Wind that Shakes the Barley

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THE PENAL LAWS

The wounds of the potato-crop failure still run deep. The Irish people say the “Great Famine” was really the Great Hunger.

Famines result when most crops fail. Only the Irish potato crop had “the blight.” Other crops, produced in abundance but too expensive for penniless people to buy, were shipped out of Ireland.

A contemporary comment by John Mitchel polarizes how many people felt then, and now:

The Almighty Indeed sent the Potato Blight but the English Created the Famine.

In 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged the British government failed to effectively help. On the 150th anniversary of what the Irish call An Gorta Mor (The Great Hunger), Blair said:

Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy. We must not forget such a dreadful event.

The Irish aren’t likely to forget.

At the time, in 1845, people in Ireland no longer owned most of their land. The Irish countryside, with its green pastures and lush farmland, had been turned into British plantations. Land-owning Irishmen, who worked for themselves, became rent-paying tenants overnight.

Worse, “Penal Laws” governing the conduct of Irish Catholics were in effect. Over the decades, those restrictive laws diminished the ability of the Irish people to flexibly manage their own affairs. Perhaps the laws were not enacted to render an entire population “ignorant.” But the list of what was forbidden makes one wonder how the British expected the Irish to function as a cohesive nation: