UNITED KINGDOM - FOOD IN WARTIME 1939-1940

On 3 September, two days after Hitler’s army and air force had launched their attack against Poland, Chamberlain declared to Parliament, the British public, and the world, ‘this country is at war with Germany’. 1 While the nation had been moving in that direction for some months, its beginning still sent shock waves throughout the United Kingdom and beyond. Nevertheless, Britain and its allies once again girded up their strength to oppose, as Churchill put it, that ‘monstrous tyranny’ known as Nazi Germany.

It is not our purpose to follow the vicissitudes of that monumental undertaking. Our task is much less daunting, but it is still of importance. It is to answer the question, how well did the government’s plans in food and agriculture work out? To answer this question, it is necessary to look at what the government did during the first eleven months of the conflict, for between September 1939 and early August 1940 the machinery for feeding the nation was put in place and had assumed a definite sense of direction.

Taking a leaf from the framework used in earlier chapters, we will assess how well the government succeeded by describing first how the food and agriculture sectors organized themselves and how they handled the question of prices. Next, we will discuss the agriculture-related measures—the ploughing up campaign, the labour issue, and farm mechanization. This will be followed by a look at aspects of food control: imports, distribution and storage, food supply, evacuations, the armed forces, and rationing. Then we will examine how the government anticipated dealing with jurisdictional disputes that might arise between the Agriculture and Food ministries despite the government’s long-term attempt to keep the issues handled by each area separate and distinct. At this point we will relate the reaction of the lobby groups and the rural population as a whole to what was occurring. And finally we will discuss two exceedingly significant events to round out our picture—a Cabinet reshuffle on 3 April 1940 and the formation of the Churchill government beginning on 10 May. These two changes brought in their wake a Scientific Committee on food questions and a long-range statement on food policy. Now armed with an inclusive, rational approach to the food problem, the government could look back, if it ever had the time to do so, with a sense of satisfaction for a job well done.

To place food and agriculture and their relation to the early stage of the war in context, it will be helpful initially to discuss briefly the military and diplomatic developments between September 1939 and July 1940 as well as the major happenings on the civilian front. From a military and foreign policy standpoint, the most obvious development was Germany’s defeat of Poland within a month. This was followed by a six-month hiatus during which Britain and France tried to figure out ways to hold the Nazi menace at bay (some even advocated peace), while the Western Allies built up their military strength to oppose the enemy.2 But Hitler abruptly ended the so-called Phoney War by attacking neutral Norway and Denmark on 9 April 1940. The British and French responded by undertaking a series of measures to stop Germany’s takeover of Norway, but they were inept, and the Wehrmacht continued to hold the upper hand. While the combat in Norway proceeded, on 10 May the Germans unleashed their long-anticipated invasion of France and the Low Countries. That same evening King George VI accepted Chamberlain’s resignation as prime minister and called upon Winston Churchill to form a new government. His appointment did little to halt the German forces, however, and by mid-June it had become obvious that they had won a resounding victory. (By this time, they had also taken all of Norway.) As the Battle of France drew to a close, the French decided to surrender, and as we all know, Britain and many of the Dominions found themselves holding out alone. The Germans, who had been joined during the later stages of the fighting by Italy, now had to decide what to do next, and the war entered another phase. Happily for Britain, and for the world, the situation eventually turned around, but that did not occur until many months later in the conflict.

At home, during the first eleven months, the transition to a war economy started somewhat creakily, but soon picked up steam. The extent of the changeover is evident in some basic war production figures.3 In terms of military aircraft, for example, British industry produced 7,940 in 1939 and 15,049 in 1940. The increase in tanks was not as dramatic— from 969 in 1939 to 1,399 in 1940—but the 1940 total jumped three and a half times to 4,841 in 1941. In naval construction, the 1940 Programme added 321 ships of all types, though no capital ships, to the rapidly expanding inventory. Moreover, the number of individuals under arms increased from around half a million in 1939 to over 2.2 million in 1940.4 Just as importantly, unemployment, that albatross of the 1930s, dropped from 1.3 million to 700,000 during the same period. Wartime Britain had become a reality.

The government also responded in expected ways. Chamberlain established a War Cabinet, and it became the central institution for running both the military and the civilian sides of the conflict.5 The Whitehall machinery also expanded dramatically to reflect its new responsibilities. Among the new ministries were Supply (actually established in August, a month before the war), Shipping, Economic Warfare, Information, Home Security, and, most importantly for our purposes, Food. In addition, a National Service component was officially added to the Labour ministry.

Two results stand out. One, not only did the London-based administration of thirty departments employ thousands of personnel, but many of them had branches throughout the country that engaged (many as volunteers) thousands more. And two, one is struck by the interrelated nature of the effort. The number of interdepartmental committees came to total several hundred, and while they varied in importance, all of them were responsible directly or indirectly to the War Cabinet. One example of how the departments were expected to relate to each other is the Food Policy Sub-Committee.6 It was headed by Sir Samuel Hoare, the Lord Privy Seal, and the other members were top officials from the Scottish Office, Colonial Office, and the Food, Agriculture, Health, Shipping, and Transport ministries. It was to look after broader aspects of food policy, and while it conceived of its brief in narrow terms, Food Policy and similar committees were vital elements for overseeing the war economy. Despite its complexity, the committee system, with which the British government was so familiar in peacetime, was expected to play an even more crucial role in the wartime setting.

As with the other departments, officials in Agriculture and the new Food ministry had already prepared to organize themselves for war before it started. When it broke out the Agriculture ministry, headed by Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, duly shifted its seventeen London-based divisions to wartime duties, though the size of its staff remained about the same at 3,500.7 Three of the most important divisions were to see that supplies were provided to farmers. They included a division for animal feed, another for tractors and implements, and a third for fertilizers and seeds.

The more than 100 War Agricultural Executive Committees also sprang into action.8 Each consisted of eight to twelve unpaid members, and the chair was often a prominent farmer or landowner. They represented the Agriculture minister and were directly responsible to him. Assisting them were full-time paid staffs made up primarily of land agents, agriculture organizers, technical advisers, and university personnel. Each county was further divided into four or more districts. They had their own local boards, and they had under them a number of Sub-Committees that functioned according to task, such as one for drainage, animal feed, cultivation, labour, and the like.

The tasks of the ‘War Ags’ and their subsidiary committees were set forth as part of the Defence of the Realm Act, passed just prior to the war. Their duties were extensive and included the right to inspect farmland and buildings and to render technical advice. They also worked with farmers to determine the type and amount of crops and livestock they would produce, the fertilizer needed and the labour and machinery required. In terms of machinery, the local committees often contracted the government-owned tractors and other equipment to individuals who then used the tractors to plough farmers’ fields. The most controversial task was the War Ags’ power to dispossess recalcitrant or inefficient farmers. While they did on occasion exercise this right in a high-handed manner (and thus became owners in the process), this criticism has to be placed over against the rise in productivity that came about. Nevertheless, one has to conclude that the committees should have acted with greater restraint, and their eviction practices mar an otherwise highly successful effort at the local level.

In the Food ministry, which was under William Morrison, the changeover to wartime duties was equally rapid.9 The six divisions based in London began to function, the marketing boards and commissions were enfolded into the organizational set-up, and trade advisers for the most significant commodities also started their work. The advisers included some of the country’s most prominent business leaders. Sir Alan Anderson, chair of Anderson, Green and Company, for instance, was to advise on cereals; Sir Francis Boys, Vice-Chair of the Livestock Commission, was the trade representative for meat and livestock; and Mr Herbert Davis, a Director for Lever Brothers, was to help with oil and fats. The ministry further set up three internal committees—an Orders Committee to ensure compliance with regulations, an Overseas Purchasing Board to coordinate foreign food imports, and a Margins Committee to regulate the amount of profit allowed (although the last was not established officially until April 1940). Moreover, Morrison had under him an Economics Division, a Statistics and Intelligence Division, and a Chief Scientific Officer to assist with long-range problems. The only major organizational difference between Food and Agriculture was that while Agriculture had 3,500 personnel, Food had only 375. That number for the Food ministry changed dramatically, however, during the early months of the war and reached 3,500 by March 1940.

Also like Agriculture, Food had an extensive local organization. Nineteen divisional officers were spread across the country, and they, in turn, had under them more than 1,400 local Food Control Committees. 10 These committees had fifteen members each, one-third of which were usually local tradespeople. The other ten members were to represent consumer interests, and they normally included a trade unionist and a Women’s Institute officer among their number. The local committees were especially concerned about sufficient food reaching the shops and rationing, though rationing did not begin until January 1940.

Among the issues common to Food and Agriculture, none was more significant than price controls. The government had already determined that on basic commodities, such as wheat, livestock, and milk, it would become the sole purchaser and would pay farmers a guaranteed price equal to that they received at the outbreak of the war.11 If the market price rose above the guaranteed price, which it did in many instances, then the government was to make up the difference with a subsidy. The subsidy was to ensure farmers reasonably high prices but at the same time prevent inordinate increases from being passed on to the consumer. The Treasury earmarked £50 million for the first year to cover the cost.

The system did not work especially well at first. The government set prices on the basis of 28 August, but the cost of imported food rose much faster than expected as did the cost of imported feeding stuffs, and this forced the Food ministry to raise its guaranteed price for some products several times in 1939–40. (It also ushered in the constant readjustment of food prices throughout the war.) In addition, price controls for the basic commodities were not instituted on all of them at once, but piecemeal because of a lack of staff in London. The result was that prices for some commodities, such as oats and barley, were not controlled as soon as they should have been. And finally, as discussed earlier, price controls for food could never be completely effective unless other aspects of the economy were also controlled, and comprehensive measures, including procedures for dealing with excess profits and wage adjustments, were introduced only gradually. Not until the end of 1939 was the government getting a handle on controlling the entire economy.

In the Agriculture ministry, its most important function was to bring about increased home production. The programme actually had two parts, which the ministry for patriotic reasons called campaigns. One was the much heralded ‘Ploughing Up’ Campaign, and the other the widely popular ‘Dig for Victory’ Campaign.

The ploughing up campaign, it will be recalled, had begun before the war with the government offering £2 per acre for every additional acre put into production. When the war started Minister Dorman-Smith assumed the lead for the government to explain what the campaign entailed.12 On 4 September, in a broadcast intended primarily for farmers, he pointed out that their ‘job is to increase, in an orderly fashion, our home production of essential foodstuffs—a task just as vital to the nation as that which has to be carried out by the armed forces’. He then outlined the government’s programme. The goal, he said, was to plough up at least 10 per cent of the pasture or idle land. In other words, he wanted to put approximately two million more acres into production for the 1940 harvest. As an additional incentive the £2 per acre subsidy was to be extended to 31 December. The ploughed-up land was to be sown with wheat or potatoes, or possibly oats, barley, beans, peas, rye, or maize. He also assured livestock farmers that they would have sufficient animal feed. The Minister went on to state that the government was doing its best to see that farmers received necessary supplies. For the present they should rely on their usual merchants.

