Think this thread gives me an excuse to relate the follow story, and ask, how would you have reacted in my shoes?
I should preface it by saying that I am of the age where the IRA campaigns had a huge effect on how I see the world. I was at Poly when those Birmingham bomb went off. And my sister who worked in the Lloyds Bank next door, left for home 5 minutes before the Harrods bomb went off.
In December 2004, I was sitting on the Heathrow Express at Paddington, reading my paper. The headline story was the meeting the previous day in Downing Street between Blair, Adams and McGuinness. It was a good news story of lasting peace. Just as the doors were closing, there was a commotion as a group rushed to board at the last moment. I looked up and was gobsmacked to see that this group was the one whose photos I was looking at in my Guardian. Adams, McGuinness and the entourage. They occupied the open space right in front of me.
Of course I am the type who tends to want to "participate in society". I felt like acknowledging them in some way. And then as I looked at them, two huge conflicts started in my head. Part of me was thinking "you are the F***ers who planned to blow up my sister". Part of me looked at the upbeat newspaper report, and thought to wish them a Happy Christmas, not least because they were taking care to be as nice as pie to all around them. That was the thing. Their utterly normal, even agreeable demeanour. People you might share a word with about the weather or the delays at Heathrow.
In the end I figured that if I could not work out what was appropriate to say, I'd probably be better to keep my trap shut. But I have never stopped thinking of that moment, whenever the IRA thing comes up again.
Should I have said something to them? If so, what? (within reason :-))
I'm sure lots of people would shake Tony Blair's hand if (unlikely) they met him on the tube. Also (70k guerilla squad) Dave.
Adams and McGuiness would have known relatives that could give 1st hand accounts of Easter Rising. 70's Army hit squads would have been sanctioned by seemingly squeaky clean politicians and subsequently covered up. All this only 120 years after we allowed the Irish population to be decimated by the potato blight. I don't condone murder of innocent civilians but we continue to RE-ELECT politicians who do just that.
The British interference in other countries affair's has continued for centuries and our arms manufacturers ensure this is still top of our political agenda.
This is a one off post as I am no expert on the above and don't want to debate semantics of my opinions, but the British occupation of Ireland, as with many other of our colonial conquests is one that I fell eternally ashamed.
Note: Born in Tasmania - aboriginal population - zero
In answer to your question? Bury your head in your paper.
For what it's worth, I'd be seriously tempted to warmly shake Tony Blair by the throat if I met him.
Re: first hand accounts of the Easter Rising, I won't say it would be impossible, but it would be very unlikely if either Adams or McGuinness had relatives involved (though, by the 1950s roughly 75% of the Irish population seemed to have been intimately involved).
Regarding hit squads and cover ups, all these things did happen, and the problem is, that, just as in today's "War on Terror", you cannot claim a moral high ground if you resort to the tactics of the men of violence (or subcontract your dirty work to them).
I'm a bit of a revisionist historically (because I think its' a good thing to be), and I am actually going to defend the British government during the Great Famine. Don't get me wrong, they did not cover themselves with glory but, the times were very different. All government was laissez faire to one degree or another, and there is no reason to assume that any other government would have done any better ("Irish" landlords showed no greater concern than anyone else). Certainly, Spanish, French, Dutch or Belgian administration would have been likely to be worse; and Irish politicians (with the exception of O'Connell) were hardly renowned, I am not sure a Dublin government would have been better.
As an aside, David Cameron is rapidly bringing us back to the days when we would rely on the charitable instincts of non-governmental groups, I'm not sure that we can expect the Cherokee Nation (who had experienced starvation in living memory in the late 1840s) to provide much relief any time soon though.
I always point people to the situation regarding the Ethiopian Famine and Band Aid. We may have had reports of crop failures and starvation in the news media, but it was only when the pictures were brought in to our living rooms that the tragedy registered. For people in Britain, unless they were to see homeless and starving Irish people in their towns and streets, in the mid-19th century, they would have had little notion of the degree of suffering.
