A FEW years back, I described an exhibition on the Irish famine period that I had seen at St Connell's Museum in Glenties in Co. Donegal to a friend.
I was taken to task on using the word 'famine'.
"How can you call it a famine when there was enough food to feed the people in the country?
What about all the food exported out of the country under armed guard to England?" my friend contested.
I wanted to know more about this tragic and defining period of Irish history so I started to read all I could and came across many descriptions of the period.
The Great Hunger and An Gorta Mór (the Irish for the former) were two names regularly used.
Yet, records of the time do confirm that there was enough food in Ireland to feed the people. The rest of the crops were not affected. So there was no 'famine'.
Historian Christine Kinealy states that almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases.
The leaders of the day allowed free trade, allowing prices to rise, leaving the starving population who were mostly dependent on the potato as their staple diet to fend for themselves, until various charities came to assist them.
Pauline LomaxThe weak government of the time effectively withheld relief and allowed market forces to take their course.
The result for Ireland and its people was five years of poverty, hunger, starvation, death and devastation.
Those who are still angry about the political policies of the time, which contributed to the demise of so many, call it genocide.
For me, there is nothing to be gained by this terminology.
Many see it as inflammatory and it does not ease the suffering both physical and emotional that was caused.
The Irish Government holds an annual commemorative event at different locations in Ireland each honouring and respecting the victims of the Great Hunger. This year, it will be held in Newry.
But the Irish Government still refers to this period as 'famine'.
I do think it is time to reflect and to call our history by the right terminology.
There was a potato blight and a pathetic, disastrous British government attempt to cope with the starvation by laws and rules.
There was forced immigration and a programme of road and building works for those unfit for work including women and children and there were soup kitchens set up and organised by the generous Quakers and then emulated by the British government.
There were workhouses where families were divided on entry and where the food was deliberately worse than in prison, so that you had to be really desperate to choose this option.
For decades, people did not want to speak of this time because it was so difficult, sad and tragic.
We need to remember those poor unfortunates who did not make it.
Those who died starving in their cottages, in the ditches, on the roads, on the work programmes, in the workhouses, on route to the ports, on ships, on arrival at ports or travelling to find work or shelter.
Most of these individuals were buried nameless in mass plots, often without a ceremony because of fear of disease.
To call it a famine denies the victims our fuller understanding of the reasons for their demise and in honouring them we should call this complex disaster The Great Hunger or An Gorta Mór.