His final point was to tell labourers to continue working the land, the implication being that their participation was essential as well. In subsequent broadcasts Dorman-Smith indicated to farmers that the ministry was aware of the increased costs they were incurring, and that it would do all it could to have them realize ‘a fair profit’. In this situation, he added, agricultural workers should also profit. Dorman-Smith was correct. The average minimum weekly wage for labourers rose from 34s. 9d. (£1.74) in September 1939 to 37s. 2d. (£1.86) in December. But the wage level was still uneven, since it was being set locally by each county committee. In June 1940 the government took the issue in hand and raised the minimum to 48s. (£2.40) per week for adult male workers.

In August 1939 the ministry announced its second campaign, the ‘Grow More Food Campaign’, but its subtitle, ‘Dig for Victory’, was the name that caught the public’s fancy. Dorman-Smith again took the lead in promoting it.13 In a broadcast to the nation on 3 October he stated: To increase home production, ‘we want not only the big man with the plough but also the little man with the spade to get busy this autumn. We are launching a nationwide campaign to obtain recruits to the ranks of the food producers’. The objective, he noted, was to provide citizens with half a million more allotments (mainly in urban areas) so that they could provide more of their own food, including potatoes, onions, carrots, and other vegetables. The allotments were to come from a variety of sources, but primarily from local authorities, who were to be allowed to take possession of unoccupied land and to divide them into plots. He also reminded his listeners that they might raise small animals, such as chickens and rabbits, for additional food. ‘The matter’, Dorman-Smith urged, ‘is not one that can wait. So let’s get going. Let “Dig for Victory” be the motto of everyone with a garden and of every able-bodied man and woman capable of digging an allotment in their spare time.’

How did the two campaigns work out?14 The answer is quite well. Despite Dorman-Smith’s misgivings—at least in private—that the farmers were not responding as he had hoped, the government, with the assistance of the county committees, did reach the two-million acre goal, and it set the stage for further increases. Moreover, the allotment programme, with the help of Women’s Institutes and various rural and village produce committees, undoubtedly produced more food. Although annual figures are not available, Murray estimates that the number of allotments increased from 815,000 in 1939 to 1,400,000 in 1943, and that the amount of land used for allotments rose from 95,700 to 136,800 acres during the same period.

Criticisms of the campaigns pale in comparison. To be sure, much of the newly ploughed land was old pasture and not particularly suitable immediately for crops, and the government’s desire to have more flax grown proved unsatisfactory since it was too labour intensive. Still, if the goal was more home-produced food, that goal was met in all parts of the United Kingdom.

The campaigns also had a number of ramifications for the nation’s war effort and for its agricultural policy as a whole.15 Expanded production was a real boon in that it saved on shipping space and foreign exchange. On the other hand, governmental subsidies to agriculture continued to increase, and this trend continued in the post-war years. Another emphasis of the campaigns was to grow food for human consumption, such as grains and vegetables, and this in turn helped improve people’s diets. At the same time, milk was also emphasized, and this had a beneficial effect on school children and expectant mothers (for whom it was soon made free of charge) as well as for the rest of the population. Finally, though the government did not forget about livestock, especially beef, for morale purposes, the replacement of pasture with cropland reduced the amount of meat available to consumers. The ploughing-up campaign and its ancillary, dig for victory, were accomplishing what the government, and the ministry, had hoped.

Tied in with greater production was the second major concern of the ministry: the labour problem. As it turned out, the problem was not as insuperable as anticipated, and primarily for two reasons.16 First of all, since the government considered agriculture a reserved occupation, the call up to the services was less than in many other areas, and secondly, a number of different groups filled in. The first factor, reserved status for farmers and workers over twenty-one and for ‘essential’ labourers over eighteen, was helped by the fact that officials were willing to grant furlough to servicemen with agricultural experience during planting and harvest time, and in some cases their enlistment was deferred for up to six months. A detailed study by F. G. Sturrock on the ‘Movement of Agricultural Workers on 157 Farms in the Eastern Counties during the First Year of War’ catalogues what happened.17 According to the author, in September 1939, these farms employed 653 workers, and a year later 662. To make up for the 92 that left, 105 new workers were hired. They included 55 from other farms, 24 from nonfarm occupations, 9 boys who had reached school leaving age, 8 Land Army girls, 7 casual workers, and 2 conscientious objectors. While Sturrock pointed out that the new workers were not as skilled as those who left, the gap had, none the less, been filled. The success of the replacement process has led John Martin to conclude that ‘the supply of labour was considerably more elastic than was commonly believed’.18

The most publicized group, as mentioned earlier, was the Women’s Land Army.19 Although the training of volunteers had begun before the war, farmers at first were reluctant to hire them and preferred to use nearby unemployed or casually employed male workers. But by the spring of 1940, with the labour market becoming tighter, farmers became more receptive, and by the end of the year 6,000 were working in rural areas. (It reached a peak of 87,000 in 1943.) Many of them were from the cities, and they had to be at least seventeen to join. They were given uniforms consisting of a green sweater, brown breeches, high boots, and a brown felt hat; underwent four weeks of training; and then were to sent individual farms or lived under supervision in hostels. They often worked eleven-hour days and were to have a half-day and Sundays off, but that was often not possible because of the nature of their jobs. They did all kinds of work, but most often were used to milk cows. Some of them eventually even became tractor drivers. They were paid around 25s. (£1.25) per week with half of it used to pay room and board.

Shirley Joseph has written movingly about her experiences. She recalls being interviewed—among the questions asked, did she realize cows had to be milked every day?—and then she was trained and sent out to work. Her first job was at Warborough Farm, where she worked from 6.15 in the morning to 5 at night, and her most important task was to assist with morning and afternoon milking. On Wednesdays she received a half-day off, and she often used the time to hitch-hike to her home nearby. Her accommodation for part of the time was a cottage with no electricity or running water. Later, she worked out of hostels at Shrivenham, Bramley, and Faringdon. Though allowed to do some milking, her main jobs were threshing and hoeing crops, which she describes as dirty, hard work. She remembers the hard bunks, queuing for meals, the total lack of privacy, the boyfriends (some of them Americans), the long hours of work. Her experiences were probably typical of the 250,000 who served.

Part of the reason why the Women’s Land Army was increasingly accepted was that it was well organized.20 Lady Denman and the other leaders realized that the training was not always adequate and that the young women were not always treated with respect, but they tried to keep local supervisors (often associated with the War Ags) informed and even had a magazine, The Land Girl, published and distributed to the workers. Denman was also able to enlist influential patrons. Queen Mary, for example, was a big supporter, and she had land girls working at Sandringham, one of the royal family’s country estates. While the Women’s Land Army may not have played as large a role in solving the agricultural labour problem as its backers have claimed, it did help, and it was a worthwhile experiment.

Further tied in with increased production and the labour supply was the ministry’s third main problem: mechanization.21 Before the war the government had realized that more tractors and other machinery could obviously help make British agriculture more productive and would compensate for the expected loss of horses to the military. Dorman-Smith had tried to sell the idea to the cabinet, but was turned down. He did not give up, however, and talked Chamberlain and Simon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, into placing an order with Fordson, the only firm capable of supply tractors in sufficient numbers. Thus, at the war’s inception, the government was getting into the tractor business.

The process generally worked as follows: part of the tractors were turned over to county committees, who then let them out to contractors, and the contractors ploughed some of the farmers’ fields. Other farmers bought their own. Despite the rationing of petrol, farmers were not restricted from using it for their machinery. As a result, tractors became a common sight in the rural landscape. In 1939 the number in use was 56,200; by 1944, it had climbed to 173,000. Added to this was a substantial increase in disc harrows, cultivators, binders, combines, and milk machines, some of which were also controlled by the committees. Even though horses still provided the bulk of the ‘power’ to till the fields—their number declined only from 649,000 in 1939 to 577,000 in 1944—farm mechanization was becoming a fact of life in Britain.

The tasks of the Food ministry were more inclusive than those undertaken by Agriculture, for the former was to handle all aspects of food control except for home production. This division of responsibilities, however, still did not preclude the two ministries from dealing with a number of common issues; nor did it put an end to the interdependency with other departments. In fact, interdependency was greater during the war than before it.

It is difficult to treat all of the issues the Food ministry faced, let alone to determine how well it carried through on them during the first eleven months of the war. Nevertheless, six were most important. The first to be discussed is the food import programme. Taking it over entailed a number of tasks: maintaining relations with foreign trading partners, developing procedures for purchases, determining the amount and type of goods to be purchased, procuring shipping, competing for shipping space. Even more uncertain was coping with the vagaries of the war. Would the trade routes remain open? What effect would the sea and air operations have on Britain’s ports? The government assumed that asdic, the device for picking up sound waves under water, would neutralize the submarine threat, but Germany’s surface fleet might still be a factor. And how would the war affect imports from the Continent?

Despite the uncertainties, the ministry obviously had no option but to forge ahead.22 It soon had the import machinery in place, and it made clear to allies, neutrals, and the Dominions and Empire that the ministry or agents would control food purchases and would base them on 28 August prices. It further established a licensing system for individual products (though not all) to differentiate between those Britain wanted and those it wanted to restrict or to prevent from reaching the enemy. Also in the background was the fact that the government hoped to use the system to ease the foreign exchange problem.

While instituting these measures helped, numerous problems still ensued. The government had overestimated the amount of merchant shipping it would have at its disposal and underestimated the non-combat disruptions the war would cause, even though before the war officials had estimated possible reductions in food imports of around 25 per cent. At first, because of the legacy of pre-war patterns, the anticipated difficulties seemed not to materialize, but it soon became apparent there were shortages, especially in wheat, and that the reserve was being used up. Moreover, the Food and Supply ministries were competing for cargo space, and so that problem had to be reconciled. Finally, the shortages meant that the ministry had to choose which products it would import. It had already decided to emphasize grain for human consumption, and not for animals, but it had to import enough feed so as not to deplete the dairy herds inordinately. The decrease in feeding stuffs did not have much of an effect on imported meat, at least at this point, for refrigerator ships were not in short supply. But, in the long run, the stress on grain products rather than on meat did, as stated before, have a considerable effect on the British diet.

By November trade in food imports was down to about two-thirds of normal, and shortages in some areas had become severe. But emergency shipments of wheat from Canada and a better familiarity with the procedures on the part of all the countries involved eased the situation by March 1940. Even the Norwegian campaign and the Battle of France in the spring did not interrupt the flow of goods for the time being. Despite a shaky start, the food import programme was now on a solid foundation. This solid foundation made it possible for the ministry to handle the drastic cuts that would be required in the future.

It is impossible to examine Britain’s relations with all of the countries exporting food to the United Kingdom. Some of them, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, remained staunch trading partners as well as joining the British cause. Others, like Argentina, drove a hard bargain for its beef, wheat, and maize, but decided to continue its trading relationship with the British.23 Denmark, on the other hand, had exports, mainly ham and bacon, to Britain cut off, and the Food ministry had to make use of alternative sources (and to make do with less).

Two exceedingly important countries from a trade and a military standpoint were France and the United States. Throughout 1939 the British had been establishing closer trade links with the French, and when the war broke out the two allies set up an elaborate machinery for inter-country sharing and for joint purchases abroad. By November they had formed an Anglo-French Coordinating Committee. It was headed by Jean Monnet, later the foremost proponent of post-war European cooperation. The coordinating committee had under it nine committees, one of which was food.24 It was named the Anglo-French Food Executive Committee, and the fact that Sir Henry French was selected to lead the three-person British team is ample evidence of its significance. The main food committee also spawned a number of Sub-Committees, including ones for cereals, oilseeds and fats, and meat.