I am anti-colonialism, and firmly believe that the colonial adventures have created far more problems for today than we could ever have believed possible.
I’ll keep out of the rest of the debate – but regarding your ‘revisionist’ history of the famine my understanding is that ‘officially’ at the time of the famine Ireland was regarded as part of the British state – nominally no different from Yorkshire, Cornwall, Kent or wherever - not a colonial possession (whatever the actual reality).
Yet the laissez faire British government of the time allowed up to 1 million of it’s own citizens to starve to death while around another 2 million emigrated (and I believe Ireland is the only western country whose overall population is now lower than it was some 175 years ago). And the laissez faire principal applied was that ‘poor relief’ had to come from the funds of the parishes where the destitute and starving lived. But as the starving tenant farmers whose potato crop had failed were unable to pay their rents to their landlords these local parish ‘poor relief’ funds were empty.
The general population in this country, at the time of the potato famine, were not living in the lap luxury. The governments of the time allowed the exploitation of men, women and their children and were content to do very little to end poverty. As long as the ruling classes were well fed and comfortable all was right in the world.
Not much as changed since then.
Except that the "poor" now have Sky TV and iphones!
The poor had 24-hour dysentery as well and that's pretty much the same as Sky TV's output.
I think there is a little more to it than that. We weren't far away from the threat of attack from France, and there were concerns about the allegiances of a Catholic country, close to a protestant country, with ties to a big, powerful Catholic country that had so recently been a military threat. There were clear strategic and political advantages to be had from keeping Ireland poor and undeveloped other than that of simple colonial superiority. As always there are consequences of brutalising a nation or culture and they are long lasting. We are still paying the price today. The voluntary withdrawal from India was to some extent informed by our experiences in the Irish south.
And of course I'm sure the scum that chatted to the people in those pubs in Birmingham while they placed nail bombs under the seats were justifing their mass murder along the same lines
What lines are those? I wasn't justifying anything. Definitely not the murderous gangsters that used the historical background as a justification for their bid for power. I was talking about history and background. Or do you prefer to think that a group of people who just natural born murderers got together and decided to start killing people and were able to recruit misguided young (mostly) men (mostly) to their cause?
I'm sure lots of people would shake Tony Blair's hand if (unlikely) they met him on the tube. Also (70k guerilla squad) Dave.
Adams and McGuiness would have known relatives that could give 1st hand accounts of Easter Rising. 70's Army hit squads would have been sanctioned by seemingly squeaky clean politicians and subsequently covered up. All this only 120 years after we allowed the Irish population to be decimated by the potato blight. I don't condone murder of innocent civilians but we continue to RE-ELECT politicians who do just that.
The British interference in other countries affair's has continued for centuries and our arms manufacturers ensure this is still top of our political agenda.
This is a one off post as I am no expert on the above and don't want to debate semantics of my opinions, but the British occupation of Ireland, as with many other of our colonial conquests is one that I fell eternally ashamed.
Note: Born in Tasmania - aboriginal population - zero
In answer to your question? Bury your head in your paper.
For what it's worth, I'd be seriously tempted to warmly shake Tony Blair by the throat if I met him.
Re: first hand accounts of the Easter Rising, I won't say it would be impossible, but it would be very unlikely if either Adams or McGuinness had relatives involved (though, by the 1950s roughly 75% of the Irish population seemed to have been intimately involved).
Regarding hit squads and cover ups, all these things did happen, and the problem is, that, just as in today's "War on Terror", you cannot claim a moral high ground if you resort to the tactics of the men of violence (or subcontract your dirty work to them).
I'm a bit of a revisionist historically (because I think its' a good thing to be), and I am actually going to defend the British government during the Great Famine. Don't get me wrong, they did not cover themselves with glory but, the times were very different. All government was laissez faire to one degree or another, and there is no reason to assume that any other government would have done any better ("Irish" landlords showed no greater concern than anyone else). Certainly, Spanish, French, Dutch or Belgian administration would have been likely to be worse; and Irish politicians (with the exception of O'Connell) were hardly renowned, I am not sure a Dublin government would have been better.
