Sinéad O'Connor Dismantles the Myth of the Irish "Famine"

The late Shuhada' Sadaqat, née Sinéad O'Connor (left), Irish singer-songwriter, record producer and activist did not shy away from speaking the truth, to the detriment of her career, but without regret. 

She called out the abuse in the Catholic church long before anyone was ready to hear about it. 

And in her song "Famine", she breaks down the myth of the Irish Potato Famine. In Irish, the famine is called an Gorta Mór, or the Great Hunger. As Sinéad explains: 

Okay, I want to talk about Ireland 
Specifically, I want to talk about the famine 
About the fact that there never really was one 

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While there was a blight in the 1840s that decimated the potato crop, there was no famine. There was plenty of food in Ireland, just not for the Irish people. Absentee British landlords sold food for export and even controlled fishing from "their" streams. 

The highly nutritious potato was the only crop that could be grown on the small plots of land where the Irish, who were essentially sharecroppers, were allowed to grow their own food. 

British "relief" measures were led by Charles Trevelyan, who said that starvation was "a punishment from God for an idle, ungrateful, and rebellious country; an indolent and un-self-reliant people. The Irish are suffering from an affliction of God's providence". He took a laissez-faire approach and shut down programs that would have sent aid. He was later knighted for his efforts. 

The Great Hunger was the beginning of an exodus of the Irish people to the United States. The Irish population has never recovered. Today, there are eight times as many Irish-Americans as there are Irish in Ireland.