Posted on 10/28/2005 5:42:28 PM PDT by blam
Waterspout taps into an old spring of republicanism
By Tom Peterkin, Ireland Correspondent
(Filed: 29/10/2005)
An apparently innocuous waterspout given to a small market town after it suffered from crop failure would appear to be an unlikely symbol of English colonial oppression.
But plans to restore a 19th century limestone well in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, have re-ignited ancient Anglo-Irish animosities.
A £27,000 proposal to refurbish the spout and reinstate a plaque commemorating the "unparalleled benevolence of the English nation to the poor of Ireland" has outraged republicans, still smarting from the treatment of Irish peasants during the Great Famine of the late 1840s.
A Sinn Fein councillor yesterday said the wording was "offensive" and claimed putting the plaque back up was "akin to asking the Jews to erect a plaque to celebrate the Holocaust".
The reaction of Cllr Seamus Morris and his supporters has divided the local council, setting them against those members who accept that the inscription should be restored as a true reflection of the town's history.
The row has stalled the project, which is part of a larger renovation programme planned for the town with a population of 6,000 on the main Dublin to Limerick road.
The plaque has been in storage since 1905 when a local councillor objected to its sentiments after the Great Famine when British landowners were blamed for countless deaths and the exodus of the Irish to America.
Money for the waterspout was provided to Nenagh, formerly a 13th century Norman stronghold, by the London Taverners' Society to provide relief work during a small-scale local famine in 1822.
The Society, a charitable organisation of the time, took the action after the then MP for Co Clare drew the attention of the House of Commons to the crisis.
The full inscription, which once adorned the well and its neoclassical columns, reads: "Erected by local contribution to commemorate the unparalleled benevolence of the English nation to the poor of Ireland at a season of extreme distress A.D. 1822."
Cllr Morris said yesterday that he was "horrified" by the proposal to display the plaque on the well, which once provided washing and drinking water for the community.
Although the waterspout was constructed before the worst of Ireland's famines in 1845-1850, Cllr Morris said that by 1822 the conditions that led to the disaster had already been put in place by the ruling classes.
"Everyone knows that all food was being exported at that time and local Irish people were being subjected to abject poverty by landowners who were mostly somewhere else.
Ireland was being prepared to halve its population and the idea that a little drop of water would do some good when people were starved is nonsense."
Cllr Morris was backed by Tom Morgan, an independent councillor, who said it should be up to the people of Nenagh to decide whether the plaque is re-erected.
"We were only poor because of England and they were invading us at the time," said Cllr Morgan.
However, others believe that it is time to move on, insisting that the words are an integral part of the heritage of the town, known for its colossal Norman keep and founded by Theobald Walter, a cousin of Thomas à Becket.
Tony Sheary, the Mayor of Nenagh, said: "I am a very grown up Irishman and this happened well over a hundred years ago. To compare it with the Jews and the Holocaust is nonsense. The project was going along fine until they heard about this plaque.
"Yet now they have hysterics, because it refers to the benevolence of the English people."
He added: "We can laugh at this because now we don't need the unparalleled benevolence of the English or any other nation. I would be disappointed if anyone took offence at this."
Fascinating.
It should be retained as an exercise in sarcasm.
It is due to the "benvolence" of the British nation that my ancestors crossed the Atlantic and that I am an American.
1-1.5 million of you countrymen starved to death during this period. Another 1.5 million made their way to America. (BTW, I think America is better place due to your immigration here)
and why myself am here today ...
MASS EVICTIONS DURING FAMINE
Mass evictions or "clearances" will forever be associated with the Irish Famine. "It has been estimated that, excluding peaceable surrenders, over a quarter of a million people were evicted between 1849 and 1854. The total number of people who had to leave their holdings in the period is likely to be around half a million and 200,000 small holdings were obliterated" (1)
Under a law imposed in 1847, called the "Gregory Clause", no tenant holding more than a quarter acre of land was eligible for public assistance. To become eligible, the tenant had to surrender his holding to his landlord. Some tenants sent their children to the workhouse as orphans so they could keep their land and still have their children fed.
