War in the fields and villages: The county war agricultural committees in England, 1939-45

Rural History

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 217-244

  Short, Brian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION; DOCUMENTARY SOURCE; POST-WAR; RURAL HISTORY; SOCIAL HISTORY; VILLAGE;

ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 34948854307     PISSN: 09567933     EISSN: 14740656     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0956793307002166     Document Type: Article

References (159)

1. Among highly authoritative published studies of wartime farming one should note the early work of E. Whetham, British Farming, 1939-49 (London, 1952);
2. K.A.H. Murray, Agriculture (History of the Second World War: United Kingdom Civil Series, 1955);
3. and P. Self and H. J. Storing, The State and the Farmer (London, 1962).
4. See S. Ward, War in the Countryside 1939-45 (London, 1988);
5. M. Winter, Rural Politics: Policies for Agriculture, Forestry and the Environment (London, 1996);
6. J. Martin, The Development of Modern Agriculture, British Farming since 1931 (Manchester, 2000);
7. A.F. Wilt, Food for War: Agriculture and Rearmament in Britain before the Second World War (Oxford, 2001);
8. and more recently by B. Short, C. Watkins and J. Martin, eds, The Front Line of Freedom: British Farming in the Second World War (Exeter, 2007).
9. For a critique of mid-twentieth century anthropological studies of British rural communities see S. Wright, 'Image and Analysis: New Directions in Community Studies' in B. Short, ed., The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 195-217.
10. H. Newby, Green and Pleasant Land? Social Change in Rural England (London, 1980);
11. H. Newby, C. Bell, D. Rose and P. Saunders, Property, Paternalism and Power (London, 1978);
12. M. Woods, 'Discourses of Power and Rurality: Local Politics in Somerset in the 20th century', Political Geography 16 (1997), 453-78.
13. M. Goodwin, 'Regulating Rurality? Rural Studies and the Regulation Approach' in P. Cloke, T. Marsden and P.H. Mooney, eds, Handbook of Rural Studies (London, 2006), pp. 304-16.
14. For one attempt to bring together the economics and sociology of agrarian communities in more general terms see H. Newby, 'Rural Sociology and its Relevance to the Agricultural Economist, a Review', Journal of Agricultural Economics 33 (1982), 125-65.
15. And see also A. Howkins, The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside since 1900 (London, 2003).
16. R. J. Moore-Colyer, 'The County War Agricultural Executive Committees: The Welsh Experience, 1939-1945', The Welsh History Review 22 (2005), 558-87.
17. E.H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales VIII 1914-1939 (Cambridge, 1978).
18. For the more recent views on the interwar period see P. Brassley, J. Burchardt and L. Thompson, eds, The English Countryside between the Wars: Regeneration or Decline? (Woodbridge, 2006).
19. TNA: MAF 53/108 Agriculture Bill 1937. Notes by the Minister of Agriculture; H.T. Williams, Principles for British Agricultural Policy (London, 1960), pp. 11-39.
20. R. G. Stapledon, The Way of the Land (London, 1943), p. 252.
21. P. Brassley, 'The Professionalisation of English Agriculture?' Rural History 16 (2005), 235-51;
22. J. Martin, 'The Structural Transformation of British Agriculture: The Resurgence of Progressive High Input Arable Farming' in Short et al., Front Line of Freedom, pp. 16-35.
23. P. Lowe, J. Murdoch, T. Marsden, R. Munton and A. Flynn, 'Regulating the New Rural Spaces: The Uneven Development of Land', Journal of Rural Studies 9 (1993), pp. 205-22.
24. C. S. Orwin, Problems of the Countryside (Cambridge, 1945)
25. and Speed the Plough (London, 1942).
26. P. Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement (Edinburgh, 2001)
27. and 'The Organic Challenge' in Short et al., Front Line of Freedom pp. 67-76.
28. See also G. Holt and M. Reed, eds, Sociological Perspectives of Organic Agriculture: From Pioneer to Policy (Wallingford, 2006).
29. B. A. Holderness, 'Apropos the Third Agricultural Revolution: How Productive was British Agriculture in the Long Boom, 1954-1973?' in P. Mathias and J. A. Davis, eds, The Nature of Industrialisation 4: Agriculture and Industrialisation: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (Oxford, 1996), pp. 68-85;
30. J. Murdoch, P. Lowe, N. Ward and T. Marsden, The Differentiated Countryside (London, 2003);
31. M.J. Smith, The Politics of Agricultural Support in Britain (Aldershot, 1990), pp. 57-116.
32. A. G. Wilson, 'From Productivism to Post-Productivism... and Back Again? Exploring the (Un)changed Natural and Mental Landscapes of European Agriculture' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26 (2001), 77-102.