As an aside, David Cameron is rapidly bringing us back to the days when we would rely on the charitable instincts of non-governmental groups, I'm not sure that we can expect the Cherokee Nation (who had experienced starvation in living memory in the late 1840s) to provide much relief any time soon though.
I always point people to the situation regarding the Ethiopian Famine and Band Aid. We may have had reports of crop failures and starvation in the news media, but it was only when the pictures were brought in to our living rooms that the tragedy registered. For people in Britain, unless they were to see homeless and starving Irish people in their towns and streets, in the mid-19th century, they would have had little notion of the degree of suffering.
I am anti-colonialism, and firmly believe that the colonial adventures have created far more problems for today than we could ever have believed possible.
I’ll keep out of the rest of the debate – but regarding your ‘revisionist’ history of the famine my understanding is that ‘officially’ at the time of the famine Ireland was regarded as part of the British state – nominally no different from Yorkshire, Cornwall, Kent or wherever - not a colonial possession (whatever the actual reality).
Yet the laissez faire British government of the time allowed up to 1 million of it’s own citizens to starve to death while around another 2 million emigrated (and I believe Ireland is the only western country whose overall population is now lower than it was some 175 years ago). And the laissez faire principal applied was that ‘poor relief’ had to come from the funds of the parishes where the destitute and starving lived. But as the starving tenant farmers whose potato crop had failed were unable to pay their rents to their landlords these local parish ‘poor relief’ funds were empty.
Except that there was also potato blight in Scotland, and people starved and were forced off the land.
Those that suffered the most in Ireland were cottiers living on tiny plots of land who survived almost totally by subsisting on the potato. They had very limited rights of tenure, and there was almost no chance that they could survive as dramatic a crop failure as occurred, but crop failure had happened before. Where rights were stronger (such as with the Ulster Custom), tenants were generally more prosperous and leased larger properties.
From 1802, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but there was still a Lord Lieutenant; it wasn't exactly the same as in England.
During the Famine there were efforts made by officials in the Dublin Castle administration to bring relief, with funding being found for the building of famine roads, etc.
In addition, some landlords and religious groups, like the Quakers, operated soup kitchens to provide for the starving. Others, equally, saw an opportunity to replace inefficient and numerous tenants with reduced numbers of "strong farmers", with much more substantial land holdings, and concentrating on livestock and cash crops. The Famine provided the sort of opportunities to landlords (absentee and native Irish) that in Scotland is associated with the Highland clearances and in England with 18th century enclosures.
The traditional Irish nationalist narrative was to blame everything on the British, which is nice and easy (described to me once as MOPES - Most Oppressed People Ever Syndrome). I'm not saying that everything that the government did was brilliant, far from it, but you cannot expect people to act differently from their time. Much provision of aid was seen as a religious/charitable activity, not a government responsibility. There is no reason to believe, in all honesty, that any government in Ireland of that time would have been any better.
Think this thread gives me an excuse to relate the follow story, and ask, how would you have reacted in my shoes?
I should preface it by saying that I am of the age where the IRA campaigns had a huge effect on how I see the world. I was at Poly when those Birmingham bomb went off. And my sister who worked in the Lloyds Bank next door, left for home 5 minutes before the Harrods bomb went off.
In December 2004, I was sitting on the Heathrow Express at Paddington, reading my paper. The headline story was the meeting the previous day in Downing Street between Blair, Adams and McGuinness. It was a good news story of lasting peace. Just as the doors were closing, there was a commotion as a group rushed to board at the last moment. I looked up and was gobsmacked to see that this group was the one whose photos I was looking at in my Guardian. Adams, McGuinness and the entourage. They occupied the open space right in front of me.