To get an idea of the subjects discussed, a look at some of the decisions the committee made at its 12 February 1940 meeting is instructive. Besides joint purchases, the French offered to sell oil cakes to Britain and to arrange for a shipment of salt from Djibuti to British East Africa. Britain, for its part, agreed to sell some of its Newfoundland cod and salted herring to the French. An example of pre-emptive buying was their decision jointly to purchase dried fruits from Turkey so as to prevent them from ending up in German hands. The motive was not so much that Britain and France needed the fruit as it was to help influence Turkey not to join the enemy side. The horse-trading at the February meeting thus served a number of purposes, and both French and British representatives regretted the dissolution of their coordinating machinery on 4 July 1940.

As for Britain’s trade with the United States, despite the November 1938 agreement—and the onset of war—relations between the two remained delicate. To be sure, both nations wanted increased trade, but it was always complicated during 1939–40 by American neutrality and British foreign exchange problems. In fact, early on Britain said it was interested in purchasing basic food products, but suggested paying for them with British goods, such as wool from Australia, rather than with hard currency.25 Not surprisingly, the Americans were not interested in such an arrangement. Moreover, the US government correctly believed that the war continued Britain’s imperial preference system, which the Americans had long held put them at a competitive disadvantage in gaining access to British markets.

Nevertheless, Britain streamlined its trade links with North America, first by agreeing with Canada in August 1939 to set up a purchasing commission in Ottawa, and then in November extending it to New York City for American goods.26 The New York commission was later replaced by a more focused, Washington-based British Food Mission in April 1941, which, in turn, gave way to an Anglo-American Combined Food Board in 1942. Although both of these bodies were different from the 1939 version, they still owed their genesis to the purchasing commission.

Despite the complications, each nation kept the other apprised of its thinking. In November Chancellor Simon indicated to Ambassador Kennedy that ‘there will be no overall reduction of imports [from the United States]’, but he then reiterated, as the Americans well knew, that ‘purchases of certain goods must be reduced in order to enable other purchases to be increased’.27 The increases Simon envisaged were raw materials, machine tools, and military equipment, especially aeroplanes, but the purchase of aircraft was a sticky proposition in that the Americans were also finally interested in building up their own air corps.

The increases and decreases also related to food products. US officials were well aware that the value of British imports in that area was diminishing, and they predicted it could well decrease by as much as 50 per cent of normal.28 As proof, they cited recent British activities. Britain had virtually stopped buying fresh fruits, lard, and grain, though it usually purchased little of the latter in any event. Especially galling to American tobacco farmers had been the cut off of that product. The British had offset the effect of their actions to an extent by continuing to purchase canned fruit and by increasing cotton imports, but it still was far from enough to overcome the overall decrease. Yet, they remained sensitive to American frustrations, and the Food ministry made a large purchase of maize—which Britain definitely needed—from the United States in the spring. Therefore, the two countries might not always get along, but security interests continued to dictate that the two work out their differences in all areas, including the food trade. In retrospect, however, when one looks at the difficulties Britain faced in getting food imports from all of its trading partners during the early months of the war, they were minimal when compared with the difficulties the country was to experience in maintaining relations later on.

Since the air war over Britain did not materialize, carrying out a second area of food control, distribution and storage, had pretty much gone according to plan.29 A centrally located Division Room in the Ministry of Transport determined what was to be unloaded where by allocating products among the major ports. Wheat, for example, was mainly unloaded in the west and south, and meat and sugar primarily through London and Liverpool. Port Emergency Committees handled the day-to-day operational problems. Few of the commodities stored at the ports were moved inland, though 7,000 tons of meat, 8,000 tons of butter, and 30,000 tons of tea were dispersed from London’s docks to storage areas in the interior. When the air raids did not take place, the government had the goods replaced. As for distribution inside the country, private hauliers and wholesalers were contracted to make sure goods reached retail outlets. Although shortages at times did occur, as it did when meat was poorly distributed, it was seldom the fault of the transportation industry.

The third area of concern, food supply, did not fare as well as the distribution system.30 The basis of food supply was closely tied to the import programme and to the commodity control schemes—now pared to thirteen instead of the fourteen planned before the war. At first the supply of basic food products seemed adequate, but by October and November shortages were appearing, especially in cereals, feeding stuffs, and sugar. At this point the difficulties could not be overcome by home production, and so, in the case of grain, the shipments of wheat from Canada helped ease that situation, and in the case of sugar, rationing, already widely anticipated, was the alternative selected. Animal feed remained a difficult proposition, but the government soon began decreasing the amount imported and further cut its use by rationing meat. By March the initial food supply crisis had passed, but it was a foretaste of problems to come. What the departments had learned was that flexibility rather than rigid programmes was the preferred method for dealing with food supply emergencies.

The fourth area with which the Food ministry concerned itself was evacuations from the major cities. Like distribution activities, evacuations were primarily the responsibility of another department, in this instance the Ministry of Health, but Food was still involved.31 It was to provide food for the evacuees at stops along the train routes and at the final destinations before they were placed in town, village, and farm homes. The county committees and various volunteer groups, such as the Women’s Institutes and the Women’s Volunteer Services, were heavily involved in this final phase.

The evacuations had actually begun on 1 September, two days before the declaration of war, and within ten days 1,500,000 persons, approximately half of whom were school children accompanied by their teachers and helpers, had been settled into mostly pre-arranged accommodation. As emphasized before, London was not the only city to have large-scale evacuations. About 15,000 from Birmingham and Liverpool, for instance, went to Herefordshire, and others from Southampton to Glasgow were sent to less endangered areas. When the air raids did not occur, the pressure was off, and the evacuees started returning home, some on their own, others more systematically. By January 1940 two-thirds of them were once again living in their own dwellings. The upshot of the ‘phoney’ evacuation was that it was, to be sure, premature, but it made subsequent evacuations, which were necessary, smoother and more accepted by the population.

The fifth main area of concern was dealing with the armed forces’ food requirements. From the beginning, the Food ministry took over this responsibility and established a Service Supply Branch to administer the programme.32 It seemed to work well. All parties well understood that the services were to have the highest priority for food, and depots were set up in the United Kingdom to distribute bulk supplies to stations at home and to an extent abroad. But for much of the food at overseas bases, the ministry coordinated but allowed the service ministries to continue using their own sources of supply, many of whom were foreign agents. To ensure coordination the ministry had liaison officers assigned to work with the services, and it met with army, navy, and air force representatives to discuss common problems. Regarding provisions for troops beginning to arrive in France, it coordinated that effort with the Anglo-French machinery as well as with the services involved. Although there were complaints, the ministry reported on 25 October, ‘The plans made in advance for the coordination of the requirements of the services with the plans of the Ministry of Food have proved generally satisfactory’. This early spirit of cooperation obviously helped when the country had to cope with the dark days that lay ahead.

The final and by far most visible aspect of food control was rationing. The major problem with rationing was that even though every one expected it, it was slow in coming about. The Food ministry had already determined the system to be used—consumers registering with individual retailers—and the products to be immediately rationed—meat, sugar, bacon and ham, and butter, and possibly margarine, cooking fats, and tea—and this information was known by the public.33 But the government at first said most food except for butter was in good supply, and then, when it said rationing was necessary, kept putting off the date. Not until 8 January 1940 was rationing introduced.

In the meantime, the chorus of complaints multiplied. On 25 September members of parliament expressed ‘disappointment’ with the delay in rationing, and on 8 November an entire session was devoted to the government defending why it had not yet taken place.34 The Labour MP A. V. Alexander set forth the anti-government position. He pointed out that the national registration system, which was to form the basis for consumer registration, had been completed by the end of September and thus should no longer cause a problem. He had been amazed, however, that Food minister Morrison had stated, in a newspaper interview, ‘that supplies were so plentiful that no rationing was necessary’. Alexander’s rejoinder was, ‘[This is] in spite of the fact that complaints were still pouring in ...’. He ended with a quote from the prominent retailer Alan J. Sainsbury, who said: ‘We believe that the only fair and equitable distribution of available supplies to the consumer is by the introduction of a rationing system.’

In the rebuttal, Morrison admitted there were initial problems brought on by getting the system started, and by supplies being diverted to the armed forces and a shortage of shipping. But he assured the members that the government was closely monitoring the situation and when necessary would set ‘the proper date’. Sir Samuel Hoare, the Lord Privy Seal, concluded for the government, patriotically declaring ‘that Germany can never starve out our country’. The opposition’s motion to have immediate rationing was defeated by 187 to 104. Reassured, the War Cabinet waited until early December to agree that rationing would be introduced sometime ‘after the New Year’.

On the 29th the government announced the rules for using the ration books that had already been distributed. They applied primarily to regular households, but the ministry also had special books for service personnel on leave; those needing extra rations, such as labourers doing heavy work; and for individuals whose work involved extensive travel.35 On 8 January—The Times could not resist chiding the government, ‘18 weeks after the outbreak of war’—the rationing scheme began. Every adult was to receive three and a half ounces of bacon and ham (when cooked) per week, 4 ounces of butter, and 12 ounces of sugar. To get an idea of the detail involved, the ministry stipulated that homemakers would be allowed an extra ration of sugar to make marmalade and bee-keepers extra sugar for their colonies. Meat was rationed next, in March, and then margarine, cooking fats, and tea in July. Among the products not rationed were bread (only as a last resort), potatoes, fish, and fresh vegetables, though they were still subject to price controls. For morale purposes, tobacco and alcohol were also not rationed. In fact, one of the favourite refrains governmental officials used when talking to the public about food controls was to declare there would be no restrictions on beer.

The instituting of selective rationing did not end all of the criticisms. People continued to complain—the sugar ration was insufficient, the price for butter too high—but for the most part it was fair.36 The government acknowledged there were black market activities and minor infractions, such as the illegal swapping of ration coupons, but they never became too widespread. Moreover, from time to time, the ministry made additional changes to improve the programme. The most notable was the introduction of a point system to supplement registration with retailers. With the new programme, the buyer was given points, and he or she was then allowed to use them to purchase goods of their choice from a limited, but non-rationed, list. This innovation, too, was considered a success. Overall, then, despite a belated start, the ministry and local officers did a commendable job administering the rationing system, in part because officials had done extensive planning before it was implemented, in part because it entailed the type of detailed work in which administrators often excel.

To keep the multitude of factors straight, the government relied on two previously mentioned bodies, the Food Policy Sub-Committee and a joint Food and Agriculture committee with the awkward title of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Coordination of Food Policy. The Food Policy Sub-Committee was the more broadly based of the two, and it was established in late November 1939.37 It had had a predecessor, the Food Sub-Committee, but the latter had been under the Committee of Imperial Defence and the new creation was responsible to the War Cabinet. It was chaired by Sir Samuel Hoare, and among its members were Ministers Gilmour, Elliot, Morrison, and Dorman-Smith, the architects of the government’s food policy before the war. The Sub-Committee had an additional pre-war cast to it in that it included numerous Treasury officials.