33. G. Cox, P. Lowe and M. Winter, 'From State Direction to Self Regulation: The Historical Development of Corporatism in British Agriculture', Policy and Politics 14 (1986), 475-90;
34. C. J. Holmes, 'Science and the Farmer: The Development of the Agricultural Advisory Service in England and Wales, 1900-1939' Agricultural History Review 36 (1988), 77-86.
35. H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1981), p. 33.
36. Only the last two harvests of the First World War were gathered under the auspices of the committees. For their success see P.E. Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War (London, 1989);
37. and J. Sheail,'The Role of the War Agricultural and Executive Committees in the Food Production Campaign of 1915-1918 in England and Wales' Agricultural Administration 1 (1974), 141-54.
38. A local case study is provided by J. Chapman and S. Seeliger, 'The Influence of the Agricultural Executive Committees in the First World War: Some Evidence from West Sussex', Southern History 13 (1991), 105-22.
39. The committees in Northern Ireland and Scotland were answerable to the respective Secretaries of State.
40. TNA: MAF 80/894.
41. For a full listing of the relevant regulations and the powers of the CWAECs see D.R. Denman, 'The Practical Application of Wartime Agricultural Policy: With Special Reference to Highland Regions' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 2 vols, 1945).
42. Sussex Express and County Herald, 6th December 1940, p. 3.
43. Personal communication from the late Nigel Harvey (1995);
44. C. M. Baldwin, Digging for Victory (undated typescript, Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading D73/22).
45. One earlier estimate by Hurd calculated the total membership at 582 by 1945 (A. Hurd, A Farmer in Whitehall (London, 1951), pp. 108-23). However, this does not take account of the shifts in the committees during the course of the six years of war, with some counties demonstrating greater committee stability than others, such that the composition of the committees could be quite different in 1945 from the original membership in 1939. This revised calculation and much of the following text is based on the documents now available at the National Archives at TNA: MAF 39.
46. Murray, Agriculture, pp. 338-9.
47. Ministry of Information, Land at War (London, 1945);
48. V. Grove, Laurie Lee: The Well-loved Stranger (London, 1999), pp. 187-8.
49. The documents are at TNA: MAF 39 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries: Establishment and Finance: Correspondence and Papers. MAF 39/228-324 has the membership (referred to as the 'Constitutions') of the CWAECs and sub-committees 1939-46. MAF 70 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries: Welsh Department: Correspondence and Papers, has the Welsh CWAECs at 70/ 176-186. The minutes of their meetings, and of their successor CAECs, between 1939 and 1971, are contained in 5,046 Ministry of Food files at MAF 80, subject to a fifty-year closure. Postwar CAEC administrative material is also contained in MAF 227.
50. A. W. Menzies Kitchen, 'Local Administration of Agricultural Policy' in D.N. Chester, ed., Lessons of the British War Economy (Cambridge, 1951), p. 249.
51. B. Short, C. Watkins, W. Foot and P. Kinsman, The National Farm Survey 1941-43, State Surveillance and the Countryside in England and Wales in the Second World War (Wallingford, 2000). Scotland mounted a similar, sample-based survey, since the Scottish Advisory Council felt that it would be 'an unjustifiable waste of time and labour' given Scotland's remoter regions.
52. For an abridged report see TNA: MAF 38/217.
53. The composition and numbers of sub committees for each county are recorded at varying dates, depending in part on the vagaries of documentary survival during and after the war. In general the composition of committees can be ascertained for the early stages of the war, and again in the months following the end of the war. In between these dates, some counties, such as Somerset, have a more reliable and complete record than others. The documents at TNA, MAF 39 and for Wales MAF 70, do not include Anglesey and Glamorgan where no such documents are extant in the National Archive collection. For these counties some idea of the composition of committees must be gained by perusing the minutes of their meetings (TNA, MAF 80/3638-44 (Anglesey); 80/3855-61 (Glamorgan)).
54. Baldwin, Digging for Victory, p. 2.
55. For a similar case of expansion for the Berkshire WAEC in Reading, see TNA: MAF 169/68.
56. Denman, 'The Practical Application of Wartime Agricultural Policy', 511-34. Menzies Kitchen gives a national figure of thirty thousand employed by the CWAECs by 1943, with Essex alone employing two thousand workers (Menzies Kitchen, 'Local Administration of Agricultural Policy', 243). His figure includes farmworkers on land taken over by the CWAECs.
