The really big thing to do is to get attitudes in Britain towards the Irish to change during this time, end the general indifference towards the poverty the Irish suffered. You need someone who is not Robert Peel in essence, the potato blight needs to be landed on with both feet and a consistent and systematic approach to containing the crisis has to be adopted.
The United British Isles - A World Building Project
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The really big thing to do is to get attitudes in Britain towards the Irish to change during this time, end the general indifference towards the poverty the Irish suffered. You need someone who is not Robert Peel in essence, the potato blight needs to be landed on with both feet and a consistent and systematic approach to containing the crisis has to be adopted.
I think perhaps you need to check you're saying what you mean here.
It sounds like you're saying the average Englishman, Scotsman, and Welshman was indifferent to poverty if it was suffered by an average Irishman as opposed to each other. Which is untrue. There was a general indifference of rich towards poor, and an attitude that it was a local parish problem to deal with, ie local money not national.
Actually Peel, despite my dislike of him, acted better than his successors who ascribed more to laissez faire than he did. He bought grain and moved to repeal the Corn Laws.
Oops. Well I stand very much corrected, I guess what I meant to say was to prevent the misunderstanding of the agricultural reality in Ireland and thus the failure to grasp the scale of the crisis.
I think it's fair to say the Tories needed a kick up the backside while the Whigs needed to understand the market wouldn't solve the problem.
Well I had to dig it out of the attic, but here it is.
From the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, 12th February 1847;
"A Vessel named the Wanderer just arrived here [Newport, South Wales] just arrived here with nearly two hundred of the wretched famished creatures, chiefly from Skibbereen, huddled together in a mass of wretchedness unparalleled. On examining the crowded vessel, it was found the between twenty and thirty starving men, women and children were lying on the ballast in the hold in dying condition. Their state was most deplorable and had it not been that surgical and charitable aid was rendered the moment the vessel came alongside the wharf, it is said that would have been brought ashore dead.
Taken from "South Wales, the Coal Trade and the Irish Famine Refugee Crisis" By Frank Neal, [Irish Migrant in Modern Wales, Edited by Paul O'Leary] PG 24.
The coal trade between South Wales and Ireland made cities like Newport a common point of entry for famine refugees, conditions on board the small coal carrying vessels were often very poor, with the refugees acting as little more than human ballast. So what if a worse incident than the Wanderer took place, say around 1845-6? Could a vessel with upwards of two hundred dead on board provoke enough of an outrage that a much more stringent response to the crisis takes place.