Of course I am the type who tends to want to "participate in society". I felt like acknowledging them in some way. And then as I looked at them, two huge conflicts started in my head. Part of me was thinking "you are the F***ers who planned to blow up my sister". Part of me looked at the upbeat newspaper report, and thought to wish them a Happy Christmas, not least because they were taking care to be as nice as pie to all around them. That was the thing. Their utterly normal, even agreeable demeanour. People you might share a word with about the weather or the delays at Heathrow.
In the end I figured that if I could not work out what was appropriate to say, I'd probably be better to keep my trap shut. But I have never stopped thinking of that moment, whenever the IRA thing comes up again.
Should I have said something to them? If so, what? (within reason :-))
I'm sure lots of people would shake Tony Blair's hand if (unlikely) they met him on the tube. Also (70k guerilla squad) Dave.
Adams and McGuiness would have known relatives that could give 1st hand accounts of Easter Rising. 70's Army hit squads would have been sanctioned by seemingly squeaky clean politicians and subsequently covered up. All this only 120 years after we allowed the Irish population to be decimated by the potato blight. I don't condone murder of innocent civilians but we continue to RE-ELECT politicians who do just that.
The British interference in other countries affair's has continued for centuries and our arms manufacturers ensure this is still top of our political agenda.
This is a one off post as I am no expert on the above and don't want to debate semantics of my opinions, but the British occupation of Ireland, as with many other of our colonial conquests is one that I fell eternally ashamed.
Note: Born in Tasmania - aboriginal population - zero
In answer to your question? Bury your head in your paper.
For what it's worth, I'd be seriously tempted to warmly shake Tony Blair by the throat if I met him.
Re: first hand accounts of the Easter Rising, I won't say it would be impossible, but it would be very unlikely if either Adams or McGuinness had relatives involved (though, by the 1950s roughly 75% of the Irish population seemed to have been intimately involved).
Regarding hit squads and cover ups, all these things did happen, and the problem is, that, just as in today's "War on Terror", you cannot claim a moral high ground if you resort to the tactics of the men of violence (or subcontract your dirty work to them).
I'm a bit of a revisionist historically (because I think its' a good thing to be), and I am actually going to defend the British government during the Great Famine. Don't get me wrong, they did not cover themselves with glory but, the times were very different. All government was laissez faire to one degree or another, and there is no reason to assume that any other government would have done any better ("Irish" landlords showed no greater concern than anyone else). Certainly, Spanish, French, Dutch or Belgian administration would have been likely to be worse; and Irish politicians (with the exception of O'Connell) were hardly renowned, I am not sure a Dublin government would have been better.
As an aside, David Cameron is rapidly bringing us back to the days when we would rely on the charitable instincts of non-governmental groups, I'm not sure that we can expect the Choctaw Nation (who had experienced starvation in living memory in the late 1840s) to provide much relief any time soon though.
I always point people to the situation regarding the Ethiopian Famine and Band Aid. We may have had reports of crop failures and starvation in the news media, but it was only when the pictures were brought in to our living rooms that the tragedy registered. For people in Britain, unless they were to see homeless and starving Irish people in their towns and streets, in the mid-19th century, they would have had little notion of the degree of suffering.
I am anti-colonialism, and firmly believe that the colonial adventures have created far more problems for today than we could ever have believed possible.
Never come across that warped interpretation of the Irish Famine before. Is that what they teach in schools in Northern Ireland?
No, what I was taught, in UCD, was that the Great Famine was one of a series of famines that hit Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries.
What made the Great Famine unusual was its duration and the degree to which the poorest in Ireland were reliant on the potato to avoid starvation even in the good years. Few had any kind of financial reserves and, as their numbers increased in the years up to the 1840s, their position became even more precarious, with regular subdivision of lands.
In many ways, the potato was the cause of the Famine in more ways than one; it allowed the massive population growth from the mid 18th century by providing nutrition with the least use of space, however over reliance on the potato (Irish Lumper) both degraded the soil and allowed subsistence on uneconomic holdings.
If you look into the figures, it is clear that, by the 1840s, the population was unsustainable, unless there was to be massive redistribution of land and wealth. The impact of the potato blight was so severe because the poorest were already on the verge of calamity.
