Opinion by Dr. Tim Ball
History is the devil’s scripture. Lord Byron
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. Eric Hoffer
History is past politics; and politics present history. John Seeley
The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Someone to Blame
The Great Irish Potato famine began in 1845 and had severe social impact for some six years. Historians tell the story in many ways, but most assign blame to a few humans, particularly for failure to deal with the great loss of life and hardships of mass migration. There was a proportionally worse famine in 1741, but that is virtually unknown. Did the 1845 event get more attention because it provided a point of attack for the social atmosphere of the time? Some attributed overall weather conditions and harvest failures for the social unrest that gave rise to Marxism: 1848 is known as the “Year of Revolutions”.
The years 1848 and 2011 both followed poor harvests, a spike in food prices and an industrial recession. What we remember as the Irish Potato Famine was in fact a blight that struck the whole of Western Europe between 1845 and 1846. This was compounded by a devastatingly bad harvest in the latter year. It was impossible to meet the demand of a vastly increased population.
The same environment engendered the ideas of Malthus (Six Essays on population published between 1798 and 1826) and Darwin (Origin of Species published 1859). The quote indicates that parallels are already being made between then (1848) and now (2011). David Archibald posed a similar question in his article, “Two years to a 1740-type event? Will those using global warming for a political agenda switch to the threat of famine due to drought? Will the blame shift from, the rich and powerful causing the event, to their failure to deal with the crisis?
History shows that leadership reaction to crisis is always inadequate. Any chance of a better reaction is in a better understanding of the cause of the crisis – in this case, weather mechanisms. Government’ preparing for warming when cooling is the trend, has already reduced the chances of proper reaction. There is good news; technology has vastly improved our ability to recover after the events.
What caused the failure of the potato crop in 1845? What were the weather conditions for both events? What weather and climate lessons are in the two events? Archibald references Briffa and Jones (2006) conclusion that “climate might vary more than is commonly accepted.” An interesting conclusion, considering they were very involved at the time in the “hockey stick” claim of very low variability for some 600 years.
Food Supply
Hunger is one word that can summarize human history. People were almost always hungry or starving. It is still true for too much of the world, but completely unnecessary. Malthus misdirected the focus with his claim that population growth would exceed increases in food production. The Club of Rome and its offspring, Agenda 21, perpetuate and expand the misdirection by claiming overpopulation is overusing, abusing and causing shortage of all resources.
The world is not overpopulated. There is no shortage of food. It’s estimated we produce enough every year to feed 26 billion people. However, thanks to Malthus and neo-Malthusians, we ignore the real problems that are adequate storage and effective distribution.
Storage
Once we switched from hunter/gatherer to sedentary agriculture, the ability to store food over the non-growing season became a force for invention and innovation. Just one example was the entire spice industry, primarily used to preserve and make food palatable. It drove commerce for buyer and seller across the world. As one person wrote,
In its day, the spice trade was the world’s biggest industry: it established and destroyed empires, led to the discovery of new continents, and in many ways helped lay the foundation for the modern world.
Estimates vary, but about 60-70 percent of the food grown in developing nations never makes it to the table. The figure is 30-40 percent for the developed world. Most of the difference is due to refrigeration. Maybe a measure of how little knowledge or importance is applied to these facts, is that few know the name Clarence Birdseye II. Refrigeration also helped the distribution problems, especially when it combined with containerization.
Modern container shipping celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2006. Almost from the first voyage, use of this method of transport for goods grew steadily and in just five decades, containerships would carry about 60% of the value of goods shipped via sea.
Some crops were adopted and adapted for their relative ease of production and storage. These characteristics were well known about the potato in South America and gave its appearance in Europe such an impact. It is likely that the cool damp conditions of the Little Ice Age (LIA) pushed grain prices up, providing an opportunity for rapid adoption of the potato. Libby’s study of grain prices for four European countries illustrates the jump.
Figure 1.
Source: H.H Lamb, Climate, Past, Present and future, Vol.2. 1977.
The peasants could achieve a great yield in poor soil and store them for the entire winter. Ireland adopted and became more dependent on the potato than most other countries. It likely caused the surge in population as the census figures show.
