Irelands Holocaust – Henry Whittaker

Ireland’s holocaust - The Irish Potato Famine, 1845-50

Introduction
The blight which devastated Ireland s potato crops in the late 1840 s was not co
nfined to Ireland alone. It also descended upon other countries, notably Belgium
and the Netherlands. It is true that these countries also lost a percentage of
their populations through famine-related deaths: the Netherlands suffered a deat
h toll of 60,000 and Belgium lost 48,000 about 2% and a little over 1% of thei
r respective populations. Yet at the same time Ireland, under the control of the
British Government, lost a staggering 13% of its population to death by disease
and starvation.
How could it be that Britain, which was still the richest and most powerful coun
try in the world, could not prevent this horrific death toll? The answer is simp
le the British ruling-classes did not want to minimize the death toll, on the
contrary, they welcomed it!
Apologists for the British government will claim that it was Ireland s over reli
ance on the potato that caused the death and misery that the Irish endured durin
g and long after the years of the Great Hunger as it is known in Irish history
. This is an argument that must be exposed for the shameful lie that it is. It w
as capitalism and landlordism, fully aided by Government policy, which resulted
in the terrible tragedy which befell the people of Ireland.
The following is a by no means comprehensive account of the callous attitude of
the British Government and the upper-classes during that terrible period in Irel
and s history.
The Great Starvation, as the Irish called it, known to the rest of the world as
The Irish Potato Famine or the Potato Blight, is blamed for the unspeakable trag
edy that befell the rural community of Ireland during those terrible years. The
mind-boggling death toll from starvation and disease, together with the horrific
ordeals endured on the ‘coffin ships by those wretched, half-starved emigrants
who fled to America, constitute the most nightmarish chapter in Irish history,
a story which will forever brand Britain s ruling-class and many of its so-calle
d intelligentsia at that time with the indelible stigma of genocide and infamy.
The Pre-Famine Years
"The miserable dress, and diet, and dwelling of the people; the general desolati
on in most parts of the kingdom; the old seats of the nobility and gentry all in
ruins and no new ones in their stead; the families of farmers who pay great ren
ts living in filth and nastiness upon buttermilk and potatoes, without a shoe or
stocking to their feet, or a house so convenient as an English hogsty to receiv
e them - these may, indeed, be comfortable sights to an English spectator who co
mes for a short time to learn the language, and returns back to his own country,
whither he finds all our wealth transmitted." (Jonathan Swift, 1667 - 1745)
The living conditions of the Irish peasantry described by Swift were no better 1
00 years later in the pre-famine years of the mid-nineteenth century. The Irish
agricultural labourer and his family were the poorest of the poor. Nowhere else
in the world was there such extreme poverty: 75% of the dwellings were mere mud
huts, many of them consisting of only one room, which the family shared with a p
ig whose manure was heaped outside the home to fertilize the next potato crop. W
hen fully grown the pig would be used towards payment of the landlord s rent and
another piglet raised to repeat the process. The great majority of agricultural
labourers and their families lived on a diet consisting of potatoes, supplement
ed when they could afford it with buttermilk and, eggs if they were lucky enough
 to own two or three hens. The average man in rural Ireland consumed up to 14 po
unds of potatoes each day. The potatoes the family did not eat, along with any c
orn they could grow, went to pay the rent for the miserable hovels they lived in
.
Life was hard, stressful and insecure; a constant struggle to survive where even
a partial crop failure could result in the entire family being evicted from its
meagre plot and turned out onto the road. The big landowners were mostly absent
ee landlords who lived in England, where they tried to keep up with the rich lif
e style of their English counterparts. To this end they hired agents to run thei
r estates, squeezing the life s blood out of the downtrodden peasantry. Often th
e agent would let out large tracts of land to one farmer who would then be respo
nsible for paying the rent for that land. He in turn would sub-let the land in s
mall plots to be worked by the smaller farmers and labourers (cottiers). These s
mallholders lived in constant dread of the agents, who were ruthless in evicting
tenants who failed to pay the rent to their parasitic masters. Those who were e
victed or unemployed could only dwell in bog holes or put makeshift roofs over d
itches to shelter themselves.
