British aggression?
Sir: I note with sorrow the words of Mark Steyn (Arts, 9 November) that New York requires schools to teach that the Irish potato famine was a deliberate act of British aggression. What the British gov- ernment were doing in 1822 I do not know, but the people of England were supporting, not hating, the Irish.
The coal-mining village of Camerton near Bath will be unknown to most readers: presumably it would have been no more or less generous than other English villages. The Reverend John Skinner (Journal of a Somerset Rector) records that on 22 July 1822 he passed on to the Committee for the Relief of the Irish the sum of £19.3.71/2d £15.10.5d from the gentry, the rest from the farmers and colliers.
Presumably that fact is also being taught in the New York schools.
Harry Charlton
Four Winds, Monger, Midsomer Norton, Bath
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