It is the negativity that accompanied even the most sympathetic commentary about Ireland and the Irish that seems most striking about the press coverage of the Irish Famine. In the last chapter, for example, we saw how a correspondent for The Times, having praised the enthusiasm with which the Irish peasantry celebrated the Queen’s visit, could not resist adding that their bonfires were ‘strangely suggestive of mystic rites and unhallowed creeds, of African fetishes, of…sacrifices to Baal….’ We could put this down to an age-old habit, ingrained in British discourse about Ireland over centuries of conflict. However, even old habits can take on new meaning. British writers and editors could barely mention the Irish without implying, if not overtly expressing, some fear, suspicion, reservation, anger, ridicule, or occasionally revulsion. The purpose of this study has been to analyze this pervasive negativity expressed not only in ideas but in the very language and images adopted by writers and cartoonists. In this conclusion we will suggest the function of British negative attitudes and expression regarding Ireland.
First, however, given the focus of this study, it is essential to try to place Britain’s repose to the Irish Famine in perspective. It is important to keep in mind that both the nature of the crisis and the level of Britain’s involvement in relief were unprecedented. We must also acknowledge that the problems faced by the British have confronted many governments and relief agencies since the 1840s; for example, getting food to people who have no money, without, at the same time, weakening local agriculture and dislocating markets. Modern societies have developed some sophistication in handling such crises today, but in the 1840s Britain could only draw upon very limited experience.
While criticism can certainly be leveled at the assumptions and ideologies that constrained its response to the Irish Famine, we should acknowledge that some of Britain’s concerns and goals were not in themselves either hostile in intent or peculiar in conception. Any modern society would be concerned about the cost of relief and the impact upon its own economy. It was natural to question the effectiveness of relief. Nor can the British be faulted for wishing to make sure that such a disaster did not reoccur. Again, there was nothing particularly malignant in the idea that the wealthier part of Irish society should make some effort to help its poor. Even Victorian moralism and providentialism, self-serving as they were, sprang from a need to reassert some spiritual underpinnings to a world increasingly dominated by the impersonal forces of economics and science. As Asa Briggs has suggested, the qualities usually associated with the Victorians’ values reflected a need, ‘to discover a secure moral order which would enable them to harness the machine, to improve their standard of living and to coexist powerfully side by side in a country which had travelled far and fast since the 1780s’ (451).
The problem lay in the priorities Britain set in dealing with famine-stricken Ireland. It failed to put humanitarian concerns first. As a result, it evaluated its relief efforts, not on the basis of their actual effectiveness in saving lives, but on their theoretical correctness, administrative convenience, economic ‘soundness,’ and political acceptability. In the end Britain failed to understand the reality of the situation. For example, the Government insisted on attempting the reconstruction of rural Ireland while hundreds of thousands of paupers had no buffer against starvation. Another example is the decision to place the burden of relief upon landlords whose inevitable response was to evict their tenants. Ideologies and prejudices got in the way of accurate perception and judgment.
Regarding the British press, one must understand that the Irish Famine was a very difficult story to understand and to report. What today is called the ‘Irish Famine’ is the product of historical hindsight. We see a seven-year crisis characterized by hunger, disease, death and massive emigration. People in the 1840s encountered first one year, then another, then another, always expecting each year to be the end of the crisis. As the Famine continued, observers had to guess at its extent and duration. Crops, including potatoes, had failed before in Ireland. Such failures had usually been local and only lasted a season or two. There was no precedent for on-going large-scale food shortages and starvation.
To complicate matters, conditions in each of the famine years were sufficiently different to make it difficult for editors and reporters to always understand a constantly changing crisis. As we have seen, there was considerable journalistic confusion in the fall of 1845 concerning the seriousness of the blight. The unexpected, almost universal, destruction of the potato crop in 1846 meant that the new Whig Government had to reinstate and even extend Peel’s relief policies after it had set about dismantling them. This turn-around proved perplexing to those newspaper editors who were ideologically opposed to such government intervention in the first place. Although a few press reports had warned of the drastic decrease in potato acreage in 1847, most government officials and newspaper editors were blind-sided by their focus on the blight. As a consequence, there was disappointment and confusion when starvation persisted that year, even as the blight seemed to recede. Then, in spite of Trevelyan’s proclamation in January of 1848 that the ‘Irish Famine of 1847’ was at an end, the blight returned in 1848.
And so it went. Each year seemed to tell a different story and yet, it seemed essentially the same story. Every year Ireland was hungry and in need. Editors, often unable or unwilling to keep up with the shifting dynamics of blight, hunger, and changing government policies, failed to help their readers grasp the depth of tragedy that had overtaken Ireland. What they saw instead was an apparently endless repetition of hunger and poverty, all to be relieved at the expense of the British taxpayer. Irish need seemed insatiable, regardless of British response. The Irish for their part seemed ungrateful and given to violence. It is little wonder that donor fatigue set in during the fall of 1847 or that schemes to limit the cost to the Exchequer and to reconstruct the Irish rural economy pushed aside reports of the horror of daily death.
