Black 47 Jan-Mar

1st Jan - 'A London Clergyman' in a letter to the Times makes the argument that people would rather donate charitably than pay for relief via taxes; "Government cannot give gratuitous relief, only wages for labour, and even then great care had to be exercised.... if the public purse were to opened without restriction for the relief of that distress, all private exertion would be relaxed, and the consumption of the already insufficient stock of food would go on at a rate which would lead to ever more disastrous results then these with which we are already threatened". "A channel must and will be immediately opened through which that charity may flow".
1st Jan - British Association (for the relief of extreme distress in the remote parishes of Ireland and Scotland) is formed by Stephen Spring Rice, Baron Lionel de Rothschild, Mr. Abel Smith, Mr. Thomas Baring (chairman), Mr. Pim of Dublin who was secretary to the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends and Mr. J. J. Cummins of Cork. Assistance was to be afforded by "the distribution of Food, Clothing and Fuel" but under no circumstances was money to be directly provided. Over £470,000 would be collected by the Association, one sixth of which given to provide relief in Scotland. Anglicised Polish nobleman Count Strzelecki is appointed agent for the Association in Donegal, Mayo and Sligo, the committee adjudging that it were wise not to appoint an Englishman. On arrival in Westport he wrote; "No pen can describe the distress by which I am surrounded ... you may now believe anything which you may hear and read because what I actually see surpasses what I ever read of past and present calamities" (Woodham-Smith: The Great Hunger: 165)
6th Jan - Colonel Jones to Trevelyan; several deaths due to starvation reported of men waiting for Presentment Sessions to renew as new projects waited approval
7th Jan - Revs Caufield and Townsend, two Church of Ireland ministers lead a deputation of the Skibbereen Relief Committee to garner subscriptions for relief but return empty-handed. They write in the Times the reasons they believed for their poor reception. There was a perception that; (1) there was abuse of former British munificence (2) Irish society not ameliorated by former kindnesses (3) the purchase of arms (4) no energy on Irish behalf to scramble out of the thicket themselves but instead tended to lean further on British goodwill (5) widely perceived that the money so far granted was given out of the English exchequer, a permanent drain on its resources without realising that these monies were all loans.
7th Jan - Rev. Mr. Begley (a Catholic clergyman) writing in the Times; He knew "men to be working two entire days upon the public works without a morsel of food ... Proceeding on their favourite principle of political economy, they have given the people some trifling employment, but, gracious mercy, what does it avail, when I tell you that the people employed on the roads are in absolute starvation - when they cannot, from their scanty earning, derive one substantial meal in the 24 hours"
8th Jan - Times editorial; "Mendicancy, in one form or another, pervades all the classes, institutions and customs of that country. A beggar peasantry, a beggar demagogue [O' Connell], and beggar landlords, vie with one another in the exercise of the national privilege. 'Give, give, give', more , more, more', is echoed from every quarter of the Irish compass .. in a perpetual chorus of importunity". "It is too true that the English prefer to bestow where they can direct its application. They wish to secure both benefit to the recipient, and something like gratitude to the giver. Money thrown into a ditch , even though that ditch were the hovel of an Irishman or the pocket of his landlord, is their abomination. "
Jan 9th Routh to Trevelyan; "The people cannot purchase at our prices to the extent they require" - to which Trevelyan responded; "If we make prices lower, I repeat, for the hundredth time, the whole country will be upon us". Relief policy at this time was to keep depot prices 5% dearer than the prevailing market price.
13 Jan - Inaugural meeting of the Irish Confederation. John Shea Lawlor, a Kerry landlord convenes with John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy appointed honorary secretaries, the latter soon replaced by Thomas Francis Meagher. 10,000 enrolled initially but according to Gavan Duffy; "the gentry only furnished a few stray volunteers, the bulk of the middle class stood apart, the Catholic clergy were unfriendly, and the people in their suffering and despair scarcely knew what was going on". (Kinealy: Repeal and Revolution: 93). Office in Dolier St. with one full-time paid secretary, weekly meetings like the Repealers renting the Music Hall in Dublin.
14 Jan - A meeting, headed by Daniel O' Connell is convened in the Rotunda by disillusioned Irish Repealers and landlords in an attempt to reverse the Whig's newly announced famine policy of making Irish relief a responsibility of Irish property. 30 MP's, 20 Peers and 600 other 'gentlemen' including Smith O' Brien despite disapproval from some quarters of Young Ireland. Demands of the 'Irish Party' included (1) suspension of the Navigation Laws - protective legislation that only allowed British registered ships to brings goods (including foodstuffs ) into the UK. (2) the removal of remaining duties on corn imports (3) a request for the navy to be used to bring food to Ireland (4) a plea to spend whatever was necessary to save Irish lives (5) a plea for a limited form of tenant right to give those evicted some compensation for improvements (6) a tax on absentee landlords. Most of the British press denounced the meeting as an attempt by Irish landlords to protect their own interests.
Kinealy repeats Gwynn's charge that at this stage the Repeal Association had virtually abandoned the nucleus of its policy and had instead under the influence of John O' Connell turned to providing 'jobs for the boys'. (Kinealy: Repeal and Revolution: 91).
16th Jan - Total employed on the Board of Works was 574,000, daily expenditure was £30,000, weekly cost was £172,000, with 11,587 staff employed by the Board of Works.
21 Jan -  The Famine Year, by Speranza appears in the Nation -
                                              VI

We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride,

But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died.

Now is your hour of pleasure—bask ye in the world’s caress;

But our whitening bones against ye will rise as witnesses,

From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffin’d masses,

For the Angel of the Trumpet will know them as he passes.

A ghastly, spectral army, before the great God we’ll stand,

And arraign ye as our murderers, the spoilers of our land.

Jan 22nd. Trevelyan to Routh; "However serious and painful it may be , it is indispensable that the prices at our depots should keep pace with the Cork prices .. else mercantile supplies should cease to be sent to at least one half of Ireland"

Feb 4th - Tory Lord George Bentinck proposes a Bill to spend £16 million building railways in Ireland. There were at the moment "500,000 able-bodied persons living upon the funds of the state, commanded by a staff of 11,587 persons, employed upon works that have variously been described as 'works worse than idleness' .. as 'public follies' and as works which will answer no other purpose that that of obstructing public conveyances". There were at the moment he argued only 123 miles of railway in Ireland; the loan of £16 million would be paid back over 37 years at 3.5% interest with the railways themselves as security.

 

18 March - Patrick O' Donoghue, young legal clerk proposes in the Council of the Confederation that Smith O' Brien "relinquish his present pursuit of vainly trying to awaken sympathy for Irish wrongs in a foreign legislature and resume his place as a leader of the loyal Irish millions." (Kinealy: Repeal and Revolution: 96). Only representative of Young Ireland in parliament at this point and while Duffy, Mitchel and Meagher wished to see him withdraw the bulk of the Confederation wished him to stay on in Westminster and continue to apply some kind of pressure.

 

Feb 10th Corn Law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Stafford

Sir (continued the hon. Gentleman) in this House, we are all rich men. More or less so, all at least assume that qualification. Members who have not got it will of course laugh at the notion of having it. [General laughter]. But, comparatively, we are all rich. We had a good breakfast this morning, and intend to have a good dinner this evening; and that, Sir, in the eyes of millions of our fellow countrymen, that is the distinction between rich and poor. For really, in the frightful contrasts which present themselves in the situation of those around us, to be able to get two good meals a day, is to be comparatively rich. (652)

But I protest against any change in these duties so sudden and so sweeping as is now proposed to us; and I feel disposed to concur with the noble Lord opposite (J. Russell) in thinking that if such a change were to be carried out so suddenly, it would have been far better that the duties in 1842 should have been lower, that the transition might have been more easy, and the shock less abrupt. I have been no inattentive student on this subject during the last four years, and I cannot concur with those who consider the present protection excessive. I may say, however, that there is one change 655 produced in my opinions on this subject. I began my consideration of it believing it a landlords' question. I did believe that the effect would be so great of a sudden and immediate repeal, that vast quantities of land would come into the market at once, and its value be greatly deteriorated. But, Sir, I greatly doubt if this can be called a "landlords' question;" or if so, it is certainly a question for small landed proprietors. It is not a question for the great landed proprietors—they who would be able to "weather the storm." It may be a question for the small landowner, who, on the faith of Parliament, even if in some sense indiscreetly, may have charged his estate to nearly its full value, and who may, therefore, find it difficult to meet a sudden and severe shock. But the more I consider this question, the more am I satisfied it is a tenant-farmers' question.

And, far from thinking that a reason for underrating its importance, it is on that very account I resolve to make my stand against the measure. Apply the precepts of your new philosophy to the tenant-farmer. Suppose prices fall in consequence—partly, perhaps, of an inundation of foreign corn—the tenant-farmer says to his landlord, "I hope, Sir, you will allow me a small abatement in my rent? I may not know so much about draining as Mr. Smith of Deanston; I may not have all the patent implements, nor show the fattest pig; but my family has held under yours for many a generation; we have weathered hard years together; I have worn your colours—and I should be sorry to go elsewhere." The landlord may reply, "My good fellow, I am very sorry for you. You have invested your capital in these drainings and these soils; but so have I mine. You have invested the money—as I have—on the faith of the Legislature. But we are told now by the Prime Minister that we are 'to buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest.' There is a gentleman from the manufactoring districts with more capital than you, ready to invest in your farm. I really must look to my own family arrangements. You talk of feudal times and days long gone by, but it is idle to conjure up old exploded notions—and as for 'colours,' God bless you, my good fellow, there is no 'true blue' now!" Yes! unless the landlord acts towards his tenant a better part and with kindlier feeling than you are now prepared to act towards the whole agricultural body, the tenant-farmer must leave his farm.