So how did the people of Ireland get themselves into this drastic state of extre
me poverty and over-population? The English middle-class and ruling-class of tha
t time seemed to think they knew the answer, although very few of them had ever
set foot in Ireland: it was obvious, wasn t it? - the Irish were stupid, they we
re lazy, they lacked initiative, they were nothing more than a backward nation o
f beggars and human sheep who had to be led and looked after by the superior rac
e; the superior race of course was that of the "True born Englishman".
The historian Macaulay wrote: ‘The English have become the greatest and most hig
hly civilized people the world ever saw. Other eminent historians, such as Lord
Acton and Charles Kingsley, expressed similar ‘master race nationalistic senti
ments. Such was the arrogance of the middle and upper classes of 18th century En
gland. Ever since the days of Cromwell the gentry and rulers of England believed
that to be English and Protestant was to be superior in every aspect to all oth
er breeds of men; they considered themselves especially superior to the Celts, p
articularly the Irish Celts. It must be said that some of the Scottish intellige
ntsia, such as philosopher David Hume and historian Thomas Carlyle also held thi
s racist contempt for the Irish. All the more praise, therefore, to those more h
onourable Englishmen such as economists John Stuart Mill and George Scrope who h
ad the courage to point the finger of blame for Ireland s plight exactly where i
t belonged - at the ruthless exploitation of Ireland by the British!
But the relentless racist diatribe continued. Popular journals claimed that livi
ng in rags and squalor came naturally to the Irish (Blackwood s Magazine) and th
at Celts in general and the Irish in particular were lazy and workshy (Fraser s
Magazine). Even Benjamin Disraeli, who should have known better, made his own co
ntribution to this racist ranting with a bigoted article in The Times: "...This
wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain and superstitious race has no sympathy with
the English character..."
Of course the Irish were far from being inferior to the British.. Nor were they
lazy, they were as tough and hard-working as any race on the planet, as later ge
nerations were to prove beyond doubt. As for being backward, Ireland was renowne
d for its learning and its culture throughout Europe in the Middle Ages: it had
the first hospital in Europe and students from many countries, including Anglo-S
axon England, flocked there to study medicine and religion; at least one English
king, Aldfrith of Northumbria, studied there.
Then came the Anglo-Norman invasion: in 1169 the first Earl of Pembroke (Strongb
ow) invaded Ireland to settle a feud on behalf of the Irish chief Diarmuid MacMu
rrogh. Strongbow saw the opportunity to make himself Ard-Ri, the equivalent of b
ecoming king of all Ireland, and Henry II was not going to put up with that. Hen
ry had long been urged by Pope Adrian IV and his successor, Pope Alexander III,
to conquer and rule Ireland. He decided to invade in 1170; that was the real beg
inning of Ireland s troubles. Thereafter Ireland endured feuds, rebellions, oppr
ession, the Tudor and Cromwellian invasions (the latter reducing the country s p
opulation to half a million), and repeated confiscation of their land and estate
s.
The result of all this is that the Anglo-Irish landlords earmarked all the best
farmland for the raising of cattle, sheep and pigs, and for the growing of grain
, barley and oats which they exported to England at great profit. The remaining
land was rented out to the rural poor and was mainly only fit for growing potato
es. One acre of potato crop could feed three times as many people as an acre of
grain. Consequently the land could be rented out to three times as many people t
hus enabling three times as many workers to rent a plot, get married and start a
family. This also led to land being sub-divided repeatedly till some were livin
g on small strips of land and some were unemployed and had no land at all.
Hence, through a set of circumstances imposed upon them by others, the rural Iri
sh became over-populated and over dependent on the potato for sustenance. The ac
claimed historian Mrs Cecil Woodham Smith, in her book The Great Hunger (the mos
t widely read work on Irish history) sums it all up perfectly: ‘All this wretche
dness and misery could, almost without exception, be traced to a single source -
the system under which land had come to be occupied and owned in Ireland, a sys
tem produced by centuries of successive conquests, rebellions, confiscations and
punitive legislation .