1821: 6,801,827
1831: 7,767,401
1841: 8,175,124
The population declined to 6.6 million by 1851. The pattern of population for the Republic is shown in Figure 2.
There were famines again in 1877-78, 1885 and 1889-90 that are reflected in the increased decline of population in Figure 2.
The famine of 1740-41 is described on the cover of the book Arctic Ireland as,
“…more intense, more bizarre and proportionately more deadly, yet most history books acknowledge it with no more than a line or two in passing.”
The book is subtitled, “The extraordinary story of the GREAT FROST and FORGOTTEN FAMINE of 1740-41”, which underscores the different weather conditions of the 1740 and 1845 famines. In 1845, the weather did not directly kill people; rather, the cool damp conditions were favorable for the potato blight. Overdependence on a single crop made the people vulnerable. Other countries, like Norway, also suffered the potato blight, but were not as dependent. The Irish Potato famine was coincident with poor crop conditions throughout Europe. The 1840s are called the “the Hungry Forties” as cool wet summers combined with moderate wet winters. The combination causes harvest failures and malnourished people who are vulnerable to diseases that survive and even flourish through the winter. These conditions are similar to those predominant in the 14th century that Barbara Tuchman documented so well in her book a Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.
In 1740 the world was just emerging from the nadir of the Little Ice Age in the 1680s. As the author David Dickson notes,
On the eve of the crisis there had perhaps been some complacency as to the power of exceptional whether to upset normal life. Winters had been relatively benign over the previous thirty years. No one, not even those with distant memories of the terrible winters of the 1680s, was prepared for what became known as the Great Frost of 1740 or for “bliain an dir” the year of slaughter of 1741.
The 1740 weather illustrates what happens when events combine. We organized the conference on the impact of the Indonesian volcano Tambora[1] because John Eddy’s work on temperature sunspot relations and Hubert Lamb’s work on the Dust Veil Index were raising questions about cause and effect. Temperatures were already declining from the solar activity associated with the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830) when Tambora erupted.
It appears the cold trend of the Little Ice Age was turning. Volcanic activity, particular the eruption of Ichinsky in Kamchatka, triggered the Great Frost of 1741. Dickson claims,
Indeed, the time of the Great Frost remains to this day the longest period of extreme cold in modern European history.
This claim appears to depend on the definition of “modern European history”. The Central England Temperature (Figure 3) shows the cold of 1740 and a prolonged cold spell that exceeds anything after 1900. In the commentary to the Archibald article there is reference to blocking, the pattern that causes the normal west to east movement of the Rossby Waves to slow down and the Waves to deepen. This results in extreme, prolonged temperature or precipitation patterns that cause problems and is most likely the explanation as other similar events indicate.
Cynthia Wilson and I organized a workshop for the 1816 conference. We created very large global maps and asked people to indicate the temperature and precipitation patterns for their region. Using simple symbols for very high normal and very low, a distinctive map emerged that showed the extreme meridionality of the Circumpolar Vortex. (The maps are included in the published proceedings.) The pattern of wind was significantly different in direction and force. Similar changes in wind were noted in 1740. In Scotland the January wind was described as a piercing Nova Zembla (Novaya Zemlya) air” This means it was coming form the northeast, probably as part of the Polar Easterlies (Figure 4).
Figure 3
The pattern of deaths was different in 1741 than 1845. Most early deaths were due to the extreme cold, followed by a growing number due to starvation. Records are scarce but Dickson says,
How does 1740-41 measure up again later, more famous, Great Irish Famine? In terms of relative casualties, the older crisis was undoubtedly the more severe, even taking the lower bound estimate of 310,000 fatalities in 1740-41.
More important, these deaths occurred in a relatively short year and a half, while 1845 lasted some six years.
Discussion
Both time 1741 and 1845 experienced meridional conditions as the Rossby Waves deepened and slowed in their easterly migration. Generally, with zonal flow or even low amplitude meridional flow, mid-latitude weather patterns persist
Figure 4
approximately 4 to 6 weeks. As meridionality intensifies, Rossby Waves deepen and blocking occurs, causing weather patterns to persist for 8, 10 or even 12 weeks. This can cover entire growing seasons and result in excessive, damaging, hot, cold, wet or dry conditions.