A short simple story, Sir, sometimes does better to illustrate an argument than more formal reasoning. Some months ago a farmer told me, "I have had a fortune left me." "Well, then," replied I, "you had better leave these 'cold clays'—take a better sort of land—settle down to it, and make your fortune double." "Sir," replied he, "there are the gravestones of four generations of my family in this parish. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather worked this farm—I will not go anywhere else. I will try what I can do at home. I will stick to the old farm till the plough breaks in the furrows." Sir, the heart of that man was worth volumes of political economy. And it is hundreds and thousands of men like him, without the same fortune indeed in their pockets—but with the same sort of heart in their bosoms—whom you are driving forth by your legislation with broken hearts and ruined fortunes; and I am sorry to be obliged to add, that when thus driven forth, their keenest associations, their bitterest recollections of ruined fortunes, blighted hopes, and broken hearts, will not be coupled with the name of Cobden!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sharman_Crawford

The Commissioners of Poor Inquiry in 659 1836 described the condition of the agricultural labourers as follows:— A great portion of them are insufficiently provided with the commonest necessaries of life. Their habitations are wretched hovels. Several of the family sleep together upon straw, or upon the bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes without so much to cover them. Their food commonly consists of dry potatoes; and even with these they are obliged often to stint themselves to one spare meal in the day. There are even instances of persons being driven by hunger to seek sustenance in wild herbs. Under such circumstances he would ask, could they say that the country was benefited by this principle of protection?

It was said, that if the Corn Laws were repealed, Ireland would lose the benefit of the English markets. What were those benefits? He admitted that there were vast quantities of provisions sent from Ireland to England, and that there were millions of English money paid for them; but did Ireland benefit by this circumstance? No. The export of provisions from Ireland, instead of being a test of her wealth or prosperity, was, on the contrary, a test of her abject wretchedness and misery. These provisions were not exports of her superfluities, but exports of the very means of her existence, which the people required for themselves to support existence, and to lead a comfortable life. The Irish people were suffering, therefore, beyond any person's belief. The exports were even recently going out of the country as largely as at any former period. Was not this a proof that the protective system did not show any prosperity in that country, but absolute wretchedness, in the abstraction 660 of these provisions from the actual wants of the people? The means of supporting life were thus taken from them. If they considered the number of acres there were in Ireland, and the amount of population that was to be fed, the quantity of land was much less in proportion to the number of people there was in England, and yet the land of England was found insufficient to support them. Why then should there be such exports of these provisions from Ireland, when the people were supposed to exist almost wholly by the labour connected with agriculture? The fact, however, was, that the people there were not generally employed, and had not the means of procuring food for themselves, although they assisted in producing plenty for exportation to this country.

One of the greatest misfortunes of Ireland was the obligation they lay under to subsist upon the potato — the lowest article of food. Immense evils had followed from this circumstance; but how were they to alter this state of things? Why by no other means than that of so cheapening corn that the people would then be able to substitute it for the other. They would not then be subject to such dreadful periodical famines as had been witnessed by the failure of the potato crop of late years.

He had only that day received a communication from that part of the country with which he was connected by property, conveying the dreadful information that there was not now one potato left, and the people were consequently obliged to recur to oatmeal and other means of supporting life. He should feel it his bounden duty to give his cordial support to the proposition of the right hon. Baronet opposite.  

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baillie_(c._1737-1793)

H.J. Baillie (son possibly)

    It seemed to be now generally assumed as an axiom, that free trade must, under any circumstances, prove beneficial to a nation: undoubtedly we had never been able to convince foreign nations of this truth, or to induce them to adopt the proposition. Foreign nations are well aware that Eng- 662 land possesses peculiar advantages for the production of manufactures. They know that we possess in a greater abundance than any other country the two great elements of manufactures, viz., coal and iron; that the country abounds in fine harbours, rivers, canals, and railroads, by which the raw produce is brought to the doors of our manufacturers; that, possessed of those advantages, together with great mechanical skill, we are enabled to produce our goods at a cheaper rate than they can be produced in any other country. It is for this reason that they have erected barriers in every country of Europe against the introduction of our manufactures, in the shape of protective duties; and it is well known that, fostered and encouraged by these protecting duties, the cotton manufactures of France and Germany have risen into great importance, and have become the source of great wealth and prosperity to those countries. But, could any one doubt, if these protecting duties were withdrawn, that France and Germany would soon be inundated with British goods, and that their own manufactures would be undersold and supplanted in their own markets? If any one doubted that, let him only refer to the history of the the cotton manufactures of India. When first we arrived in that country, we found the population of that vast empire, consisting of not less than 160,000,000 of inhabitants, wholly and entirely clothed in their own beautiful domestic manufactures: by the great cheapness of our own, we had succeeded in supplanting and destroying them. Hundreds of thousands of people were, by these means, thrown out of employment, and reduced to misery and starvation. They had no one to fight their battle. They perished by famine and disease; the great and flourishing cities, the seats of these manufactures, had become desolate and depopulated. The most ruthless conqueror of India had not inflicted greater misery, or caused a greater destruction of human life, than we had done by the introduction of our cotton manufactures into that country. These are notorious facts. We may boast of having established an enlightened Government in India, a Government which gives protection to life and property, which encourages education, and seeks to elevate the condition of the people, but we cannot deny that from the date of our rule in India must also date the decline of the internal prosperity and material wealth amongst the mass of 663 the people; gradually their condition deteriorated, as gradually we succeeded in destroying their domestic manufactures. Such had been the result of free trade to India. Can we be surprised that foreign Governments hesitate to allow their people to be submitted to chances of a similar fate? Having failed, therefore, in our endeavours to induce foreign nations to adopt the principles of free trade, the question is, shall we try the experiment upon our own people?

Can we be surprised that foreign Governments hesitate to allow their people to be submitted to chances of a similar fate? Having failed, therefore, in our endeavours to induce foreign nations to adopt the principles of free trade, the question is, shall we try the experiment upon our own people? We have only to refer to the occurrences of the last few years, in order to be convinced of the intimate connexion and relation which exists between our agriculture and our commerce, and how much the success and prosperity of the one depends upon that of the other. Indeed, we need go no further back than to the year 1841. We all remember what was the state and condition of the country at that period; the trade and commerce of the country were stagnant, the manufacturing interest in the deepest state of depression; thousands of our operatives were out of employment, subsisting upon public charity; and the revenue had fallen far below the expenditure of the country. To what was this state of things attributed? for, be it remembered, three years previously we were in a state of great prosperity. This disastrous state of things was attributed to four notoriously bad and deficient harvests in the four preceding years. In like manner, when we look at the prosperous state of the country at the present moment, when we know that every branch of our national industry is flourishing, that our operatives are in full employment upon good and sufficient wages, that our manufacturers have been making greater profits during the last two years than at any former period upon record; to what is this altered state of things to be attributed, unless to the three fine and abundant harvests of the years 1842, 1843, and 1844? But, if this were true, how clearly does it demonstrate to us the vast importance of our agriculture—how clearly does it point out to us that we should devote our attention to promote its prosperity and success! Well, the question is, then, which is the best way to promote the prosperity and success of agriculture?—whether by giving a moderate protection to the produce of our own country, or by leaving it to free and unrestricted competition with those foreign countries who possess as great and superior advantages over us for the production of wheat as we possess over them for the production of 664 manufactures? It is not my intention upon the present occasion to enter into the discussion as to whether there are or not peculiar burdens upon land in this country which are not equally shared by all the other great branches of our national industry. I certainly believe that there are; but I will not enter into that discussion at present, because I think I shall be able to show that the agriculturists of this country labour under a much greater disadvantage in their competition with foreigners, than any that can be attributed to peculiar or exclusive burdens upon the land—to a disadvantage which certainly has never been sufficiently appreciated in these discussions, and one which no labour, or science, or skill on their part can ever enable them to surmount—I mean the disadvantage of the inferiority of the climate of this country, as compared with that of most foreign countries, for the production of the finest descriptions of grain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Lefroy_(Irish_politician)

after referring to the advocacy of the measure by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. S. Crawford), on the ground of the benefit it would confer upon Ireland, said, he was anxious to ask that hon. Gentleman in what way the support of such a measure would improve the condition of the lower orders in that country, or raise the circumstances of the Irish landlords? For his own part, though he was grateful to the Government for some measures which they had adopted in reference to that country, yet he could not give them his support in reference to the measure before the House.

he did still feel that it was utterly impossible for him to vote in support of the proposal of the Government. It was time, indeed, for every man to put to himself the question—was it for the advantage of this country 668 that the Corn Laws should be repealed? All those evils and dangerous consequences which his hon. Friend had argued would attend this measure in reference to this country, would of necessity fall with greater force upon Ireland. What would naturally be the consequence of such a measure? If the exports of Ireland, which were very great, were to be diminished, must not the landlords of that country be seriously affetced? Could rents be paid? And must not the agriculturists of Ireland turn those lands, which now gave employment to the people, into pasture lands, which would not afford the same extent of employment? And suppose that the results which were anticipated from this measure, by those who brought it forward, should fail of being realized, that those lands should be turned into grass, and the people deprived of employment, would not Ireland, let him ask the House, become, under such terrible circumstances, a land of trouble, sorrow, and destitution, beyond all that was ever heard or conceived?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Clements,_3rd_Earl_of_Leitrim

For the last six years he had earnestly endeavoured to improve the agriculture of his neighbourhood, and he had made himself intimately acquainted with the wants and condition of the farmers and the labouring classes of the county he had the honour to represent. (lying cunt)
He believed it would be found from every inquiry into the state of Ireland, that nothing could be more melancholy, nothing more destitute or deplorable, than the condition of the labouring population. Their state was such that it was impossible for any one to imagine it, unless he had been an eye-witness of it, and cognizant himself of that misery and total destitution. That destitution had lately been most fully and usefully laid before the public by the enterprise of a leading publication in this country. The gentleman intrusted with the inquiry had depicted in strong and forcible language the total destitution of the poor in certain localities; and he (Lord Clements) was prepared to admit, that in no one single syllable written by the Commissioner employed by that publication had he in the slightest degree overstated the case. He believed, indeed, that if it were possible for language to draw the picture more forcibly, it might have been done without in the least deviating from the truth. He would turn to the evidence taken before Lord Devon's Commission, which appeared to him particularly relative to the present case. It

The noble Lord, in conclusion, stated that he would give his support, with great pleasure, to the measure of the right hon. Baronet, and with still greater pleasure, if the suggestion of the noble Lord the Member for the city of London induced the right hon. 676 Baronet to propose an immediate, in place of a gradual, repeal of the Corn Laws.