The Famine Strikes
There had been a serious crop failure affecting parts of the country in 1865, bu
t those affected managed to survive on whatever scraps of food and potatoes they
could salvage, along with relief measures brought in by Peel s Tory Government.
Peel s government had also introduced public works schemes which were unpopular
because they were inefficiently and often corruptly administered by local offic
ials and also because they took workers away from the farms. This experience, ha
rd though it was to live through for those involved, was nothing compared to wha
t lay ahead.
Things were looking good in the summer of 1846. There had been a small outbreak
of the disease in early June in some parts of County Cork, but it had been conta
ined and had done little damage. Then it returned. In late July farmers awoke to
find the air filled with a vile, overwhelming stench so putrid and unbearable t
hat it filled them with alarm. When they opened their doors that morning their a
larm turned to fear: the stalks of their potato plants were discoloured and the
leaves were brown-spotted and withering. The stalks broke off in their hands whe
n they tried to pull up the potatoes, so in desperation they tried to dig them u
p with their bare hands. The potatoes had to be saved at all costs - their lives
, their families lives, the entire community s lives, depended upon it. But all
their hands unearthed was a blackened, slimy, inedible pulp. And this time the
disease was not restricted to Cork; every corner of the land was affected. The p
otato famine had arrived - and hell came riding on its back!
"Political Economy"
Man s inhumanity to man,
Makes countless thousands mourn.
Burns.
Yes, hell came riding on its back: the hell of dying by inches with unrelenting
pangs of hunger gnawing and clawing at your insides, your starving body eating i
ts own muscle and brain tissue until your emaciated, lice-ridden body gives up t
he fight and disease or starvation finally kills you.
Starvation was not the only fate visited upon the long-suffering Irish rural com
munity: there were also the horrific diseases that came with the famine, disease
s such as typhus and cholera to which, with their weakened immune systems, they
became easy prey; there were the cynical evictions, when sick and starving famil
ies had there homes demolished and then were kicked off their rich landlord s es
tate; and there was the Hobson s choice of death or emigration, resulting in fam
ilies, friends and whole communities being forever split asunder.
All of these horrors, and more, could have been avoided or greatly reduced if th
e British Government had met its responsibilities; instead, by its action and in
action, this government, this abhorrent, abominable group of parasitical oligarc
hs, was instrumental in inflicting most of the suffering on those tragic victims
of the famine, or, to be accurate, victims of so-called "Political Economy".
So what was Political Economy? It was a loose conglomeration of nonsensical idea
s, along with Providentialism and Moralism, which shaped the political ideology
of the day. It s most famous proponent was Thomas Malthus ( 1766-1834) who claim
ed that food production could never keep up with population growth and therefore
population growth would have to be curtailed either by prudence or natural disa
ster - he considered birth-control to be wicked but on the other hand famines co
uld be very helpful. He also believed charity to the poor to be a dangerous thin
g, something that had to be kept strictly under control. Unfortunately for the I
rish, the influential Charles Edward Trevelyan, permanent head of the treasury,
along with many other leading political figures of those days, was very much in
favour of such ideas. To strip Political Economy of all its hypocritical argumen
ts all it meant was ‘Let the rich get richer and let the poor go to hell! In ot
her words, like its repugnant political descendant, Thatcherism, it was nothing
more than unfettered, dog-eat-dog capitalism.
There is no doubt that the British Government had the political and moral respon
sibility to resolve the problems caused by the famine. The Act of Union which ca
me into effect on January 1, 1801, puts the political as well as the moral argum
ent beyond doubt. But this act, following an Irish uprising in 1798, was achieve
d with bribery and false promises, and was no more than a pact between the lande
d gentry of both countries to watch each other s backs and keep the peasantry in
their place. The ferment of revolutionary republicanism that was manifest in Ir
eland and Europe was contagious; the English ruling classes, alarmed at the thou
ght of this unrest affecting the English peasantry and working-class, deemed it
wise to close ranks with their Anglo-Irish counterparts.