Its task was to keep ‘under continuous and close review the broader aspects of food policy’, which it construed to consist of four main problem areas: shipping, statistics, rationing, and domestic production. But even though the Sub-Committee did discuss these issues and received advice from other councils and groups, such as one made up of agricultural economists, it never went beyond dealing with immediate problems rather than establishing a long-range policy. At first, the main problems were rationing and the food supply.38 Once these were being dealt with, agricultural concerns, such as providing sufficient labour and the need for fertilizers, dominated the discussions, although throughout its existence the Sub-Committee was constantly looking at ways to control prices.

But the lack of a long-range policy, along with a lack of coordination, led to criticisms from both traders and consumers, and Chamberlain thus decided in late March 1940 to replace Food minister Morrison with a businessman, Lord Woolton. One of the things that happened soon afterward was a change in the name of the Sub-Committee to the Food Policy Committee, and Woolton insisted that it frame a longrange statement.39 The changeover to the Churchill government in May did not relieve the committee of this responsibility. Churchill retained the highly regarded Woolton, and he was no doubt pleased to have an appropriate statement on his desk by late July. Therefore, the problem of not having a long-range food policy statement had finally been solved.

The joint Food and Agriculture committee had been the pre-war brainchild of French and Fergusson. They used the committee, which included representatives from Scotland’s and Northern Ireland’s agriculture departments and from the Treasury, to discuss common problems weekly on an informal basis and to defuse possible jurisdictional disputes in the food area.40 Both French and Fergusson were of the same opinion: they wanted to maintain the confidence of farmers while achieving a productive wartime agriculture. To accomplish this objective the government needed to see that the farmer came out well financially but within reasonable limits. At times, the committee’s discussions were theoretical, such as how to influence farmers to grow a certain crop without excessive financial inducements or using compulsion. At other times its members addressed more practical matters, such as how to increase immediately the supply of oats and other feedstuffs from abroad. But whether theoretical or practical the two permanent secretaries were attempting to benefit farmers by achieving a proper balance between prices and production in a wartime setting.

How well then did the government and its ministries do in getting their food programme accepted? The answer is that, on the whole, the public reaction, and that of rural interests in particular, was favourable. They seemed to accept that sacrifice and change were the order of the day. Many of the agricultural lobby groups, for example, changed locations (although most retained offices in London), and they met less frequently and disbanded some of their committees and converted others to wartime matters. In addition, they cut down on the number of pages in their journals as did the national and local newspapers. Yet, despite their loyalty and willingness to support the government, criticisms of its programme surfaced in various quarters—from parliament, the press and farmer weeklies to the activities and publications of lobby groups that had a keen interest in rural affairs.

As in the past, parliament is a good place to start, for the views of its members are a fairly good barometer of how people felt about the food measures being put into effect.41 As early as 26 September Morrison was obliged to assure the Commons that problems over the supply of butter and sugar were being dealt with and that the delay implementing rationing was a result of ‘trying to get an accurate count of the population’. On 8 November the previously mentioned debate over whether to have immediate rationing took place, and early in December, MP de la Bère wanted assurances that farmers receive a ‘reasonable price on goods’, and that price guarantees continue for ‘at least two harvests after the termination of the war’. De la Bère included this latter phrase as a reminder of what the government had failed to do for farmers after the first war. On 2 April 1940 the Commons again devoted an entire session to food problems. While Morrison admitted that the Food ministry had made mistakes initially and that ‘much remains to be done’, A. T. Lennox-Boyd, the parliamentary secretary, summed up the government’s position by saying that in terms of prices, food stocks, and rationing, it was doing a good job. The majority of the members agreed, though they continued to question the government when they felt it was not acting in the country’s best interests.42 Also, by this time, members of parliament, and governmental officials, well understood that the Food and Agriculture ministries were to see that the producer received a reasonable price and that the consumer paid a reasonable price and was supplied rapidly and yet fairly in the ‘least expensive way possible’.

The Times discussed many of the same issues—prices, rationing, food supplies—that were addressed in parliament, but the paper better reflected individual concerns.43 Georgeanna Musgrove of Sussex, for instance, noted that the ‘dig for victory’ campaign was hurting local producers and thus there was a need for more permanent market stalls in towns. L. A. Dunn of Campden criticized the army for using inexperienced cooks, and the result, in his opinion, was wasted food. And Grace Paget of Shepton Mallet said that although more milk for the troops was a good thing, she suggested they would accept it more readily if it were ‘disguised’, such as making it into chocolate or adding it to vegetable soup.

Among the regional papers, with their local emphasis, the Hereford Times listed the eight members of the county war agricultural committee and reminded readers that two of them had served in the same capacity in World War I.44 It also included a letter from a cottager who was ‘worried’ about feed for his animals, and one of the paper’s editorials pointed out that the most pressing problem for local farmers in reaching the 75,000 additional acre goal for the next harvest was insufficient labour. It suggested postponing the call up of agriculture-related workers, a solution the government had utilized the year before. Like the others, Plymouth’s Western Morning News cut down on its length (in this instance from twelve to sixteen pages down to six), and one of its articles discussed ploughing up flower beds and planting them with vegetables. Not only would such a practice provide food, but it would also require less labour.45 Another article talked about Cornwall’s Women’s Land Army, which was organized by Mrs Peggy Pollard, and which had signed up 156 recruits as of April 1940.

Like other local papers, to save space, the Aberdeen Press and Journal decreased the number of classified advertisements and moved news articles to the front page. One of its main concerns was the need for higher prices for farm products, which reflected the same, strongly held position of the National Farmers’ Unions.46 The Eastern Daily Press out of Norwich discussed primarily increased crop production, but it also ran a number of articles on horticultural topics and the need for more vegetable gardens.47 It also praised the work of the Women’s Institutes, headed locally by Lady Suffield, and the Women’s Land Army, which had 250 land girls ‘usefully engaged’ in West Suffolk. ‘What is especially encouraging’, according to a 20April 1940 editorial, was ‘that the land girls are as pleased with farming as their farmer is pleased with them now that the early prejudice to which he confesses has been removed’. Despite the overstatement, the war had not stopped the local press from keeping their readers informed.

The Farmers’ Weekly and Farmer & Stockbreeder also combined information and support of the government with occasional criticisms. One area in which the weeklies were especially critical was the apparent lack of concern for farmers being exhibited by the Ministry of Food.48

The farmers’ main complaint was that prices for goods, which were set by the ministry, were often too low, as was the case for livestock and sheep. They were getting along with the Agriculture ministry, but according to the article, what Food officials needed to do was to take farmers into their confidence. In February 1940 the editor of Farmer & Stockbreeder was therefore heartened when Food minister Morrison stated in the Commons: ‘Farmers must at this time have a prospect of fair prices for the work they are doing.’ In an address before the Farmers’ Club in March, Morrison further felt compelled to say, ‘I hope you will get out of your heads an idea which I have heard expressed many times, that there is any difference of opinion or clash of interest between my colleague in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries [Dorman-Smith] and myself. There is none.’49

Among the lobby groups, the National Farmers’ Union was the most critical. To be sure, when the war broke out, it offered its services to the government and ‘the offer was accepted promptly’.50 But the NFU was most concerned about the relation of prices to costs, and it pressed this point relentlessly when it consulted with the government.

The government was listening.51 Agricultural officials (Dorman-Smith often attended) and NFU leaders began meeting on 19 September and met regularly thereafter. By December the farmers were getting results. The government agreed to increase the price guarantee for wheat and promised to look into increasing livestock prices as well.

Still, NFU officials were not satisfied, in part because of continuing pressure from its branches, and the NFU insisted that the government raise prices even further. On 6 May 1940 their demanding attitude prompted Sir Horace Wilson of the Treasury and a key member of the Food Policy Sub-Committee to say that he was getting tired of the ‘complaints made by farmers, who as a class were certainly making adequate profits at the present time’.52

Before one is too critical of the NFU, it is good to remember that the Union had had a major influence on the government’s agricultural policy before the war, and some of its members were also influential in Conservative Party circles. Besides being the premier agricultural lobby, the NFU had tailored its operations to wartime needs by moving its headquarters to High Wycombe, setting up an Emergency Committee to deal with urgent matters between regular Council meetings, and having officials serve on governmental committees.53

In effect, what had happened by 1939–40 was that the NFU represented the industry. For example, even though it did not like the Food ministry, it met with French and others on occasion, because, after all, Food was responsible for setting prices.54 By February 1940 President Peacock was revising his opinion of the ministry, which he said was increasingly sympathetic to agriculture, and the two groups agreed to get together every two weeks. Furthermore, the NFU was revising its opinion of the worker unions, and it sympathized to an extent with their desire for higher wages. Therefore, it met with labour representatives and agreed to make the unions’ views known to the government at NFUAgriculture ministry meetings.55 When the government decided in April to raise the minimum wage, however, the NFU was upset because it was not linked to higher prices for farm goods. Finally, the NFU continued its pre-war practice of meeting regularly with its counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland.56 These two groups, the Scottish National Farmers’ Union and Chamber of Agriculture and the Ulster Farmers’ Union, were considered important enough in their own right to warrant representation on governmental committees in London, and they were also extremely influential with the agriculture departments in their own countries. As might be expected, the Scottish NFU was especially interested in prices for oats, barley, sheep, and cattle, and the Ulster Union was likewise for cattle. Another special concern of the Northern Ireland group was to make sure its members received the same prices for products as the rest of the United Kingdom. Thus, all in all, the government appreciated the significance of the farmers’ unions and solicited their advice. Nevertheless, they remained difficult to deal with.

The views of the Central Landowners’ Association, it will be recalled, usually reflected those of the National Farmers’ Union, and like the NFU it moved its offices outside London, in this instance to Coppid Hall near Henley-on-Thames.57 It accepted the ploughing up campaign and was pleased that ‘agriculture generally have responded to the call’. But even more than the NFU it was displeased with the government’s wages bill. In the opinion of the CLA, this should be a matter to be settled directly between employers and employees, not by the government. The Association was also disturbed that while the Agriculture minister met regularly with the NFU, it was not meeting with the landowners’ group. In March 1940 Dorman-Smith rectified the oversight, and two months later he also invited the CLA to participate in the ministry’s monthly meetings with the NFU and the trade unions. These joint get-togethers continued under the Churchill government.

For the labour unions, the National Union of Agricultural Workers and the agriculture branch of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, their main concern was higher wages.58 There were other issues they were concerned about, such as working conditions—they were upset, for example, when the Women’s Land Army agreed to Sunday work as part of their regular work week, which the union opposed. They also undertook war measures so that they could continue to conduct business. Although they did not move out of London, the NUAW established a War Emergency Sub-Committee to deal with urgent problems. Moreover, they were glad to receive increased recognition. Many union members served on War Ag committees and other local entities, and when Edwin Gooch and George Dallas, the heads of the unions, complained in September 1939 about the government not meeting with them, the Agriculture minister responded by setting up regular meetings. In February 1940 union representatives further started meeting with Food ministry subcommittees.