Sunningdale for Slow Learners? - the Early 70's Revisited

Ex-IRA commander Martin McGuiness to meet Queen Elizabeth II - CBS News

The Queen shakes hands with former IRA commander Martin McGuinness in historic first meeting behind closed doors | Daily Mail Online

Or conversely why is a former IRA commander allowing himself to be played host to by the Queen of England who still claims sovereignty over the six counties of Northern Ireland? Many grass-roots Republicans still instinctively gag at the prospect though they've no option now but to bite the bullet and get on with the business of power sharing.

They say the Good Friday Agreement is Sunningdale for slow-learners and there's a lot of merit to that although it's also misleading in some respects. This was only two years after the Arms Crisis (which demonstrated the willingness of senior Fianna Fáil ministers to assist in an armed struggle), Bloody Sunday (which demonstrated the willingness of British soldiers to fire at unarmed protestors), prior to Cruise's Broadcasting Ban (an index of the tolerance yet extended down south to both Sinn Féins and their military counterparts; the "Provisionals" and "Old " IRA as exemplified by the fiercely pro-Nationalist Irish Press) and in the midst of Paisley's daily blasts of incomparable bigotry (which typified the unwillingness of a hard-core element within Ulster Unionism to tolerate any form of compromise; the DUP didn't even sign up for the GFA originally despite international mediation and an otherwise cross-party consensus) - the world of the early 70's in other words (in which McGuinness was "active") is light years removed from the world we inhabit now.

And of course, once the island was partitioned, the Protestant dominated polity never (predictably) became representative of "democracy and order" unless you revere that type of order that gerrymanders constituencies and practices widespread discrimination against its Catholic minority. Séamus Mallon, when a young community activist, was once asked to make representations on behalf of a neighbour to a Unionist councillor to secure social housing only to be told; "no Catholic pig and his litter will ever get a house in ... as long as I'm alive". And you wonder why people take up the gun?

Not everyone has the mammoth reserves of patience and good-will evinced by the cross-community bridge-builders like the SDLP or Alliance .. an optimism which has seen them both in the end abandoned at the ballot box as the "extremists" (DUP and Sinn Féin) now monopolise the Executive ministries. You can see how much 'reason' came to play a role in the North by a brief perusal of the history of the Foyle constituency where a presumed associate of the Brighton bombers consistently tops the poll whereas a commentator as lucid as Éamonn McCann can only manage a fifth of votes.

Adams and McGuinness had sufficient gravity within the Republican movement to end the abstentionist policy, splitting (amicably enough given the circumstances) with O' Brádaigh's "purists" who stubbornly held onto second Dáil principles. Therein the seeds of an eventual political settlement were ultimately sown (as post-split Republican Sinn Féin withered in the wilderness) despite vociferous opposition down south to the Hume initiative from the revisionist Indo stable typified by Cruise O' Brien and (later) the incessant demands for decommissioning by Trimble's UUP.

The Hume-Adams agreement eventually won the support of the British and Irish governments and belatedly pulled into it's inexorable orbit the steadfast "Ulster says NO" merchants - the Paisleyite DUP. With that, and on foot of the GFA the Republic changed it's constitution and no longer makes territorial claims to the North (no party down south could get an electorate to agree to this without substantial guarantees for the North); the unification, if and when it does happen being subject to the consent of the majority within the six counties - peace and a workable power-sharing executive has been achieved with McGuinness and Paisley (formerly polar opposites in ideology) now being christened the 'chuckle brothers' such is the new found bonhomie between them.

I don't know what part of McGuinness' C.V. a quarter of a million voters in the Republic (13.7%) were more impressed by when they give him their first preference in the Presidential elections but I suspect the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA cessation/decommissioning, the cross-border institutions now in place and above all the comparative "peace" we all enjoy today were high up there in their calculations - he has no shortage of detractors, that's inevitable and understandable given what the whole island has been through but taking everything into context he got my No. 2 vote behind Michael D.

It wasn't exactly the strongest line-up of candidates either but I make no apologies for giving him my No.2. I thought he was handled disgracefully by large sections of the media down here but it was no worse than I've come to expect - ahistorical, de-contextualised sanctimonious bilge is unfortunately the by-product of two generations of revisionist whitewashing down here.

The way liberal, middle class Ireland turns up its nose and spouts pieties at all things Republican while year after year voting in so many parish-pumping & developer buddy crooks, particularly for a Fianna Fáil party whose policies & "leadership" wound up creating a multi-generational 'black hole' debt crisis which still leaves me rubbing my eyes in disbelief. The violence and waste of life in the end sickened me as much as the next man .. and I certainly do not hold out any sort of unconditional respect for McGuinness.

It's perfectly obvious to me he is a flawed individual who has shown on occasion a very suspect grasp of history but Sinn Féin are at present the only All-Ireland party the country has and despite the paucity of real talent in their ranks (with the exception mainly of Pearse Doherty & Mary Lou McDonald who are excellent Dáil performers) I think their rejuvenation down south is well overdue and needs to be encouraged.

Here's a question -

Was it "right" to take up arms against the Unionist statelet given the conditions that prevailed after the introduction of internment?

Here's a related question -

If it wasn't "right" was it at least understandable why so many did so?

Another question -

Were those who chose to take up arms supported in their aims by their own community & how widespread was this support?

And more -

Were the "gunmen" exploiting their own communities or were they in fact more or less the embodiment of its will?

Clearly, we could go on for a very long time teasing out answers to these questions, which would never be mutually conclusive, as the points of divergence would multiply forthwith immediately (cultural conditioning) - but this is the central issue when assessing a 'verdict' on a figure as proximate to all these events as McGuinness - at every step of the way you confront automatically questions which probe to the core your basic opinions on nationhood, state legitimacy, colonialism, sectarianism, the morality of the use of violence to achieve political ends etc. etc.... the lives of some figures somehow seem to encapsulate all the core anxieties of a people at a given time and Mr. McGuinness is certainly one of them.

The struggle over representation creates the world afresh every day .. is it any wonder we're all so engaged in the past?!

The war got bogged down in a senseless quagmire of increasingly destructive reprisal killings leading nowhere and having no palpable end-point other than entrenching the alienation of both communities.
Unionists had the majority where it mattered, in the executive branches of government and they used that dominance to maintain a stranglehold over local authorities - this has been so completely documented and acknowledged by all quarters (to the point of saturation) its scarcely worth refuting.

How many Protestants marched for Civil Rights in 68-69 and how many of them signed up to support the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association? Very few. It doesn't imply some of them didn't have a hard time of it, as many working class Protestants who may have wished to better their conditions of living didn't march for rights, as essentially they wished to be seen supportive of the State and not bring its sectarian mechanisms into the spotlight. Forging a cross-community working class consensus was one of the aims of the NICRA committee in the early days but Protestant leaders influenced by their politicians and lodge mandarins almost uniformly rejected their calls for participation.

The allocation of housing was not merely about grievances over cramped living conditions it was also a means of lowering the proportion of Catholics who had the vote as only rate-payers were entitled to exercise the franchise. A war of figures won't be won over this one; it was a 'Protestant run state for a Protestant people' and self-confessedly so, with the minimum amount of social housing and concessions being allocated as were consistent with law and decency (as in the case of Bernadette Devlin's family) and in many instances, not even that.

"Look after your own" is a fine evasive philosophy to adopt when Unionists enjoyed a monopoly of executive power, the bulk of local government, and the commanding heights of industry - a Catholic back then was twice as likely to be unemployed as a Protestant, principally because many employees specifically told their managers not to employ them. How was all this a formula for equity and justice? It wasn't, and when they marched to claim the rights denied them they were beaten into submission by Paisleyite thugs and a partisan police force. It's ridiculous that the RUC weren't told to pull out before the Bogside escalated into the battle it became - an entire section of the citizenry utterly alienated from its forces of "law and order" before the world's press and to the shame of all Northern Ireland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfVhVevY8J4

Seamus Mallon talks about the refusal to be granted housing (for a client) in the above documentary. He's been interviewed by John Bowman in retirement and with the opportunity to give us his considered thoughts on over forty years in politics. I think its fair to say he's well noted for his integrity by all sides of the political divide and I personally find it inconceivable he'd simply "make up" a story like that - you need only look at his expression after he said it to see how much it still galls him.

The exact words of George Woods (the local district Unionist Councillor), who was apparently a notorious bigot, were; "No Catholic pig and his litter will ever get a house in Market Hill as long as I'm alive". Paisley, as is well known, used phrases like this (and worse) to describe Catholics on a regular basis, its his trademark rant as it were, - actually, in this very documentary he's on a podium in front of the usual massive crowd, telling Catholics they should "get back to their piggeries"!!

I recall an interview with an IRA activist who was asked why after all his years spouting hatred and monopolising the narrow ground Paisley wasn't targeted by them for assassination and he simply said; "he shows them up for what they are .. he only says what all the rest of them are thinking about". I don't believe that for a second, it's simply the distortion of reality from the prism of one extremist through that of another and I'd say the majority of Protestants were appalled by his diatribes in the early days. But once the Troubles kicked off (of which he played a major role himself in starting) he suddenly becomes transmogrified into "a man raised by God in Ulster's hour of need".