The Whig Administration
To be fair, considering the political climate and the times they lived in, Peel
s administration had been relatively prompt and helpful to the famine victims in
1845-46. Even the radical nationalist Irish newspapers of the day offered their
grudging praise. But, by repealing the Corn Laws to bring down the price of gra
in, Peel committed political suicide. After the general election of 1846 the Whi
g administration under Lord Russell came into power, and those who pulled the st
rings of power were sympathetic to the ideas of Malthus. It was the worst thing
that ever could have happened to the people of Ireland at that time.
Charles Trevelyan, backed by influential sympathisers such as Charles Wood, Chan
cellor of the Exchequer in the Whig government, was now going to handle the fami
ne his way. The Peel administration had purchased corn which they stored in seve
ral depots in the worst affected parts of Ireland. This corn was to be resold at
reduced prices. Trevelyan decided there was to be no more of that - private ent
erprise must supply the food. The only exception to this would be half-a-dozen i
nadequately stocked grain stores on the West coast, where no other food but the
potato was ever available, but even these were only to be opened as a very last
resort. Merchants asked for assurance that there would be no more food supplied
by the government and this assurance was readily given along with the promise th
at there would be no more interfering with ‘the legitimate profits of private en
terprise .
If the Irish wanted famine relief they would have to work for it: with money pro
vided by the local rates, a new public works scheme was to be introduced. If the
local rates needed to be subsidised by government money then this money had to
be repaid with interest within ten years (the public works scheme introduced by
the Peel administration the previous year had proven much too costly). But this
was not to be just an ordinary work scheme that could be of future use to the co
untry: there would be no houses built for the dispossessed, nor hospitals for th
e sick; no improvements to existing roads or the country s infrastructure - that
would be taking away potential business from private contractors. Instead this
blinkered administration deliberately devised projects that would be completely
useless to the people of Ireland. Thus it came about that half-starved men were
forced to expend there remaining strength constructing roads that went from nowh
ere to nowhere and bridges that spanned non-existent rivers. Often their pittanc
e of a payment for this useless labour was delayed; as a consequence many of the
m died who may have lived if they had been paid on time. But even this nonsensic
al plan proved too costly for the government s liking and they later decided to
scrap it.
This then was the basic government famine relief plan, modified here and there a
s the famine continued. Trevelyan received enough warnings from his agents and t
he clergy in Ireland that to endorse these measures was like signing the death w
arrant for the Irish peasantry, but, rather than visiting Ireland and seeing for
himself the plight of the famine victims, he haughtily stuck to his guns.
And the famine began to take its toll. People died. They died on their own, they
died with their entire families; they died in their homes, they died in the poo
r houses; they died on the roads and in the ditches; they died in fields and the
y died huddled up in caves, their skeletons still being discovered or unearthed
by the plough years later. Throughout all this horror the landlords and food tra
ders took enough cattle, sheep, pigs and cereal crops out of Ireland to feed the
entire population twice over.
As news of the famine became widespread money was raised to get food to Ireland
by people all over England, Europe and America. The USA sent shiploads of food s
upplies hurrying to Ireland, only to find that they had to pay to have their car
goes transferred to British ships and then unloaded in the ports of Ireland - th
e British Shipping companies had to make their profit while Ireland starved. Thi
s legalised robbery continued for a whole year until outraged world opinion emba
rrassed the government into putting an end to it.
A lot of this aid was put at the disposal of the Quaker movement in Ireland and
England, and the Quakers deserve great praise for the effort they made on behalf
of the people of Ireland. One of the measures taken by them was to establish so
up kitchens. These soup kitchens saved an incalculable number of lives and shame
d the Whig administration into reluctantly doing the same. It must be noted that
, not surprisingly, the soup issued by the Quakers was much more nutritious than
the "flavoured water" supplied by the government.