My view on any government action is based on the simple idea that the same classes of people, with much the same types of education and similar social and political outlooks would have been in power, no matter what their national identity may have been. Certainly, some of the British politicians were better than others (Peel v Russell) and not all in positions of power were sympathetic - but that's neither unique to one nation's leaders or one period of time, look at how we are reacting to Syrian refugees today; will future generations blame us for our response?
I'm sure lots of people would shake Tony Blair's hand if (unlikely) they met him on the tube. Also (70k guerilla squad) Dave.
Adams and McGuiness would have known relatives that could give 1st hand accounts of Easter Rising. 70's Army hit squads would have been sanctioned by seemingly squeaky clean politicians and subsequently covered up. All this only 120 years after we allowed the Irish population to be decimated by the potato blight. I don't condone murder of innocent civilians but we continue to RE-ELECT politicians who do just that.
The British interference in other countries affair's has continued for centuries and our arms manufacturers ensure this is still top of our political agenda.
This is a one off post as I am no expert on the above and don't want to debate semantics of my opinions, but the British occupation of Ireland, as with many other of our colonial conquests is one that I fell eternally ashamed.
Note: Born in Tasmania - aboriginal population - zero
In answer to your question? Bury your head in your paper.
For what it's worth, I'd be seriously tempted to warmly shake Tony Blair by the throat if I met him.
Re: first hand accounts of the Easter Rising, I won't say it would be impossible, but it would be very unlikely if either Adams or McGuinness had relatives involved (though, by the 1950s roughly 75% of the Irish population seemed to have been intimately involved).
Regarding hit squads and cover ups, all these things did happen, and the problem is, that, just as in today's "War on Terror", you cannot claim a moral high ground if you resort to the tactics of the men of violence (or subcontract your dirty work to them).
I'm a bit of a revisionist historically (because I think its' a good thing to be), and I am actually going to defend the British government during the Great Famine. Don't get me wrong, they did not cover themselves with glory but, the times were very different. All government was laissez faire to one degree or another, and there is no reason to assume that any other government would have done any better ("Irish" landlords showed no greater concern than anyone else). Certainly, Spanish, French, Dutch or Belgian administration would have been likely to be worse; and Irish politicians (with the exception of O'Connell) were hardly renowned, I am not sure a Dublin government would have been better.
As an aside, David Cameron is rapidly bringing us back to the days when we would rely on the charitable instincts of non-governmental groups, I'm not sure that we can expect the Cherokee Nation (who had experienced starvation in living memory in the late 1840s) to provide much relief any time soon though.
I always point people to the situation regarding the Ethiopian Famine and Band Aid. We may have had reports of crop failures and starvation in the news media, but it was only when the pictures were brought in to our living rooms that the tragedy registered. For people in Britain, unless they were to see homeless and starving Irish people in their towns and streets, in the mid-19th century, they would have had little notion of the degree of suffering.
I am anti-colonialism, and firmly believe that the colonial adventures have created far more problems for today than we could ever have believed possible.
I’ll keep out of the rest of the debate – but regarding your ‘revisionist’ history of the famine my understanding is that ‘officially’ at the time of the famine Ireland was regarded as part of the British state – nominally no different from Yorkshire, Cornwall, Kent or wherever - not a colonial possession (whatever the actual reality).
Yet the laissez faire British government of the time allowed up to 1 million of it’s own citizens to starve to death while around another 2 million emigrated (and I believe Ireland is the only western country whose overall population is now lower than it was some 175 years ago). And the laissez faire principal applied was that ‘poor relief’ had to come from the funds of the parishes where the destitute and starving lived. But as the starving tenant farmers whose potato crop had failed were unable to pay their rents to their landlords these local parish ‘poor relief’ funds were empty.
Except that there was also potato blight in Scotland, and people starved and were forced off the land.