Journalistic focus and public interest can be sustained during an on-going crisis, providing it is punctuated by specific ‘events’ and that it promises a clear ending. Wars, for example, are measured in battles, are fought by commanders who take on public personas, and are ended by victory or defeat. The daily struggle against an on-going famine waged by (usually) faceless bureaucrats against an enigmatic fungus and monumental want was difficult to report. ‘Monster meetings,’ bread riots, the first soup kitchens, political priests, murders, arson, and revolution, a royal visit — these constituted ‘news.’ After a time, people dying day after day ceased to be ‘news.’
Another problem in reporting the Famine was that Ireland could never be seen as an entity unto itself. The first part of this study has tried to show how British opposition to O‘Connell’s Repeal movement created an atmosphere of suspicion and impatience within which the challenge of Ireland’s food crisis had to be recognized and understood. Other issues such as the Com Laws, the emergence of middle-class opinion as a powerful factor in politics, as well as the constant concern about Britain’s own economic health and social stability in a difficult, uncertain decade, all helped determine the perception of Irish problems. A British editor, looking at events in Ireland, had to consider not only how the crisis would affect Ireland, but also how it would affect Britain, even the Empire. In terms of editorial priorities Ireland did not come first.
An editor’s responses to events in Ireland was also informed by ideology and party (or factional) loyalties (especially those of the paper’s owner), as well as by the expectations of the paper’s readers. Each paper and journal had its own biases, appealed to its own section of the public and, therefore, had its own slant on the news. When, for example, reports of the blight began to appear in 1845, Tory protectionist papers played down its importance and Whig, anti-protectionist journals decried a looming disaster. When papers changed owners or editors, their perspectives changed as well. When a Tory faction purchased the Morning Chronicle in 1848, the once independent Whiggish interest in alternative solutions for Ireland disappeared. Even ideological positions had to be adjusted to changing events and shifts in public opinion. As Michael de Nie points out, after 1847 James Wilson’s The Economist began to ease its strictures against government intervention in Ireland and to demand, instead, a heavy hand in providing security in order to attract new investors. De Nie also notes how, after the election of 1847, both the Government and the press responded to the emergence of a strong radical, middle-class voice pressing for the moral and economic restructuring of Ireland (1997, 77, 82).
Even the basic acts of writing about or depicting images of the Famine presented reporters and editors with difficult challenges. How far could a writer or artist go in portraying the horrors of death by starvation or cholera? Editors had to be sensitive to the amount of space and detail they could devote to any descriptions of suffering. As a result, most reports tended to distance readers from the depth of the disaster. Writers, for example, often adopted simple linguistic devices that placed the starving Irish in a different category than that of their readers. In an intensely class-conscious society middle- and upper-class readers might feel sympathy for the ‘poor wretches,’ ‘paupers,’ ‘swarming hoards,’ and ‘redundant potato eaters’ of Ireland without quite imagining them on the same level of humanity as themselves. Their religion taught them that all were equal in the sight of God, but their social sense suggested that some were more equal than others. Even honest, hard-working English Hodge, who was no doubt more deserving of charity than improvident Paddy, might occasionally have to go hungry.
Since journals like The Times and the Illustrated London News were commodities, published in order to be sold, we can assume that whatever they printed was intended to contribute to their marketability. When publishing matter that might disturb their readership, editors and writers, consciously or unconsciously, had to find ways to enable readers to accept the information without feeling called upon to repudiate their own sense of self-interest and comfort or their political and economic instincts. Even discussions of poverty in England had to be presented carefully, lest grim reality intrude too much upon middle-class conscience. Peter W. Sinnema has shown that while the ILN’s texts described the grim interiors of English labourers’ cottages, the accompanying illustrations made the exteriors seem picturesque. Sinnema argues that this ‘dissonance between word and picture’ offered an ‘escape route’ for the journal’s readers. In doing so, the ILN reaffirmed ‘its loyalty to a middle-class audience’ (96, 104).