Eviction and the Poorhouses
All the outside help, welcome though it was, was inadequate to feed the starving
Irish and counteract the damaging policies of Britain s government. And of cour
se the Irish peasants and small farmers were unable to pay the rents demanded by
many of the landlords, so evictions came on a massive scale. Whole families, si
ck and weakened by hunger and dysentery, and often already infected with typhus,
were thrown off the estates to wander the countryside dressed in rags that coul
d not protect them from the cold. Some of them made it to the poorhouses; some o
f them died on the roads, their mouths stained green from eating grass in a last
desperate attempt to survive. Their corpses, half-eaten by dogs, littered the r
oadside hedges and ditches. And even the dogs began to disappear from the countr
yside as they were caught and eaten by the desperately hungry peasants.
Ireland s 130 poorhouses were designed to shelter the normal endemic unemployed
and destitute of the country; they could not hope to cope with the unprecedented
number of victims now seeking help. Even when these hostels were overcrowded we
ll beyond their normal capacity there were desperate crowds clamouring and hamme
ring at their doors pleading for food and shelter. Inevitably this concentration
of people whose immune systems were weakened by malnutrition became ideal breed
ing grounds for disease and soon thousands were dying of typhoid, dysentery and
cholera. The gathering together of large numbers of people at relief works proje
cts and food depots also helped spread disease; soon there were as many dying of
disease as there were dying of hunger.
But the stony-hearted bureaucrats of the Treasury were unmoved. In 1848, in the
midst of all this unbearable human misery, with more than half a million already
dead, the heartless Trevelyan commented: "the great evil with which we have to
contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfis
h, perverse and turbulent character of the people... they are suffering from an
affliction of God s providence." So there you have it - according to the great a
dvocate of Political Economy and private enterprise God was lending capitalism a
hand by ridding the world of the ‘morally evil Irish. The shocking element of
these appalling utterances is that Trevelyan and his capitalist friends really b
elieved them.
It is no exaggeration to say that in examining the Political Economists attitud
e to the solution of the ‘Irish Problem one can detect the same inhumane thinki
ng that lay behind the Nazi solution to the ‘Jewish Problem . Should anyone deba
te this let him explain this statement by Benjamin Jowett, talking about a conve
rsation he had with the oddly named Nassau Senior, professor of Political Econom
y at Oxford: "I have always felt a certain horror of political economists, since
I heard one of them say that he feared the famine in Ireland would not kill mor
e than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do any good."
Rebellion
For you stole Trevelyan s corn
So your young might see the morn,
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.
(The Fields of Athenry)
Well armed and properly trained Irishmen made formidable warriors, as their perf
ormance in the Napoleonic War proved. Wellington said of the Connaught Rangers:
"I don t know what those men do to the enemy, but they terrify me!" If Ireland h
ad had a well armed peasantry there would have been hell to pay. It would have p
ut a stop to the boatloads of grain, dairy produce, cattle, sheep and pigs that
were being exported out of Ireland by food merchants to fill English stomachs an
d feed the British army garrisons abroad. As we have seen, there was enough food
being taken out of Ireland to feed its entire population twice over and the foo
d exporters and importers of Ireland and England were making fat profits while I
rish women and children starved.
But Ireland did not have a well armed peasantry. It had a hunger-weakened, disor
ientated population of agricultural workers with little in the way of weapons to
oppose the British army, and most of them could not afford the luxury of going
off to fight while their wives and children were dying of hunger. There were iso
lated incidents when small armed groups ambushed food supplies being transported
 by road or canal, and there were protests against evictions and high rents; at
least one landlord was shot.
The best known of these incidents was one involving the Young Irelanders. It is
necessary to briefly explain the background to this group: it is usually describ
ed by historians as a somewhat violent collection of hotheads who were keen to g
ain freedom for the Irish people by armed rebellion and all means of physical fo
rce. This is a misconception. The Young Irelanders is an adopted name of the Iri
sh Confederation, which is in turn the name of the group who broke away from the
Repeal Association which was founded by Daniel O Connell. In adopting the name
Young Irelanders they were identifying themselves with movements like "Young Ita
ly" founded by the Italian revolutionary Mazzini.
