A Cork born Californian trade unionist, Denis Kearney’s historical existence posits some degree of awkwardness for those using the Irish Famine as a legitimising device for contemporary mass immigration. Fleeing poverty at home Kearney made a name for himself for his vituperative condemnations of the import of Chinese labour with his Workingmen’s’ Party. Below is an extract of an 1878 speech by Kearney on the matter.
Our moneyed men have ruled us for the past thirty years. Under the flag of the slaveholder they hoped to destroy our liberty. Failing in that, they have rallied under the banner of the millionaire, the banker and the land monopolist, the railroad king and the false politician, to effect their purpose.
We have permitted them to become immensely rich against all sound republican policy, and they have turned upon us to sting us to death. They have seized upon the government by bribery and corruption. They have made speculation and public robbery a science. The have loaded the nation, the state, the county, and the city with debt. They have stolen the public lands. They have grasped all to themselves, and by their unprincipled greed brought a crisis of unparalleled distress on forty millions of people, who have natural resources to feed, clothe and shelter the whole human race.
Such misgovernment, such mismanagement, may challenge the whole world for intense stupidity, and would put to shame the darkest tyranny of the barberous past.
We, here in California, feel it as well as you. We feel that the day and hour has come for the Workingmen of America to depose capital and put Labor in the Presidential chair, in the Senate and Congress, in the State House, and on the Judicial Bench. We are with you in this work. Workingmen must form a party of their own, take charge of the government, dispose gilded fraud, and put honest toil in power.
In our golden state all these evils have been intensified. Land monopoly has seized upon all the best soil in this fair land. A few men own from ten thousand to two hundred thousand acres each. The poor Laborer can find no resting place, save on the barren mountain, or in the trackless desert. Money monopoly has reached its grandest proportions. Here, in San Francisco, the palace of the millionaire looms up above the hovel of the starving poor with as wide a contrast as anywhere on earth.
To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has sent to China—the greatest and oldest despotism in the world—for a cheap working slave. It rakes the slums of Asia to find the meanest slave on earth—the Chinese coolie—and imports him here to meet the free American in the Labor market, and still further widen the breach between the rich and the poor, still further to degrade white Labor.
These cheap slaves fill every place. Their dress is scant and cheap. Their food is rice from China. They hedge twenty in a room, ten by ten. They are wipped curs, abject in docility, mean, contemptible and obedient in all things. They have no wives, children or dependents.
They are imported by companies, controlled as serfs, worked like slaves, and at last go back to China with all their earnings. They are in every place, they seem to have no sex. Boys work, girls work; it is all alike to them.
The father of a family is met by them at every turn. Would he get work for himself? Ah! A stout Chinaman does it cheaper. Will he get a place for his oldest boy? He can not. His girl? Why, the Chinaman is in her place too! Every door is closed. He can only go to crime or suicide, his wife and daughter to prostitution, and his boys to hoodlumism and the penitentiary.
Do not believe those who call us savages, rioters, incendiaries, and outlaws. We seek our ends calmly, rationally, at the ballot box. So far good order has marked all our proceedings. But, we know how false, how inhuman, our adversaries are. We know that if gold, if fraud, if force can defeat us, they will all be used. And we have resolved that they shall not defeat us. We shall arm. We shall meet fraud and falsehood with defiance, and force with force, if need be.
We are men, and propose to live like men in this free land, without the contamination of slave labor, or die like men, if need be, in asserting the rights of our race, our country, and our families.
California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so. May we not rely upon your sympathy and assistance?
those using the Irish Famine as a legitimising device for contemporary mass immigration?
The narrative given by the lamestream, that there was a famine is complete horseshit, as there was no shortage of food produced in Ireland in the so-called famine years, what really happened was that the british empire was using Ireland as a bread basket, so as to extort all the food production. The food produce was shipped out of the country to be sold for profit in England. Irish people could have easily sustained themselves if the british establishment would have just got the fuck out of a country that they should not have attempted to colonise, and commit genoice on the native populace.
There was thousands of tons of grain, enormous amounts of sheep, pigs, cows, peas, beans, rabbits, honey, salmon, milk, butter being produced in Ireland, you name it. These products were denied to the irish, because britain demanded that the food be given to them. The british establishment left all the ports open so that food could be sent out to britain, whilst irish starved to death with the failing of the poor mans food, the potato.
Alternative food production was denied to the starving Irish, land was denied to the starving Irish, english landlords exploited the land so as to ship all the food production out to britain, selling it at a far bigger profit than they would ever get from starving people. If an irish family wanted some of that food, they would have been greeted with the barrel of a rifle.
In the 19th century, the british government, and the so-called royal family you could say were a bunch of murderous lunatic genocidal scum. No different to war criminals. They let a whole nation starve.
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The modern assumption of people giving excuses for all the uncontrolled mass-immigration into Ireland, by comparing it with 19th century immigration of irish into GIGANTIC land areas like america and australia is completely ignorant. Shur didn’t we go to? Please just shut up.
Irelands land mass is miniscule compared to where irish immigrated. Higher population density lowers the standard and quality of living. Ireland does not need millions of anyone, it is packed enough as it is. High population density also destroys natural habitats with urbanization.
Also a higher population density of mass-immigration creates two tier societies and ghettoization, it is a failure, multicultural societies do not work, they have high crime rates, as seen in many european cities where it has been attempted. By also allowing lots of islamic centres in Ireland, there is an increaed risk of radicalization and terrorism, as seen in France, Germany, Sweden, Britain, Netherlands etc.
Poland has no such problems, because it has not allowed two tier societal systems to flourish. They denied any refugee quotas.
To deny genocide,to deny holocaust,to lamely and insultingly try to cover it up
by the PROMOTION OF FAMINE and the rewriting of Irish history, who’s interests are being served or protected? Certainly not the DECENDANTS of
the Irish.British and American interests control the publishing world and protect the colonizer and imperialist.The beauty about truth,and it will always
surface is that a lot of the information and data was sourced from the one and only BRITISH LIBRARY in London.Why would so called Irish historian ,governments and the world media ignore what came from the horses mouth?
Thanks to individuals,just like THE REAL FIANNA and Patriots globally
that will never SELL-OUT for lies,silver,corruption or SERF-TRAITORS.