Various permutations can occur. For example, in the 14th century there were long periods with cool and wet summers, with warm and wet winters – it was difficult to separate the seasons. Similar conditions occurred during the 17th century and again plagues devastated populations. During the period following Tambora, extreme meridionality caused prolonged conditions. A drought in central Canada, documented in detail by Peter Fidler, stressed the people with profound social and historical impact detailed in my 1992 paper, “Climatic Change, Droughts and Their Social Impact: Central Canada, 1811-20, a classic example”. It was also the theme of a public presentation at the Museum titled, “The Year without a Summer: Its Impact on the Fur Trade and History of Western Canada.” at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa. As usual, historians attributed the social impacts solely to colonial expansion.
It is the same pattern seen in reports of the 2011 uprising in Egypt that became “the Arab Spring”. The catalyst was dramatic increases in food prices. At best, these got secondary mention by a few reports.
Then, there is a secondary problem: a huge run-up in food costs in recent months. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the worldwide food price index is at an all-time high—surpassing its 2008 peak, when skyrocketing costs caused global rioting and pushed as many as 64 million people into poverty. The price of oils, sugar, and cereals have all recently hit new peaks—and those latter prices are especially troubling for Egypt, as the world’s biggest importer of wheat.
So the media, like historians, are telling stories, with bias, misinformation and the arrogant belief that humans are not environmentally or climatically determined. As Benjamin Bradlee said, ”News is the first rough draft of history.” Regardless, they are both driven by the need to blame someone, rather than something. Until we change that the chances of understanding and reacting properly to natural events is very unlikely.
[1] C.R.Harington (ed) The Year Without a Summer? World Climate in 1816. 1992, National Museum of Natural Sciences, Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa.
…about 60-70 percent of the food grown in developing nations never makes it to the table. The figure is 30-40 percent for the developed world. Most of the difference is due to refrigeration.
————
Aha! That’s why the Malthusians want CFCs banned.
“Brute says:
August 20, 2014 at 9:59 pm”
Spain has the largest area covered in clear plastic sheeting, a sort of greenhouse. Acres and acres covered in plastic.
“The world is not overpopulated. There is no shortage of food.”
I have been to some very poor countries in Africa and I have seen some appalling food waste, while people, literally, go hungry while sleeping on the road side.
Great post, Dr Ball.
@Patrick
Yep. That form of agriculture (plasticulture?) has turned an utterly poor region of the country into a incredibly wealthy one. I remember visiting the place three decades ago and then again a few years back. An amazing change. Of course, some people complain… today. Until the “plastic revolution”, no one wanted to even live there (and by far most didn’t).
Dr Ball mentions the great famine of 1741 so it is worth putting this into greater context.
Here is my comment quoting Phil jones that the 1730′s was the warmest decade until the 1990′s and that natural variability might be underestimated.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/17/phil-jones-2012-video-talks-about-adjusting-sst-data-up-3-5c-after-wwii/#comment-1539164
This from a 2006 paper by Jones and Briffa about the very warm period noted in old records and especially CET;
” The year 1740 is all the more remarkable given the anomalous warmth of the 1730s. This decade was the warmest in three of the long temperature series (CET, De Bilt and Uppsala) until the 1990s occurred. The mildness of the decade is confirmed by the early ice break-up dates for Lake Malaren and Tallinn Harbour. The rapid warming in the CET record from the 1690s to the 1730s and then the extreme cold year of 1740 are examples of the magnitude of natural changes which can potentially be recorded in long series. Consideration of variability in these records from the early 19th century, therefore, may underestimate the range that is possible.”
Taken from; UNUSUAL CLIMATE IN NORTHWEST EUROPE DURING THE PERIOD 1730 TO 1745 BASED ON INSTRUMENTAL AND DOCUMENTARY DATA’. Jones and Biffa. Revised version published in 2006.
http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-006-9078-6
Phil Jones has written several good books on historic climate and is somewhat more sceptical than some might think. In recent years the Met Office has also moved away from their notion of a steady climate until mans influence from 1900, to one in which natural variability is somewhat more centre stage. The biggest Hockey Stick in the CET series from 1659 (and there are several) is the period noted in the Jones article and not the modern period.