An indication of their increased status can be derived from a dinner of the NUAW at its biennial conference on 3 May 1940. Among those attending, besides Labour’s party leader, Clement Attlee, was Dorman-Smith. His reply to a gracious toast by President Gooch was that inviting a Tory minister to the dinner was ‘a sign of that deep sense of national unity’ which was so vital for the country, and he ended by saying, we are ‘all servants of the soil’. In his presidential address Gooch emphasized that the union supports the war effort, and that ‘we are at last regarded as partners in the industry’. But he could not resist adding, ‘It has taken a war to do it.’

Nevertheless, the union’s primary goal remained better pay.59 One of the unions’ complaints was that each county wage committee was setting the minimum wage for its area, and therefore there was no uniform rate. At a December meeting Agriculture secretary Fergusson agreed with the unions to seek a Central Wages Board, and, failing that, at least to enable a Central Board to revise the wages set by the county committees. The government, however, accepted a Central Wages Board, and during the negotiations the workers on the board proposed a 60s. (£3) per week minimum. The farmers on the board recommended 42s. (£2.10). The workers moved the figure back to 55s. (£2.75), then to 50s. (£2.50) as a final offer for adult male labourers. They finally agreed to 48s. (£2.40), which was the amount the unions had originally said in private they would accept. Adult women were to receive a 35s. (£1.75) minimum. Even though neither side was completely happy—the union still wanted more for overtime work—it was a rise of approximately 8s. (40p) per week, depending on the region, and both sides were relatively satisfied with the result. The least critical of the lobby groups were the Women’s Institutes.

Their attitude seemed to be, there’s work to be done, let’s get on with it.60 Because of the war, they reduced the length of their magazine, Home & Country, and in May 1940 they moved their general office to Abingdon Hall in Dorking. Their activities included helping care for the evacuees; producing more garden vegetables, fruits, poultry and other small animals, and eggs; promoting and demonstrating methods of food preservation; disseminating information through pamphlets, circulars, and radio broadcasts; and keeping up morale in the villages and the countryside. More specifically, these activities took the form of working with local officials to set up Producer Guilds and providing assistance for the Women’s Land Army. The Women’s Institutes further opened numerous market stalls for local produce in the towns— Home & Country reported sixteen new ones being constructed in June 1940—and that same month Lady Denman talked to the nation over the BBC about what the Women’s Institutes were doing. As for keeping up morale, T. E. Bray of the Shere and Gomshall WI, perhaps put it best. ‘We dig for victory,’ she wrote, ‘we keep chickens and goats, we knit for the troops, we keep our village merry and bright by handicrafts, music and drama and a hundred and one useful odds and ends.’ In other words, although at times the members of the Women’s Institutes probably did become discouraged, on the whole, their enthusiasm and good will provided a positive example for people in rural Britain.

The other lobbies seem to have reacted similarly to the major groups. The Council for the Preservation of Rural England, for instance, set up two offices, one at Hughendon Manor, the other in London. 61 It also instituted an Emergency Committee, but in this case it was to handle ‘all matters affecting the CPRE’ and to take the place of general and regular committee meetings. Among its activities, it continued to comment on the government’s acquisition of land for military installations, but the CPRE and its Welsh counterpart were less active during the war than before it.

Thus, by the spring of 1940 the food programme was functioning, not without difficulties at first and not without criticisms, but, on the whole, smoothly. Still one element was missing, and that was a governmental statement on its long-term food policy, and especially as to how that policy would relate to nutrition. Two events resolved the problem. One was a reshuffling of the cabinet by Chamberlain on 3 April 1940.62 Although anticipated for months, the changes consisted mainly of moving ministers around within the cabinet. But two of them that were not shuffled related to food and agriculture. One was the appointment of Robert S. Hudson to replace the recently deceased Sir John Gilmour as Minister of Shipping. The other was naming Lord Woolton as Food minister in place of Morrison, who was shifted to the less taxing Postmaster General position.

Woolton (1883–1964) turned out to be a superior appointment.63 He was the highly successful head of the Lewis’s stores, based in Liverpool, but he had served in the civil service during World War I and had further served as an adviser to various governmental committees in the inter-war years. At the outbreak of the war he was attached to the Ministry of Supply and was directing the procurement of army clothing and textile equipment when Chamberlain asked him in March 1940 to take over as Minister of Food. Woolton recalled his first meeting with the Prime Minister as follows. The Prime Minister asked him to become Food minister. Woolton replied that he would rather not and suggested Colonel J. J. Llewellin, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Supply, as an excellent choice, since as an MP he had a better grasp of politics. (He in fact succeeded Woolton in November 1943.) Woolton also said he knew little about food matters. But Chamberlain ‘insisted that this was not a matter of politics—I could remain independent of political parties—but that the country would be pleased to have a businessman in charge of this vital and critical department—and very understandably, in view of my attitude—he pointed out to me that he was paying me the highest compliment’. Woolton said he would think about the offer.

At a subsequent meeting Woolton related that at first their conversation was formal and almost ‘frigid’. But when he told the Prime Minister he agreed to serve, Chamberlain ‘turned in his chair, smiled at me and said, “They have always told me you would make any sacrifice for your country: I knew I was right!”’ Woolton admitted he was ‘touched’.

He had been selected primarily because he would bring a business mentality to the ministry and hopefully would gain the confidence of the food industry. He did both.64 Within a month and a half after his appointment, he had had lunch with representatives of the National Federation of Grocers, the Hotel and Restaurant Association, and the Food Manufacturers’ Federation and had enlisted their support. He further gave businessmen more authority within the ministry and named several of them to head departments. But he also overcame the suspicions of the civil servants by meeting with them, visiting every office, and talking with them face to face about their problems. As Woolton put it in his memoirs, ‘So the officials and I began to get to know one another and to understand a common policy and—probably most important of all—I had made the staff feel that we were engaged in a task that was essentially a personal one for the people of this country.’

Another aspect of his job was to deal with the House of Commons.65 He realized from the beginning that his immediate problem was that as a member of the House of Lords he could not appear before the other body (hence, part of his reluctance to accept the Food ministry position). But with the assistance of his parliamentary secretaries, and after meetings with members of both Houses—at which he acknowledged their right to criticize but also his desire to move ahead for the good of the nation—he experienced few difficulties with them.

Part of his success with parliament can also be explained by another factor: his ‘common touch’ with the people.66 He had a great gift for public relations, and even though a great deal of his prominence in this area became evident later in the war, as T. O. Lloyd has noted, Woolton ‘left the mark of his personality on the food policy of the whole war’.

The second event of great importance was much more than a reshuffle; it was the resignation of the Chamberlain government on the evening of 10 May 1940 and its replacement with one headed by Winston Churchill. This event, of course, was of profound significance, and it has been examined in great detail elsewhere.67 (It is also good to remember that that same morning the Battle of France had begun.) But from our perspective Churchill’s government further signalled a change in the attitude if not the direction of the Food and Agriculture ministries. Regarding Food, the change was not so great, because Woolton was retained. As for Agriculture, however, Dorman-Smith, the farmers’ friend and past president of the National Farmers’ Union, was replaced by Robert Hudson.

The question is, why? Why replace a Conservative—Churchill had kept numerous others—with a civil servant? True, Hudson was proving himself an effective administrator, but he had just been named Minister of Shipping. Since Churchill was adding Labour and Liberal party leaders, why not appoint one of them? But Labour had too radical an agriculture programme, and the Liberals were already heading the important Air ministry. Therefore, they were passed over. The actual reason Hudson took over is that even though Dorman-Smith had represented the interests of the farming community, he had a more traditional view of agriculture instead of the newer, more scientific approach. 68 Putting it another way, he was more interested in grain and livestock production than in nutritional considerations. As he once remarked to an NFU deputation, ‘Once we fall into the nutrition trap we are sunk’, and he had argued with the new Prime Minister about their ‘different conclusions’ on several occasions in the months before Churchill took over. Therefore, Dorman-Smith was not surprised to be dismissed, and somewhat surprisingly, he seems not to have borne Churchill any ill will.69

The farm interests were not so charitable.70 They deplored Dorman-Smith’s removal, which one newspaper termed a ‘tragedy’. Columnist Blythe in the Farmer & Stockbreeder probably summed it up best when he wrote, ‘Sir Reginald [was] the only Minister of Agriculture within memory... in whom farmers, workers and landowners had trust and confidence’.

Still the farm groups’ displeasure did not turn into outrage in large part because the nation was passing through a war crisis.71 They all agreed to support the new Agriculture minister with the National Farmers’ Union leading the way. On 23 May its Council sent a telegram to the Prime Minister ‘renewing the assurance of the Union’s whole-hearted support in the present critical state of international affairs’.

Robert Hudson (1886–1957) did not let the farmers down.72 Within a week, he and his staff met with NFU leaders to discuss common problems and to assure them that he was listening to their concerns. He continued to meet with them regularly and also with representatives of the landowners and the workers’ unions. On Sunday, 2 June he delivered his first nationwide broadcast. He stated that there would be more land put into crops, especially potatoes and vegetables. However, feeding stuffs were to be cut, which he acknowledged would cause difficulties for animal producers, especially pork and poultry farmers. He then proposed raising agricultural wages to 48s. (£2.40) per week minimum, and most importantly, wages were to be linked to prices. The response was overwhelmingly positive. The Times, for instance, stated, ‘The best feature about these pronouncements is that Mr. Hudson took the people fully into his confidence and displayed a welcome sense of urgency and drive in the general scheme of his policy’. Outside London, an editorial in the Eastern Daily Press commented: ‘The Minister of Agriculture has made a spectacular debut, and there is no longer any doubt about the Government’s determination to put farming on a war-time basis at all costs’. The Farmers’ Weekly was just as fulsome in its praise. ‘In 14 days’, an editorial noted, ‘he has shown a clear-headed appreciation of the [minister’s] position’. His broadcast was ‘not laced with buts and ifs’, but was a frank statement of what was required. In its opinion, Hudson may have come in on a ‘dark horse’, but ‘the dark horse has turned into a runner worth following’.

At the same time Hudson was wooing the agricultural community and conveying to them a series of decisions, he did not forget about the ‘scientific side’ of his job. This took concrete form with the establishment on 28 May of a Scientific Committee that was to advise the government on ways to meet the myriad of problems facing the food and agriculture sectors.73 This committee was not responsible to the Agriculture ministry, however, but to the Food Policy Committee, which was under the War Cabinet. The Scientific Committee also brought to the fore once again the question of a long-term food policy with the idea of nutrition embedded in it. To examine these two issues—food policy and nutrition—is a complicated task, but four main governmental groups were involved. First was the promotional role of a Food Economy Central Committee; second, the work of the Chief Scientific Officer and his staff; third, the contribution of the Scientific Committee; and fourth, the impetus of the Food Policy Committee. The first three groups relate primarily to nutrition and the last to food policy, but an understanding of all four is essential to an understanding of the whole.