Irish poverty was, of course, perceived quite differently. Observers generally could not asetheticize Irish poverty. In Ireland the cabin’s exterior tended to be as wretched as its interiors. Until the Famine, some visitors tried to make Paddy, with his jokes and his dancing, picturesque, thereby dulling the edge of his destitution, as well as the observer’s conscience. This option disappeared once the Famine struck. However, British writers had already developed buffers to protect the consciences of their readers. Irish poverty was either the fault of the Irish landlords or of the Irish peasants themselves. Thus, the negativity that pervaded discussion of the Famine had the necessary function of protecting the interests of the British middle-class
Some distancing from the victims of the Irish Famine was inevitable. Even today, readers and viewers in the West are spared the most horrible sights of death in the Third World. The problem goes beyond squeamishness. Images, verbal or visual, of intense distress and suffering, might excite human empathy. They may, however, simultaneously raise barriers against it. Accounts of half-naked, starving people may generate pity and alms but also revulsion. For many people, there is a point at which the sufferer moves from the category of a human being to that of a grotesque. Thus, while we desire to help, we also desire to be rid of visions of human beings in extremis. They starve, and we suffer from ‘compassion fatigue.’
Nevertheless, if the gulf between the comfortable middle-class consumer of news and the geographically, or socially or racially distant victim of disaster cannot always be bridged by human empathy, it can still be measured in terms of guilt. Organized charity, private and public, provides conduits for aid but also mechanisms to assuage guilt. The press, for its part, could report the Famine while at the same time shielding the readers’ souls and limiting their sense of responsibility for the crisis. In this respect, popular Evangelical moralism provided spiritual protection, as well as a buffer against economic vulnerability. The wrong sort of charity given to the wrong sort of people threatened a debauch; the poor would become dependent and the middle-class would become poor. Irish need would sap British strength. Thus, the attraction of the mantra, ‘Irish property must pay for Irish poverty,’ which nicely shifted the burden onto the proper shoulders. There was only a limited inclination to ask if this solved the problem. A few editors and writers occasionally glanced into the abyss. Generally, it was sufficient to blame Irish landlords and their tenants for Ireland’s plight, leaving the British readers to shake their heads in pity or in indignation, quite free of further responsibility and guilt.
The press also voiced the frustrations that editors, and presumably many of their readers, felt at what they regarded as a spectacular inability of the Irish to respond to the crisis, either on their own or with Britain’s aid. By the 1840s Britain was nearing the end of the first century of the industrial revolution. A new culture was emerging, suited to the demands and opportunities provided by industrial capitalism. Among the characteristics of this culture were an admiration for efficiency, an adherence to rational analysis, especially when applied to problem solving, and a firm belief in individual effort and responsibility. In the British mind, none of these qualities could be associated with the people of Ireland.
The Irish Famine also struck at a central assumption that lay at the heart of the British dedication to progress, what Richard Altick identifies as the Victorians’ belief in
the great strides man had lately taken toward fulfilling his oldest dream, the conquest of his physical environment. Man and nature had always been at strife, and now at last, thanks to the advance of scientific knowledge, man was winning, bringing nature meekly to heel (1973, 107).
The crisis in Ireland was an embarrassing denial of, or at least a serious challenge to, this Victorian sense of progress. Faced with the challenge of the Famine, the new urban, industrial capitalist mindset, as represented in the editorial offices of the British newspapers and journals, gave vent to an immense amount of frustration, even anger; thus, the tendency to blame the Irish victims of the Famine.
In responding to the multitude of pressures to shape the news in one way or another, editors and writers had a variety of techniques available to them. Some tried to normalize the Famine by insisting that Ireland was always experiencing short-falls in its food supply and that events in the late 1840s were but a part of the sequence of eternal Irish hunger. Sometimes writers sought to naturalize events. By simply using the passive voice, a leader writer could remove even the hint of agency from a report, so that starvation, robbed of any apparent connection to policy decisions, just seemed to have happened as part of some inevitable chain of events for which no one, except possibly the Irish themselves, was responsible. On a micro-level, editors juxtaposed articles on a page to provide subtle commentary. On several occasions reports of troop movements in Ireland followed an article on Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal meetings. By printing carefully chosen letters sent in by readers (or solicited by or even written by the editors themselves), editors created a controlled pseudo-dialogue, praising the views they supported and criticizing or ridiculing those they found in error (Royle, 54). Publishing diverse views and then refuting them allowed the papers to appear open-minded, while their editors controlled the flow of ideas.
Likewise, by publishing and then commenting on the debates in Parliament an editor could use his leading articles to try to shape public opinion. In the generally negative press reaction to Lord Bentinck’s railway scheme, Whig editors were able to attack the protectionist Tory landlords, while at the same time calling into question virtually any but the most limited forms of government intervention in Ireland. Politicians and government officials, of course, supplied information to sympathetic papers and, occasionally, like Trevelyan, wrote articles.
By employing special correspondents, who presumably shared his views, an editor gave readers access to first-hand observations that also dovetailed with his paper’s bias. Delane used Russell’s reports on the State Trials and Thomas Campbell Foster’s letters from rural Ireland to bolster his paper’s attacks on O’Connell and on the Irish agriculture system. Series such as these also enabled editors to create a context for future reporting. The Times drew upon a number of Foster’s ideas and images in its later commentary on the Famine. Frederick Bayley’s somewhat more sympathetic interests in Ireland may have caused him to send James Mahony to Skibbereen for the Illustrated London News in 1846. A few years later, Charles Mackay, the ILN’s new editor, used his artist/correspondent’s reports on evictions in the winter of 1849 to call into question the Government’s handling of the crisis.
Finally, editors could try to influence public opinion by deciding which stories to emphasize and which to downplay or ignore. The State Trials, the Mahon murder, the rising at Boulagh and the Queen’s visit to Ireland were all the types of stories that would easily attract the attention of readers. Focusing on such stories, however, took attention away from the Famine. In some cases, such as the Mahon murder and the buildup to Young Ireland’s ‘revolution,’ a kind of hysteria was created in the press that virtually erased from the public mind the fact that the Irish masses, still struggling with famine, had not taken the road to violence and revolution.
The interested and dedicated reader could, of course, find a variety of information and viewpoints in the press. Issues were debated. The policies of Peel and Russell were never without their critics. Moreover, while some papers played down the worst suffering, others published compelling accounts of the devastation taking place in Ireland. Nevertheless, for all of the differences of opinion in the press there was considerable consensus regarding Britain’s response to the Irish crisis. This is not surprising. Roger Fowler argues that ‘Articulating the ideology of consensus is a crucial practice in the Press’s management of its relation with government and capital, on the one hand, and with individual readers on the other’ (49).
Admittedly, the early, if not universal, assumption that Irish food should be kept on the island did not influence government policy. Nor did Parliament take too seriously the widely expressed belief that the Government had to prevent starvation in Ireland. As the crisis deepened, however, a firm consensus developed around the conviction that Britain had to do something. Abandoning Ireland to its own devices or to private charity was not an option for most commentators. Yet, also from the very beginning, there was broad concern that Ireland should not become a burden to the Exchequer and the British taxpayer. Concerning specific policies, there was general consensus that Irish property had to be held responsible for the costs of relief. This idea emerged early in the press and proved to be a central element in Whig policy. Also within the first year of famine, attention was focused on the Irish Poor Law and the role it should play in famine relief. By late 1847 the demand for security of life and property in Ireland had come to dominate much of the press commentary. British disgust with the Young Irelander ‘rising’ only added to demands for law and order.
With the potato blight arriving in the same year as the Devon Commission’s report, there was early agreement that the crisis had its roots in the Irish land system, in potato cultivation and in the nature of Irish peasant society. These ideas coalesced into a general assumption that Ireland, at least in the West, had to be reconstructed. Various schemes were put forward, ranging from peasant proprietorship and massive land reclamation to the anglicization of Irish agriculture under the aegis of new English investors and farmers. With the exception of extreme devotees to political economy, such as James Wilson, there was a broad consensus that some sort of reconstruction had to be the goal of governmental policies.
Perhaps the most important part of the consensus was one that did not require constant reiteration: the assumptions regarding the power relationship between Britain and Ireland. Britain had power, legitimate power. Ireland did not have legitimate power. Ireland was always the object of British power. Britain’s purpose was to rule, to govern, to guide, to help, to succor Ireland. Whether ruling or relieving, Britain acted upon Ireland as it saw fit.
Apparent reversals of this position, such as the portrayal of Britain itself as a potential victim of the Irish situation, only emphasized the peculiar nature of the relationship. In some cartoons and leading articles Britain was depicted as an honest, hard-working citizen beset by an importuning beggar, or robbed by a vicious thief, or cheated by a charlatan. A startling metaphor, of which we have seen several examples, involved the healthy body of Britain attached to the diseased body of Ireland. All of this represented a reversal of the proper power relationship between the two islands. They were warnings that Ireland could cause Britain to lose control and to find its wealth stolen or drained away, its rule of law challenged by rebellion, its constitutional Union threatened.
In his study of the presentation of the news, Roger Fowler states that ideology is ‘in the language already…. Ideology is already imprinted in the available discourse (all discourse)’ (41-42). In the material with which this study is concerned, it is not difficult to see the Foucauldian issues of power and ideology throughout press commentary. We have also seen that the language of colonialism, while not completely applicable to the British-Irish relationship, was, nevertheless, never far beneath the surface. Yet, as we look at the way information about Ireland was presented, and especially at the language used, there seems to be a deeper stratum within the discourse, one that goes beyond the obvious issues of ideology and power. We must, then, look past the surface content of articles and cartoons to the underlying message each item contained.
