There is always a certain sense when writers write about the great famine, which is sometimes called the ‘great hunger’, in Ireland of 1847 starting with the word ‘great’ in order to draw a particular picture. It is words that either add description to something or detract from its reality by their economy and form. Of course there is or was nothing great about hunger or that it was a famine in the true sense of the word; It was mass starvation on a national scale perfected by, at least at that time, one of the most powerful countries in the world, Great Britain. Again, there was nothing ‘great’ about Britain either unless you factor in a monstrous tyranny against people of every race and culture across the globe starting with their nearest neighbour, us.
Digging their own graves
When the biggest mass starvation raged in Ireland, it was just another one in the long catalogue of others that went before it. Four raged in that century alone while none has happened in our near century of freedom. Writers have for generations tried to label that last attempt at mass starvation as more to do with neglect, mixed in with officialdom and bureaucracy, as being heavily to blame because of a mere potato blight. In Ireland today if every single potato died in the ground no free citizen would die with it. There lies the only difference and evidence that ever mattered. During every year of every mass starvation in Ireland, record exports of wheat and cattle, that benefitted only the British landlord and the government that protected them, left for other lands except ours.
How Britain saw us as a country historically is the undercurrent as to how they see us now, even though it is edging toward a more positive change than ever before. The writer, Niamh O’ Sullivan recently wrote in the Irish Times that: “The racialisation of poverty justified government policy then, leading the Times to condemn the ‘wretched, indolent, half-starved tribe of savages who never approached the standard of the civilised world.’ Even Niamh could not resist labelling in part this historic mass starvation of a people as: "…..the outcome of a systematic neglect by the richest empire in the world." I can neglect or forget to feed a child or myself but neither of us will ever starve as a result.
There is some residue from a historical sentiment and argument still used against refugees today, even by former refugees and migrants who have pulled themselves up from abject poverty a couple of thousand years ago. Positively tribal I say. Cheery picked amnesia is easy for the beggar who has found himself a horse in order to ride over those still starving on the ground. Yet many slaves of the 1800's, free and indentured, along with tribes of indigenous peoples in America and elsewhere, sent money to relieve the appalling suffering of the Irish people as it even outweighed their own. We must not try to cover up our past or compromise on its horrors for political and commercial gain, for our shared past with England and the world is at least a moral blueprint for the helping hand that means freedom rather than the jackboot that represents oppression.
I leave you with a quote or two from one infamous landlord at that 'never to be forgotten time', Sir Charles Trevelyan, who considered the ‘famine’ and said: “the judgement of God sent this calamity to teach the Irish a lesson.” He also added: “It was an effective mechanism for reducing surplus population.” He must have read Charles Dickens character ‘Scrooge’ sentiments on the matter.
Barry Clifford
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