Irish Famine History

In this period of prosperity and greed it is no longer advantageous to be sympathetic to Irish nationalism (not that it ever was, only sometimes perhaps in their sacrificial deaths) so Mitchel is being sanitised right out of the history books by the thought police. ‘The deep and fierce anger which burned in the heart of every true Irishman at the unutterable degradation and shame to which his country and race had been subjected’ has been forgotten and set aside by well-fed revisionists who put personal wealth or advancement in an English University ahead of relating Irish history as it happened, instead of relating how the British would like it to be remembered.

Unfortunately, in Irish universities the historical subjects chosen for research, and the limits of their investigation, are carefully controlled. When the lecturers are themselves revisionists then the students must uncritically reflect the revisionist ideology, back to their lecturers, until within the space of one generation the country has lost its memory. Then the students will take their obedient place in society oblivious to all the requirements of educated thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. They turn not on the executioners but on the victims. The victim becomes the new villains. And what is even more sinister, with careful manipulation and the use of tendentious arguments and by putting forward their conjectures as foregone conclusions coupled with an aura of intellectual superiority, the country has a new ‘plantation’ – this time the ‘plantation’ of an induced false national memory unquestioned by almost an entire population; definitely an entire generation of that population.

The roots of modern revisionism supposedly sprang from that theoretical struggle for objectivity. In fact, much of what we regard as history today is already heavily revised and it is in no way objective. It was written by the victors. The Irish were never on the winning side of anything so they never even knew what favourable history writing was.

What is most disturbing now is the Irish revisionists are shifting to the winning side as well and revising the already revised history, deliberately pretending it is in the name of dismissing myths and ultimately in the name of peace, by erasing our past memories of wrongs committed against us. While complete objectivity would be great if everybody in the history business could be objective. It would also be great if there were British revisionists challenging what were once standard interpretations of British involvement in Irish wars, and other colonial wars, and if there was an attempt to change the belief of British omnipotence and an examination of the attempt to impose British interests and values on the world; questioning why Britain pursued a policy of overseas expansionism and questioning their inability to recognize that this quest was catastrophic and, in the end, counterproductive.

Mitchel wrote in the opening of his Jail Journal, ‘England has been left in possession not only of the soil of Ireland – but in possession of the world’s ear also. She may pour into it what tale she will: and all mankind will believe it’. Nothing much has changed.