It's extremely difficult to find a commentator (let alone an actor) in this whole tragic farce who can claim they've clambered the highest mountain top to unleash thunder bolts of enlightened "reason". The mere act of commenting with however marginal a bias is enough to send heckles flying in some quarters; hence "whatever you say, say nothing". And this applies no matter what angle you approach the difficulty from .... the story of the Peace Movement is typical (Williams, Corrigan, McKeown), it petered out after the Hunger Strikes but made an impact for a few years and has been credited by some with significantly lowering the death toll from 1976 onwards.

It essentially called for an end to "violence" from all sides but republicans (for one) initially inferred a two-fold bias as in (a) sectarian killings from UDA/UVF loyalist gangs were often described as 'apparently motiveless murders' in the media at the time while the call to end "bombings" seemed to point the finger unduly at the Provos and, more obviously (b) the mere act of asking for a cessation was weighted heavily in favour of the post-Sunningdale "direct rule" status quo.

In the working class Catholic Turf Lodge the "Peace People" had to be rescued by on the spot Provos from an irate community gathering who were ready to tear them to pieces after they arrived to "investigate" the death of a local boy from a British soldier's rubber bullet. Sitting on the sidelines and merely calling for peace in this context well .. your talking about a community in siege mentality with the Provos their last line of defence. It's probably indicative that the (Protestant) Shankill peace march passed by without any major flare-ups whereas in the (Catholic) Falls they were hurdled out of it with sticks, stones, bottles and all the rest of it.

Certainly, vis-à-vis halting the downslide into collective mayhem there were always doubters on both sides and there's no shortage of evidence of attempts to call a check to proceedings at every stage but you feel there was just such an elemental fury let loose (beginning with Burntollet maybe) that it just took that long (twenty years plus) to expend itself. The politics of the day (mid-60's) was certainly geared towards the possibility of a grass-roots cross-community non-sectarian approach concentrating on Protestant and Catholic working class synergies; in fact, this was the basis of the re-organised post Border Campaign IRA's strategy who practically downed tools en masse (i.e de-militarised) under Goulding's influence (circa 1962) to allow a thoroughgoing campaign to "politicise the masses" within a Marxist-Leninist framework; education workshops, trade union infiltration etc. were now the preferred tactic while emphasising Tone's vision of a non-sectarian republic embracing "Protestant, Dissenter and Catholic"- (NICRA had possibly a quarter of IRA "campaigners" in their ranks) - yet there was no inkling seemingly of the level of resistance that would be met by entrenched Paisleyite Unionism to protect Protestant hegemony where even O' Neill's mild reforms were bellowed down with the UDA/UVF taking it's cue readily enough.

This was arguably the central plank of Bernadette Devlin's early political philosophy; to affect a cross-community working class consensus while yet advancing civil rights & de-emphasising the national question lest it alienate potential Protestant support; the very fact that this strategy was contemplated by so many in the early days gives you some idea of how transformed & polarised the landscape became within a few short months.

While British soldiers were initially welcomed in working class Catholic communities; anything to protect them from the oppressive state forces & loyalist pogroms which were creating one of the country's worst ever refugee crises - this enthusiasm dissipated rapidly amid house-searches, heavy-handedness, patrols, check-points, searches and the constant (well-founded) suspicion of partisanship. Once the IRA started targeting soldiers you can't really blame them given that many UDA/UVF were ex-servicemen who only had "Catholics" in their sights and thus didn't represent an immediate "existential" threat. The level and extent of collusion with loyalist gangs is of course still widely debated but that it was there no-one really disputes.

I'm not a compulsive "North-Watcher"; the fact of the matter is that the mere contemplation of the place, especially during this period, tends to drain me emotionally. God knows what it must have been like to actually serve full-time up there. Kevin Myers, whom I normally roundly disagree with on just about everything concerning the national question, did at least, put all the instability in a nutshell when entitling his account of his journalist days there Watching the Door; the idea being that when out taking a refresher in the local you sat with your back to the wall and your eyes pasted on the front door. What a way to live!

I don't recall Ciaran McKeown in his account of the Peace Movement mentioning Devlin's participation at any stage; it seems instinctively to me something she may not have wished to associate herself with at the time given it's explicit repudiation of militant republicanism. Price of My Soul, her only full-blooded account of the Troubles, only takes us up to the Battle of the Bogside, from which point she seems to have participated at some level with the Officials via her engagement with McAliskey, a 'sticky' activist. She was certainly associated with the IRSP after Costello's split from Goulding's group (on account of the Officials ceasefire) later giving the oration at INLA man, Dominic McGlinchey's funeral.

She's certainly a central figure throughout in my view (even more so during the Hunger Strikes when her oratory virtually guaranteed Bobby Sands election); you need only listen to her to know the depth of feeling involved, besides which certain passages of her analysis in Price of.. are astonishingly lucid, some of the best writing in fact on the North are in that tome. The 'guest' involvement with the Marxist-orientated IRSP is perfectly consistent with the politics she had outlined there and it's interesting to reflect too that by aligning herself with the Dublin based Officials she was perhaps self-consciously distancing herself from the Provos who after all, had definitively dropped even discussion of ending abstention and were moreover never committed to the Goulding group's policy of active involvement in politicisation. The Officials on account of this early decision to stick with the 1962 reformed plan of action & their own early ceasefire meant they retained in their ranks a lot of "sobre heads" I should say, many of whom went on to play a key role in the politics of the ROI.

Senator Eoghan Harris, a Sunday Independent contributor for instance was a Marxist ideologue in those days steering the Official's 'think-tank' on industry and commerce up until at least 1976. He now writes columns regularly denouncing Sinn Féin and has even joined the Cruise O' Brien bandwagon on 1916 revisionism, morphing into a fully-fledged HR Redmondite in the process. Tony Gregory, the great Dublin Inner City TD, who did Trojan work for two decades for this disadvantaged area, joined the IRA in 1969, stuck with the Officials during the Provo-split and again when Costello branched off to form the INLA (circa 1975). He had great respect for Costello seemingly on account of seeing the work he did for Bray constituency but the savage reprisal war with shortly broke out between both factions finally flipped him into "regular" politics - he said he used to sleep with an axe under his bed at this time. Proinsias De Rossa (MEP), Liz McManus TD, Pat Rabbitte (current Coalition Minister) and even Eamonn Gilmore (our current Tánaiste) all sprang either from the Officials themselves or the Democratic Left party which largely superceded them - all of which I'm mentioning merely to illustrate that in the time that was in it (early 70's) there were a lot of "quality" people ether engaged directly with the IRA or hovering around the margins.

The very fact that Jack Lynch (FF Taoiseach) allowed both Sinn Féin offices to function down South for so long was an index of the general public's attitudes (tolerance) of "the armed republican equation" in Irish life. It was only when the Labour/Fine Gael coalition of 1973 was formed that a general tightening of attitudes was contemplated largely through the tireless objections of Cruise O' Brien who as Communications Minister eventually succeeded in introducing the Broadcast ban (not without fierce objections from the media, RTE included). So, that's by way of illustrating I guess the general ambiguities in attitude in the early days towards militant republicanism down South - it was only as the bombing campaign by the Provos seemed to increase in intensity and civilian casualties mounted up as we moved into 1974-75 that attitudes began to harden, though this, as mentioned above, was almost as much concerned with the change of government.

Sir Alfred Cope and the Bureau of Military History

Last month, Trinity College Dublin wrapped up its hugely successful massive open online course (MOOC) entitled "Irish Lives in War and Revolution". It attracted over 16,000 participants from around the globe to discuss various aspects of the Irish revolutionary period with a principle focus on "ordinary lives" as its organisational key theme. As a final piece of solicited commentary contributors were asked to reflect on the above statement of Sir Alfred Cope, the British Under-Secretary to Ireland in 1921 and central figure concerned in the peace talks which led to a Sinn Féin/Volunteer cessation, outlining his reasons for not participating in the Bureau's 'fact-finding' project.

http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.i...469.pdf#page=1

The retrospective accrediting that I then witnessed in the course comments of Cope's "quasi-visionary" desires for reconciliation between the two countries was misplaced insofar as they assumed he was some kind of "progressive", when in actual fact he appears far more to be a sentimentalist old fossil yearning for the return of Empire's halcyon days. You can't re-write Irish history, as is often the wont of Trinity researchers, and turn it into a benevolence parade of British magnanimity when all the facts, personal narratives and rancour of the day suggest otherwise. His reluctance to contribute to the BMH is simply borne of his refusal to give any credence whatever to the Free State or its mode of formation; an avuncular imperialist who can't wrap his head around a nation's wish for self-determination.

That Ireland "has too many histories" is a nonsensical cop-out and wasn't in any case Cope's primary reason for not contributing to the BMH. He didn't give future historians the benefit of a personal memoir as he regarded the whole period as "the most discreditable in Ireland's history" - he simply sounds like a disgruntled imperialist aghast at the Empire crumbling all about him and probably viewed Irish "treason" as the first step in that process. It reeks of sour grapes and a snubbed, sanctimonious British paternalism.

As to the differing/contradictory accounts required, all of them should be weighed and assessed according to their merits. The more narratives we have (from all sides) the likelier we are to come to an approximation at least of "the truth" (big exhale) or, at the very minimum, a small localised variant of it. To say that professional historians or 'disinterested' intelligent researchers are incapable of reaching sound judgement, or at least one (all things considered) that takes the debate on to a higher level, because "given enough facts" we can all support our opinions, is likewise, non-sensically defeatist and tantamount to epistemological nihilism. These were all 'time-capsuled' commentaries, written with the express understanding that none of it would be released into the public domain until all participants were long dead and buried - nothing was going to be "stirred up", unless he had the suspicion/conviction (like perhaps Ed Moloney didn't) that "leakages" would inevitably occur.

http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.i...228.pdf#page=5

I am inclined to interpret General MacEoin's report of their conversation as simply Cope's attempt to cover his ass from the accusation that he exaggerated the abilities of the IRA to defend its own patch and continue the war indefinitely - a question merely of imputed lack of competence. Cope isn't interested in the Boundary Commission and he's even less interested in the on-going Civil War, what does concern him is the current British election (1923) & that the intelligence he related to Lloyd George earlier in 1921 (along with Sturgis) at the time when the British Cabinet were considering making approaches to de Valera on a truce, can be taken as a faithful depiction of the abilities of the IRA to continue prosecuting the war.