The idea of promoting nutrition for the public took many forms, but the government’s interdepartmental Food Economy Central Committee was the main coordinating body.74 Sir Russell Scott of the Information ministry was the chair, and it included representatives from the Board of Education, Scottish Office, Health, Agriculture, and Food, and an official from Northern Ireland and the Food Ministry’s scientific adviser were also in attendance. In January 1940 the committee decided on a ‘Right Food’ Publicity Campaign, which was to be launched at a public meeting at Queen’s Hall on 5 April. Mrs Chamberlain was to preside, and Food Minister Morrison was among those scheduled to speak. The meeting was to be only the beginning, for it was to be followed by local open meetings across the country, classes on the preservation of fruits, and cooking demonstrations organized by volunteer organizations, such as the Women’s Institutes. The committee further had two leaflets prepared for wide distribution on ‘Our Food Today: How to Eat Wisely in Wartime’ and ‘Housekeeping in Wartime’.

But by the time the Queen’s Hall festivities were to take place, Lord Woolton had become Food minister, and on his first day on the job— 4 April—he was informed that he was to address the meeting the next day.75 Sir Henry French told him not to worry, since he had already prepared a speech, but Woolton was naturally quite nervous about speaking on a subject about which at this point he knew very little. Nevertheless, he gave the speech the next day, and it was a success. Not only did he credit Morrison for establishing the ministry on an ‘excellent foundation’, but he also emphasized eating and conserving the right types of food. He further caught the public’s fancy by using a number of catch phrases, such as women ‘mobilizing themselves on the kitchen front’, and taking ‘one spoonful of tea for each person... and none for the pot’. What Woolton and the other speakers were doing, of was to heighten people’s awareness of not wasting food and of having a proper diet.

This type of thinking fitted in well with the activities of the Chief Scientific Officer, Professor (soon Sir) Jack Drummond, whose work was the second strand of the food policy–nutrition equation.76 Although Drummond’s effectiveness was hindered at first by a lack of support (or interest) from the interdepartmental committees, he and his associates still managed to compile data on a number of problems. By the end of April 1940 he had put together his first policy statement and appended to it ‘A Summary of Wartime Nutrition with Special Reference to Home Production of Foods and Import Programmes’. It was a detailed study of the nation’s total caloric and vitamin requirements, and it stressed ‘relying on home production for protective foods and importing calories’. The study highlighted twelve foods that needed to be imported. Cheese, for example, was a valuable source of protein, as was canned fish, which was also rich in Vitamins A and D. As for cereal crops, it recommended increasing the amount imported for 1940–1 by 18 per cent, and decreasing the amount of meat by 42 per cent. With regard to protective, home-produced foods, the study proposed increasing as much as possible the supply of potatoes, garden vegetables (especially green vegetables), milk, and oatmeal. The implication of the study was that adopting these recommendations would lead to a healthy Britain.

Data such as that analysed by Drummond and his staff on nutrition—and they later looked into other issues, such as dehydrated foods, which saved shipping space—were a real boon to the third group, the Scientific Committee, but its establishment in late May 1940 is part of a larger story. It had begun in the 1930s with the work of Sir John Boyd Orr, Charles Orwin, Lord Astor, and others, but it will be recalled that while the government paid attention to their insights, many of their proposals were never acted upon. With the outbreak of the war, however, these agricultural scientists saw their hopes revive that the government might take a more enlightened view toward food matters. Lord Astor, Orr, Orwin, and Sir Robert Greig, a member of the Commons, were in the forefront, but their problem was that a number of governmental leaders, and especially Dorman-Smith, were not sympathetic to their ideas. One of the ‘progressives’, Sir Frederick Keeble, wrote a letter to Lord Hankey, Dorman-Smith, and Morrison in March 1940 calling for a Food Council to work out a policy that emphasized nutritional concerns with an emphasis on home-produced cereals, milk, potatoes, and vegetables and a reduction in meat.77 Dorman-Smith’s rebuttal to Hankey, who still had a good deal of influence in the cabinet, was that ‘Keeble does not understand the importance of importing some foods for political reasons’, such as importing eggs from Romania to keep them out of the hands of the Germans. Among other points, Dorman-Smith continued, ‘He [Keeble] seems to think that I have not at my disposal and have not been consulting the leading agricultural scientists, but I have and announced the names last September’.

If that were indeed the case, in the view of Astor, Orr, and others, the Agriculture minister had not asked the right people. They were also aware that ‘the new Minister of Food [Woolton] provided a favourable opportunity for reviewing the problem’.78 The problem, according to R. Hart-Synott of Oxford, was that ‘there is a widespread criticism by scientists concerned with agriculture that the Government’s schemes for food production are inadequate’. ‘So far,’ he added, ‘little use ... has been made of their knowledge’.

By mid-April the scientists were getting organized and enlisting the aid of sympathetic members of parliament.79 At first they advocated two committees, ‘a purely scientific Committee to deal with nutrition and [to] link nutrition to food and shipping’, and a Technical Committee to handle ‘day-to-day problems of supplies, labour, cultivation, etc., and to think ahead’. They then began to suggest names: Orr, Sir Daniel Hall, Keeble, Orwin, Sir John Russell from Rothamstead, some of the younger men from the research stations. By 9 May the scientists and parliamentary supporters were sending a memo to the Minister of Agriculture proposing a Scientific Committee, though not a Technical Committee, and they were further ‘writing out a precise statement of goals’.

Then the governmental changeover intervened. It soon became evident, however, that the efforts of the scientists were paying dividends with the new government. At the weekly informal meeting between Food and Agriculture on 14 May, Fergusson and French naturally focused on the effects of the German invasion of France and the Low Countries on the food supply. Not surprisingly, their conclusion was that it would not be ‘catastrophic’ for agriculture, but ‘food imports were a real concern’.80

The discussion then shifted to the proposed Scientific Committee. In the crucial exchange that followed, Fergusson indicated that ‘the Agriculture Departments would not object to such a committee so long as its terms of reference were restricted to nutrition and scientific aspects of the matter, but they were definitely opposed to extending the terms of reference to include a consideration of agriculture policy’. The latter, he pointed out, was connected to issues (foreign policy, economic warfare, etc.) ‘upon which nutritionists and scientists were not competent to advise’. Fergusson then added he felt ‘that the recommendations might seriously embarrass the Ministry... and further that the Treasury might also be placed in a difficult position in so far as a Committee of Scientists was almost certain to make very strong recommendations for the subsidisation [sic] of food for the poorer consumers’. French’s classic rejoinder was as follows: ‘[He] said if it was necessary to have a Scientific Committee the sooner it was appointed the better. His Minister [Woolton] held the view most strongly that the Government would not be able to justify a food policy prepared mainly by the bureaucracy and that there was a case for the setting up of a Scientific Committee.’81 Then to mollify Fergusson, French said it would, of course, be necessary to have the Agriculture ministry oversee any recommendations the Scientific Committee might make regarding agriculture policy.

But the issue had been aired. Only the outcome was in doubt. Woolton and French favoured a Scientific Committee. Fergusson, taking the traditional Agriculture line, did not. The key person was the new Agriculture minister, Robert Hudson. Astor talked to him and Woolton and Robert Boothby, the new parliamentary secretary and at this point a close confidant of Churchill.82

Astor ascertained that Woolton and Boothby were favourably disposed toward his thinking, but he feared that ‘Hudson, coming entirely new to the agricultural world, is too much obsessed with the need of obtaining the good will of the NFU’. Astor need not have been apprehensive, however, for at a meeting of the Food Policy Committee on 24 May Hudson went along with the Committee’s decision to set up a Scientific Committee.83 Sir William Bragg, the President of the Royal Agricultural Society, was to be the chair, and the Committee was to include Orr and other scientists among its members. On the 28th it had its first meeting. One day earlier, after meeting with Hudson, MP Greig wrote to Astor: ‘Mr. Hudson gave me the impression that he was more alive to the [food policy] situation than his predecessor was.’ Astor soon felt the same way. By early June the public had been informed of the existence of the Scientific Committee, and it generally approved. As expressed in a 5 June editorial in the Eastern Daily Press, ‘Vigorous action, founded on expert advice, will bring farming and food to their best. Thus from the war at least these benefits may come: a prosperous agriculture and a nation educated in nutrition.’84

During June the Committee set to work, though it did have to overcome distractions and a potential problem. Besides the war, which was a major distraction in itself, the other difficulty was that the Food ministry moved most of its offices from London to Colwyn Bay, a seaside resort in northern Wales.85 The only announcement in the press was that the ‘evacuation of the staff of the Ministry of Food’ was under way ‘to a secret country site’. During the last week in June the move was accomplished, although a number of civil servants remained behind in London. Some of the divisions also relocated to other places, including, among others, the Potato Division to Oxford, the Canned Fish Division to Liverpool, and the Liquid Milk Division to Thames Ditton in Surrey.

The potential problem for the Scientific Committee was that Drummond’s Scientific branch might not prove cooperative, but that, in fact, did not happen.86 Instead, Drummond and his workers assisted the committee by giving it information, and the members of the committee reciprocated by sharing their research with Drummond. The reason was not only because Drummond was part of the Food ministry, which strongly approved of the Scientific Committee, but also because he agreed with its nutritional emphasis.

On 28 June, a month after its inception, the Committee issued its first report, ‘A “Basal Diet” as the Foundation of Food Policy’.87 It began by stating that the committee realized the war situation had become desperate and that ‘widespread devastation by air raids and invasion’ might well be in the offing. Nevertheless, the committee was basing its report on the premiss that the country would survive, and that the war would continue for a long time. It had used this premiss to draw ‘up a list of foods in order of priority determined by physiological needs, by the possibilities of extensive home production and in the case of imported goods by shortness and convenience of shipping routes, compactness and least call on foreign exchange’. Those foods that had the highest priority were called a ‘basal diet’, and they included bread, fats (margarine, butter, and cooking fats), milk, potatoes, oatmeal, and vegetables. Eight secondary foods were placed in a supplementary list, and it included cheese, dried beans and peas, meat and fish (especially tinned), cereals (other than wheat and oats), bacon, sugar, eggs, and dried fruit (since many types of fresh fruit might not be available). The committee recommended that the basal diet make up 2,000 calories per person per day, and that the supplementary list make up 800 calories. The 2,800 calories were considered ‘sufficient to meet the energy requirements of people not engaged in manual labour’. The report then went into how much each person needed to consume each day on average of the six basic foods to reach 2,000 calories—12 ounces of bread, 16 ounces of potatoes, just over half a pint of milk, and so forth. The final section dealt with communal feeding, such as for factories and schools. The entire report was sent to the Food Policy Committee for consideration.

The Scientific Committee followed its initial report with a number of others on such topics as whether the wartime situation warranted rationing bread—the committee thought not—and how to maintain sufficient domestic milk production in light of possible bombing attacks—the committee had no immediate solution.88 But after July the Food ministry started making suggestions on technical matters the committee might examine. These included looking into methods of preserving fresh vegetables at minimum cost without losing their nutritional value and ways to make oats and oatmeal more palatable with minimum use of fuel for cooking. Although food officials had been considering these issues for some time, they hoped the committee could assist them in finding solutions.

Thus the Scientific Committee had found useful work (though it faded from the scene by 1942). But its report on nutrition and the work of the Scientific adviser’s office were still only part of what Woolton and the Churchill government wanted: a long-term food policy.89 Woolton had already made this point soon after taking office, and this is where the fourth group, the Food Policy Committee, enters the picture. In the new government, Labour leader Attlee had become chair of the committee, and while the members continued to discuss immediate issues, such as milk for children and expectant mothers and prices of agricultural products, one of its main concerns was setting forth a food policy.

