A year after the Easter Rising the
preoccupation of British newspapers with the Irish question wasn’t the reaction
to the rebel executions, the rise of Sinn Fein or the massive amount of arms
still in circulation on the island but headlines blazed about the humble
potato.
The British were relying on food
crops grown within the British Isles as German
submarines were having an affect on imported goods and ships were being used
for military purposes rather than food transport. The potato harvest in both Ireland and Scotland had been particularly poor
in 1916 and the word ‘famine’ was again circulating. The yield in Ireland in 1916 was a quarter of a millions tons
less than a year earlier and exporting from Ireland had been interrupted by the
events of Easter week. Towards the end of 1916 the British Government
prohibited the export of potatoes from Ireland
to Britain leading to major
shortages in Britain .
The Belfast News wrote,
“From Clare to
Donegal and Dublin to Sligo
thoughtful men are asking ‘what will happen if the people’s food is sold for
export?’ there is only one answer –famine”
The Donegal Vindicator added
“The crisis has
found Ireland as unprepared
as the war found Great
Britain . The potato famine is upon us and so
are the exporters. The farmer who sells his potatoes for export today must be
restrained by his more sensible neighbours. There is a food crisis.”
By early 1917, the wholesale cost
of the spud had mushroomed. A ‘CWT’ (8 stone bag) of potatoes that cost between
four and eight schillings in 1916, a year later was costing between eleven and
fourteen schillings. Some Irish exporters had been accused of withholding
supplies for export to take advantage of the ever increasing wholesale prices.
The embargo was lifted on the Irish potato in July 1917 but not before the
British Government ordered the Irish farmer to sell his crop for a maximum of
£6 10s per ton or 1s per stone down from the reported £14 some farmer had been
receiving.
By March there were prosecutions in
Ireland
of those appearing to profiteer. Potato sellers Thomas Sheridan and Sons were
fined £5 and £2 costs for selling potatoes wholesale to Mary Keating of Arklow
for 11s 6d a CWT on March 9th when the maximum at the time was 10s
10d per CWT. There were many such prosecutions during the following six months
across the country.
One newspaper editorial in Wales ,
an area that had been severely affected by the potato shortages wrote,
“Potatoes are
not worth buying if they cost more than 4s a cwt. They have been as high as 8s this
spring. The potato is of very little value as food. There is not more than two per
cent of nutriment in the potato. Potatoes at 8s a cwt are equivalent in price
to oatmeal as 1s per lb which is absurd. We have largely become the victims of
the potato habit. In the early part of the nineteenth century potatoes could be
had for two or three shillings a cwt. In those times anybody could live for
about a shilling a week on potatoes. The root had very little dietetic value;
but it was "filling" and cheap at the price. When however the potato
begins to cost the price of a genuine food, it is time- its character was
exposed. If you have a. good dinner it is all very well to have a few potatoes
as "extras" just as you would have a few tomatoes or Brussels sprouts
but to regard the potato as an article of diet in itself is rank folly. If the
potato were relegated to its proper place the consumption of that fraudulent
tuber would decrease and its price would fall accordingly. People acquired the
taste for the potato in an age of poverty and they go eating it quite
regardless of the fact that its food value is almost nil. The extraordinary
prices which potatoes reached in the spring were due to the rebellion in Ireland . They
grow huge quantities of potatoes in Ireland but they are not so foolish
as to eat them. The Irish labourer has long ago got over his partiality for
potatoes. He lives on tea "soda-bread" and American bacon. Liverpool,
Fleetwood, .Glasgow and Bristol all receive
daily shiploads of potatoes from Ireland . There is never usually
more than a week's supply of potatoes in hand in the big towns of England and Scotland . When the Sinn Fein
flare-up took place all shipping between this country and Ireland was
held up for a couple of weeks, and it was a month before things became normal.
In the meantime the grocers in this country were getting desperate for
potatoes. Travellers from Manchester and Edinburgh were scouring the wilds of Wales offering
any prices for a few sacks of potatoes. The only cure for the high price of
potatoes is for people to use less of them. Those who eat meat can do with less
potatoes. Puddings are cheaper than potatoes just now. Those who don't use meat
should not use potatoes at all. As a food they are useless; their proper
function is to serve as an adjunct to meat. Our fathers formed dietetic habits
when certain articles of food were cheap. When circumstances alter the habits
should alter. The only point in favour of the potato is its cheapness. Once it
ceased to be cheap, it ought to be discarded.”
In parts of England especially Lincolnshire ,a good potato growing county,
there was a different kind of Irish problem when it came to harvesting the
potato crop. In 1917 the ‘Irish Need Not Apply’ signs went up at farms, pubs
and shops. The local community turned on Irish labourers who would travel
across the Irish Sea for seasonal work as local Englishmen serving in the
British Army who were conscripted and had been sent to Ireland during and after
the Easter Rising were paid one schilling per week but the Irish who had
replaced them in the fields and were exempt from conscription in what locals
saw as appeasement were being paid between five and seven schillings a week to
replace them.
By the end of 1917, the price had
stabilised and the threat of famine in both Ireland
and Britain
had receded but by the end of that year consumers had discovered alternatives
to the potato like swede, turnip and parsnip and as the First World War came to
a conclusion the potato crisis had abated.