We can begin our search by returning to our observation that neither the British press nor politicians saw the Famine as a single overwhelming event, but always as something inexorably intertwined with British concerns. Many of the issues that fascinated editors and leader writers did not have much to do with the Famine. We have seen, for example, how sectarian and racial issues occasionally pushed their way into the discourse. Other themes, however, were like icebergs, the ‘tip’ appearing in the text, while the bulk might be present only by implication. Take, for example, the frequently expressed assumption regarding the supposed superiority of British grain cultivation over Irish dependence upon the potato. While such assertions did not make nutritional sense, grain bias was deeply embedded within British concepts of social and individual morality. Grain cultivation was seen as the basis for the ‘proper’ economic and social order of rural Britain, especially for the enclosed English countryside. Grain, moreover, demanded a very visible cycle of production that, to the Victorian mind, seemed to point to a proper moral order. It took planning and continual work, involving agricultural labourers working under the watchful gaze of the ‘master.’ On the other hand, to British eyes, which were seldom informed by actual observation, potatoes required only minimal labour (without supervision) for minimal, yet to the Irish peasant, sufficient reward, leaving him free to loaf, sing, dance and engage in seditious agitation.
Providentialism was another rather complicated theme, since it was not just the improvident Irish upon whom divine retribution had been visited. The British themselves suffered because they had failed to rule Ireland properly. Recall The Times’ leader of 25 January 1847 quoted in Chapter Eight, in which readers were told that
England is mulcted for connivance at a great neglect, which time has developed into a great crime. The weakness or the indifference of man has given intensity to the infliction of Heaven; and England feels the scourge which had visited Ireland for the omission of duties which it was once incumbent upon herself to fulfil, and it is now incumbent upon both to recognize.
There were secular versions of the theme of Britain’s guilt and responsibility. John Stuart Mill, among others, called upon Britain to acknowledge its historical misgovernment, indeed, mistreatment of Ireland. Interestingly, however, this admission of past administrative failures on Britain’s part lent no support to the Repeal position that Ireland should be given some degree of self government. Rather, like providentialism, this theme simply reinforced Britain’s ‘responsibility’ to govern Ireland properly, however that might be defined.
These themes were related to others more metaphorical in nature. Occasionally, we find the suggestion of a parent-child relationship, in which Britain was portrayed as an indulgent or a neglectful parent who had spoiled her Hibernian child. There was also the imperial metaphor of the all-wise mother country that had to govern a backward colony, which, left to its own devices, would forever run amuck. All of these themes reinforced the necessity for Britain to continue, even to extend, its control over Ireland, since the Irish were incapable of running their own affairs.
It is interesting to consider one theme that did not surface very often — that of the ‘Good Samaritan.’ In the Biblical parable, the good Samaritan went out of his way to rescue a robbery victim, a Israelite, whose people were generally hostile to Samaritans. The Samaritan took the destitute, injured man to his house, cared for him, and returned him whole and sound to his life. The essence of the parable was that the Samaritan gave his charity unconditionally to a member of an alien tribe. Some British editors and politicians no doubt thought that Britain had taken on the Samaritan role. However, no matter how much a leader writer insisted that it was Britain’s duty to aid famine-stricken Ireland, such aid was hardly ever offered unconditionally. British magnanimity was limited by the need to guard against never-ending Irish mendicancy. Punch’s 1846 cartoon of John Bull lending succor to an Irish family (Figure 7.1) depicts the British view of charity properly directed and wisely limited. John Bull hands the Irish family a basket of bread and a spade. The bread was for immediate relief; the spade was for long-term self-help.
As noted earlier, the self-help theme itself was an important element in British industrial culture, and it lay at the heart of the moralism that frequently appeared in press commentary on the Famine. Insisting that the individual was responsible for his own survival, the ideal of self-reliance provided a rationale against over-generous aid to the poor. Thus, in early 1847 the Manchester Guardian complained about the Irish, who:
are unfortunately so prone to lean upon others; to whom the offer of any assistance is but to aid and encourage a strong inherent propensity…. The moment the government hints at attempting to improve Ireland by any particular process, that moment the Irish seize upon the suggestion, and claim its performance as a right; that moment they relinquish to the government, what they could probably perform for themselves (10 February 1847, 4).
Harold Perkin in his Origins of Modern English Society stresses the importance of self-reliance to mid-Victorian society. In contrast to the old theory of ‘dependence and protection,’ the new concept ‘evoked not only manly self-respect and responsibility but also ambition to rise in social status which was the chief source of energy and drive behind the progress of society.’ Thus Richard Cobden’s ‘masculine species of charity’ designed to ‘inculcate in the minds of the labouring classes the love of independence, the privilege of self-respect, the disdain of being patronized or petted, the desire to accumulate, and the ambition to rise’ (224-25).
All of the themes that appeared in famine reports were ultimately linked to one basic assumption: the inferiority of all things Irish, most especially the Irish mind and character. Most writers seemed to assume that there was something radically wrong with the Irish, something that went beyond issues of land or politics. Here is Thomas Campbell Foster writing in The Times in the fall of 1845, as quoted in Chapter Five.