That climate varies much more than the Hockey stick suggests should be well known by now, yet it still holds great sway in the corridors of power.
Incidentally I would like to amend Friedrich Nietzsche absurd quote given above
. ‘The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.”
It should surely read;
‘The historian looks backward. In the end he also sees the likely future.’
We ignore history-especially climate history- at our peril, as from it we can see the much greater incidence of extreme events in the past that our benign age has forgotten, but surely must return at some point in the future.
tonyb
Dr Ball mentions the great famine of 1741 so it is worth putting this into greater context.
Here is my comment quoting Phil jones that the 1730′s was the warmest decade until the 1990′s and that natural variability might be underestimated.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/17/phil-jones-2012-video-talks-about-adjusting-sst-data-up-3-5c-after-wwii/#comment-1539164
This from a 2006 paper by Jones and Briffa about the very warm period noted in old records and especially CET;
” The year 1740 is all the more remarkable given the anomalous warmth of the 1730s. This decade was the warmest in three of the long temperature series (CET, De Bilt and Uppsala) until the 1990s occurred. The mildness of the decade is confirmed by the early ice break-up dates for Lake Malaren and Tallinn Harbour. The rapid warming in the CET record from the 1690s to the 1730s and then the extreme cold year of 1740 are examples of the magnitude of natural changes which can potentially be recorded in long series. Consideration of variability in these records from the early 19th century, therefore, may underestimate the range that is possible.”
Taken from; UNUSUAL CLIMATE IN NORTHWEST EUROPE DURING THE PERIOD 1730 TO 1745 BASED ON INSTRUMENTAL AND DOCUMENTARY DATA’. Jones and Biffa. Revised version published 2006.
http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-006-9078-6
Phil Jones has written several good books on historic climate and is somewhat more sceptical than some might think. In recent years the Met Office has also moved away from their notion of a steady climate until mans influence from 1900, to one in which natural variability is somewhat more centre stage. The biggest Hockey Stick in the CET series from 1659 (and there are several) is the period noted in the Jones article and not the modern period.
That climate varies much more than the Hockey stick suggests should be well known by now, yet it still holds great sway in the corridors of power.
Incidentally I would like to amend Friedrich Nietzsche absurd quote given above
. ‘The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.”
It should surely read;
‘The historian looks backward. In the end he also sees the likely future.’
We ignore history-especially climate history- at our peril, as from it we can see the much greater incidence of extreme events in the past that our benign age has forgotten, but surely must return at some point in the future.
tonyb
early 1700s=cool 1846/53=cool 1830s =early in cool 1788=cool 1885/90=cool 1709=early in cool
The above dates are drawn from the above post and comments. The use of the word cool is denoting how I see where the year/s fits into a time frame of approximately 30+ year warm/cool patterns. As you can see all of the dates which have been mentioned and referenced as problem times fit into the cool cycle. Whether or not this has any additional relevance to any of the factors that led to the troubles, it can be seen that it does correlate with the troubled times. In the scenario of 30+ year trends, we started into a cool pattern around 2006/07.
The CET temps run different from most other regions, or that is how it appears to me. I would think that this is due to the influence of the Atlantic waters. So when I use the term cool that would not necessarily apply to Ireland/England.
Dr. Ball, where does the number for this line come from? “It’s estimated we produce enough every year to feed 26 billion people”
Potato blight in Ireland shows most calamities are caused by poverty and corruption, not from climate. Ireland’s was being grossly exploited from a foreign power, which made it much worse. Norway wasn’t.
My ancestor came out as a convict to Australia during the potato famine ~1848-1850 from west Ireland, as a forger of documents. Probably got hungry and thought forgery was either a way to eat, or to get out of Ireland. So did many other convicts in Australia, they weren’t all hardened criminals, many were just hungry and poor. He served his time, and rose to be made head of the State Library of NSW within ~15 years and was given a huge plot of land in prime dairy country (right where the film Babe was made). Not bad for a starving convict. But the descendants bred racehorses and over time lost it all on gambling and drinking, which is so typically Irish. By the time I arrived the huge plot of land owned for many generations had been given over to an adopted line of children, the true one remaining heir (my father) too drunk as well as drug ridden to do anything about it.
