THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE IMPACT, IDEOLOGY AND REBELLION Christine Kinealy 2002 CONTENTS List of Tables ix Acknowledgements x 1 Remembering the Famine 1 A Forgotten Famine 2 A Dangerous Memory? 10 The Famine in Context 17 2 The Government’s Response to the Crisis 31 A Temporary Calamity 32 Relief Works 40 Irish Responsibility 43 Parliament and Opposition 47 Black ’49 52 The End of Famine? 58 3 Philanthropy and Private Donations 61 Landlords and Irish Relief 64 Relief Organizations in Ireland 66 Private Charity in Britain 70 Aid from Overseas 74 The Catholic Church 83 Famine Fatigue? 85 4 Food Supply and Trade 90 Corn and Repeal 93 Food Supply and Price Increases 96 Trade and Ideology 102 Exports from Ireland 110 vii viii Contents 5 Riot, Protest and Popular Agitation 117 Pre-Famine Agitation 118 Food Riots 123 The Breakdown in Relief 130 Crime and Punishment 135 Landlords 141 The Police and the Army 144 6 Religion and the Churches 149 The Churches and Relief 150 Proselytism 156 Politics and Religion 169 Priestly Jealousy and Popular Bigotry 177 7 Repeal, Relief and Rebellion 182 Politics and Famine 183 Land Agitation 187 Repeal and Relief 191 Repeal without O’Connell 192 Green against Orange 195 Green against Green: Young and Old Ireland 200 Epilogue 211 Notes 222 Select Bibliography 256 Index 260 TABLES 4.1 Spirits Charged with Duty for Home Consumption (in gallons) 98 4.2 Total Amounts of Irish-Grown Grain Exports, 1844–6 (in quarts) 105 4.3 Exports of Cattle and Livestock from Ireland to Great Britain in 1846 111 4.4 Grain Exports from Kilrush to Glasgow in 1847 (in pounds) 112 4.5 Grain and Foodstuffs Exported from Kilrush to Liverpool in 1847 and 1848 (in pounds) 112 4.6 Grain and Foodstuffs Exported from Ballina to Liverpool in 1847 and 1848 (in pounds) 114 4.7 Grain and Foodstuffs Exported from Tralee to Liverpool in 1848 (in pounds) 114 4.8 Oats Exported from Limerick in 1847 and 1848 (in pounds) 115 5.1 Gross Committals in Ireland 136 ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book was written with the assistance of many people. Firstly, I would like to thank the team of the British History in Perspective series, especially the general editor, Jeremy Black. My colleagues in the University of Central Lancashire for their support and encouragement, most par- ticularly Anne Brownlow, Susan Burnett, Rex Pope and Geoff Timmins. A special thanks is due to Professor John Walton for his comments and observations on earlier drafts of the text. David Sexton and Robert Langford have offered valuable perspectives and observations on various stages of the manuscript. I have spent many hours in a variety of libraries and archives and I would like to thank the staff for their help, especially the staff of the County Library in Wexford, the Public Record Office in London, Colin- dale Newspaper Depository, the National Archives of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College Library in Dublin, the Linen Hall Li- brary in Belfast, the Presbyterian Historical Society, the National Library of Ireland, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Public Library in New York, the National Archives in Washington, the Public Record Office of Belfast. I am grateful also to the Earl of Clarendon for permission to quote from his ancestor’s papers. Inspiration and insights have come from a number of people who themselves have done much to promote an understanding of the Famine – occasionally in fraught circumstances – they include John Leahy and David Valone of Quinnipiac University, Jack Worrall, James Mullin, George Harrison, Senator Tom Hayden, Deborah Peck, Charles Rice, Bill Rogers, Cormac Ó Gráda, Donal Kerr, Brendan Bradshaw, Pat Mac Gregor, Peter Collins, John Waters, Gerard Mac Atasney, Patrick O’Sul- livan, Terry Eagleton, Don Mullan, Joel Mockyr, Owen Rodgers, Finbar O’Doherty, Kevin MacNamara MP and Ambassador Ted Barrington. Tony Blair also – whatever his motivation – has made an important contri- bution to the memory and commemoration of the Famine. x Acknowledgements xi Thanks also are due to Honora and Ray Ormesher, Angela Farrell, Bernadette Barrington, Ray Gillespie, John Brandwood, Steve and Alison Henshall, Séan Sexton, Eileen Black, Peter Collins, Ivan Cooper, Francine Sagar, Peter Roebuck, and Seth and Deirdre Linder. My great- est debt, however, is to those who continue to share a home with me and tolerate my bizarre passion and life-style. 