You have here the richest land and the most extreme poverty. The people complain of high rents, and yet extract but half the profit out of the land that it will yield. They struggle desperately to possess a patch of land, because they have no employment by which to live…. They shoot one another in the struggle to possess a patch of land, and leave neglected thousands of acres which would amply repay their labour and capital…. They complain that landlords and agents in parts of the county will not reside, and they shoot them if they do (4 November 1845).
While several of the standard stereotypes about the Irish appeared in the article, the basic argument was that the Irish were incapable of grasping reality and behaving rationally.
Consider another passage from The Times leader published on 17 August 1847. In charging that the Repealers were still drawing on the late Daniel O’Connell’s rhetoric, the paper asserted:
In Daniel O’Connell’s time we know the way was to tell the laziest, least enterprising, dirtiest portion of the population of Ireland that they were the finest and most intelligent peasantry on the surface of the globe. If their cabins were open to the four winds; if their wretched patches of conacre were not half cultivated; if they had a taste for shooting down any rash individual who might be bold enough to suggest improvements; if they loved to revel, husband and wife, children and pigs, on the mud floor of one and the same smoky hovel — it was KING JOHN, or CROMWELL, or WILLIAM III, or some historical worthy who was at fault — any one rather than themselves (5).
Given the Victorian tendency to seek explanations for social and economic problems in terms of character, the leader writer easily slid from the topic of Repeal to that of the Irish character.
The Times leader articulated some of the traits that supposedly defined the Irish; they were alleged to be lazy, dirty, lying, given to fantasy, improvident, careless, and violent. Assertions such as these implied some base of comparison. To simply state that the Irish were lazy did not mean very much. How lazy? Lazier than whom? Irish laziness had to be defined in terms of some known opposite quality. Occasionally, writers compared Irish peasants to other ‘savage’ peoples, usually to the detriment of the Irish. Generally, however, the context made it clear that the point of comparison was not to other ‘inferior’ peoples but rather the very superior British.
Of course, few British needed to be reminded that the Irish were inferior. They would scarcely have imagined the reverse. However, this was not the point. Calling attention to an inferior Irish trait automatically suggested to the reader a superior British trait, even if, as in most cases, it was not mentioned in an article. As Sinnema suggests, ‘To be English is to identify oneself with the superior term in a series of binary oppositions disparaging national, sexual, religious and class Others; to define oneself as a fervent patriot in a nation distinguishing itself as the epitome of progressive civilization’ (112).
In his essay ‘Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art,’ Gregory Bateson sought to look beneath the surface of a work of art, or any other expression of culture, for an underlying meaning. He was concerned ‘not about the meaning of the encoded message [within the artifact] but rather about the meaning of the code chosen’ (130). To accomplish this, he drew upon communications theory. He stated that ‘meaning’ within a system of communication
may be regarded as an approximate synonym of pattern, redun-dancy, information, and ‘restraint,’ within a paradigm of the following sort:
Any aggregate of events or objects…shall be said to contain ‘redundancy’ or ‘pattern’ if the aggregate can be divided in any way by a ‘slash mark,’ such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can guess, with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. We may say that what is on one side of the slash contains information or has meaning about what is on the other side (130-31).
If this is true, then it would not be difficult to guess what positive British traits were implied by invoking negative Irish attributes. Taking the Irish traits discussed in The Times leader of 17 August 1847, we can precede to join them to their opposing British qualities.
Irish/British
lazy/industrious
dirty/clean
lying/truthful
fanaticizing/realistic
improvident/provident
careless/careful
violent/law-abiding
According to Bateson’s theory, what is on one side of the slash ‘restrains’ the possibility of making a wrong guess about what is on the other. ‘The essence and raison d’etre of communication is the creation of redundancy, meaning, pattern, predictability, information, and/or reduction of the random by “restraint”’ (131-32). Therefore, in terms of British press commentary on Ireland, the redundancy represented by such implied dichotomies was obvious. Indeed, the redundancy was so great that even traits that in other people might be considered desirable or at least acceptable turn out to be negative in the Irish when the implied comparison to the British is taken into account.
Irish/British
humourous/serious
loyal follower/commanding leader
loquacious/quiet
quick/deliberate
Here Paddy’s ‘positive’ qualities turn out to have negative connotations within the context of British success and Irish failure.
British writers usually referred only to the Irish half of these dichotomies, leaving the superior British qualities to be supplied by the reader’s imagination. If a reader was told that the Irish were lazy, then the context of the statement usually suggested the image of British industriousness. As suggested earlier, without such pairings on the right side, the expressions on the left lacked significance. Therefore, more was involved than pin-pointing the reasons for Irish inferiority. The process not only defined Irish laziness, for example, but in so doing it made the reader appreciate British industriousness all the more. Each element in the comparison reinforced the other.