As we know Lloyd George & the Cabinet were much impressed by Cope & co's assessment of the fruitlessness of the British side continuing the aggression and from that point on they were making arrangements to orchestrate a negotiated peace. I don't see any necessary linkage with his refusal to participate in the BMH archival project which was thirty years later and light years removed from the electioneering and reputational concerns which Cope had at the time he was helping MacEoin press paws in Westminster. The flak Lloyd George was receiving on his handling of the "Irish situation" was naturally reflecting on himself as one of the prime instigators of policy so his concern is simply to ensure MacEoin played according to the script and didn't bury him in fresh scandal. What does it reveal about him in his refusal to submit a statement 30yrs later? Not a whole lot; merely to show like all political animals he had a well-honed survival instinct. What else can possibly be read into MacEoin's statement?

I don't know how long precisely he hung around on the Liberal's coat-tails but they were a minority partner in a ten month coalition with Ramsay McDonald's Labour after that 1923 election he was so anxious MacEoin wouldn't spoil, after which the Liberals famously disintegrated following Stanley Baldwin's five year tenure as Conservative PM, in which time Cope disengaged from politics and took up his anthracite concerns. Séan MacEoin seems impressed by Cope's 'positive attitude' towards the Irish in general yet he doesn't seem willing to relate that good will to the needs of a Liberal electioneering machine which needs to depict the Anglo-Irish Treaty as a fait accompli, and the best deal available carved out by Lloyd George given (as Cope then wishes to convey) the widespread discontent in Ireland with British rule. It's pre-election negative fallout from the Tory-Unionist press Cope is here anxious to avoid and as such his opinions as related to MacEoin in this instance cannot be taken to be fundamentally representative of his attitude as a whole.

As an example of the type of stuff Cope was alleged to be wrapped up in while in Ireland consider the following submission in the House of Lords by Lord Muskerry on 5th March 1924 -

"On his arrival at the castle he took advantage of his official position to attend meetings held by heads of Departments to consider the best means of putting down these outrages and of restoring law and order. Having obtained full information, he at once proceeded to convey that information to the leaders of the Sinn Fein organisation"— may I request the special attention of your Lordships to the following words?— with the result that these plans devised by His Majesty's officers came to naught and in many cases His Majesty's officers and men lost their lives. The result of this treachery at headquarters was to paralyse the efforts of His Majesty's officials, and crime and outrage were rampant throughout the country immediately afterwards. If those words are true I think your Lordships will agree with me that the individual to whom they refer ought to be taken out and shot, because they really amount not only to a charge of treason but also to a charge of being an accessory to murder."

To put this in context, Muskerry's outburst is an index of propertied Anglo-Irish frustration whose power had been clipped & eclipsed in the transition to democratic national self-governance. Cope became a ready scapegoat for a wide range of interests who blamed him personally for taking his remit 'seriously' and forging a path for dialogue via, it is alleged, intelligence exchanges with Sinn Féin which compromised "His majesty's forces" in their line of duty. Muskerry later alleged in the house it was RIC who furnished him the information but when pressurised by the Chancellor finally retracted all comments. Cope emerged reputation intact with ex-Lord Lieutenant Fitzalan citing two instances of attempts made on his life:-

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1924/mar/19/claims-of-irish-loyalists

For all its merits Trinity will likely remain an Oxbridge outreach programme long after the island is united. Our special cross to bear; for our final primary source engagement we are offered from the thousands of viewpoints available a solitary posthumous lecture from the former British Under-Secretary telling us the years of the Irish Revolution were the "most discreditable in our history". Really, whether or not Cope's words were irony-laced or honestly held is incidental to the fact that his carefully selected mawkish reflections on peace not war sum up the thematic red thread adopted throughout this course. The judgement we are encouraged to condone is faith in Irish Parliamentary Party Home Rule and a repudiation of Republican violence with only passing regard for the global-wide violence of colonialism whose rivalries carving up the planet hurled a generation to their doom.

This is what Republicanism attempted to detach itself from, completely and irrevocably. It failed as we know and set at once consuming itself with recriminations. But despite all this, our greatest hour & our firmest bedrock will remain the men & women of 1916. As such, there is no Ireland without them - at least not one I'd like to belong to.

In terms of course content I would have liked a component on the wider international context; the rise of socialism, labour trade unions, the Bolshevik revolution. A consideration of Empire generally; inter-colonial rivalry, the conditions in which nationalism evolved in Europe to become the primary force governing politics (nucleus of fascism etc.) - the tendency for monarchy to be discredited; the later fracturing of Austria-Hungary. The role of America, Wilson's blueprint for self-determination; the League of Nations - all of these questions troubled and were foreseen to some extent by contemporaries.

The Clan na Gael weren't touched at all; the diaspora which out-numbered the Irish at home who had multiple links with Indian nationalists themselves split into radical and constitutional elements. Lloyd George's fait accompli 'comply or die' was thrust down Irish throats to preserve Empire intact; the illusion of it to prevent Indian fissures. We often assume ordinary people only thought of bread & butter issues; but what of penniless rank & file activists who grasped a bigger & more ennobling picture & sacrificed all they had for their scrap of this ideal in spite of penury?

The years prior to WWI were the 'Golden Age of Socialism';- incremental as opposed to Marxist revolutionary change was advocated by many, including the Fabians, who had many cross-channel ties with Irish revolutionaries. Lloyd George built his career paying attention to the likes of Keir Hardie and the dismantling of the Lords veto was initiated by rejection of a Labour-oriented budget with industrial unrest peaking in Britain the year before the War. Socialists and Labour parties were the only ones who paid any attention to "ordinary" working-class people (both 'The Leader' & Arthur Griffith denounced 'Larkinism') so the omission of at least a summary of their views (which always included a critique of imperialism/colonialism) is a little strange.

Socialist/trade union & Labour pamphlets & handbills circulating these ideas would be the daily reading material in many Dublin working class tenement areas while the last great electoral reform act (1918) owes its existence to all this agitation - not just the body-bags returning from the front. So yes, something of an elephant in the room for me - though things of course need to be kept 'simple' & time is of the essence.

Prelude to War - Echoes of Famine and Republicanism

If you were to pinpoint a time that represents a truly formative precursor event to the Irish revolutionary period (1912-1923) my line in the sand would be 1790-1801. The American War of Independence sent transformative shockwaves through the Protestant English and Ascendency dominated Irish body politic, re-invigorating the Catholic Committee who sought a tranche of reforms to erase Penal era exclusions which still disbarred Catholics on social, economic and political grounds. The colonists war with Britain soon embroiled pre-revolutionary France and it was the threat from the latter's sea-borne invasion which prompted the formation of defensive, locally raised 'Irish Volunteers' - who soon morphed into a radicalising agency for 'Grattanite' separatism in 1782; a parliament and year which became a focal point of Young Ireland and later Home Rule nostalgia. But the point about this era is that it was inspired by Enlightenment ideals of religious tolerance; non-sectarianism, franchise expansion & the effective elimination of class and 'property- based criteria to determine a 'citizen's' political worth.

These republican ideals were crystallised and gained further impetus via the French Revolution and the United Irishmen drew their strength (and early membership) from that radical hub of republican activity, Protestant Belfast, more specifically perhaps 'New Light' Presbyterian dissenters, who, like Catholics, had suffered the effects of discriminatory legislation under the Anglican dominated British polity. Many of these cross-community political linkages were initially forged during the days of common participation in the Volunteer movement. One of the themes worth considering is how this northern Protestant separatist republican tradition which self-consciously aligned itself with Catholic agitators for parliamentary reform, before being forced underground and becoming a revolutionary movement, utterly collapsed in the wake of the 1798 'rebellion' and Act of Union.

What is particularly interesting is the shifting terrains of allegiance provided by the post-famine re-articulation of Gaelic cultural nationalism and separatist republicanism; their interlocking, overlapping and (more often) antithetical stance and discourse with proponents of a diluted 'federalist' Home Rule (O' Connellite, Parnellite, Redmondite) and how individual members of the four mooted 'communities'; Protestant English, Protestant Anglo-Irish, Northern Presbyterian and Catholic nationalist all managed to locate and assert themselves (often contrary to 'sect' expectations) within this rapidly changing pre-and post-Great War environment (amidst the rise of socialism, franchise expansion, collapsing influence of land-based aristocracy, mooted League of Nations etc.).

For myself, the famine is the central defining event in modern Irish history. A social catastrophe of unprecedented proportions it obliterated a whole class of small rural landholders and peripatetic labourers who had for generations clung desperately to ever denuding portions of their native soil. Among this economic strata; those whom it did not destroy outright were disgorged to the four corners; taking ship with whatever means left to them principally to America, England and Australia. In the crude mathematics of economic necessity it resolved at a stroke the Gordian knot of the Malthusian 'catastrophe', drastically depopulating the countryside and allowing at last the shift to more 'rational' and 'modern' modes of agricultural management.

Such at least was the prevailing narrative quickly constructed to situate what for many remained an unutterable horror into some vaguely identifiable locus of meaning. One causative framework was erected for the consumption of the respectable 'propertied' middle and upper classes (both Anglo-Irish and Catholic nationalist), or, generally those who stood to benefit from the mass depopulation, another, closer to the bone, conveying all the horrendous immediacy of those dark days was retold and recycled orally among the survivors and their kin as they fled from their ancestral homes across the Atlantic.