57. TNA: MAF 39/237 (Cheshire); 39/239 (Cornwall); 39/286 (Northumberland); 39/270 (Lancashire); 39/241 (Cumberland); 39/249 (Durham); 39/255 (Hampshire); 39/276 (Lindsey); 39/282 (Norfolk); 39/316 (Wiltshire).
58. Emily Baker, writing for Mass-Observation in early 1940, noted how difficult small pig and poultry producers found the procurement of feed in the Sussex Weald (A.Howkins, 'A Country at War: Mass-Observation and Rural England, 1939-45' Rural History 9 (1998), 85).
59. D.R. Denman, A Half and Half Affair: Chronicles of a Hybrid Don (London, 1993), pp. 73-9. I am grateful to John Sheail for bringing this reference to my attention. Denman worked as assistant to the Executive Officer for the Cumberland WAEC, resigning the morning after Atlee's victory in 1945 because of the Labour promise to continue the wartime 'dirigiste' structures after the war. Anxieties about potentially libelous comments on farmers made by CWAEC members also illustrate the gulfs that might occur with this power (TNA: MAF 38/471).
60. Earl of Portsmouth, A Knot of Roots (London, 1965), pp. 198-9.
61. TNA: MAF 32/1012/109. Mr Knight was classified as a 'B' farmer.
62. The quest for more archival information on the Farmers' Rights Association and other localised protest groups is set out in J. Martin, 'British Agricultural Archives in the Second World War: Lying Fallow', Archives 25: 103 (2000), 123-33.
63. A. G. Street, Shameful Harvest (London 1952). The inquest is reported in the Hampshire Chronicle 3rd August 1940. The verdict was justifiable homicide.
64. R. N. Sadler, Sunshine and Showers: One Hundred Years in the Life of an Essex Farming Family (Chelmsford, 1988), p. 70.
65. Farmers' Rights Association, The New Morality (Church Stretton, 1948), no pagination.
66. B. Short, 'The Dispossession of Farmers in England and Wales during and after the Second World War'in B.Short et al., The Front Line of Freedom, pp. 158-78.
67. Foucault's 'panoptism' with the interests of the state resting on 'small-scale, regional, dispersed Panoptisms' which maximised its effectiveness, comes to mind here. Within a tradition of public service, the use of inventories, dossiers, systems of classification, reports and maps that might inform 'the tactics and strategy of power' offers a tantalising theoretical insight into the CWAECs' mediating position between state and locality. (M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 (Hemel Hempstead, 1980), pp. 63-77).
68. Here was the 'complete hierarchy that assured the capillary functioning of power' (M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London, 1991), p. 198.
69. Sadler, Sunshine and Showers, pp. 68-9;
70. P. Wormell, Essex Farming 1900-2000 (Colchester, 1999), pp. 65-95.
71. F. Sykes, This Farming Business (London, 1944);
72. J. Blishen, A Cack-Handed War (London, 1983).
73. PD (Commons) 407 6th February 1945, 2031. Loverseed was returned at a by-election for Eddisbury as a member of the Common Wealth party in 1943.
74. J. Winnifreth, The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (New Whitehall Series) (London, 1962), p. 27.
75. Moore-Colyer, 'The County War Agricultural Executive Committees: The Welsh Experience', 571;
76. Smith, The Politics of Agricultural Support, pp. 79-86.
77. Murray, Agriculture, pp. 337-8.
78. PD (Commons) 400, 16th May 1944, 543-8.
79. A.F. Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 1912-36: A Study in Conservative Politics (Manchester, 1989), pp. 1-4. He cites Roy Jenkins as claiming in an article 'Premier of Paradox', The Observer 4th July 1976, that 'the destruction of rural life probably proceeded more rapidly during [Baldwin's] premiership than during any other span of fifteen years'.
80. G. Day and M. Fitton, 'Religion and Social Status in Rural Wales: "buchedd" and its Lessons for Concepts of Social Stratification in Community Studies', Sociological Review 23 (1975), 867-92;
81. Wright, 'Image and Analysis'.
82. F. Parkin, Max Weber (London, 2002), pp. 71-89;
83. C. Brennan, Max Weber on Power and Social Stratification: An Interpretation and Critique (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 71-103.
84. D. Rose, P. Saunders, H. Newby and C. Bell, 'Ideologies of Property' Sociological Review 24 (1976), 699-730;
85. R.W. Johnson, 'The Nationalization of English Rural Politics: Norfolk South West, 1945-1970' Parliamentary Affairs 26 (1972), 8-55;
86. R. Ottewill, 'County Council Elections in Surrey: The First Sixty Years 1889 to 1949', Southern History 27 (2005), 76-108.