Woolton’s ministry did the spade work.90 Its Economics Division examined the Scientific Committee’s report and ‘generally agreed’ with its conclusions. (Official historian Murray was secretary of the Economics Division.) However, the report alone was insufficient, and so the completed draft was much more comprehensive. On 31 July a memorandum, ‘Policy of the Ministry of Food’, was forwarded to the Food Policy Committee, which turned it over to the War Cabinet, and it was approved on 7 August.

It is a relatively straightforward document.91 It began by stating, ‘The function of the Ministry of Food is to feed the people of this country and to feed them in such a manner that they can get on with their job of national service’. It then described the methods and factors involved. The ministry was to prescribe what was to be produced at home and what imported. It was to oversee rationing and price controls, but only in so far as necessary. It was to be concerned with food distribution, building up and conserving food supplies, and educating the public on the best value of the food available. As for luxury foods, they should be allowed to find their own price levels. Finally, the document stated that both the home production and the import policies were to emphasize ‘the findings of the Scientific Committee’ regarding a basal diet. But then with a nod to what a basal diet really meant, it said that ‘in addition to these foods essential to physical health, adequate provision should also be made of the foods essential to the general contentment of the public’. In other words, a strict basal diet would not have a lot of flavour.

Yet the final piece of the programme, a statement on food policy, was now in place. Its completion gives rise to a number of observations. First, as noted earlier, almost all of the measures called for—setting home production and import quotas, handling rationing and price controls, etc.—were already being carried out by the Food ministry. Nevertheless, it was good to have them spelled out and to be reminded that the ministry’s objective was ‘to feed the people’ in time of war.

The statement also makes clear, if it were not already obvious, that the Food ministry was the dominant body running the food programme, and Agriculture was secondary. To be sure, the policy statement refers only to the Food ministry, but the latter still determined home production quotas and prices for farm goods, and the other major functions of the Agriculture ministry—providing labour and horse and machine power—depended on food production. While the government continued to try to meet the farmers’ complaints, and to an extent, their expectations, their interests were secondary to feeding the nation, for which the Food ministry was primarily responsible.

A third observation is that while Woolton and the Churchill government served as catalysts in bringing into being a food policy statement, the government was already moving in that direction, particularly in terms of nutrition, at the time Woolton and Hudson took office. This involvement had taken the form of a publicity campaign and the work of the scientific adviser and his staff. But the question still remains, would Morrison and Dorman-Smith ever have pushed for a policy statement on their own? They had been aware of the issues for years, but had never seen fit to adopt one. True, their top civil servants were also negligent in this regard. Nevertheless, without Woolton and the Churchill government appointees such a statement might never have come into being, or at least would have been delayed even further.

Finally, one is forced to conclude that in this instance there were too many governmental committees. The ones that were responsible—first the Food Sub-Committee before the war, and then its successor, the Food Policy Sub-Committee, after the war started—never ordered the Food ministry to draft a broad statement, and so a number of other committees and offices, including the Scientific Committee, became involved. The problem was that given the crush of events, no one in the government, until Woolton, was willing to take the initiative to see that the necessary time and energy were devoted to set forth a food policy statement. But by August 1940 it was finally accomplished.

It may seem odd to end this study, except for an epilogue, at the early stage of the Battle of Britain, perhaps the country’s most trying time during the entire conflict. But in this case the interrelationship between food, agriculture, and preparations for war, it makes sense. For even though it took the government eleven months to have the entire programme worked out, it was functioning adequately before that terrible spring and summer of 1940. True, during the first months of the war, the preparations worked out beforehand had to be adjusted, and in at least one instance, the fish control plan, it had to be abandoned and another put in its place.92 All in all, however, the preparatory planning was sound, and it allowed the government to establish a solid foundation. By the time it faced its severest test in 1940–1, it was able to meet the challenge in supplying food for the nation.