On the pivot of these two starkly contrasted interpretative experiences emerged the essential bifurcation of subsequent nationalist separatism; the one constitutional and pacifist which sought redress within the confines of Westminster; the other Fenian, republican and determinedly 'physical force' which repudiated the very legitimacy of the British 'liberal state'. The immediate impact of the famine therefore was to delegitimise the pre-existing constitutionalist O' Connellite Repeal movement not only in the eyes of the vast bulk of the dispossessed emigrés but also in the hearts of that huge swathe of small tenant holders who had suffered the most during 'the hunger'. Buoyed by the cultural and literary revivalists (Gaelic League, Yeats, Synge) it was the confluence of these two distinct modes of agitation which eventually provided the motor influence for the forces which propelled the Irish Revolution.

We know many Irish republicans who remained stout adherents to the principles of the French Revolution exported their radicalism abroad to England (e.g. Bronterre O' Brien & Feargus O' Connor), particularly during the Chartist era of the 1840's, whose agitation on the 'six-points' eventually paved the way for the British franchise reform acts - but the great Repealer and pacifist O' Connell, like a good disciple of Burke, always distanced himself from French republicanism.

In Ireland, it was arguably only the Irish Republican Brotherhood (forged in the aftermath of the famine's horrors) who carried on this torch of French revolutionary, enlightenment-inspired idealism, all within the confines of the British 'liberal' state. The 'republicanism' which they avowed along French revolutionary (and in indeed ancient Greek) models, called for "active citizenship" along with the more familiar prescription of physical force separatism and it was this component of their philosophy which ensured their support and participation in the GAA, Gaelic League, Na Fianna, and the Volunteers, providing the wider community net without which the "revolutionary moment" would never have solidified into a mass movement.

You can see clearly the growing strength of these bonds of association in many of the Bureau of Military History witness statements. James Kavanagh, for instance, seems to have been involved with just about every 'advanced nationalist' grouping of the time bar the oath-bound IRB. It gives you a very good impression of how bonds of camaraderie, a sense of common purpose, and above all, trust, would have been built up during the early days of the Gaelic League via social gatherings, céilí, picnics, demos & assorted parades & féiseanna. I've always been of the opinion that social networks built up during this period provided the "glue of resistance" for the fighting men without which the revolution would never have succeeded.

One of the by-products of this re-doubled vigour, and an aid to promoting intra-group discipline was the comparative success Sinn Féin clubs had after 1916 in promoting temperance. These type of efforts had a long prehistory. Repeal wardens during O' Connell's 'monster meetings' were specifically charged with quelling scenes of drunken-ness & Fr. Matthew's temperance campaign gained enormous membership during the 1830's & 40's. - the inculcation of 'national pride and self-respect' being key here. The Victorian simianised 'drunken Paddy' of Punch fame was a wildly denounced stereotype which didn't chime easily with Home Rule aspirations especially when many dyed-in-the wool Tories still referred to the Irish 'character' as being intrinsically incapable of self-government. Collins, though by all accounts a hard drinker among the London Irish, is said to have poured a barrel of stout down the drain on the first day in the GPO; "they accused us of drunken-ness in 1798 - that won't happen this time".

Perceived lack of support among the general populace for advanced nationalist goals was largely illusory and in any case boiled down to mere pragmatics; Ireland's appalling revolutionary record up to that point was the stuff of legend and the country was still martialled by a 20,000 strong British garrison ring of steel. Laurence Ginnell, who wrote an influential work on ancient Gaelic institutions and was knee deep in the western ranch war was probably one of the many ex-IRB who politicised after the New Departure by throwing his lot in with Home Rule constitutionalism - this latter phenomena meant that the Irish Parliamentary Party harboured in its midst many of a republican hue who switched readily enough to Sinn Féin once conditions turned. The 'change in climate' after the 1916 executions is sometimes exaggerated to imply that 'republicanism' sprang from the ground unheralded like the army of Spartoi - but it was there all along, nestled in the ranks of the IPP playing the pragmatic game of "wait and see".

RIC, though predominantly Irish, were dispersed to non-local stations and had good pensionable jobs which the majority didn't wish to see jeopardised. Poverty was ubiquitous and elements of the state security apparatus were handsomely compensated by comparison. What could possibly motivate them to abdicate their relative high status? All in all, the forces arrayed against a successful revolutionary outcome were depressingly formidable. Even firebrand historian Alice Stopford Green who re-wrote mediaeval Ireland in line with Irish-Ireland & Gaelic League 'wish-fulfillment' and co-funded the Howth gun-running couldn't bring herself to applaud the Easter revolutionaries. Before 1916, it may be said, the head dominated, afterwards, the heart.

I always think its relevant to enquire what the likely mind-set was of IRA men who fought the guerrilla war. Again, the spectre of the famine again looms large. It was hardly ancient history; Michael Collins father was already an adult (in his 30's) when the blight struck and O' Donovan Rossa, the recently buried Fenian over whose corpse Pearse delivered his famous grave side eulogy had not only lived through it but recorded in scathing terms all its horrors in his "Recollections" (publ. 1898) deploring in particular the land agent Trench and the inhumane workhouse system. Constance Markievicz, the Irish Citizen Army commandant, "wept" on reading John Mitchel - the Young Irelander & de facto editor of the country's largest selling political daily during the Famine (the Nation), who called for an open revolution, demanded the cessation of food exports and denounced the Lord Lieutenant as Her Majesty's "chief butcher and executioner". After being tried by a packed jury and sentenced to be 'hung, drawn and quartered' an international petition drew clemency and he was dispatched to Van Diemen's where he wrote "Jail Journal" and afterwards in America, his great denunciation of famine policy; "Last Conquest of Ireland".

This latter work was immediately placed on the Free State's secondary school syllabus at independence and a woman I know (in her 80's) tells me that her class were bid to learn whole chunks of it off by heart in the 1940's. Maud Gonne commonly referred to Queen Victoria as the "Famine Queen" and actually wrote an article to that effect to 'celebrate' her Jubilee;

"I realised how extraordinary it was when there were so many survivors of Black '47 who had seen one million of our people die of starvation while the abundant harvests they had sown and reaped, under escort of the English garrison, were exported to England. Kathleen (her sister) and I were children belonging to the English garrison. (...) That sentence "The creatures, God help them, they have lost their mother" came to my mind in 1884 when I saw the evictions, and many times after during the wholesale destruction of mud cabins by the battering rams manned by the emergency men, recruited from the Orange lodges protected by the RIC and sometimes by the red-coated military'."
This is why I'm drawn to biographies of the period as formative events like these are very revealing as to motivation. Even more so with Maud Gonne, un-official muse of the revolution, when you consider she came from a well to do family with an English father who was an officer in the British army. Perhaps it was the contrast with the high-class soirées held in Dublin Castle which stirred her empathy with the cabin-dwellers of Mayo? Or maybe the sadness of losing her mother at such an early age? Either way, she launched herself full throttle into the nationalist movement on its account making her name most notably in campaigns to have Fenian prisoners released from English jails, particularly Tom Clarke, whose grateful mother initiated a moving correspondence with Maud. (John Redmond, incidentally, also interceded several times on Clarke's behalf). Many years later, her son Séan, as a barrister and politician, would seek improved conditions for republican prisoners in Free State jails; an 'hereditary activism' you might say, which soon gave birth to Amnesty International and a Nobel Peace Prize - all stemming from the evictions of a Mayo mud-cabin witnessed by a young girl a long time ago.

So, it seems important to me to understand the precise political lineage being tapped into here. "How to form Sinn Féin Clubs c.1917-1918" was a letter dispatched by central office giving advice for stocking up the local Circulating Library. A reading list is recommended for Sinn Féin branch managers naming four books in particular (a) Arthur Griffith's "Meagher of the Sword", (b) Michael Doheny's "The Felon's Track" and (c) John Mitchel's "Jail Journal" and "Last Conquest of Ireland (perhaps)" - all of which are "Young Ireland" productions/subjects i.e. (mainly protestant) nationalists who split from O' Connell's, Catholic hierarchy backed Repeal movement over the question of using physical force as opposed to constitutional methods on foot of the deteriorating conditions in Ireland during the famine. Sinn Féin are continuing to fly in the face of the catholic bishops here who at this point have virtually canonised "the Liberator" in the nation's annals for the great feat of Catholic Emancipation and his life-long profession of non-violent tactics (despite fighting several duels!).

None of this violence sprang out of a vacuum, nor can we safely conclude that participants had the memory of goldfish who simply reacted in Pavlovian fashion to the fleeting twists and turns of the politics of the day. Perceptions of past wrongs and oppressions, however we may have detached ourselves from them today, were clearly deeply embedded psychological realities at the time for many earnest revolutionaries.

There were also long-standing disparities which did little to quell native catholic nationalist unrest and disillusionment with the status quo. It should not be assumed that protestants held a complete monopoly of political power; many had fallen through the cracks or came from a working class background. The playwright Sean O' Casey's grandfather, for instance, was a catholic, a small Leitrim farmer if I recall, who married a protestant but who died young having reared his first few children 'in the faith'. Michael, O' Casey's father, held up the rear, and his mother determined to raise her last born Anglican but on account of the post-famine dread of subdivision the first born son usually held the land intact so Michael had the usual option to either emigrate or find work in the cities with a minimal skill-set - hence O' Casey growing up a working class protestant. Only speculation on my part, but it may be assumed also that Michael's mother foresaw these difficulties and perhaps felt his protestantism would give him an 'edge' in the jobs market. At this time, 1860's - 1890's, consolidation of farms into large-scale enterprises switching from tillage to pasture put enormous pressure on small holdings of 20 acres or less, disgorging many younger siblings either across the Atlantic or into the ever-swelling city tenements. Both O' Casey's poverty and his Protestantism were a by-product of the then unresolved land question.