87. E.J. Rudsdale, 'Colchester Journal', Essex Record Office D/DU 888/Box 3:1941, p. 11.
88. In the analysis following, the data on the chairmen of WAECs 1939-46 was derived from a separate document for each county from TNA: MAF 39 for England and MAF 70 for Wales. Data on the membership of sub committees was also derived from the same MAF record class.
89. TNA: MAF 39/267; 39/295; 39/303; 39/252; 39/242.
90. For an example of the voluminous correspondence expected of the chairmen of executive ommittees see the letters of Richard Stratton 1939-45, chair of the Wiltshire Executive Committee (Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office 2865/1).
91. TNA: MAF 39/230;
92. The Times, 10th November 1944.
93. Gavin Henderson, second Baron Faringdon (1902-1977) who lived at Buscot Park (now in Oxfordshire), was a Labour peer and Fabian. He was dismissed by Hugh Dalton as 'a pansy pacifist of whose private tendencies it might be slander to speak freely' (Gaynor Johnson, 'Henderson, (Alexander) Gavin, second Baron Faringdon (1902-1977)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31218, accessed 19th September 2006],
94. citing B. Pimlott, ed., The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1940-1945 (1986), p. 509.
95. TNA: MAF 39/232;
96. Kenneth O. Morgan, 'Addison, Christopher, first Viscount Addison (1869-1951)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30342, accessed 28th September 2006].
97. Lord Addison's support for land nationalisation was well known, and was set out in his A Policy for British Agriculture (London, 1939), with the preface written from his farm at Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire (pp. 5-6).
98. TNA: MAF 39/266.
99. D. Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven, 1990), p. 617.
100. Susanna Wade Martins, 'Overman Family (per. c.1800-1933)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/50161, accessed 27th September 2006].
101. See, for example, Ministry of Information, Land at War, p. 11.
102. David Taylor, 'Hosier, Arthur Julius (1877-1963)', ODNB, 2004; [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34006, accessed 23rd November 2005].
103. A.J. Hosier, in B. Vesey-Fitzgerald (ed), Programme for Agriculture (London, 1941), p. 113
104. and infra.
105. W.M. Williams, A West Country Village, Ashworthy (London, 1963), pp. 201-3.
106. TNA: MAF 39/256; 39/249; 39/294; 39/286; 39/322.
107. TNA: MAF 39/292; 70/184; 70/183; 39/250.
108. And see Wormell, Essex Farming 1900-2000, p. 82.
109. TNA: MAF 39/269.
110. Daughter of the sixth Baron Hotham, she was married to Ralph Assheton of Downham Hall, MP for Rushcliffe (Nottinghamshire) and a wartime member of Churchill's government from 1942 as parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Supply and, from December, as financial secretary to the Treasury (Julian Amery, 'Assheton, Ralph, first Baron Clitheroe (1901-1984)', revised Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; online edition, October 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/30772, accessed 28th September 2006].
111. TNA: MAF 39/296; 39/269-70.
112. TNA: MAF 39/297;
113. Hurd, Farmer in Whitehall, p. 85. Mrs Hurd was also a member of the separate Wiltshire WLA committee.
114. For Miss Brocklebank see Burkes Peerage and Baronetage 107th edition (2003), vol. 1, p. 514.
115. Also A. Sylvia Brocklebank, The Road and the Ring: Being the Memories of her Coaching Days (with additional notes by T. Ryder (Macclesfield, 1975).
116. For Lady Langman see TNA: MAF 39/316.
117. TNA: MAF 39/304 (E.J. Cousins from the Bury sugar beet factory sat on the West Suffolk Labour sub-committee. A nominee from the Suffolk branch of the National Association of Corn and Agricultural Merchants attended the West Suffolk Feeding Stuffs Committee).
118. TNA: MAF 39/235. Sir John Clapham retired from Cambridge University in 1943, but chaired the Cambridgeshire Employment Committee and Refugee Committee, and was a member of the Conscientious Objectors Panel.
119. For Watson, Murray and Orwin see TNA: MAF 39/289-90.
120. TNA: MAF 39/286.
121. TNA: MAF 39/281-2; 39/241. Roberts was Liberal MP for Cumberland North.
122. TNA: MAF 39/319-20.
123. Thus George Orwell in 1941 could write, amidst his call for the nationalisation of land: 'Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred'. He then continued 'England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege largely ruled by the old and the silly. But in any calculation one has to take into account its emotional unity, the tendency of nearly all its inhabitants to feel alike and act alike and act together in moments of extreme crisis' (G. Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (London, 1941), pp. 22, 27).
