The British are concerned that Ireland may ‘exaggerate’ the apology for the 1997 famine to draw a parallel with Bloody Sunday

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s token apology for the Great Famine in 1997 received a “warm” reaction in official Irish circles, official British archives show.

However, a British official also raised concerns that the Irish government may overstate the apology to “overstate” a Bloody Sunday parallel.

Blair said the London government failed the people of Ireland in their time of need during the disaster, which reached its worst year in 1847.

The 1997 British Government Archives were published by the Northern Ireland Public Record Office (PRONI).

In a restricted letter from Donald Lamont, an official in the Republic of Ireland affairs section of the British Government, dated June 2, 1997, the Prime Minister’s statement that month on the famine was discussed.

It read: “I don’t think I could have wished for a better response to the Prime Minister’s statement than that of the Taoiseach reported in his 178th telegram.

“The Irish embassy has also been warm in their reaction.

“And if (Ulster unionist) John Taylor is nothing more than ‘disdainful’, then no harm has been done in that quarter.”

The humanitarian disaster, which lasted from 1845 to 1850, was triggered by a potato blight that turned Ireland’s staple crop into a mass of rotten, inedible material.

It caused approximately one million deaths and forced two million destitute and starving Irishmen to emigrate abroad, including to the United States and Canada.

Blair had recognized the fact that “a million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain.”

His statement was read at a commemoration of the famine in Co Cork.

Lamont later wrote: “The most obvious disadvantage would be attempts by the Irish to exaggerate the potential parallel with Bloody Sunday.

“The situations seem so different to me that that shouldn’t be too difficult to handle.”