How the British government responded to the Great Hunger in Ireland

Relief and lack of response from the crown during the Irish Famine years.

The question of food exports and imports also proved to be controversial. Prior to 1845, Ireland had been a major exporter of food to Britain, including vast amounts of high-quality grain products, earning it the title of “the bread basket of the United Kingdom.” Following the failure of the potato crop, many within Ireland, including the corporations of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Belfast, had asked the government to close the ports to allow foodstuffs to remain within the country. Similar measures had been used during earlier periods of food shortages and had proved to be effective. Moreover, other governments in Europe were responding to crop shortages in their own countries by acting to keep food within their country, as a way of increasing supplies and stabilizing prices. The British government, which at the time was one of the most interventionist in the world, refused to do so, arguing instead the efficacy of non-intervention and laissez-faire. Consequently, massive amounts of foodstuffs left Ireland, even from impoverished areas such as Dingle, Killala and Kilrush, while inadequate amounts of highly-priced, generally low-quality, corn was imported. The senselessness of the situation was explained by The Nation:

“Let us explain to you Irish farmer, Irish landlord, Irish tradesman, what became of your harvest, which is your only wealth? Early in the winter it was conveyed, by the thousand shiploads, to England, paying freight; it was stored in English stores, paying storage; it was passed from hand to hand among corn-speculators, passing at every remove, commission, merchants’ profits, forwarding charges and so forth; some of it was bought by French or Belgian buyers and carried to Havre, to Antwerp, to Bordeaux, meeting on the way other corn, from Odessa or Hamburg or New York, which also earned for merchants, ship-owners and other harpies, immense profits, exorbitant freights, huge commissions ... In other words, you sent away a quarter of wheat at 50 shillings, and got it back, if you got it at all, at 80 shillings.”

Criticism of this policy was not confined to nationalists. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon, a political ally of the British Prime Minister, wrote to him in private, making it clear that he believed the Irish poor had been the victims of the greed of merchants and the political ambitions of John Russell: “No-one could now venture to dispute the fact that Ireland had been sacrificed to the London corn-dealers because you were member for the City, and that no distress would have occurred if the exportation of Irish grain had been prohibited.”

Belatedly in 1847, the government temporarily removed the restrictive Navigation Acts, which had limited the ability of foreign-registered ships to bring goods to the ports of the United Kingdom. This measure was too little and too late.  In 1847, the British government had used public works, soup kitchens and the Poor Law as a way of dealing with the crisis, but the high cost of food and the draconian ways in which relief had been provided had added to the problems of the poor. Mortality and suffering in 1847 earned the year the enduring sobriquet, “Black ’47.” But this year marked neither the apogee nor the end of the suffering in Ireland.

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