To get away from the WWII angle...

There definitely was a famine in Ireland amongst the farming communities. There also was a similar famine in England amongst the farming communities, bcos the English working classes were supporting themselves the same way the Irish did. "Adequate food from outside" just wasn't coming to either. The rich cash crops fed the rich in both countries. So condemn the English aristocracy if you like, but please don't condemn *England* as a whole. And whilst many landowners in Ireland were English, there were plenty of Irish ones who took the English aristocratic line - ergo, the problem is the bastards at the top, of any nationality, not the *country*. Please don't confuse the two.

The English poor had cities that they could move to, either to work in industry (which was just starting at the time), to work in associated trades, or to resort to theft and criminal activity. The Irish had no such cities. However the Irish did have *English* cities to move to, and many of them did - Liverpool was a particular hotspot. So this really isn't a big difference. Had the Industrial Revolution not just been gathering pace, both England and Ireland would have lost many more people.

The main difference though: the English farmers tended to pass their whole farm onto the first-born, whereas Irish farmers partitioned the land between all their sons. By the time of the famine, Irish farms tended to be so small that survival in *good* times was a challenge. Any kind of crop failure would have caused a famine - the Irish simply got unlucky in terms of magnitude. Although even then note that it's nothing like the magnitude of famines before and since, particularly modern-day famines in Africa. The tragedy is that it does keep happening.

Also don't forget that English farms of the time had had improvements in productivity through the Agricultural Revolution. This involved the English aristocracy dispossessing many English farmers of their land (and common land), and roughly the same results (dead bodies on highways, and people moved into industrial cities) as the Potato Famine. And their eviction was 100% political rather than the result of bad luck and poverty.

To my mind, the best songs of the Famine are those that are universal - the pain of being forced to move on, or of those you love being forced to move on. My favourite is one I heard not long ago, called "The Sky Road". Can't remember who sung it. I have no time for the interminable reinventions of history that paint it black and white and say "The Irish starved while the bastard English stuffed themselves and laughed" - sod that.

Graham.