Those that suffered the most in Ireland were cottiers living on tiny plots of land who survived almost totally by subsisting on the potato. They had very limited rights of tenure, and there was almost no chance that they could survive as dramatic a crop failure as occurred, but crop failure had happened before. Where rights were stronger (such as with the Ulster Custom), tenants were generally more prosperous and leased larger properties.
From 1802, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but there was still a Lord Lieutenant; it wasn't exactly the same as in England.
During the Famine there were efforts made by officials in the Dublin Castle administration to bring relief, with funding being found for the building of famine roads, etc.
In addition, some landlords and religious groups, like the Quakers, operated soup kitchens to provide for the starving. Others, equally, saw an opportunity to replace inefficient and numerous tenants with reduced numbers of "strong farmers", with much more substantial land holdings, and concentrating on livestock and cash crops. The Famine provided the sort of opportunities to landlords (absentee and native Irish) that in Scotland is associated with the Highland clearances and in England with 18th century enclosures.
The traditional Irish nationalist narrative was to blame everything on the British, which is nice and easy (described to me once as MOPES - Most Oppressed People Ever Syndrome). I'm not saying that everything that the government did was brilliant, far from it, but you cannot expect people to act differently from their time. Much provision of aid was seen as a religious/charitable activity, not a government responsibility. There is no reason to believe, in all honesty, that any government in Ireland of that time would have been any better.
It's not a simple British v Irish thing.
Well this is all getting heavy but I had to respond. Valid points - however... you would do well to understand that Irish historical revisionism is a narrative also - a counter narrative, but a narrative nonetheless that in its worst guises is a reactionary convenience for apologists of the then administration - e.g. 'you cannot expect people to act differently from their time' - whatever that means. The fact is that this was a human tragedy, with human causes and which should have had a comprehensive humane response. It didn't. Multitudes starved in a country that had the resources to ensure they did not. Of course the historical reality was complex and of course it's not a simple British v Irish thing and of course there are those who have attempted to make political capital out of it since but regardless men, women and children starved in ditches and many more were forced to abandon the country not just at the time but for generations after. We can argue over the complexities of it and dismiss the simplicities of interpretation. But in the end it happened and it should not have. Just like those bombs in Birmingham.
Think this thread gives me an excuse to relate the follow story, and ask, how would you have reacted in my shoes?
I should preface it by saying that I am of the age where the IRA campaigns had a huge effect on how I see the world. I was at Poly when those Birmingham bomb went off. And my sister who worked in the Lloyds Bank next door, left for home 5 minutes before the Harrods bomb went off.
In December 2004, I was sitting on the Heathrow Express at Paddington, reading my paper. The headline story was the meeting the previous day in Downing Street between Blair, Adams and McGuinness. It was a good news story of lasting peace. Just as the doors were closing, there was a commotion as a group rushed to board at the last moment. I looked up and was gobsmacked to see that this group was the one whose photos I was looking at in my Guardian. Adams, McGuinness and the entourage. They occupied the open space right in front of me.
Of course I am the type who tends to want to "participate in society". I felt like acknowledging them in some way. And then as I looked at them, two huge conflicts started in my head. Part of me was thinking "you are the F***ers who planned to blow up my sister". Part of me looked at the upbeat newspaper report, and thought to wish them a Happy Christmas, not least because they were taking care to be as nice as pie to all around them. That was the thing. Their utterly normal, even agreeable demeanour. People you might share a word with about the weather or the delays at Heathrow.
In the end I figured that if I could not work out what was appropriate to say, I'd probably be better to keep my trap shut. But I have never stopped thinking of that moment, whenever the IRA thing comes up again.
Should I have said something to them? If so, what? (within reason :-))
I'm sure lots of people would shake Tony Blair's hand if (unlikely) they met him on the tube. Also (70k guerilla squad) Dave.
Adams and McGuiness would have known relatives that could give 1st hand accounts of Easter Rising. 70's Army hit squads would have been sanctioned by seemingly squeaky clean politicians and subsequently covered up. All this only 120 years after we allowed the Irish population to be decimated by the potato blight. I don't condone murder of innocent civilians but we continue to RE-ELECT politicians who do just that.