But there was an aspiring urban catholic middle class who still confronted a lack of opportunity in the professions, higher civil service, government administration, courts & judiciary; as much as 80% of the top posts across the board being still held by the minority denomination. Most of the high ranking officers of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Army would have been protestant for instance and D.P. Moran's Leader regularly featured articles bemoaning the imbalance & investigating what it regarded as discriminatory promotions. The catholic bishops were as much to blame denying talented catholics the opportunity to pursue a third level education by denouncing the 'godless' non-denominational Queen's Colleges and forbidding enrolments there. Up until 1909 then, only Maynooth (a seminary) and the costly Jesuit-run Belvedere were the solitary third level options for catholics - so, before the Home Rule crisis even erupted in 1912 you had a floating, disgruntled catholic intelligentsia disbarred from the higher ranks of society and pouring their energies into increasingly virulent forms of separatist agitation.

Support from the Atlantic diaspora also played a huge role during this period, so much so in fact, that its debateable whether independence would have been gained at all, or at least in the manner that it was, without the consistent influx of hard-earned Irish-American dollars. The figures raised at various stages for different campaigns were simply enormous and would never have been raised domestically; funding the Land League campaign, which culminated (eventually) in peasant proprietorship, financing arms shipments which kept alive IRB credibility in the countryside, Parnell's Home Rule, the Plan of Campaign, Gaelic League activities, and, not least, Tom Clarke's revamped IRB supreme council which plotted the Easter Rising. This was funded by Devoy's Clan na Gael which co-ordinated fundraisers with a host of Irish-American (mainly Democrat) politicians, largely through the pages of the Gaelic American. In addition to which, De Valera embarked on an 18 month fund-raising campaign during the WOI.

People talk of the huge famine-time immigration but of the 4.5 million (perhaps more) who left the country between the famine and the Great War the vast bulk (i.e about 4 million) settled in the United States - it has been estimated (by Kerby Miller) that in America at the turn of the century some 20 million could claim Irish descent either from first, second or third generation immigrants. Certainly, it was a demographic that no party could fail to ignore ... more besides the point perhaps, is that those who left the country and settled in America were the more radicalised politically and whereas it took a generation or two for them to settle in, once they did, and co-ordinated themselves into a powerful voting bloc and moved up the financial ladder, they gave a "keener edge", to both the constitutional and physical force struggles - Gladstone's Liberals accepted this painful reality of Irish-American support in the mid-1880's and determined the only way to quell unrest in the countryside (fired to a large extent by American dollars which bankrolled no-rent campaigns, court expenses, shelter, temporary respite, food packages etc) - was to grant Home Rule.

This was all money raised privately by Irish-Americans working for the most part on the lowest rungs of the American socio-economic ladder; the bulk of whom derived their origins from the bottom half income group of small tenant farmers in Ireland who simply couldn't compete in the new "rationalised" farming marketplace, which encouraged large-scale switches to pasture over tillage, consolidation into large farming blocs and the liquidation of "unviable" holdings of less than 15 acres. As far as the Irish-Americans who had emigrated during this period were concerned they were simply forced off their land whereas, increasingly, those who were left behind and rented or consolidated farms over 20 acres, switched to pasture and exported cattle to England, the resultant depopulation and per capita income rise actually raised living standards appreciably. As Marx caustically observed of this process, "Ireland had fulfilled its destiny and become an English pasture and sheep-walk".

By the time you get to 1900 you have something extraordinary, there's now (far) more Irish living in America than there is in the actual country itself and the bulk of them are either descended from (or are themselves) the disgruntled, dispossessed "lower shavings", those deemed surplus to requirements, who, despite any increased standard of living they may be enjoying in their adopted country, still have a massive axe to grind and old scores to settle ... the virulence of Irish-American opinion on the "national" question has often out-stripped the "native" Irish themselves (both historically and even up until more recent times) and it is instructive to open up yet another important dimension when assessing strands of causality. Even more so, when you consider the sensitivity of the British cabinet to American opinion throughout the period - especially when it was attempting to seek American entry into the war and subsequently when the US floated war-time loans to finance a beleaguered British exchequer.

As Tim Pat Coogan once said, Collins is "a hero to most Irish people, but perhaps an uncomfortable one" because of the tactics employed. Even more so perhaps, in the light of what subsequently transpired in the north and the provisional IRA's policy of targeting off-duty members of the state security forces. Was there any other option though in light of the forces the British Empire had at its command and the gross disparity in resources available to both sides? De Valera was sensitive to accusations of "terrorism" while fund-raising in America and when he returned briefly influenced a short-term switch to strategic open-fighting - he was after all trying to get a seat for the Irish Republic at the soon to be inaugurated League of Nations and wanted US Pres. Wilson's support to this end. It had limited value as a short-term propaganda coup but the loss of men and equipment reinforced the views of Collins and his supporters in the IRB, cabinet and volunteers that guerrilla tactics needed to be maintained. Collins always regarded the Easter Rising as pure folly from a tactical standpoint; "trapped like rats in a cage" or words to that effect.

An unenviable bind - RIC in the War of Independence

I have ancestors that were both Royal Irish Constabulary and IRA during the Anglo-Irish War and Pro and Anti-Treaty after it and its impossible not to sympathise with any of them on a human level. The plight of the RIC was sad particularly from 1918 on but they still had conscious political decisions to make. They were far more than mere symbols; they were the eyes and ears of Dublin Castle and became a vital conduit for transmitting counter-revolutionary intelligence which cost many volunteers their lives as well as their liberty.

Many RIC, in fact, resigned on foot of the 1918 Sinn Féin vote and the formation of Dáil Éireann, while others remained and became intelligence moles for the IRA - the bulk of course stuck with their pensionable jobs and became de facto servants of Empire amidst the tidal wave of national resurgence. To be sure, they were caught in an unenviable cross-fire and divisions within their own extended families would have reflected the fracturing of national opinion. The ramifications of 'high politics' always took its toll heaviest on the poor grunts on the ground.

Also, its much easier to stick with the "divil ye know" than take a leap into the unknown especially when your bread is being buttered in the interim. Options were available though for those RIC who felt their national impulses compromised by work which must have been at times highly disagreeable to them.

For example, in early 1920 Sinn Féin sent out circulars to club secretaries urging the formation of pressure groups to lobby relatives and parents of RIC of the wisdom of their retiring; in addition to which SF members were urged to collaborate in sourcing jobs for them once they did.

This was a canny policy decision adopted by SF in recognition of both the economic bind many RIC were caught in and the fact that many must have been split by divided loyalties. Some may well have interpreted this as 'an offer I can't refuse' (depending on the 'delicacy' in which the matter is broached by the delegation I'd imagine) but others presumably didn't and were glad to avail of the 'get out clause'.

As to conscious political decisions there were on average 46 RIC resignations a week by mid July 1920, according to a flustered Warren Fisher in a letter to Lloyd George. So the Sinn Féin 'feelers' had obviously reaped some dividends but more important you suspect is the escalating policy of reprisals which many RIC clearly wished to have no hand or part in. One such was Daniel Crowley who resigned June 1st, 1920. This from his statement to the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland;

"They were to go on an armoured car with a machine gun ... and every man who took a prominent part in the SF movement they were to stand up in front of his house and turn the machine gun on it. In this armoured car there were put 120 cans of petrol and also 120 Mills bombs, and the reason for this is that they were for burning houses."

On another occasion on patrol with two Black and Tans one of them demanded to know the whereabouts of the houses of a Maurice Walsh & a chairman of Clogheen District Council, saying they intended to shoot them;

"We reminded him that he was not in the army now. And he said that when he left the training depot he was told that he would not be subjected to any discipline whatsoever if he shot Sinn Féiners".
Apparently, after this altercation the Tan actually shot at Crowley and another officer! But still he hadn't resigned - this was the night of May 21st. What does it take to push a man over the edge?? I guess its just the slow drip drip exposure to brutality. Further on, in reference again to the Tans he says;

" I have seen them stop two girls of the town coming to the rosary at half past six in the evening, and they said to the girls, 'Hands up', and knocked them down".

"They were just trying to stir the people up", he says. Eventually, he just gave it up altogether. There's no record of his financial situation though in the end you get the impression it wasn't too high on his priority list

Fenianism: Forged in the Fires of Famine's Aftermath

"Tháinig blianta an ghorta agus an droch shaoghal agus an t-ochras agus bhris sin neart agus spiorad na ndaoini. Ní rabh ann ach achan nduine ag iarraidh bheith beo. Chaill said a' daimh le chéile. Ba chuma cé a bhí gaolmhar duit, ba do charaid an t-é a bhéarfadh greim duit le chur i do bhéal. D' imthigh an spórt agus a caitheamh aimsire. Stad an fhilidheacht agus a' ceol agus damhsa. Chaill said agus rinne said dearmad den iomlán agus nuair a bhisigh an saoghal ar dhóigheannai eile ní tháinig na rudaí seo ariamh arais mar a bhí said. Mharbh an gorta achan rud."

"The years of the Famine, of the bad life and of the hunger, arrived and broke the spirit and strength of the community. People simply wanted to survive. Their spirit of comradeship was lost. It didn't matter what ties or relations you had; you considered that person to be your friend who gave you food to put in your mouth. Recreation and leisure ceased. Poetry, music and dancing died. These things were lost and completely forgotten. When life improved in other ways, these pursuits never returned as they had been. The famine killed everything."

The above is the recorded impressions of a contemporary Donegal native who managed to live through "an t-ochras". Its a reminder for myself that what the devastatation wrought by the famine did achieve was the final obliteration of a culture and way of life which was already being compromised in sundry ways. Thomas Davis's calls to respect and preserve this way of life went largely unheeded while Carleton's "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry" is one of the few attempts to capture in literature the anglicised folkways of bilingual rural communities pulling themselves slowly away from a Gaelic language & culture which increasingly compromised their capacity to "advance" in an anglophone, Westminster-oriented world. The Whigs had rolled out their national programme of primary education in the 1830's, hedge schools became obsolete and tally sticks were introduced (often at the behest of parents) to punish children speaking Irish. I've seen this abandonment in action here in Ireland where African refugees whose native tongue is Bamileke only talk to their children in pidgeon-English just to ensure they "get along". I always tell them never to forget their old tongue - it may well be their life's greatest regret.