Broadly speaking this group (with a few honourable exceptions) was still conserv
ative in its outlook, respecting big business and private property etc. and woul
d not have done a great deal to change the status quo. Its one abortive attempt
to seize power entailed the besieging of some constables in a house in Tipperary
. This ill-conceived incident was led and financed by the inept and indecisive W
illiam O Brien; it resulted in two of his followers being killed and many of the
others, including O Brien himself, being transported to Tasmania.
One of the honourable exceptions was John Mitchell. He is regarded by today s es
tablishment historians as a hot-headed firebrand, but if the leaders of the Youn
g Irelanders had adopted his strategy they would have had the active support of
the people and in all likelihood would have had a much greater impact on the out
come of the famine; it would certainly have highlighted the injustice of the gra
in, cattle and other food produce being shipped out of Ireland to make profit fo
r the landlords, food merchants and shipping companies while the people of Irela
nd starved to death in their thousands.
What Mitchell advocated was that instead of handing over grain and other foodstu
ffs to the landlord the peasants should eat it themselves and refuse to pay rent
; they should also destroy railroads and bridges and block canals to prevent foo
d from being taken to the ports for exporting to England. This strategy would ha
ve been supported by the people and would certainly have hit the pockets of the
traders and landlords who were making money while Irish women and children were
being transformed into walking skeletons by private enterprise. Mitchell express
ed these ideas in the United Irishman and was consequently transported to Tasman
ia for inciting rebellion.
Exodus: The Coffin Ships
"They are going! They are going! The Irish are going with a vengeance! Soon a Ce
lt will be as rare on the banks of the Liffey as a red man on the banks of the M
anhattan!
With unconfined joy The Times gloated over the mass emigration of thousands upon
thousands of desperate, downtrodden, humiliated human beings, defeated by hunge
r and disease, fleeing the unbearable suffering and oppression inflicted upon th
em by the British Government and its policies.
Their only escape was emigration, saying goodbye forever to their homeland, thei
r friends, families and the sweethearts they loved. Some did well in America and
were able to send for a younger brother or sister, some never got any further t
han Liverpool where they were fleeced out of their money by the crooks and trick
sters who waited like vultures to prey on them. For many the parting was as fina
l as death, indeed for thousands it was death, for they did not survive the haza
rdous journey to America: instead their corpses were thrown overboard into the c
old grey waters of the Atlantic.
The mass exodus of the Irish from their homeland was a dream come true for most
landlords, after all, as far as they were concerned, Ireland was far too good fo
r the Irish. They were eager to clear the Irish riff-raff from their estates in
order to adapt the modern English methods of agriculture to their farmlands: rai
sing livestock; harvesting wheat, oats, barley, meal; anything that would increa
se their profits, even if it brought heartbreak, misery and death to their tenan
ts. This is why the Gregory Clause (nicknamed the eviction-made-easy Act) had be
en introduced to amend the Poor Law in June, 1847. This meant that any desperate
Irishman who applied for benefit had to give up the right to all but one quarte
r acre of his tenancy in exchange for a mere pittance with which to feed his fam
ily. This meant that he and his family would soon be doomed to eviction as it wa
s impossible to exist on such a tiny sliver of land let alone raise the rent to
pay the landlord. This clause enabled the landlord to clear his tenants off his
estate quicker, thus clearing the land for the raising of more livestock and exp
ortable food produce to increase his profits.
Those tenants who had not yet fallen victim of the Gregory Clause knew that they
too would still be unable to pay their rents, so when the landlord, in his hast
e to clear him off the estate, offered to pay his passage to America he had no c
hoice but to accept. Thus began mass emigration of the rural Irish from their be
loved homeland, a process that was to continue for decades.
Needless to say, the steamship companies made capital out of this tragedy by gre
atly increasing the cost of passage from Ireland to Liverpool, the starting off
point of the voyage to the USA. And needless to say it was even more profitable
to pack the passengers in like sardines: on one stormy voyage from Sligo to Live
rpool 75 out of 200 passengers died of suffocation because the captain of the ‘L
ondonderry covered the hatches with tarpaulin to drown out the cries of the pas
sengers pleading for the hatches to be opened.