Probably many similar to many tales in the USA, although the Kennedy’s managed to achieve something without losing it all on gambling and drinking. I don’t think we had the Irish gangs as in New York like in the film, not sure why but possibly because Sydney had a very different social administration and still being an English colony they kept a tight rein on things and wouldn’t tolerate that gangland sort of culture, which wasn’t at all a bad thing.
The Great Shame by Thomas Kenneally also talks about the Irish in Australia and the potato famine I think. I havent read it but might have to.
tonyb
‘The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.”
It should surely read;
‘The historian looks backward. In the end he also sees the likely future.’
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
The quote as worded by Ball is correct. Nietzche also said:
Insanity in individuals is rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule
Consider the single minded madness of the climate doomsayers, the havoc they would visit on humanity to slay a monster of their own making. Constructed to large extent by peering into the past through tree rings and other proxies, which in turn informed the computer models with which they were able to, with 97% unanimity, discern clearly in their own minds, the monster in our future which they are determined to slay, regardless of how many must be doomed to poverty disease and early death to do it.
The late Nigel Calder quotes John Butler of Armagh Observatory in his book The Manic Sun, page 105. Butler suggested the sunspot cycle warming between 1840 and 1960 led to the potato blight which resulted in the Great Famine in Ireland in 1846. The book was published seventeen years ago.
Phooee… 1840 and 1860….
davidmhoffer
I agree that Tim Ball phrased the quote by Nietzche correctly, I was just saying that I thought my amended version was more apt. Your second Nietzche quote hits the bullseye.
Someone above suggested that history should be a module of any climate science course. I never cease to be amazed at all the various congressional and senate hearings on climate that never seem to put modern records into historic context.
Try as I might I can never understand why tree rings and other proxies receive the acclaim they do.
Hardly surprisingly, these inadequate proxies don’t seem to record any noticeable climate effect thereby giving the impression that the climate was constant…. until an inconstant instrumental record is spliced on.
Before around 1998 tree rings were used for dating objects and had some merit for this purpose.. Quite why they (and other novel proxies) have acquired cult scientific status is baffling.
tonyb
cgh says:
August 20, 2014 at 7:38 pm
Indeed a great essay, but this statement is flat out wrong.
Now is not one of those eras. Name one leader capable of turning our current very tenuous position on energy.
Before around 1998 tree rings were used for dating objects and had some merit for this purpose.. Quite why they (and other novel proxies) have acquired cult scientific status is baffling.
tonyb
Even for this purpose they are somewhat suspect. The minimum requirement of 50 years / 50 rings gives you a fair understanding of how suspect.
An advantage of roots such as potatoes over grains such as wheat is that the edible part is not flattened by awful little ice age summer weather. The move to roots in northern Europe would have prevented famine on balance in this area. One hypothesis is that this did not happen in France, which made them more susceptible to famine and revolution when bad weather hit at the end of the 18th.Century. Cake was not a major crop either.
There is a lot of simplistic comment concerning the causes and effects of the Irish Potato Famine.
“The Great Hunger” by Cecil Woodham-Smith describes the complexities involved and is well worth reading.
It was a disaster waiting to happen and when it did happen was exacerbated by laissez-faire politics.
How much would it cost to repeat the sampling of the trees on the Yamal peninsular, or has someone arranged for all the trees involved to be cut down?
I seem to remember that a tree growing on the shore-line on an Indian Ocean island was uprooted by some Australian activists because it showed there had been little or no sea-level rise.
Excellent essay. However more needs to be said about part of the Irish calamity that didn’t involve the meteorology.
The disgusting part of the potato famine was the English leaders exporting food from Ireland even as people starved. The death of little children was appalling. I honestly think the Irish psyche was scarred (or perhaps made wiser) by the awareness lords in in England were burping and licking their chops, while going over papers at the dinner table which showed the fine profits from Irish investments, even as little Irish children died by the droves. That is not a thing it is easy to ever forgive and forget.
The only good to come of the nightmare was America got so many Irish. Of course, my grandfather could tell me tales about how the Irish were not entirely welcome, at first. However their distrust of the government allowed them to fit into a land whose constitution is framed, to some degree, on distrust of those in power.
