The Tower of Silence
There was a poignant ceremony in the east end of Glasgow last
week as the memorial to An Gorta Mor was unveiled in the grounds of St Mary’s
church. Sculptor John McCarron’s work ‘The Tower of Silence’ will stand in mute
witness to the horrors inflicted on the poor of Ireland in the mid nineteenth
century. Through a combination of heartless indifference, appalling racist
attitudes and the ugly face of unrestrained capitalism, the greatest empire in
the world at the time allowed over one million of its people to die in a
catastrophe they had the power to halt. Ignoring centuries of mismanagement,
underdevelopment and the exploitation of England’s first colony, Charles
Trevelyan stated with brutal indifference…
‘The famine has been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson.
The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the
famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of
the people.’
The Great Hunger is the defining moment in Ireland’s
relationship with England. It casts a long shadow and made up the minds of many
in Ireland that the country would be better freed from the colonial control of
London. The so called ‘famine’ has played its role in defining the identities
of the two great communities of Ireland. For Catholics, it marks the low point of
English indifference to their suffering and has left an enduring mark on their
psyche. For the descendants of those Protestants sent to colonise the north
east of Ireland in the years after 1609, the famine is portrayed as a Catholic
catastrophe which they avoided due to their thrift, hard work and God’s grace.
The truth though is far more complex than either of those scenarios.
Recent research into population trends in Ireland suggest
that the Great Hunger had a major impact on poor Protestants as well as their
Catholic neighbours. Ian Gregory and Niall Cunninghame’s work, ‘The judgement
of God on an indolent and unself-reliant people’?: the impact of the Great
Irish Famine on Ireland's religious demography,’ uses Census records and information
from church records to establish how the famine affected both communities. Their
findings on the loss of population in Ireland in the mid nineteenth century are
stark indeed…
‘In the period between 1834 and 1861 the population of
Ireland fell by 27%. This was driven primarily by Famine-related deaths and
emigration, although fertility decline may also have been relevant. Subdivide this by religion, comparing data from the 1834 Commission and the 1861 census and superficially, these results seem to support the idea that Catholics were the
main victims of the Famine. Of the 2.15 million people lost over the period,
90.9% were Catholic, and for every Protestant lost 7.94 Catholics were lost.
This ratio is, however, slightly misleading as before the Famine Catholics
outnumbered Protestants by 4.24 to one.’
The population of Catholics and Protestants were both
significantly affected by the great hunger, both in terms of deaths and people
leaving to try and find a better life elsewhere. The study looked at areas of north east Ireland
with higher Protestant populations and found that both communities were hit
hard by the catastrophe…
‘Where there were significant Protestant populations these
were often at least as badly affected by the Famine as Catholics. The nine
dioceses that were more than 15% Protestant in 1834 contained 81.6% of the
Protestant population. These dioceses experienced a 15.9% decline in their
total populations between 1834 and 1861 which, while not quite as high as the
27.7% losses experienced across Ireland as a whole, was still little short of
catastrophic. Importantly, these losses were almost evenly divided between the
two religions: the Catholic population dropped by 16.9% while the Protestant
population fell by 14.5% suggesting that in these areas the Protestant
population was as vulnerable to the Famine as Catholics.’
The famine affected the rural poor more severely than the
urban dwellers. In the north east of Ireland there was more industry and work
to be had and this soaked up some of the impoverished excess population from
the countryside. The lack of industrial development in Ireland as a whole though
meant there were few options for the poor in the rural south. The deliberate
lack of industry in the south and west of Ireland, combined with a growing
population of rural poor living on the margins, contributed to the impending
disaster. That being said, the government of the day did too little too late to
alleviate the disaster their misrule had contributed to. It is recorded that
food was being exported out of Ireland throughout the years of the great
hunger, often under armed guard.
Gregory and Cunningham’s study is clear that the famine was indiscriminate
in who it affected. Despite much mythology and overt use of the famine in
political discourse, it seems clear that it had an impact on Irish Protestants
which many today would be surprised to find…
‘Far from being a Catholic famine, the Great Irish Famine was
a famine of the rural poor. Over much of Ireland this group was predominantly
Catholic, and thus the Catholic population was disproportionately affected.
However, the impact on Protestants increased in areas with larger Protestant
populations to an extent that in mixed areas it is impossible to say which
denomination was more severely affected. As a result, the Famine and its
immediate aftermath did not result in major changes to Ireland's religious
geography. The Famine remains a defining catastrophe in Ireland's history and
has an enduring power to reinforce the stereotypes from which both communities
continue to construct their own self-identities. The experiences of the two
communities were more similar than either would tend to assert.’
There was an incident in Belfast a few years ago when a
Loyalist Flute band stopped outside St Patrick’s Catholic church and marched in
a circle playing that odious and fairly moronic ‘famine song.’ Apart from the
absurdity of the descendants of those ‘planters’ sent to colonise Ulster
telling the native Irish to ‘go home’ there was also a complete lack of
awareness of the fact that many of their own people perished in the famine. As
studies have shown, the great hunger claimed the lives of at least a million
people in Ireland and caused a further million to leave the country. It is
thought that around 100,000 of those who were lost were Irish Protestants.
An Gorta Mor was a catastrophe we should remember with
honesty and reverence for those lost regardless of their religious
denomination. Some, such as historian Tom Devine, have questioned the placing
of the Tower of Silence in the grounds of a Catholic church but St Mary’s has
played an important role in the story of the Glasgow Irish and as the memorial’s
sculptor John McCarron has said, the sculpture commemorates all of those lost,
of all faiths and none.
What would be a fitting memorial to those who perished in the
great hunger would be the end of any petty squabbling and a coming together to
remember a truly catastrophic event which affected all communities. As for
those who play or sing ‘the famine song,’ perhaps they lack the intelligence to
see the absurdity and ignorance of the lyrics. Or perhaps they are lost in
tribalism where mythology is more important than facts.
The poor of Ireland, exploited and marginalised, did not die
because there was no food in the land; they died because they had no money to
buy it. That the forces of commerce would rather let people die in their hundreds
of thousands than lose money was and remains the great evil of the famine
years.
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