Many articles and cartoons referring to Ireland were built around these implied dichotomies. In addition to the ones listed above, we have encountered the following:
Irish/British
poor/rich
wrong/right
backward/modern
uncivilized/civilized
ignorant/knowledgeable
emotional/rational
potato-eater/bread-eater
powerless/powerful
rebellious/loyal
foolish/commonsensical
Catholic/Protestant
sick/healthy
inferior/superior
The list could easily be extended, but the basic redundancy is obvious. Any Irish trait could easily generate its British opposite, which would always be superior or positive in comparison to the Irish.
Such contrasts were visually represented in a number of Punch cartoons that were physically divided between two figures, one Irish and one British, each representing a contrasting quality. In Richard Doyle’s ‘THE MODERN SISYPHUS’ a toiling Peel tries to roll up a hill an unmovable boulder bearing O’Connell’s face; patient, dedicated British effort applied to Irish intransigence (vi., March 1844, 16; Douglas, 41). ‘A DISTURBER OF THE PUBLIC PEACE’ (Figure 3.5) shows O’Connell as a somewhat shabby importuning street musician in a comic Repeal Cap being paid off by a neatly dressed, erect, serious-looking Peel (Figure 3.5). A well-dressed John Bull, looking every inch the respectable citizen, is accosted by a ragged, simian-faced Paddy in ‘HEIGHT OF IMPUDENCE.’ The Irishman begs a ‘thrifle…for a poor Irish Lad to buy a bit of — a blunderbuss with’ (xi., 1846,248). Bounteous John Bull dominates his one half of the page in ‘UNION IS STRENGTH’ (Figure 7.1), as he hands across his bread and spade to the starving Irish family depicted on the other half. Even Mr. Punch looks forthright and in command as he demands that a pop-eyed puppet Paddy put down his toy gun in ‘PUNCH AND PADDY’ (xiii., 25 December 1847, 245).
The same convention holds true even in cartoons that were not directly intended to ridicule or criticize the Irish. ‘A MORNING CALL’ (Figure 13.3) shows fashionably dressed Britannia and the Prince of Wales on the one half of the cartoon and ragged Hibernia and her urchin on the other. Similarly, in ‘LANDING OF QUEEN VICTORIA IN IRELAND’ (Figure 13.4) the Royal couple stand opposite a kneeling Paddy, each dominating their own space on the page. All that is missing in these cartoons is Bateson’s slash mark separating the Irish from the British figures. Indeed, in most cases, in seeing only one half of the cartoon, the viewer, knowing the context, could correctly guess the general nature of the other half.
Using Bateson’s terms, the ‘redundancy’ that appears in all of this material helps us to recognize the cultural role played by the news stories and cartoons about Ireland. While an article might contain ‘news,’ there was a deeper meaning, a subtext, to the piece: the repetition of the underlying message of British superiority and Irish inferiority.
Bateson argued that when analyzing a cultural artifact, in our case the British/Irish comparisons embedded in articles and cartoons, we should see the ‘message’ of the artifact as ‘both itself internally patterned and itself a part of a larger patterned universe — the culture of some part of it’ (132). In other words the characteristic pattern within an artifact should lead to a recognition of the pattern within the larger culture of which the artifact is a part. Bateson, whose example was a painting, illustrated this idea with the following diagram:
[Characteristic of art object/Characteristic of rest of culture]
where the square brackets enclose the universe of relevance, and where the oblique stroke represents a slash across which some guessing is possible, in one direction or in both. The problem, then, is to spell out what sorts of relationships, correspondences, etc., cross or transcend this oblique stroke (132).
At the heart of many of the articles and cartoons we have been considering, we can see an internal pattern of basic dichotomies describing the inferior/superior Irish/British relationship. The redundancy of this pattern should lead us further into British culture. Using Bateson’s diagrams, we can suggest the following diagram.
[Characteristics of the artifacts (Negative Irish traits/positive British traits)/Characteristics of British culture]
If we apply this to a specific item, such as the Punch cartoon of Paddy begging a ‘thrifle’ from John Bull, we would have
[Characteristics of the artifacts (Paddy/John Bull)/Characteristics of British Culture (British superiority]
In Bateson’s terminology, this illustrates
the necessarily hierarchic structure of all communicational systems: the fact of conformity or nonconformity (or indeed any other relationship) between parts of a patterned whole may itself be informative as part of some still larger whole (132).
As Bateson points out, a reader or viewer’s reaction to an implied ‘slash mark’ — the guessing at some contrasting quality — may often be an unconscious act. Similarly, writers and artists may also be unaware that their works may imply deep cultural dichotomies. Cultural redundancy may be so strong that certain types of comparisons may unwittingly form an underlying meaning for an article or drawing. The mere commenting on some Irish quality or trait with no reference to Britain could still cause the reader to make the comparison. Indeed, for most Britons reading about Ireland, the comparison between the British and Irish characteristics would have been almost impossible to avoid.
