Legacy of genocide

My grandfather left Tralee in 1917 at the age of 28 and never returned to Ireland again. He changed his name, we think, from Killane or Killeen to Lane when he arrived in Wales some two years later. He almost never spoke about Ireland or the family he had left behind and he did not possess a single photograph or artefact of any kind as a reminder of his previous life.

Once or twice, however, his wife and children came across him, a man physically as hard as nails and prone to bouts of spectacular violence, sitting in the darkness late at night with tears streaming down his face.

When asked why, he would simply reply that he wanted to go home. These rare displays were considered by those around him as maudlin self-indulgence and, from all accounts, were dismissed as embarrassing and generally unmanly behaviour. Violence, it seems, was infinitely preferable to tears.

This outstanding collection of essays gathered together by Tom Hayden made me remember the story again because I realised, I am ashamed to say for the first time, that my grandfather was a product of the Famine. His parents were amongst those survivors who did not emigrate. It placed those little fits of tearfulness - and violence - in a different light altogether.

What is the legacy of the Famine? What is the psychological effect on the descendants of those who, despite the best efforts of the British establishment, survived it? At first, the question seems impossibly abstract. How could the Famine affect anyone three or four generations on?

The answer lies in some of the most powerful contributions in this fine collection of essays; those by Irish Americans. Although these are intensely personal and, I presume, written independently of one another, there are recurring themes which run through many of them; an indefinable sense of loss, of not really knowing who one is, the lack of material things such as heirlooms, photographs, family furniture; of desperate and ultimately futile attempts to piece together family history and most of all an overpowering, deafening, silence about the past - or rather about the Famine. It was, quite simply, never spoken about by its survivors because of its shameful associations. A massively important piece of Irish history has been lost forever.

Peter Quinn writes: ``Somewhere in the mass of statistics compiled on the Famine - bowls of soup distributed, evictions, deaths from fever, departures, etc - are my ancestors. Over the years as I poked at the fringes of those lives, as I tried to piece together some coherent record of the long dayís journey of my family from Famine Ireland to the Bronx of my childhood, I came to realise that in their particularity, in their individuality, these people were beyond my knowing. They had been swallowed by the anti-romance of history, immigrant ships, cholera sheds, tenement houses.''

And in this paragraph, Ray Yeats also comes very close to answering myquestion about the legacy of the famine:

``I am afraid of the Irish Famine. It is a combination of ideas, facts, history and images from my imagination which echoes strongly in the close personal history of my family and more frighteningly in my recent experiences. Irish and hungry, Irish and poor, Irish and emigrated, Irish and dead. A fate from which our noble history could not protect us, centuries of endurance and all for nothing. I have always been afraid that I would never have enough, and not just enough food, but talent, knowledge, character and indeed everything that is thought to be essential for life.''

Recently, during a panel discussion on the Politics of Remembrance which was held in Derry as part of the Bloody Sunday weekend, the historian Edna Longley accused the Irish, particularly those in the north, of something she called `nemophilia', the rather unsavoury fetishisation of commemoration which, she sagely informed us, is related to necrophilia.

Leaving aside the gross insensitivity of coming out with such a statement in front of the Bloody Sunday families and leaving aside her abject, snivelling whatever-must-the-British-think-of-us Uncle Tommery, reading these essays with their ever-present motif of lack of commemoration, lack of history, lack of memory, makes me even more angry about that crass and stupid comment now than when I first heard her say it.

In the meantime, please read this book. Read particularly John Waters' excellent contribution and start to get as angry as he is: ``When I speak about it in public, I make a point of saying, unequivocally, that the Famine was an act of genocide, driven by racism and justified by ideology.''

And when the Uncle Toms down south start cringing just remind them of the motto on the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem: ``Forgetfulness is the way to exile: remembrance is the way to redemption.''

by Fern Lane

Honouring our dead

This booklet is one of the best and most professionally produced commemorative booklets that I have ever seen. It is also one of the most comprehensive as it not only mentions IRA Volunteers and Sinn Fein personnel that have died in the course of the struggle, but also the many other republicans from the Beechmount district of Belfast who may have died of natural causes but whose commitment to our republican ideals never wavered and whose loss was felt by the republican family.

The booklet says what republicans all know; that the struggle for national liberation isn't just fought out on the streets but in the houses of those unsung heroes whose doors where never closed to the Movement and in the hearts and minds of so many ordinary people.

In the introduction the Committee acknowledges that Republicans have hurt and killed people in the course of the struggle and expresses their sympathy to their families.

However, the book is about commemorating the republican dead and marking the 25th Anniversary of the Beechmount Commemoration Committee.

The booklet also uses many photos of those commemorated, which puts faces to people and gives them a presence that words on their own can't. Getting those photos must have been a pain-staking task for the Committee.

What is also true of this booklet - and it would be worthwhile if those who denigrate republicans take this on board - is that the booklet tells the story of our communities. It explains that this struggle has gone on for as long as it has because the people in the North have stood up to the injustices of unionist rule and collectively they have paid a heavy price in the struggle for justice, equality and peace. That sacrifice is what this booklet is about. It can't be dismissed by those who want the clock turned back before 1969.

The booklet will be launched and go on sale at The Felons Club on Friday 27 February.
By Ruairi MacDomhnaill