The British interference in other countries affair's has continued for centuries and our arms manufacturers ensure this is still top of our political agenda.
This is a one off post as I am no expert on the above and don't want to debate semantics of my opinions, but the British occupation of Ireland, as with many other of our colonial conquests is one that I fell eternally ashamed.
Note: Born in Tasmania - aboriginal population - zero
In answer to your question? Bury your head in your paper.
For what it's worth, I'd be seriously tempted to warmly shake Tony Blair by the throat if I met him.
Re: first hand accounts of the Easter Rising, I won't say it would be impossible, but it would be very unlikely if either Adams or McGuinness had relatives involved (though, by the 1950s roughly 75% of the Irish population seemed to have been intimately involved).
Regarding hit squads and cover ups, all these things did happen, and the problem is, that, just as in today's "War on Terror", you cannot claim a moral high ground if you resort to the tactics of the men of violence (or subcontract your dirty work to them).
I'm a bit of a revisionist historically (because I think its' a good thing to be), and I am actually going to defend the British government during the Great Famine. Don't get me wrong, they did not cover themselves with glory but, the times were very different. All government was laissez faire to one degree or another, and there is no reason to assume that any other government would have done any better ("Irish" landlords showed no greater concern than anyone else). Certainly, Spanish, French, Dutch or Belgian administration would have been likely to be worse; and Irish politicians (with the exception of O'Connell) were hardly renowned, I am not sure a Dublin government would have been better.
As an aside, David Cameron is rapidly bringing us back to the days when we would rely on the charitable instincts of non-governmental groups, I'm not sure that we can expect the Choctaw Nation (who had experienced starvation in living memory in the late 1840s) to provide much relief any time soon though.
I always point people to the situation regarding the Ethiopian Famine and Band Aid. We may have had reports of crop failures and starvation in the news media, but it was only when the pictures were brought in to our living rooms that the tragedy registered. For people in Britain, unless they were to see homeless and starving Irish people in their towns and streets, in the mid-19th century, they would have had little notion of the degree of suffering.
I am anti-colonialism, and firmly believe that the colonial adventures have created far more problems for today than we could ever have believed possible.
Never come across that warped interpretation of the Irish Famine before. Is that what they teach in schools in Northern Ireland?
No, what I was taught, in UCD, was that the Great Famine was one of a series of famines that hit Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries.
What made the Great Famine unusual was its duration and the degree to which the poorest in Ireland were reliant on the potato to avoid starvation even in the good years. Few had any kind of financial reserves and, as their numbers increased in the years up to the 1840s, their position became even more precarious, with regular subdivision of lands.
In many ways, the potato was the cause of the Famine in more ways than one; it allowed the massive population growth from the mid 18th century by providing nutrition with the least use of space, however over reliance on the potato (Irish Lumper) both degraded the soil and allowed subsistence on uneconomic holdings.
If you look into the figures, it is clear that, by the 1840s, the population was unsustainable, unless there was to be massive redistribution of land and wealth. The impact of the potato blight was so severe because the poorest were already on the verge of calamity.
My view on any government action is based on the simple idea that the same classes of people, with much the same types of education and similar social and political outlooks would have been in power, no matter what their national identity may have been. Certainly, some of the British politicians were better than others (Peel v Russell) and not all in positions of power were sympathetic - but that's neither unique to one nation's leaders or one period of time, look at how we are reacting to Syrian refugees today; will future generations blame us for our response?
If you are going to use Syria as an analogy it is more correct to compare Assad's treatment of sections of Syria's population with the British government's treatment of sections of its population during the famine. Both governments have been and will be judged by future generations. No amount of 'revisionist' nonsense will ever change that.
Every other football forum is probably either getting excited about next season or new signings, or anticipating the Euros, and on Charlton Life people are debating the Irish Potato Famine.
