‘Charity Begins at Home’?: Humanitarianism, the Irish Save the Children Fund and the Volga Famine Campaign in 1920s Ireland

This article explores the little-known response of the Irish Save the Children Fund to famine in Soviet Russia and Ukraine from 1921, as well as to hunger in the west of Ireland in 1924–5. Drawing on wide-ranging sources from the Cadbury Research Library, the Women’s Library at LSE and elsewhere, it examines the translation of humanitarian relief into different local, national and transnational contexts. The Volga famine was a seismic moment in inter-war humanitarianism and the initial focus of the newly formed Irish Save the Children Fund, itself formed in the context of war and civil war. Humanitarianism in the new Irish Free State had distinctive gendered, class and religious dynamics, as well as connections to Britain and the Irish diaspora. This article argues that tracing relatively small and largely unexamined organisations like the Irish Save the Children Fund offers new angles into the relationship between humanitarianism, nationhood and social change.