The United Irishmen weren't exactly noted for their passionate commitment to the Irish language and culture; they were enlightenment ideologues committed to the rational democratic, organisation of society. We had yet to await Walter Scott, Herder and German Romanticism before the folkways and vernacular of indigenous cultures were considered even worthy of preservation. At the Belfast Harper's Festival which inspired Bunting to collect so many songs and airs of Gaelic provenance (now otherwise forgotten) Wolfe Tone struggled to conceal his utter disinterest, noting in his diary "Strum, strum and be damned!". Our own leaders consigned it to obliteration as much as any policy adopted by Westminster or the Dublin Parliament (though they certainly dug the hole) particularly the Vatican which refused to endorse the production of a vernacular Irish-language Bible in the 1720's (at a juncture when the bulk of the island spoke the language). Later, neither the clergy at Maynooth or the Repeal movement did anything to arrest its slide throughout the early 19th C. - Thomas Davis and John MacHale being one of the few who actively encouraged its sustenance.

Daniel O' Connell played a significant part in this abandonment, though a native speaker himself; he thought it were well it disappeared off the face of the earth (or words to that effect) - it simply served no purpose in the here and now. The language of learning and science, newly published literature which caught Europe by storm - little of it was published in Irish; the native vernacular, and the Maynooth-trained priests scarcely lifted a finger (insitutionally) to reverse the trend. John MacHale and many others were the exception but the malaise wasn't properly addressed (by the Gaelic League) until it was too late and as we're all aware there's little by way of authentic Gaelic institutions or a living language left in Ireland today outside the Gaelteacht and the revived Gaeilscoileanna.

Why though, did the Irish tenant farmer rely on the spud to an extent unseen anywhere else in Europe? Why were so many cottiers & conacre labourers obliged to survive on a solitary food source, stuffed into the margins and forced to reside in the most inhospitable terrains imaginable? The humble spud is uniquely geared to provide a high calorific return per acre (far more than grain) and no other root crop could have staved off revolution or famine as long as it did given the distortions in land ownership derived from the Cromwellian and Williamite settlements at whose apex sat the Anglo-Irish Crown servants (the "Protestant Ascendency") divorced from their tenantry by language, law, culture and religion.

The attempt to reclaim lost rights in the soil wrested from them throughout the 18th century by the battery of exclusions known as the Penal Code manifested itself in widespread agrarian unrest; Whiteboyism in the 1760's-80's, Defenderism in the 1790's, Ribbonmen in the 1800's, Rockites in the 1830's, not to mention the Tithe War of the 1830's which protested a 10% levy on agricultural produce to uphold a church alien to an 85% dispossessed minority. All of these movements stood to coalesce on the eve of the famine if "tenant right" were granted a-la the Ulster Custom but the Catholic nationalist opposition was landlord led, middle class in outlook and had thrown in it's lot with the liberal "reformist" Whigs of Russell whose mantra (when out of power) was "Justice for Ireland".

The penny finally dropped for the Young Irelanders who seceded from O' Connell's Repeal movement forming the short-lived Confederacy from whose loins sprang the 1848 rebellion; inspired principally by Fintan Lalor's articles to the Nation proposing agrarian revolt and a right to "ownership of the soil" for those who worked it - a call, in other words, to end the Ascendency feudalism which hamstrung all attempts of effective relief and which contributed much to Lalor's horror and so fatally to the disintegration of an entire class of native smallholder. He was the first in fact to grasp the nettle of the land question and realise it's primacy over the political struggle - hence the Land League of the following generation which was not won by 'legitimate' parliamentary wrangling but by a vicious Land War, spearheaded by Davitt, who had seen his own family evicted & thrown onto the roadside during the Hunger.

Mitchel (too late) recognised the urgency of Lalor's prophesies and thundered revolt through the pages of the United Irishman in the early months of 1848. This was when all Europe was aflame and revolutionary France was inviting delegations from newly installed republican & democratic governments everywhere who had managed to topple Metternich's post Congress of Vienna 'forest of bayonets' which copper-fastened pan-European ancien regime legitimacy, largely thanks to the diplomacy of Castlereagh, the crusher of Irish 1798 republicanism. Mitchel was lifted after referring to the Lord Lieutenant as His Majesty's "chief butcher and executioner", tried before a blatantly packed jury and dispatched post-haste to Van Diemen's.

Smith O' Brien and Meagher "of the sword" followed suit, initially tried by like means and sentenced to the capital crime of being "hung, drawn and quartered" until an international petition drew clemency and were likewise bundled off to the New World. Mitchel's critique (Last Conquest of Ireland) remains a valid one, he was de facto political editor of Ireland's largest circulating daily throughout the crisis and his open calls for revolution were reigned in by a Catholic hierarchy still loyal to the Liberator.

In the end, policy boiled down to a number of principles which Russell vainly attempted to swerve his Irish Ascendency dominated cabinet from pursuing; the landlord must be protected from poor-law exactions which threatened to submerge him in workhouse sponsored debt (the enaction of Gregory's 1/4 clause); the land must be cleared to make way for capital intensive large scale commercial farming based on pasture as opposed to grain which the cottiers hitherto grew to pay rent (rapid escalation of eviction notices from 1848 -1852); the Malthusian "problem" needed to be addressed (large scale deportations to Canada and Australia were regularly discussed in the years leading up to the famine) and, certainly in the early days with the Anti-Corn Law League and Chartist bread riots, England's domestic grain supply must not under any circumstances be threatened.

As to famine relief schemes under the Board of Works, early Victorian notions of inculcating thrift, industry and good working habits (which the 'lazy' Irish cottier decidedly lacked in their opinion) manifested in emergency measures to transfer cash (the means of buying bread and grain) into a predominantly barter economy in exchange for calculated man-hours building all sorts of god-forsaken projects with no ultimate end-purpose. So today, the countryside is still littered with 'famine-roads' leading nowhere and walls enclosing nothing in particular. Sometimes they'd have to lay a road one day only to dig it up the next. Inside the workhouse the same philosophy reigned; "I'd rather die than crack stones for ten hours a day" being one memorable fragment left to us by the Folklore Commission. Some work was worthwhile; canals were dredged, bogs reclaimed, bridges built but the pay was so measly and the work so exhausting many died anyhow. Putting food directly into people's mouths was the way to go (a-la the soup kitchens) but this meant over-coming the aforementioned prejudice and disturbing the sacrosanct 'free market' mechanisms

The Industrial Revolution and the huge displacements therein ensured England's urban/rural ratios triggered a crisis of grain sovereignty partially addressed by Foster's Corn Laws in the 1780's which offered massive bounties to Irish landlords to transport grain across the channel. Hence Peel's primary concern to pass Corn Law Repeal in the face of O' Connell's deputation to the Viceroy that Ireland's ports should be closed and its brewing grain diverted for domestic consumption - the standard economic response to dearth of the time - yet smothered by a wave of absolutist laissez faire claptrap resurrected by the Edinburgh Review and Trevelyan in particular, who delighted in circulating Burke's (poorly conceived) 'Thoughts on Scarcity'.

Nassau Senior belonged to that select coterie of economists (contributors to the afore-mentioned Edinburgh Review) who played a vital role in determining Whig policy throughout the crisis; they may not have sat in Cabinet but they had the ear of Lansdowne, Clanrickard & Palmerstown who as Irish landlords themselves consistently furnished wrecking-ball amendments to progressive land bills intoroduced at the behest of Russell to provide protection to tenants. By the time these three in particular had done with them - the orientation of legislation was decidedly skewered towards landlord right; hence the convulsions of Lalor & Mitchel as outlined above, at the evictions, mass-death and needless starvation. Russell was a weak leader outmanouevred.

Hence the devastation; the total amount of funds given in official government aid (some £7.5 million) over the course of the entire "famine" (which nevertheless continued to dispatch the land's produce overseas; pigs, poultry, cattle, wheat, oats, barley, maize, eggs) should be seen in light of an average exchequer income from 1844-1850 of £55 million per annum - a sum some way short in fact of the outlay required (and readily raised) for the Crimean War less than a decade later. To talk of charity or "mismanagement" in this context is to insult the intelligence.

As Davitt himself noted in the Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, after 'black 47' the backbone agitators of the Land League were those who had learned their lessons & tactics from the early agrarian movements which preceded O' Connellite pacifism. The Irish independence struggle had in fact polarised (such was the animosity generated by the Repealer-Confederate split over government famine policy) between the Constitutional Nationalists (Parnellism, Redmondism) and the IRB (Fenianism) as a direct result of the devastation left in the wake of the Great Hunger; dispossessed 'sons o the soil' generally forming the backbone of the
latter.

O' Donovan Rossa for instance (b. 1832), founder of the Fenian precursor Phoenix Society, convicted felon, IRB fundraiser in America (the milk and honey from the Irish coffers of famine emigrant descendants continued to fund Republicanism right up until to the present day) and over whose corpse Pearse exclaimed in such stirring terms the necessity for "blood sacrifice" in 1913; underpinned in justification as always by the writings of his 'holy quartet' of Irish revolutionaries; Emmett, Lalor, Mitchel and Tone.

Michael Collins, as like so many of his generation, were first and foremost IRB men, who traced their filial descent back to the stance of the 1848 revolutionary men of Young Ireland and therefore the writings of Mitchel and Lalor in particular, which denounced in the strongest terms possible British government policy throughout the crisis. We are perhaps too far removed to pronounce objectively on the matter, but that it was murder in their eyes, the eyes of living contemporaries engrossed in the day to day horrors, should never be forgotten, or be erased from the record, as is the wont of modern scholarship.