For the second part of my instalment, I thought it may be interesting to consider one of the most well-known historical episodes in Irish History, The Famine. When one thinks on the famine one gets the impression of a scarcity of food, people dying from starvation whilst being removed from their homes by the RIC and a British Government hell-bent on genocide. This, however, would not be accurate. As with the Siege the reality of the Famine is dominated by the social and Political aspects and structures of the time.
By the time of the Famine Irish society outside of the northeast of Ulster was seeing an excess in population which was resulting in increasingly smaller plots of land available to the rural population. This rural population mostly lived on a subsistence level with the potato and buttermilk staples of their diet. The Irish ‘Lumper’ was the Potato of necessity for many. The ownership of the land was in the hands of a largely Anglo-Irish and Protestant ruling class of whom about one third did not live in Ireland, the management of their estates was left in the hands of their agents. There had been sporadic violence between landlords and tenants throughout the 19th century with the most notable the Tithe War where mostly Catholic peasants resisted the collection of tithes or taxes to the Church of Ireland. Nonetheless, Catholic Emancipation in the 1820’s and Reform of the Corporations in the1840’s did reform the country in a way which had long been promised by the British Government.
The first year of the famine was in 1845 when a fungus attacked the potato plant leaving it inedible. Half the crop was to fail and although this did plunge many of the poor into crisis there were still stores and seeds from the previous year whilst rent could be withheld to buy food for one season. The British Prime Minister Robert Peel also imported large amounts of Indian meal from North America but his most important and controversial move was to repeal the Corn Laws, placing tariffs on bread entering Britain in order to make it cheaper. The repeal of the Corn Laws tore the Conservative party apart and led to a major split eventually indirectly costing Peel his Premiership. A public works scheme was also initiated in order to provide the poorest with a means by which to earn money to buy food. This was formed through a series of local committees who would raise funds to pay the workers with the Government matching whatever was raised.
1846 and 1847 were the years in which the social and Political aspects and structures within Ireland contributed hugely to the suffering. On the face of it food was aplenty within Ireland at this time, however the Liberals who replaced Peel in 1846 believed in a ‘laissez fare’ market with non-interference a key policy. Guards were used to export food from Ireland, the public works scheme initiated under Peel was discontinued, evictions began to take place and soup kitchens despite being relatively cheap to run and set up by the Whig’s were shut down. This overtime has led to accusations of a purposeful genocide led by the British Government with Charles Trevelyan as the instigator. But the true story is somewhat different.
In 1846 the Potato crops had failed and with no stores to fall back on the rural poor were left destitute. Bands of starving civilians roamed the countryside but most would die of ‘famine fever’, typhus and dysentery. 1847 was even worse and is known as ‘Black 47’. The cruel irony was that the potato crop did not actually fail this year but most farmers had not planted seeds in the expectation that the crop would likely do so. 1847 was by far the worst year of the Famine with mass starvation and rampant disease. The Workhouses were overflowing and many would die there. Mass evictions also began to occur. Bailiffs often with a Police escort ejected tenants from their home and then routinely burnt it to the ground. Quite often tenants were replaced with livestock. The story of the landlord however is a mixed one. There were some kind and generous landlords who fed and clothed their tenants as best they could, some started employment schemes whilst others played a very active role in local committees. Some landlords gave their tenants permission to eat crops they usually handed in for rent. The story of the cruel landlord however is an enduring one in the Irish Psyche.
These actions occurred mainly because of one key action taken by the Government. Added to the closing of the soup kitchens, the discontinuing of the public works and the exporting of goods in a policy of non-interference in the market was the Government decision not to use any more Imperial funds to alleviate the famine in Ireland. Instead the burden was placed on Irish tax payers, most of whom were landlords. Many landlords however avoided paying for poor relief by use of the ‘Gregory Clause’ by which any tenant with a plot of over a quarter acre was not considered destitute and not eligible for relief. In the end only about one third of landlords actually contributed at all towards famine relief. The attitude of the Government was based upon the economic ideology of the time rather than any malice. Interference in the economy or public charity was discouraged and providing assistance to the poor regarded as detrimental to the economy. Almost all Government policy of the day was guided by the principles of ‘Political Economy’. That was based on intervening in a bare minimum way on the forces of supply and demand.
Charles Trevelyan has gone down in history as the chief architect of Government policy and is often quoted as declaring that the Famine should ‘run its course’. His name is the subject of scorn to this day. And yet Trevelyan was a centrally placed civil servant who was caught haplessly between the manoeuvrings of his Political overseers in Westminster and the governing elite in Dublin. He liaised between Dublin Castle and London which was an unhappy partnership even in the best times and he often was an arbitrator in disputes between various factions including the various committees, boards and commissions set up in response to the Famine. His spell as Permanent under Secretary was not an easy one and maybe history has been a little unkind to him although he certainly was a ‘providentialist’. That however was not an unusual belief in that time period.
In the end I think it is unfair to describe the Famine as Genocide against the Irish people by a vengeful British Government. It seems that the Famine was a result of ideological fanaticism and neglect than any intentional malice. It may be significant however that only £9.5 million was spent by the Government on Famine relief whilst £69 million was spent on the Crimean War a few years later. However it can’t be said that the Government was wilfully neglectful from the beginning of the Famine. Certainly Robert Peel was a conscientious man and his actions did much to stave off the worst of the food shortages in the early years. Ironically in his attempts to help the situation he inadvertently created the conditions for his own demise and left the door open for the non interference ideologues of the Whig Government to take power, much to Ireland’s misfortune.
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