124. But for the ongoing class divisions in rural Britain see Howkins, 'A Country at War', p. 92.
125. and for doubts on social solidarity in either town or country see S. Fielding, P. Thompson and N. Tiratsoo, "England Arise!": The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain (Manchester, 1995), pp. 21-6;
126. and S. Rose, Which People's War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain 1939-1945 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 151-96.
127. Baldwin, Digging for Victory, p. 12.
128. J. Wentworth Day, Farming Adventure: A Thousand Miles through England on a Horse, (London, 1943), p. 6;
129. Moore-Colyer, 'The County War Agricultural Executive Committees: The Welsh Experience', 578.
130. E. Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour (London, 1967), p. 1.
131. TNA: MAF 70/183. A hint of the political undercurrent is contained in a letter of 4th June 1940 which was sent to Grant McKenzie at Labour Party Offices, Smith Square, SW 1 on 'the Monmouth problem' of whether there should be a second Labour member on the Executive Committee at the expense of one of the Conservative members. But 'unless we can find some person or persons who are slackers and not doing their duty, it will be difficult to insist upon changes'.
132. A.G. Street, Wessex Wins (London, 1941), p. 335.
133. Duke of Grafton, 'Experiences in Land Reclamation: Euston, Thetford', Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 104 (1943), 85-7.
134. Ibid., 'Land Reclamation on the Euston Estate', Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society England 108 (1947), 127-9.
135. TNA: MAF 39/272.
136. Denman, A Half and Half Affair, p. 74. From the Cumberland WAEC documents this would appear to have taken place in August 1942 (TNA: MAF 39/240-41).
137. TNA: MAF 80/3638. Lady Kathleen Stanley (née Thynne, 1891-1977) lived at Plas Llanfawr, Holyhead.
138. TNA: MAF 70/184.
139. A.D. Rees, Life in a Welsh Countryside (Cardiff; 1968 (1st pub 1950)), pp. 23-30, 144;
140. P.J. Madgwick with N. Griffiths and V. Walker, The Politics of Rural Wales: A Study of Cardiganshire (London, 1973), pp. 41-44.
141. In addition, one other member of the Bedfordshire milk panel resigned in early 1945 'because he dislikes C'tee's insistence on returns of petrol used and mileage run'(TNA: MAF 39/229). The amount of turnover in 1945-6 also renders the lists of memberships published by Hurd (A Farmer in Whitehall) rather less useful for a fuller understanding of the composition of the wartime CWAECs.
142. Sir A. Daniel Hall, Reconstruction and the Land (London, 1941);
143. Hosier in Vesey- Fitzgerald, Programme for Agriculture, p. 120;
144. M. Tichelar, 'The Labour Party, Agricultural Policy and the Retreat from Rural Land Nationalisation during the Second World War', Agricultural History Review 51 (2003), 209-25;
145. and see K. Manton, 'The Labour Party and the Land Question, 1919-51', Historical Research 79 (2006), 247-69.
146. F. Sykes, This Farming Business (London, 1944), pp. 119-20;
147. A.G. Street, Feather-bedding (London, 1954), p. 37.
148. B. Short, C. Watkins and J. Martin, 'The Front Line of Freedom: State-Led Agricultural Revolution in Britain, 1939-45', in Short et al., Front Line of Freedom, pp. 1-15.
149. P. Self and H. J. Storing, The State and the Farmer (London, 1962), p. 111;
150. Smith, The Politics of Agricultural Support, pp. 98-101.
151. B. Short, 'Agency and Environment in the Transition to a Productivist Farming Regime in England and Wales 1939-1950' in H. Clout, ed., Contemporary Rural Geographies: Land, Property and Resources in Britain: Essays in Honour of Richard Munton (London, 2007), pp. 21-42.
152. K. Cahill, Who Owns Britain? (Edinburgh, 2002), p. 25.
153. Winter, Rural Politics, pp. 102-4.
154. TNA: MAF 39/232. Letter dated 4th August 1945 to the new Labour Minister, Tom Williams.
155. For the formation and work of the postwar CAECs see Cox, Lowe and Winter, 'From State Regulation to Self Regulation', 475-90;
156. Sir W. Gavin, 'County Agricultural Committees', Agriculture 54 (1948), 481-5.
157. J. Murdoch and N.Ward, 'Governmentality and Territoriality: The Statistical Manufacture of Britain's "national farm"', Political Geography 16 (1997), 307-24;
158. G. Cox, P. Lowe and M. Winter, 'Changing Directions in Agricultural Policy: Corporatist Arrangements in Production and Conservation Policies', Sociologia Ruralis 25 (1985), 130-53. This article also gives consideration to the role of the postwar committees.
159. M. Winter, 'County Agricultural Committees: A Good Idea for Conservation?', Journal of Rural Studies 1 (1985), 205-209.