Opinion: The Hunger: The Story of the Irish Famine is a timely reminder of the event's central place in Irish history
'A few days ago there were two little boys found dead on the roadside at Bohalla in my parish. These were three days dead before I heard of it; on the evening of the third day they were buried thus – their coffins were the rags of clothes they wore, and their graves a sand pit; into which they were thrown without my knowledge and since a third…the mortality of my parish averages daily five deaths since the 1st of April 1847. Unless immediate steps be taken by the government to stay the destroying sword that is depopulating the land, it will be once more the valley of eagles and not the homes of Christians. May God in his mercy remove this calamity'. (Rev. Michael O’Flynn PP, Attymass, Co Mayo; as reported in the Freeman’s Journal, June 1st 1847)
This year marks the 175th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Irish Famine (1845-1852) which resulted in the deaths of over one million people and the scattering of one million and quarter across the globe. It was a large-scale humanitarian disaster with tragic consequences, especially for those classes at the bottom of the social ladder: the cottiers and landless labourers whose families were almost entirely dependent on the potato for their survival.
While island-wide in terms of its impact, the Famine was particularly devastating for those counties in the west and south of the country. One of the great strengths of the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (Cork University Press, 2012), that informs The Hunger: The Story of the Irish Famine documentary was the fact that it laid bare the local, regional, national, and international dimensions of the Famine narrative. As Cormac Ó Gráda et al point out, "famines are regional crises which can only be understood by the local story".
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From RTÉ News, President Michael D Higgins address the 2016 National Famine Commemoration at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin
In foregrounding these regional and local contexts, the atlas allowed readers and scholars to view the Famine in all its social complexity. It revealed a society and its customs imploding, as was the case in Attymass in Co. Mayo, as starvation and disease took its deathly toll.
The new documentary is a timely reminder of not only the event’s central place in Irish history, but also its place in the history of North America, Australia and Britain. It is also a timely reminder of the Famine’s relative closeness in time to present generations. When I speak to UCC students amongst the ruins of Bahaghs workhouse located outside Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry, I am referring to events that are only five or six generations away. And it is the nature of the events themselves and their proximity in time that strikes an immediate chord.
This documentary is also opportune in that it captures ongoing research on the Famine. This provides new perspectives that both deepen our understanding of the event and pose important questions about the nature and structure of Irish society during the Famine years, not all of which can be neatly answered.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Blighted Nation, Myles Dungan explores how the Great Famine swept through Ireland in the mid-1800s and changed the country forever.
Famines are ultimately about failure. The failure of the potato impacted parts of Europe, but nowhere was it more devastating in its consequences than in Ireland. Why? The documentary examines the different national and international contexts in which the crisis unfolded, in particular the role of successive British governments – Tory and Liberal - in responding to the crisis in Ireland, the relief policies pursued and the political ideology and religious beliefs underpinning the response and the fallout from these policies.
It is important to note that there were also voices within the British establishment that condemned the nature of the response and what they saw as their government’s mismanagement of Irish affairs. However, the nature of Irish society was also complex, and the crisis impacted men, women, children in different ways while the experiences of landlords, land agents, big farmers, small farmers, shopkeepers, and merchants also varied. The millions of cottiers and labourers and their families without access to money to buy food suffered the most in terms of mortality. Those with means managed to escape the horrors as best they could to forge new lives for themselves on foreign shores and in very often hostile environments.
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From RTÉ 2fm's Dave Fanning Show, UCC's John Borgonovo on why a Native American tribe come to the help of Ireland during the Great Famine
Famines also bring out the very best and the very worst in human nature. Great acts of charity, kindness, and selflessness by relief workers and the members of the clergy of different denominations, for example, were frequently overshadowed by more numerous instances of a lack of compassion from those in positions of authority. There was also copious evidence of neglect, ignorance, and indifference to the scale of human suffering. Even amongst neighbours, the will to survive could eclipse all other loyalties and desperate acts committed in order to ensure one’s own survival.
Television as a medium in ways demands an overarching narrative, one that always tidies away the messiness of history. However, the maps used in the documentary act as a counterpoint to this often-neat presentation of events and undermines the notion that all Irish people are descendants of those men, women and children who suffered and perished during the Famine. To use a phrase coined by Catriona Crowe in relation to research on the revolutionary period in Ireland, such maps in a sense 'complicate the narrative'.
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UCC's John Crowley previews The Hunger: The Story of the Irish Famine documentary
The documentary in the end seeks to achieve a balance between information, insight and feeling. As the artist John Behan points out, "death is impersonal when it occurs in such large numbers – it is important to find the human signature." Beyond the absolute figures lie the individual stories such as that of the young boys found dead on the roadside in the parish of Attymass, Co. Mayo. It is in such reports that the real horrors of the Famine emerge. It is important to understand and remember what happened on such roadsides.
The Hunger: The Story of the Irish Famine airs on RTÉ One on November 30th and December 7th at 9.35pm. Read more on The Great Famine on RTÉ History
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
