appearing to make a derogoratory remark about the Irish famine.

Any thoughts? I cant seem to link an article, but if you google his name youll see it

I'm Irish and to me this is clearly a reach. Don't find it offensive at all.

How funny is mass starvation? Would you be highly amused if a country that had colonised the UK was arfarfing in its parliament about a million British people dying while under foreign rule, while the government exported food around the starving? Laugh a minute, innit?

I wasn't in any way minimising or excusing his comment. I was pointing out that the Labour MP and the BBC were also offensive in their comments.

In addition to the 1m who died in Ireland, another 1m emigrated. Most travelled on what were known as coffin ships. Many of that 1m did not reach their destination.

Very little of it is taught. My British dh hadn't a clue when he met me first about our countries shared history. He knew we had one and it wasn't good but beyond that he knew very little . He actually found learning about it quite upsetting

I think the issue is"

"Not with enormous success"

Is a very flippant way to describe a famine, where a million people died.

Im glad you dont find it offensive.

Ive seen a lot of irish people on social media today ,who do find it offensive.

Yeah. I didn't have it in quotes originally but I thought someone might get bogged down with the term and consider it derogatory. Looks like I made the wrong choice 😁

They ate the seed potatoes when the crop failed. The choice was eat them and have nothing to plant or starve now.

I don't think so, same with other countries of the former empire I'd say.

I hope a teacher who knows the history curriculum might contribute and let us know. I did a quick google, and rightly most history is confined to the history of Britain, but I don't see much (if anything) on world history particularly Britain's rule of foreign countries.

it looks like a seed potatoe is just a regular potatoe with special conditions that is used to grow more potatoes. (I thought they were tiny potatoes but google tells me otherwise)

So you can eat them in that case.

That's a whitewashing of history.

Its a bit of a strange attitude. You would think they would want people to learn the full history

I heard about this remark earlier on and thought it was incredibly offensive myself.

Of course he was referring to the Irish potato famine, and of course it’s incredibly offensives. That sort of thing is never funny, no matter how much time passes.

Although I grew up in the UK and live in Ireland now, I am trying to recall if we learnt about this in history in the UK. Not sure. I love history so probably read about it on my own. Definitely know lots about it now.

We studied Anglo-Irish history for GCSE at my UK school. Admittedly that was a catholic school in Northern Ireland and I’m not aware of it being taught in schools in other parts of the UK…

I went to school in Germany in the late 80s and then children knew nothing about the Nazi regime. I used to be quizzed about the war and to say it was awkward was an understatement.

I can't really get worked up about anything that happened the best part of 200 years ago

As an Irish person I also find it a bit of a stretch to be offended. I'll caveat that by saying I've only seen the comment in writing and the tone may have been to make a joke of it which is tasteless.

I had a look at Hansard to see the context. A discussion about business growth and it appears to be an example of the access [I assume from the EU trade agreement] that this will give to the Scottish seed potato industry . I'm assuming he meant to infer that a deal that benefits potato sales on its own not going to revitalise the economy.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025-05-21/debates/886E1467-88FC-4FBD-B3E6-F8A4B4675972/BusinessAndTheEconomy#contribution-A9AE17C9-2495-491E-9811-681D2806BD83

Personally, while a somewhat glib remark that a mono diet of potatoes has not been a success in the past I'm not sure I'm going to be hugely offended at what is a statement of fact if hugely understated. A better choice of words would have been "tried historically with catastrophic consequences."

The full comment is below
I am enormously glad, and we should be balanced, that we have found something that goes the other way. I am not sure if one can subsist entirely on a seed potato—it may have been tried historically, and not with enormous success—but I congratulate the hon. Member on the success of his seed potato industry.

To be charitable, we have found a rare example of the Government actually having the back of a business and supporting it, but would it not be wonderful if they could extend that to much larger sectors of the economy, such as financial and professional services, retail and hospitality industries and even our manufacturing industries, as they wrestle under the cosh of uncompetitive energy costs, so that a business in Birmingham, west midlands, will face an industrial energy cost four times higher than that of a competitor in Birmingham, Alabama?

They definitely learn about it now. My german friends in their thirties told me they studied ww2 and germanys part in the war extensively in school, and that they were brought to see concentration camps when they were in school too

History is importamt.

World war two is nearly one hundred years ago, and people still talk about it alot.

Oh do drop those pearls. You keep reiterating that it's all over social media, like there's some sort of lynching to be had.

It is all over social media. Thats where i saw it today. I was flicking through insta and tiktok. Theres a lot of chat about it today.

What are your own thoughts on it

Being important is different to being offended by stuff. The black death was only another couple of hundred years further back. It was a big deal at the time but I wouldn't be offended by someone joking about it. Most people in history had it pretty shit.

@Ablondiebutagoody
Can you not?

Nope. See above. Would you be offended by a Black Death joke? Maybe the English Civil War? Or the US?

Where are you from @Ablondiebutagoody ?

I've seen politicians make far worse errors of judgement than that. Much ado about nothing. Is it because it's a Tory MP who said it; would you be quite as outraged if it were a Labour MP? Of course, you will whip up a frenzy but that's par for the course on anything slightly Tory related.