page_title: Hunger in the United Kingdom
section_title: 19th and 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Hunger in the United Kingdom / History / 19th and 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Famine memorial by the Liffey Close by the monumental architecture of the Custom House and the sleek new office buildings around it, this larger-than-lifesize troop of gaunt bronze figures creates a big impact. It memorializes the starving people who made their way to the quayside here to seek salvation overseas during the Great Hunger.
context_page_description: Chronic hunger has affected a sizable proportion of the UK's population throughout its history. Following improved economic conditions that followed World War II, hunger was less of a political issue. Yet since the lasting global inflation in the price of food that began in late 2006 and especially since the financial crisis of 2008, hunger again returned to the political agenda. By December 2013, according to a group of doctors and academics writing in the British Medical Journal, hunger in the UK had reached the level of a "public health emergency".
  In the run-up to the 2015 general election, the issue of hunger in the UK became somewhat politicised, with right wing commentators expressing scepticism about figures presented by church groups and left-leaning activists. An All-Party MP group focusing on hunger in the UK has called for activists to be cautious in how they discuss the problem of domestic hunger, as exaggerated claims and political point scoring risk reducing public support for tackling the issue.
context_section_description: Improvements in agricultural technology, transportation, and the wider economy meant that for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, severe hunger receded as a problem within the United Kingdom. An exception occurred in the 1840s. Known as the Hungry Forties, various problems affecting food production resulted in millions suffering from hunger all over Europe. In the early 1840s the UK was relatively less affected than the rest of Europe. Yet thousands of working-class people still starved to death, including in England, Scotland and Wales, in part as it had become illegal to give poor people aid.
  In Ireland, which was part of the UK at the time, the Great Famine struck in 1845, and close to a million died of hunger and related disease.  From the late 1850s, the availability of food and the ability of even the poorest to pay for it generally improved.  The 1920s and 30s were an exception to this. There was no famine, yet mass unemployment became a problem in several parts of the UK.  While the New Poor Law had been relaxed, workhouses were still in existence, and without a well-paying job, it was often difficult for working-class people to feed themselves and their families. The UK saw a number of hunger marches in the 1920s and 30s, with the biggest being the National Hunger March 1932 and perhaps the most famous being the Jarrow crusade. From the outbreak of World War II, unemployment swiftly vanished, and remained very low in the UK for decades afterwards. Food was often limited during the war and the first few years after, but a rationing system generally ensured no individual would overly suffer from hunger.  With a relatively generous and inclusive welfare state established after the war, and with food prices often falling in real terms, hunger within the UK was no longer a pressing problem for the second half of the 20th century.
caption: A hunger memorial near Customs House in Dublin, depicting people starving due to the Great Famine, who are trying to leave Ireland via ships from the nearby quay.
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