Other tenants surrendered their land, but tried to remain living in the house; however, landlords would not tolerate it. "In many thousands of cases estate-clearing landlords and agents used physical force or heavy-handed pressure to bring about the destruction of cabins which they sought." (2)
Many others who sought entrance to the workhouses were required to return to their homes and uproot or level them. Others had their houses burned while they were away in the workhouse.
"When tenants were formally evicted, it was usually the practice of the landlord's bailiffs - his specially hired 'crowbar brigade' - to level or burn the affected dwellings there and then, as soon as the tenants effects had been removed, in the presence of a large party of soldiers or police who were likely to quell any thought of serious resistance." (3)
THE EVICTED
"These helpless creatures are not only unhoused, but often driven off the land, no one remaining on the lands being allowed to lodge or harbor them. Or they, perhaps, linger about the spot, and frame some temporary shelter out of materials of their old homes against a broken wall, or behind a ditch or fence, or in a bog-hole, places unfit for human habitations .... disease, together with the privations of other kinds which they endure, before long carry them off.
As soon as one horde of houseless and all but naked paupers are dead, or provided for in the workhouse, another wholesale eviction doubles the number, who in their turn pass through the same ordeal of wandering from house to house, or burrowing in bogs or behind ditches, till broken down by privation and exposure to the elements, they seek the workhouse, or die by the roadside." (4)
"There were hoards of poor on the roads every day. The Catholics who could gave some little they had to these, a saucer of oatmeal, a handful of potatoes, a drink of milk or a little bottle of sweet-milk to carry away with them. It was not unusual to see a woman with two, three or four children half-naked, come in begging for alms, and often several of these groups in one day, men too. If the men got work they worked for little or nothing and when they were no longer needed they took to the road again. These wandering groups had no homes and no shelter for the night. They slept in the barns of those that had barns on an armful of straw with a sack or sack or some such thing to cover them." (5)
BRITISH GOVERNMENT & EVICTIONS
When there was widespread criticism in the newspaper over the evictions, Lord Broughman made a speech on March 23rd, 1846 in the House of Lords. He said:
"Undoubtedly it is the landlord's right to do as he pleases, and if he abstained he conferred a favor and was doing an act of kindness. If, on the other hand, he choose to stand on his right, the tenants must be taught by the strong arm of the law that they had no power to oppose or resist...property would be valueless and capital would no longer be invested in cultivation of the land if it were not acknowledged that it was the landlord's undoubted and most sacred right to deal with his property as he wished." (6)
Even when tenants were evicted in the dead of winter and died of exposure, the British Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, "rejected the notion that house-destroying landlords were open to any criminal proceedings on the part of the government." (7)
British Parliament passed a law reducing the notice given to people before they were evicted to 48 hours. The law also made it a misdemeanor to demolish a dwelling while the tenants were inside. As a grand gesture of goodwill, the law prohibited evictions on Christmas day and Good Friday.
....I will not visit England until they 've solved their own little mess in Northern Ireland...in an honorable fashion.
Terrible poverty caused by promiscuity and alcoholism.
Cite your sources.
Check "Angela's Ashes" out of the library. Yes, there was widespread poverty in the U.S. and in Ireland during the 1930's, but in the specific case, Angela had a quickie with a drunk in a bar, got pregnant, married him, and ended up with a flock of kids, many of whom died, while he never held a job worth mentioning and evenually walked out.
I thought you were talking about widespead promiscuity and drunkeness in Ireland predicating Irish poverty in the 19th Century. Sorry I misconstrued your post.
No problem ... I was referring just to the book.
I always laugh when Farrakan wants reparations from me for my slave-owning ancestors. When his ancestors were slaves, my ancestors didn't own shoes, let alone slaves.
I was one of those 'kids', Frank, who wrote the book.
That is true.
The order the posts hit did look funny, it's true.
I think it would be tough to make a case for the English in the 1840's being responsible for the McCourt family's living in poverty in the United States in the 1930's, but one could try.
Self, shut up!
They had already straightened it out, and now I might need the flame suit!
Sorry!
See my #18.
No problem. If my post had shown up right after blam's, it would have avoided the confusion. The long post about the famine hit less than a minute before mine.
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