Complaint
The programme included a report of an excavation of a part of one of the 鈥渇amine roads鈥, which had been built in Ireland as part of the British Government鈥檚 attempts to provide relief during the Potato Famine.聽 In the course of a contribution from the historian Dr Onyeka Nubia, the Prime Minister of the day (Sir Robert Peel) was quoted as saying in a speech to the House of Commons:
In justice to the poorer classes, to those classes who are in a state of destitution, it would, I think, be infinitely more agreeable to their feelings that they should be able to earn their subsistence by honest labour, than by any other mode鈥
Dr Nubia went on to comment:
What a remarkable thing to say.聽 He鈥檚 saying that he knows the working people in Ireland; he knows their feelings, and he believes that their feelings are that they want to work for a living.聽 And he鈥檚 also saying from a philosophical perspective that if relief is given to those ordinary people without working, that that is worse psychologically, socially, culturally, politically than that population dying from starvation.聽 These ideas, of course, weren鈥檛 new to the Victorians, but the way that they were implemented, getting the poor to work, on roads to nowhere, on activities that would not produce tangible, beneficial results, simply to enforce a philosophical point, and to make a statement that if you were poor you had to work your way out of your poverty 鈥 it 聽is utterly deplorable.
A viewer said that, while he agreed with Dr Nubia鈥檚 account of Peel鈥檚 words as meaning that relief without work would be 鈥渨orse鈥han that population dying from starvation鈥 , he disputed the accuracy of his further comment about making 鈥渁 statement that if you were poor you had to work your way out of your poverty鈥 (and hence the justification for the term 鈥渄别辫濒辞谤补产濒别鈥), on the grounds that 鈥淭he Hansard extract did not in any way imply that it was considered necessary for those suffering in Ireland, or anywhere else, to 鈥榳ork their way out of poverty鈥.聽 It simply said that they would have preferred paid work to simple charity鈥.聽 The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the 麻豆官网首页入口鈥檚 editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
The ECU considered that the complainant鈥檚 assent to the understanding of Peel鈥檚 words as meaning relief without work for those suffering in Ireland would be 鈥渨orse鈥han that population dying from starvation鈥, went a long way towards justifying the view that they amounted to saying that the poor had to work their way out of poverty.聽 In addition, the ECU noted that Dr Nubia鈥檚 reference to people working their way out of poverty was not a direct comment on Peel鈥檚 words as quoted from Hansard, but related primarily to the ideas which lay behind them 鈥 ideas which included an emphasis on the supposedly deleterious effects of relief unconnected with work, and which strongly influenced the British Government鈥檚 response to the famine under Peel and his successor. Whether or not the implementation of such ideas at the time could be described as deplorable was a matter of opinion rather than of accuracy, but the opinion expressed by Dr Nubia is hardly controversial in terms of the historiography of the famine.
Not upheld