NOTES

1 351 HC Deb., 1938–9, col. 292, 3 Sept. 1939.
2 Michael Dockrill, ‘Defending the Empire or Defeating the Enemy: British War Aims 1938–47’, in Peter Catterall and C. J. Morris (eds.), Britain and the Threat to Stability in Europe, 1918–45 (London, 1993), 114–15.
3 Alan F. Wilt, War from the Top: German and British Military Decision Making during World War II (Bloomington, Ind., 1990), 54, and Sir Stephen W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939–45, i.The Defensive (London, 1954), 388–9.
4 Clarence D. Long, The Labor Force and Changing Income and Employment (Princeton, NJ, 1958), 334.
5 Michael M. Postan, British War Production (London, 1952), 78–9, and Chester, ‘War-Time Machinery’, in Richard Rose (ed.), Policy-Making in Britain: A Reader in Government (New York,1969), 340–1.
6 FP(O)(39), 1st Meeting, 28 Nov. 1939, CAB 74/8, PRO.
7 MAF, Sept. 1939, MAF 39/20, PRO.
8 Anthony Hurd, A Farmer in Whitehall: Britain’s Farming Revolution, 1939–1950, and Future Prospects (London, 1951), 109–27; A. W. Menzies Kitchin, ‘Local Administration of Agricultural Policy’, in Chester (ed.), Lessons of the British War Economy (Cambridge, 1951), 240–3; John F. Martin, The Development of Modern Agriculture: British Farming since 1931 (Basingstoke, 2000), 60–6; DA, ‘Defence of the Realm’, 4 Sept. 1939, AF 45/4, SRO; and Lord Murray [Keith A. H. Murray], Agriculture (London, 1955), 300 and 324–39.
9 Richard J. Hammond, Food, 3 vols. (London, 1951–62), i. 51–8, and 352 HC Deb., 1938–9, cols. 1946–8, 1 Nov. 1939.
10 353 HC Deb., 1938–9, col. 234, 8 Nov. 1939.
11 Ministry of Food (MF), ‘Minutes of a Meeting Held on Sept. 9, 1939’, MAF 72/106, PRO; Martin, Development of Modern Agriculture, 57–9; E. F. Nash, ‘Wartime Control of Food and Agricultural Prices’, in Chester, Lessons of the British War Economy, 205–9; and 359 HC Deb., 1939–40, col. 56, 2 Apr. 1940.
12 The Times, 5 Sept. 1939, 10.
13 Ibid., 4 Oct. 1939, 5.
14 Thomas Inskip Diary, 10 Nov. 1939, INKP 1/1, Churchill Archives Centre (CAC), Churchill College, Cambridge University; Murray, Agriculture, 245–8; MAF, ‘Report on Food Production’, 2 Jan. 1940, MAF 74/285, PRO; and Edith H. Whetham, British Farming, 1939–1949 (London, 1952), 27–8
15 Menzies Kitchin, ‘Local Administration’, 239, and Martin J. Smith, The Politics of Agricultural Support in Britain: The Development of the Agricultural Policy Community (Aldershot, 1990), 87–9.
16 (MAF), 2 Jan. 1940, MAF 74/285, 2 Jan. 1940, PRO; FP(40)25, ‘The Agricultural Labour Position’, 19 Mar. 1940, CAB 74/3, PRO; and Angus A. Macleod to W. Bakel, Dept. of Agriculture in Scotland, 19 Feb. 1940, AF 59/9, SRO.
17 F. G. Sturrock, ‘Movement of Agricultural Workers on 157 Farms in the Eastern Counties during the First Year of War’, The Farm Economist, 3/9 (1941), 161–2.
18 John F. Martin, ‘The Impact of Government Intervention on Agricultural Productivity in England and Wales, 1939–1945’, Ph.D. (Univ. of Reading), 162.
19 Whetham, British Farming, 40–2; Nicola Tyrer, They Fought in the Fields. The Women’s Land Army: The Struggle of a Forgotten Victory (London, 1996); Victoria Sackville-West, The Women’s Land Army (London, 1944); and Shirley Joseph, If Their Mothers Only Knew: An Unofficial Account of Life in the Women’s Land Army (London, 1946).
20 Gervas Huxley, Lady Denman, CBE, 1884–1954 (London, 1961), 160–1, and Sackville-West, Women’s Land Army, 79–80.
21 José Harris, ‘Great Britain: The People’s War’, in David Reynolds, Warren F. Kimball, and A. O. Chubarian (eds.), Allies at War: The Soviet, American, and British Experience, 1939–1945 (New York, 1994), 239–40; Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith Papers, MSS. Eur E215/32/1–2, BL; Sidney F. Pollard, The Development of the British Economy, 1914–1980 (4th edn., London, 1982), 206; Martin, Development of Modern Agriculture, 60–4; and Murray, Agriculture, 271–7.
22 Hammond, Food, i. 62–77; Murray, Agriculture, 68–72; Martin Doughty, Merchant Shipping and War: A Study of Defence Planning in Twentieth Century Britain (London, 1982), 96–100; and C. B. A. Behrens, Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War (rev. edn., London, 1978), 44–67.
23 File 641.006/400, American Embassy to Sec. of State, 11 Sept. 1939, RG-59, Box 3398, NARA.
24 E. E. Bridges to French, 21 Nov. 1939, MAF 74/23, PRO; French to Sir Horace Wilson,
25 Nov. 1939, MAF 74/23, PRO; Anglo-French Food Executive, 12 Feb. 1940, MAF 74/23, PRO; and FBC9( J )(40)57, 3 July 1940, MAF 74/23, PRO.25 File 641.006/395, American Embassy to Sec. of State, 7 Sept. 1939, RG-59, Box 3398, NARA, and File 641.006/401, American Embassy to Sec. of State, 14 Sept. 1939, RG-59, Box 3398, NARA.
26 H. Duncan Hall, North American Supply (rev. edn., London, 1984), 69–72, and Sir Eric Roll, The Combined Food Board: A Study in Wartime International Planning (Stanford, Calif., 1956), 11 and 55–6.
27 File 641.116/2519, Kennedy to Sec. of State, 1 Nov. 1939, RG-59, Box 3402, NARA.
28 File 640.11, European War 1939/1, American Embassy, ‘Estimated Effects of British Entry into the War upon the American Economy’, 28 Nov. 1939, RG-59, Box 3394, NARA, and Hammond, Food, i. 71.
29 Behrens, Merchant Shipping, 29–33, and [Statistical Branch, Ministry of Food], 19 Sept. 1939, MAF 74/284, PRO.
30 MF, ‘Report on the Food Position of the United Kingdom . . .’, 3 Sept. 1939, MAF 74/284, PRO; French to Morrison, Minutes Sheet, 11 Jan. 1940, MAF 74/284, PRO; FP(M)(39), 1st Meeting, 28 Nov. 1939, CAB 74/1, PRO; and FP(M)(40), 1st Meeting [of 1940], 26 Jan. 1940, CAB 72/2, PRO.
31 Ruth Inglis, The Children’s War: Evacuation, 1939–1945 (London, 1989), pp. xi and 1–5; [Minister of Health], ‘Evacuation as it Affects Agriculture’, [Feb. 1940?], MAF 47/45, PRO; and HT, 29 Sept. 1939, 9.
32 Hammond, Food, i. 47–8; MF 1314/38, 11 Oct. 1939, MAF 74/300, PRO; MF, ‘Notes of Meeting Held at Ministry of Food’, 19 Sept. 1939, MAF 74/300, PRO; and MF, ‘Monthly Report’, 28 Oct. 1939, MAF 74/285, PRO.
33 The Times, 19 Sept. 1939, 8, and 30 Sept. 1939, 8, and Morrison, 31 Oct. 39, PREM 1/295, PRO.
34 351 HC Deb., 1938–9, col. 1276, 26 Sept. 1939; 353 HC Deb., 1938–9, cols. 269–375, 8 Nov. 1939; and Inskip Diary, 4 Dec. 1939, INKP 1/1, CAC.
35 The Times, 4 Dec. 1939, 8, and 8 Jan. 1940, 6.
36 359 HC Deb., 1939–49, cols. 74–5, 2 Apr. 1940; Harris, ‘Society and the State’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, 3 vols. (New York,1990), iii. Social Agencies and Institutions, 91–2; and Lord Woolton [Sir Frederick Marquis], Memoirs (London, 1959), 197.
37 FP(M)(39), 1st Meeting, 28 Nov. 1939, CAB 74/1, PRO; Hammond, Food, i. 59; [DA], ‘Minutes of the Conference of Agricultural Economists . . .’, 6 Sept. 1939, AF 81/1/1, SRO.
38 FP(M)(39), 2nd Meeting, 1 Dec. 1939, CAB 74/1, PRO, and FP(M)40, 6th Meeting, 5 Mar. 1940, CAB 74/2, PRO.
39 FP(M)39 IC, 9 Apr. 1940, CAB 74/1, PRO, and FP(M)(40), 14th Meeting, 24 May 1940, CAB 74/2, PRO.
40 FP 1, [Sept. 1939?], MAF 53/146, PRO; FP 3, 31 Oct. 1939, MAF 53/146, PRO; and FP 20, 2 Apr. 1940, MAR 53/146, PRO.
41 351 HC Deb., 1938–9, col. 1241, 26 Sept. 1939; 353 HC Deb., 1938–9, cols. 279–82, 8 Nov. 1939; and 350 HC Deb., 1939–40, cols. 85–136, 2 Apr. 1940.
42 363 HC Deb., 1939–40, col. 464, 18 July 1940, and Thomas Duncanson, North Scotland Potato Association, to P. D. H. Dunn, 1 Oct. 1939, AF 47/8/2, SRO.
43 The Times, 2 Jan. 1940, 4; 4 Mar. 1940, 4; and 14 Mar. 1940, 4.
44 HT, 2 Sept. 1939, 9; 6 Jan. 1940, 5; and 9 Mar. 1940, 6.
45 WMN, 8 Apr. 1940, 8, and 19 Apr. 1940, 8. 
46 APJ, 30 Oct. 1939, 8.
47 EDP, 2 Oct. 1939, 8; 7 Oct. 1939, 9; 14 Mar. 1940, 11; 20 Apr. 1940, 4; and 16 Apr. 1940, 3.
48 FW, ‘Editor’s Diary’, 12 Jan. 1940, 14, and 19 Jan. 1940, 12; and F & S, 30 Jan. 1940, 242, and ‘A Fair Remuneration’, 20 Feb. 1940, 403. 
49 Morrison, ‘An Address by the Minister of Food’, Mar. 1940, Journal of the Farmers’ Club, 24. 
50 NFU Yearbook, 1940, 5, and Cyclo W 4/6, NFU Consultative Committee, 9 Nov. 1939, NFU Minutes, IAH. 
51 NFU Yearbook, 1940, 29–33.
52 FP(10)(40), 6 May 1940, CAB 74/8, PRO.
53 Cyclo W 23/1, ‘Report to Council’, [Sept. 1939?], 1–3, NFU Minutes, IAH, and NFU Yearbook, 1940, 27.
54 [NFU], ‘Report of Livestock and Wool Committee’, 29 Dec. 1939, AD1/NFU 22, 29 Dec. 1939.
55 NFU Council to County Branch Secretaries, 28 Dec. 1939, AD1/NFU 22, IAH, and [NFU], ‘Report of General Purposes Committee’, 9 Jan. 1940 and 17 Apr. 1940, AD1/NFU 22, IAH.
56 [DA], ‘Memorandum by the NFU and Chamber of Agriculture of Scotland’, 11 Oct. 1939, AF 43/198, SRO; Farmers’ Journal, Jan. 1940, 212; and Ulster Farmers’ Union, Annual Meeting of Council, Apr. 1940, D1050/13/A/K/3, PRONI.
57 [CLA], Executive Committee Meeting, 6 Dec. 1939, 28 Feb. 1940, 20 Mar. 1940, and 30 May 1940, AD1/31, IAH, and JCLA, Mar. 1941, 1.
58 NUAW, Minutes of Meeting of Executive Committee, 22 Sept. 1939, 17 Nov. 1939, and 16 Feb. 1940; [NUAW], Biennial Conference 1940, 3 May 1940, B/VI/8, IAH; and The Times, 29 Sept. 1939, 5.
59 [NUAW], Minutes of Meeting of Executive Committee, 15 Dec. 1939; 31 May 1940; and 14 June 1940, B/I/9, IAH. 
60 NFWI, Executive Committee Minutes, 9 Sept. 1939, 743–9; 31 May 1940, 278; and 12 June 1940, 272, NFWI Headquarters; and H & C, June 1940, 127 and 144.
61 [CPRE], Emergency Committee Meeting, 12 Sept. 1939, and 10 Feb. 1941, 3 CPRE AI/5, IAH.
62 The Times, 4 Apr. 1940, 8–9; FW, 4 Nov. 1939, 13; and WMN, 1 Apr. 1940, 5.
63 Woolton, Memoirs.
64 ‘Ministry of Food’, Woolton Papers 11/36, Bodleian, and Woolton, Memoirs, 187–9 and 198–205.
65 EDP, 4 Apr. 1940, 5, and Woolton, Memoirs, 180–3.
66 Woolton, Memoirs, 180, and T. O. Lloyd, Empire, Welfare State, Europe: English History, 1909–1992 (4th edn., Oxford, 1993), 258.
67 Robert Blake, ‘How Churchill Became Prime Minister’, in id. and William Roger Louis (eds.), Churchill (New York, 1993), 257–74; Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vi. Finest Hour, 1939–1941 (London, 1983), 299–314; and Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Strategy, 1933–1940 (Cambridge, 1975), 379–91. The selection process can be followed in The Times, 11–16 May 1940. 
68 Dorman-Smith Papers MSS. Eur E215/32, 3–6, BL, and [MAF], 17 Apr. 1939, MAF 53/134, PRO.
69 Dorman-Smith to Lady Dorman-Smith, 13 June 1944, Dorman-Smith Papers MSS. Eur E215/47, BL. Dorman-Smith became Governor-General of Burma toward the end of 1940 and served in that difficult post until 1946.
70 EDP, 15 May 1940, 7; F & S, ‘With Our United Strength’, 21 May 1940, 1123; and [CLA], Executive Committee Meeting, 6 June 1940, CLA AD1/1/l, IAH.
71 EDP, 15 May 1940, 7; NFU Record, June 1940, 113; and [NFU], ‘Report of General Purposes Committee’, 23 May 1940, AD1/NFU 22, IAH.
72 [MAF], ‘Note of a Deputation from the National Farmers’ Union’, 21 May 1940, MAF 53/134, PRO; Cyclo 25/10, Minutes of Council, 15 Aug. 1940, NFU Minutes 1940, IAH; WMN, 3 June 1940, 2; The Times, 3 June 1940, 7; EDP, 3 June 1940, 4; and FW, ‘Action and No Humbug’, 7 June 1940, 1.
73 FP(M)(40), 24 May 1940, CAB 74/2, PRO.
74 Food Economic Control Committee (FECC), 1 Jan. 1940; 8 Jan. 1940; and 20 Mar. 1940, MAF 74/19, PRO.
75 Woolton, Memoirs, 170–2; ‘Speech’, 5 Apr. 1940, Woolton Papers 11/68, Bodleian; and WMN, 6 Apr. 1940, 6.
76 Jack C. Drummond and Anne Wilbraham, The Englishman’s Food: A History of Five Centuries of the English Diet (London, 1958), 448–50; Hammond, Food, i. 220; and [MF], ‘A Survey of War-Time Nutrition...’, 12 May 1940, MAF 98/46, PRO.
77 Sir Frederick Keeble to Hankey, 19 Mar. 1940, CAB 63/137, PRO, and Dorman-Smith to Hankey, 2 Apr. 1940, CAB 63/137, PRO.
78 R. Hart-Synott, ‘The Food Problem’, 9 Apr. 1940, Astor Papers MS 1066/1/968, URL.
79 Orr to Astor, 16 Apr. 1940, Astor Papers, MS 1066/1/962, URL; Astor, ‘Memorandum for the Meeting...’, 18 Apr. 1940, Astor Papers, MS 1066/1/968, URL; and Victor Finney to Lord Astor, 9 May 1940, Astor Papers, MS 1066/1/962, URL.
80 FP 23, 14 May 1940, MAF 53/146, PRO. 81 Ibid.
82 Lord Astor to Sir Robert Greig, 22 May 1940, Astor Papers, MS 1066/1/961, URL.
83 FP(M)(40), 14th Meeting, 24 May 1940, CAB 74/2, PRO, and Greig to Astor, 27 May 1940, Astor Papers, MS 1066/1/970, URL.
84 EDP, 5 June 1940, 4. 
85 The Times, 26 June 4, and Hammond, Food, i. 59–61.
86 J. C. Drummond, [Note], 21 June 1940, MAF 98/254, PRO, and Sir John Boyd Orr to Lord Woolton, 24 July 1940, MAF 98/254, PRO.
87 FP(M)(40)91, ‘First Report by the Scientific Sub-Committee’, 28 June 1940, CAB 74/4, PRO.
88 [MF], ‘Memorandum on Policy ...’, 28 June 1940, MAF 98/254, PRO; MAF, 17 July 1940, MAF 98/254, PRO; and Dr Clayton to Sir Quinton Hill, 1 Oct. 1940, MAF 98/254, PRO.
89 Woolton, Memoirs, 192–3; FP(M)(40)77, ‘Meat and Food Supplies ...’, 12 June 1940, CAB 74/4, PRO; and FP(M)(40)82, ‘Requirement, Supply and Retail Prices of Food in War-Time’, 20 June 1940, CAB 74/4, PRO.
90 Economics Division, Ministry of Food, 15 July 1940, MAF 98/254, PRO, and ‘Policy of the Ministry of Food’, 31 July–7 Aug. 1940, Woolton Papers 11/87–90, Bodleian.
91 ‘Policy of the Ministry of Food’, and FP(M)(40)127, ‘Policy of the Ministry of Food’, 21 Aug. 1940, CAB 74/4, PRO.
92 Hammond, Food and Agriculture, 19.

By Alan F. Wilt in "Food for War - Agriculture and Rearmament in Britain Before the Second World War", Oxford University Press, USA, 2001, excerpts pp. 182-222. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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