The 1845 famine, due to potato blight, was a cause celeb for the anti English population. There were landlords who had little care for those living on their land and who could not pay the rent resulting in them being thrown off the land. But these heartless people were hardly ever in Ireland so would not have known what was happening. Much of England was in the same state with failed harvests. Lack of modern infrastructure meant that imports were scant and the logistics of moving any surplus to areas on need impossible.
The writer, Anthony Trollope, lived in and travelled throughout Ireland both before and during the famine explained that the “scourge of Ireland” was the Irish system of tenant farming.
“The fault had been the lowness of education and consequent want of principle among the middle classes; and this fault had been found as strongly marked among the Protestants as it had been among the Roman Catholics. Young men were brought up to do nothing. Property was regarded as having no duties attached to it. Men became rapacious, and determined to extract the uttermost farthing out of the land within their power, let the consequences to the people on that land be what they might.”
“Men there held tracts of ground, very often at their full value, paying for them such proportion of rent as a farmer could afford to pay in England and live. But the Irish tenant would by no means consent to be a farmer. It was needful to him that he should be a gentleman, and that his sons should be taught to live and amuse themselves as the sons of gentlemen—barring any such small trifle as education. They did live in this way; and to enable them to do so, they underlet their land in small patches, and at an amount of rent to collect which took the whole labour of their tenants, and the whole produce of the small patch, over and above the quantity of potatoes absolutely necessary to keep that tenant’s body and soul together.
And thus a state of things was engendered in Ireland which discouraged labour, which discouraged improvements in farming, which discouraged any produce from the land except the potato crop; which maintained one class of men in what they considered to be the gentility of idleness, and another class, the people of the country, in the abjectness of poverty.”
Solomon, yours is an important counterpoint to the usual Brit-bashing accounts of the heartless colonists. That a local population can be more exploitative of ‘their own’ than the supposed or actual ‘rulers’ is too often dismissed. Having seen first hand the behaviour of many local populations there are many examples I can cite of the ‘ruling class’ being imitated by an opportunistic local minority who employ with heartless abandon the extortionate policies of their accidental exemplars.
The polarising and simplistic Marxist technique of defining social action in terms of dialectical materialism disguises behind a thin veil of tragically defective logic a vicious intent to unite class enemies against an artificial, abstract enemy, ultimately to be sacrificed in the volcano of ‘revolution’.
The real enemies of progress are ignorance, nationalism, racism and materialism. The Irish potato famine employed all of these with the English viewing the ‘Irish race’ as not worth saving. The Irish meanwhile were content, could they afford it, to see their neighbours perish for there were always more tenants willing to sign over their labour for a chance to survive another year. The wickedness is evident at every level. It had global historical impact.
I must compliment Dr. Ball on his narrative style. The essay was not only very informative, but enjoyable to read! More often than not, essays are dry and difficult to navigate. This one was not.
The great thing about being a skeptic about one thing is that you can be skeptical about everything. They didn’t all die, you know. Many of them moved to England, Scotland and Wales where there were jobs, and Australia, New Zealand and other places.Quite a lot moved to North America – those who went to the US, of course, moved to a country where slavery was still legal, and would be for 20 plus years, leaving behind a country where it was illegal, and had been for thirty. But then the Irish were white.
The business about food exports is stupid. The British government (and that included the MPs elected by Ireland) didn’t want to upset the price of the exports which would have left the Irish even more poverty stricken. Instead, they bought subsidised maize – which the native Irish wouldn’t eat, because there weren’t able to get the food programmes on their TVs that extolled the virtues of polenta, nor could they make Mexican food! I think about that every time I open a can of Jolly Green Giant Sweetcorn …
As for poverty, what the hell about the famines that swept Europe? Ever read or seen Les Miserables? It wasn’t a bundle of laughs being poor in England, with thousands of women in prostitution (see Walter’s ‘My Secret Life’) and thousands of men in coal mines and other horrible occupations, with life being brutal and short..
The main problem is that the Paddies in the US are of the ‘green beer on St Patrick’s Day’ and ‘give money to the IRA’ kind, so naturally they bleat about their history and how hard done by they were by the English. However, in 1922 they got carte blanche to run their affairs on their own, get their kids sodomised or impregnated by perverted priests and run their own grand civil war.