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By complaining about the Celtic fans singing of the 'tottie famine' the soccar pundits seem plugged into a sentiment that opposes the singing of the song.
But what is behind it? There is much sentiment that the English caused the famine here. But hardly any popular blame is laid down on the Anglo-Irish landlords that were rackrenting and sending grain to English markets right through the period.
It is true that Westminster did nothing to control prices to allow people to buy food, as this was the prevailing economic theory of the time, the reasoning came at the end of Merchantilism which insists that government intervention in the economy is essential. The rejection of this notion led to a system of protectionism which forced prices up. Classical Economics took over from price intervention and became the dominant economic philosophy of Liberalism. This link has been solid as a rock ever since. Socialism has made the system fairer for those workers within the liberal empires but those outside the system of 'globalisation' consistently suffer famines every few decades.
So what happened in Ireland can be seen in the context of an early example of what globalisation does to people, within the context of fuedal land-lordism combined with a system of price protectionism.
The 'tottie famine' happened in a period of massive over-population, within a land system that gave too little land to too many free-holders. The land being too intensively farmed, and without the prospect of profit, farmers moved into sustenence farming. This was a systemic disaster waiting to happen.
When a straw broke the camels back, rents could not be paid, those of the poorest could not even afford food, the horrifily bad of social-welfare was overcome, and the work-houses were filled. People became cheaper to carry than balast for grain and cotton ships returning to the US from Ireland and England. The Irish began to emigrate en masse for a better future.
But as an Irishman I am not offended by such remarks by soccer pundits.
The Famine changed Ireland forever, it freed us. Within a couple of decades we had the Land League founded in Mayo, the Boycott was invented, the IRB were working in secret to get ready for revolution, the Anglo-Irish Land-Lords days were numbered. They lost power as the Home Rule party was just around the corner, REFORM was in the air as Classical Economics made so many suffer that SOCIALISM began to take hold amoung the masses in England, and the Whigs took up the challange. Lets see the Famine for what it was, a watershed that changed everything systemically. Ireland would remain poor, but it would never again suffer like that again duriing that 15 year period of systemic failure.
Celtic fans may go on about the 'tottie famine' and so they might, their club was founded out of dire economic circumstances and social change that made the Russian Revolution conditions look like peanuts!
The period 1840 to 1920 put an end to hundreds of years of Anglo-Irish domination.
Our own Lords were as much to blame for doign nothing as than any English Lord. Maybe we should never forget that.
