LETTER: STATE CONTROL WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE IRISH FAMINE, TOO

IN 1943 there was a famine in Bengal which resulted in the deaths of 3 million Indians. This happened in the days of the British Raj. Why should this famine, which happened within living memory, be virtually forgotten in this country when the Irish famine of the 1840s is written about just because it happened 150 years ago?

Ireland in the 1840s was like many Third World countries to-day where people scrape a bare existence from the soil. Our response to poverty and disease in the poor southern half of the world is similar to that of the British government to the Irish famine of the 1840s - inadequate.

John Faulls

Portsmouth