This nightmare was repeated on the voyage across the Atlantic. In 1847 alone mor
e than one quarter of a million people died of starvation or disease and the Iri
sh peasantry fled in fear from the country. Some were aided by money sent from a
broad by relatives; some were aided by charities; some were paid to go by their
landlords; all of them fled because they feared the fate that lay in store for t
hem if they stayed at home. True to form the transatlantic shipping companies al
so swelled their profits by cramming and overcrowding the passengers into the ho
lds. The stifling, suffocating, cramped conditions under which these poor wretch
ed people were forced to live made the ships little better than floating ‘black
holes of Calcutta . Their overcrowded living spaces were ideal breeding grounds
for the disease-carrying lice with which many were already infected; the outcome
was inevitable: in that terrible year alone over 6,000 souls perished during th
e voyage and were thrown overboard; another 12,000 died soon after reaching the
shores of North America. But the shipping magnates made bigger and better profit
s.
The worst effects of the potato blight were over by 1850, by which time about on
e and a quarter million people had died of disease and starvation and over a mil
lion had fled the country: this is the equivalent of over 8 million people dying
of starvation and disease in Britain today and as many again fleeing the countr
y. But the dying and the homeless, the sick and the hungry, and the emigrants fl
eeing their ruined nation dragged on for decades afterwards. Nor should we forge
t the mental trauma of those who survived: the parents who watched in helpless d
espair as their once lively, bright-eyed children turned into living skeletons t
hen faded into unconsciousness and died before their eyes; the man who had to ca
rry his wife s corpse over his shoulder to the cemetery; the man who dragged his
dead children in a sack behind him to be dumped in the famine pit (coffins were
now an unaffordable luxury); the man who came home to find his wife, crazed wit
h hunger, eating the arm of her dead child. These mental and emotional scars cou
ld never heal and such tales would be handed down to succeeding generations, car
rying with them a bitter legacy of hatred for the British which would affect lat
er events for decades to come.
The harrowing horror stories of Irish suffering, and of the pitiless policies of
Britain s capitalists, could fill countless volumes.
The Guilty
There are two schools of historical opinion on the subject of culpability for th
e tragedy that befell Ireland during the famine years: the nationalists and the
revisionists. The nationalists agree with John Mitchell, who, after all, lived t
hrough it. He put the blame squarely on the capitalist-class and the callous gen
ocidal capitalist policies of the British government. The revisionist view is th
at it was nobody s fault, just one of these natural disasters, an act of God, or
whatever. It almost beggars belief, that the majority of historians who support
the revisionist view are themselves Irish. Perhaps some did their graduate trai
ning in British Universities, but many revisionist historians were linked to Tri
nity College, Dublin.
There is no denying that there were many officials who defied government orders
and gave food to starving Irish families, nor is there any doubt that some landl
ords did behave humanely by foregoing their rents and even helping supply food t
o their tenants - but such people were the minority.
For the revisionist case look at this piece of unmitigated drivel from E.R.R. Gr
een in The Course of Irish History:
"...we need to be clear in our minds that this was primarily a disaster like a f
lood or earthquake. The blight was natural, no one can be held responsible for t
hat. Conditions in Ireland which had placed thousands upon thousands of people i
n dependence on the potato are another matter. Yet the historian, if he is consc
ientious, will have an uneasy conscience about labelling any class or individual
s as villains of the piece."
Oh really? Who does he think he s kidding? And what about the mountains of well
documented evidence to the contrary? What about the Government refusing to allow
the people access to the food that was generously sent to them in shiploads fro
m America because doing so would affect the profits of the British food traders?
What about the Government amending the Poor Law to make it easier for landlords
to evict sick and dying tenants from their homes? What about the government rul
ing that relief food stored in depots must only be opened when no private trader
s are available to sell for profit, and that even then the relief food must not
be sold at a price that would undercut the prices charged by private traders - s
o America was willing to supply free food to the Irish while Britain, still the
richest country in the world, insisted the penniless Irish must pay market price
s to protect private enterprise? And must we ignore the previously quoted statem
ent by the professor of political economy at Oxford who complained that "...the
famine in Ireland would not kill more than a million people, and that would scar
cely be enough to do any good."?