Therefore, through this built-in cultural redundancy, any expression of an Irish trait led, first of all, to a superior British trait. This in turn led to all other comparisons between Britain and Ireland, all of which asserted the superiority of Britain and the inferiority of Ireland. Finally, however, this broader comparison itself pointed towards the ‘greater context’ — British cultural identity.
Britain’s was a very diverse society trying to discover and assert a unifying culture in the midst of the rapid expansion of industrial capitalism and imperialism. Linda Colley, in Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, has concluded that people tend to define themselves in terms of ‘who and what they are not. Once confronted with an obviously alien “Them,” an otherwise diverse community can become a reassuring or merely desperate “Us.”’ Colley discusses a process in which a sense of ‘Britishness was superimposed over an array of internal differences in response to contact with the Other, and above all in response to conflict with the Other’ (6).1
Simon Gikandi, focusing on Englishness as the core of this emerging cultural identity, claims that, ‘Englishness, far from emerging from a body of stable values and shared experiences, had been produced by a continuous conflict between the center and its Celtic and colonial peripheries’ (xvii). Gikandi suggests that the ‘metropolis could be drawn into the sites of what it assumed to be colonial difference and turn them into indispensable spaces of self-reflection’ (xviii).
Sinnema notes ‘the thematic alignment of the Illustrated London News…with the bourgeoisie as the cultural and economic nucleus of England’ (207). He argues that among the strategies employed by the ILN were ‘the disparagement of national Others as a means to bolster the reader’s own sense of Englishness…’ (205).
By the 1840s, the concepts that defined English and British identity had come together. However, the emerging pressures of industrial capitalism placed some of these traits under pressure, requiring that they be continually maintained or, where necessary, redefined. For example, the old ideal of an organic society in which all of its members were linked in a hierarchy of relationships was shattered by industrialism. Therefore, the unity of Britishness could no longer be located in terms of deference to superiors and responsibilities to inferiors.2 This placed greater emphasis on other characteristics; old stand-bys such as patriotism and Protestantism.
Perhaps even more important, however, were those other qualities, already mentioned, that were assumed to be central to the emerging industrial culture: honesty, fair dealing, a regard for law, industriousness, hard-headed realism and self-reliance. These were traits that all British people supposedly shared and which were assumed to be sorely lacking in the Irish. Ireland, therefore, represented a sort of reverse mirror in which one could see the shambles of a society that had not embraced British values. Ireland was the object lesson to those who preached the virtues of industriousness, sobriety and thrift to their fellow citizens. Ireland made British character traits seem essential to the maintenance of British society and identity.
The supposed negative characteristics of the Irish were, then, signifiers pointing to the virtues of the British, virtues that had to be continually examined and reaffirmed under the pressures of industrial capitalism and imperialism. The plight of the Irish during the Famine made these British qualities seem even more important. The Famine also threatened to undermine them, however. How could one preach industriousness and self-reliance to the poor of Britain while handing out food and make-work to the improvident Irish? This was especially difficult, given the widespread belief that the Irish had endangered themselves by relying on a crop that required minimal effort on their part. Therefore, charity had to be hedged round with restraints designed to preserve as much as possible the moral well-being of the destitute. The neat formulaic solution of the Poor Law of 1834 was made a mockery of by the flood of Irish paupers into the workhouses in Ireland. If Ireland had to be helped, and it did, then Britain’s repose had to reaffirm, not undercut, British values. If Ireland was to be saved, it had to be made more like Britain, and, therefore, worth saving. This attitude established the priorities that governed famine relief. Saving lives was among those priorities, but it could not and did not take precedence.
In a strange way, Ireland, especially during the Famine, helped to hold British identity together during the turmoil of industrialization. The ‘killing remarks,’ the expression of Britain’s negative attitude towards Ireland, had their roots in a largely unconscious concern for preserving and strengthening those values that defined British identity. The ultimate ‘meaning’ of British press commentary on Ireland and the Irish Famine was the reaffirmation and clarification of the validity of Britishness.
Notes:
1. Sinnema quotes David Morse on this subject. ‘England’ is at once an all-inclusive term that generously and openly refers to everyone and an elaborately coded discourse: it means to be English, as against Irish, Scottish or Welsh, to be Saxon rather than Celt…’; 112.
There were, of course, various ‘Others’ against which concepts of Englishness or Britishness were formed, such as Jacobins, the French, Catholics, English radicals at the time of the French Revolution, and eventually Americans.
2. Some British commentators liked to contrast the Irish landlords to those of Britain, who, it was supposed, would have employed their labourers in a similar crisis. However, even supposing it to be true, this was a far cry from the old tenant-master relationships in the era before enclosures.