Every other football forum is probably either getting excited about next season or new signings, or anticipating the Euros, and on Charlton Life people are debating the Irish Potato Famine.
This is what you have wrought Katrien.
Maybe we should just stick to trains during the summer months.
I would have said "you blew up my desk in the NatWest Tower.
Twice. "
The Baltic exchange bomb was a Friday night and I was in The Railway pub Liverpool Street and almighty bang and one or two windows broke.
The bishopsgste bomb was a Saturday and only found out about it as met some millwall work colleagues in pub before we gave them their usual three points that afternoon.
Blimey.
But do you think you would have actually said that to them in the same situation, when they were minding their own business having been over to take forward peace process? Just something I keep asking myself...
Despite what these scumbags did, unless you involve them fully in talks to try and resovle the issue, it will never be sorted.
Not much comfort for the families of those killed I admit but sometimes the means justify the end.
I met Paddy Hill once at a Miscarriage of Justice talk in about 2001. He came across as a normal bloke that had his life ripped away from him for two decades. He said the compensation paid was nothing compared to a life lost forever. He gave a moving account of the years spent locked up and on release all his family and friends had moved on and the world was so different. My uni mate who took me along was involved with peace talks at Stormont and his ex-girlfriend had been assassinated by the IRA as she was a prominent solicitor. He told me how she was shot on her way to meet him. Made me really think at the time how sheltered a life i've had living in the relative safety of England.
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Those that suffered the most in Ireland were cottiers living on tiny plots of land who survived almost totally by subsisting on the potato. They had very limited rights of tenure, and there was almost no chance that they could survive as dramatic a crop failure as occurred, but crop failure had happened before. Where rights were stronger (such as with the Ulster Custom), tenants were generally more prosperous and leased larger properties.
From 1802, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but there was still a Lord Lieutenant; it wasn't exactly the same as in England.
During the Famine there were efforts made by officials in the Dublin Castle administration to bring relief, with funding being found for the building of famine roads, etc.
In addition, some landlords and religious groups, like the Quakers, operated soup kitchens to provide for the starving. Others, equally, saw an opportunity to replace inefficient and numerous tenants with reduced numbers of "strong farmers", with much more substantial land holdings, and concentrating on livestock and cash crops. The Famine provided the sort of opportunities to landlords (absentee and native Irish) that in Scotland is associated with the Highland clearances and in England with 18th century enclosures.
The traditional Irish nationalist narrative was to blame everything on the British, which is nice and easy (described to me once as MOPES - Most Oppressed People Ever Syndrome). I'm not saying that everything that the government did was brilliant, far from it, but you cannot expect people to act differently from their time. Much provision of aid was seen as a religious/charitable activity, not a government responsibility. There is no reason to believe, in all honesty, that any government in Ireland of that time would have been any better.
It's not a simple British v Irish thing.
What made the Great Famine unusual was its duration and the degree to which the poorest in Ireland were reliant on the potato to avoid starvation even in the good years. Few had any kind of financial reserves and, as their numbers increased in the years up to the 1840s, their position became even more precarious, with regular subdivision of lands.
In many ways, the potato was the cause of the Famine in more ways than one; it allowed the massive population growth from the mid 18th century by providing nutrition with the least use of space, however over reliance on the potato (Irish Lumper) both degraded the soil and allowed subsistence on uneconomic holdings.
If you look into the figures, it is clear that, by the 1840s, the population was unsustainable, unless there was to be massive redistribution of land and wealth. The impact of the potato blight was so severe because the poorest were already on the verge of calamity.
My view on any government action is based on the simple idea that the same classes of people, with much the same types of education and similar social and political outlooks would have been in power, no matter what their national identity may have been. Certainly, some of the British politicians were better than others (Peel v Russell) and not all in positions of power were sympathetic - but that's neither unique to one nation's leaders or one period of time, look at how we are reacting to Syrian refugees today; will future generations blame us for our response?
This is what you have wrought Katrien.
Not much comfort for the families of those killed I admit but sometimes the means justify the end.