There are numerous such sickening examples of the Whig administration s victimis
ation of the Irish peasantry in the interests of capitalism and the landed gentr
y, and of the utterances of Trevelyan et al., about putting the profit motive ab
ove all else. And through all this pitiless, genocidal period the press, in part
icular The Times, gloated and rejoiced at the plight of the Irish. The logic of
these revisionist so-called historians is beyond all understanding.
However, in 1962 Mrs Cecil Woodham-Smith s book The Great Hunger appeared on the
shelves of Britain s bookstores and quickly became the mostly widely read of al
l books on Irish history. It remains so to this day. It was the result of ten ye
ars of research and was written with objectivity and compassion, a truly commend
able work which deserves the great success it achieved, although if anything it
was more than fair in its judgement of the British establishment throughout the
famine years.
But Mrs Woodham-Smith made the revisionists look like the fools they were and so
they reviewed her book with disdain. Again it was ironical that it was an Engli
sh historian, the controversial and outspoken A.J.P. Taylor, who came to her def
ence: "...all Ireland was a Belsen. The English governing class had the blood of
two million Irish people on their hands...that the death toll was not higher wa
s not for want of trying." A.J.P. was not a man to mince his words.
Let us leave the last word to the great Marxist-Socialist James Connolly. Scots-
born Connolly, born just 20 years after the famine, always considered himself to
be Irish. He gave his life for the freedom of Ireland s people, not merely free
dom from British rule, but freedom from the slavery of capitalism:
"Had Socialist principles been applied to Ireland in those days not one person n
eed have died of hunger, and not one cent of charity need have been subscribed t
o leave a smirch upon the Irish name. At the lowest computation 1,225,000 died o
f absolute hunger; all of these were sacrificed on the altar of capitalist thoug
ht."
Conclusion
The Irish are the great survivors among Europe s nations. They have endured cent
uries of oppression, persecution, occupation and attempted extermination: The Vi
kings, the Anglo-Normans; the attempt by the Tudors to crush them, the attempt b
y Cromwell to exterminate them; the defeat of their rebellions and the horrendou
s ordeal of the famine. All these things they have overcome and today they are a
thriving nation with a prosperous economy.
Yet there is one thing they have not overcome: they have not overcome the warpin
g of history by establishment propagandists. There is a towering monument in Dub
lin to Daniel O Connell, there is even a street named after him. He is revered a
s the greatest of all Irishmen. But what, in reality, did ‘The Great Dan achiev
e? Irish emancipation? The vast majority of Ireland s poor were no more able to
vote after ‘emancipation than they were before. And his avowed belief that you
could not be Irish if you were not Catholic played a huge part in the religious
antagonism that divided the Irish working-class. O Connell was a charismatic pol
itician, a born leader and a tireless worker for Irish nationalism. But he was n
ot the ‘man of the people that he is reputed to be. If he had achieved his drea
m of repealing the Act of Union the Irish poor would have remained just as poor,
they would still have been oppressed by landlordism. In reality he was a champi
on of the Irish landlords, the gentry, the men of property, as indeed was his so
n, John O Connell, who did much to slander and undermine the Young Irelanders.
William Smith O Brien, descendant of the legendary king Brian Boru, was a leadin
g figure in the Young Ireland movement and is also a revered figure in Irish His
tory. But he too was a landlord and respecter of private property who, well-inte
ntioned though he may have been, could not put the needs of the starving Irish p
eople above all else and was ultimately ineffective in helping their cause.
The true heroes of the famine years were Fintan Lalor and John Mitchell, and the
greatest ever champion of the Irish people was undoubtedly James Connolly. But
there are no towering monuments dedicated to them. It is to the writings of thes
e brave and selfless men today s Irish working-class should turn if they wish to
be guided in bettering their lot, and it is to them that this article is dedica
ted.