1 REMEMBERING THE FAMINE The Irish Government wholeheartedly shoulders its responsibilities in acknowledging the importance of the Famine, which so signally marked us as a people, which vastly expanded our diaspora, and in which modern Ireland itself was born.1 (Avril Doyle TD Chairperson of Famine Commemoration Committee in the Republic of Ireland, 1995) ‘The Famine was a defining event in the history of Ireland and of Britain. It has left deep scars. That one 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 as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive tragedy. We must not forget such a dreadful event’.2 (Tony Blair, PM of the United Kingdom, 1997) Belfast City Council is to erect a stained glass window in memory of those from the city who died in the Great Famine – despite a DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) attempt to block the move . Councillor Sammy Wilson said there was no evidence that the Famine played a major role in the history of Belfast and said the motion gave succour to anti-British, Sinn Féin propaganda’.3 (Irish News, Belfast, 4 February 1997) Few commemorative events have captured the public, private and political imagination as did the 150th anniversary of Ireland’s An Gorta 1 2 The Great Irish Famine Mhór, the Great Hunger or Famine.4 Significantly, Blair’s address pro- vided an open admission that the Great Famine was as much a part of Britain’s history as Ireland’s. The same point had frequently been made in Ireland. In 1995, the well-respected broadsheet, the Irish Times, had declared that ‘the Great Famine was the most culpable episode in the troubled rule of Britain and Ireland’.5 Yet, despite the general accept- ance of the awfulness and significance of the Famine, it was rarely taught in Irish schools or universities and little had been published on it. Instead, the dominant school of thought within Irish history, known generically as revisionism, had argued that the Famine was not a significant event in modern Irish history, but that it merely acted as a catalyst for changes which were occurring anyway.6 Moreover, the Famine was depicted as inevitable and it was suggested that the British government could have done little more than they did to save lives.7 This interpretation had dominated academic discourse since the 1930s, with varying degrees of intensity. One of its key purposes was to revise the traditional nationalist or popular interpretation of the Famine, whilst claiming that it had no political purpose of its own. Those who challenged it, however, were accused of having a covert agenda or being politically motivated.8 Clearly, the revisionist interpretation did not exist in an intellectual or political vacuum and its writings – especially by non-academics – were shaped (and constrained) by events within Ireland at the end of the twentieth century, notably, the ‘Troubles’. One consequence of revisionism was ‘to undermine the basis of Irish nationalism and leave Ireland without the heroes of historical memory . [and to] play down the British responsi- bility for the catastrophic aspects of the Irish experience’.9 Moreover, the revisionist domination meant that intellectual debate in Ireland was effectively constrained, and to take a counter-position was tantamount to declaring support for the national struggle.10 A Forgotten Famine? The reluctance of Irish historians to engage with the Great Hunger was particularly curious given that the Famine was a watershed in the devel- opment of modern Ireland. Moreover, the scale of population loss was remarkable; over one million people died and an even greater number emigrated during a six-year period, thus cutting the population by over 25 per cent. And even after good harvests returned to Ireland, the popu- Remembering the Famine 3 lation decline continued. Until the 1990s, however, the two standard books on the Famine were by Robin Dudley Edwards and Desmond Williams, The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History, which was academic- ally acclaimed but of uneven quality, and the academically panned but best-selling, The Great Hunger, by Cecil Woodham-Smith. The Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, commissioned the former in 1944 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Famine. Despite receiving a large subvention from the government, the publication did not finally appear until 1956 and was just over half the size of that which had been agreed. The chapters were uneven in quality and lacked coherence (some lacked footnotes, one set having been lost in a London taxi-cab by one of the editors). The final product was also a disappointment to de Valera, whilst Dudley Edwards admitted that the authors had not paid sufficient attention to it.11 The editors’ introduction (which had been ‘ghost’ writ- ten by a junior historian) captured the spirit of much revisionist writing by refusing to engage with some of the more unpleasant aspects of the disaster, such as mortality and the responsibility of the government. The introduction also criticized popular and folk interpretations for viewing ‘the failure of the British government in a sinister light’.12 Yet, in spite of its many shortcomings, the book sold well and received favourable reviews from fellow acadmics.13 In contrast, Cecil Woodham-Smith’s Great Hunger, published in 1962 and which provided a more comprehensive and meticulously researched view of the Famine by a non-academic, was derided by many Irish histo- rians; one of the examination questions asked of undergraduate history students in University College in Dublin in 1963 was ‘The Great Hunger is a great novel.