'Somewhere quite different': The seventies generation of organic activists and their context

Rural History

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 217-234

  Conford, Philip ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

^b NONE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ORGANIC FARMING; SELF SUFFICIENCY; SOCIAL MOVEMENT;

STEINERIA;

EID: 52149119893     PISSN: 09567933     EISSN: 14740656     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0956793308002501     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Tracey Clunies-Ross, 'Agricultural Change and the Politics of Organic Farming' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Bath, 1990), pp. 144, 169-70.
2. David Frost and Carolyn Wacher, 'A New Incarnation - The Role of the Organic Growers Association in Changing the Production and Marketing of Organic Produce', Organic-Research.com (January 2004), 5N, 7N.
3. The 'other scholars' are Professor Richard Moore-Colyer and the sociologist Matthew Reed. Philip Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement (Edinburgh, 2001), p. 211.
4. Frost and Wacher, 'New Incarnation', 5N. Clunies-Ross, 'Agricultural Change', p. 144
5. Interview with Angela Bates, North Witham, 3rd March 2007.
6. Frost and Wacher, 'New Incarnation', 9N.
7. Interview with Riccardo Ling, Sydenham, 28th March 2006.
8. Interview with Patrick Holden, Bristol, 26th April 2006.
9. Interview with Peter Segger, Cilcennin, 9th June 2005. Segger described his early experiences in West Wales in an article for the bio-dynamic journal Star and Furrow 50, 23-26.
10. Interview with Carolyn Wacher, Aberystwyth, 10th June 2005.
11. Interview with David Frost, Llanrhystud, 9th June 2005.
12. Interview with Dr. Nic Lampkin, Aberystwyth, 10th June 2005
13. interview with Rachel Rowlands, Borth, 7th June 2005. The topic of the organic movement's attitude to orthodox science requires a lengthy study in its own right.
14. Part of Tolhurst's response to the questionnaire sent to growers by Frost and Wacher for their article 'New Incarnation'; copy provided for author by Carolyn Wacher.
15. Tolhurst, response to questionnaire. Peter Segger, 'A Healthy Revolution', OGA Newsletter 2 (April 1981), 1.
16. Interview with Sue Coppard, Bradford-on-Avon, 25th April 2006
17. 'Organic Farmers of Tomorrow', Span 55 (November 1971), 8.
18. Pamphlet, 'A Brief History of WWoOF' (April 1990).
19. Interview with Alan and Jackie Gear, Snettisham, 10th October 2006.
20. Alan and Jackie Gear, 10th October 2006. On Hills, see Lawrence D. Hills, Fighting Like the Flowers (Hartland, 1990).
21. Interview with Lawrence Woodward, Hamstead Marshall, 28th July 2006.
22. Interview with Craig Sams, Hastings, 19th July 2005
23. Craig Sams, 'Case History: Green & Black's' in Simon Wright and Diane McCrea (eds), The Handbook of Organic and Fair Trade Food Marketing (Oxford, 2007), p. 109.
24. Interviews with Craig Sams, Hastings, 19th July 2005, and Gregory Sams, London, 4th November 2005.
25. Interview with Dr. Anthony Deavin, Epsom, 6th April 2005.
26. Coward had been a member of Viscount Lymington's far-Right society the English Array, was a leading figure in the Soil Association's Wessex Group, and in 1989 was the subject of a television documentary directed by Joanna Barlow, daughter of another organic veteran, Dr. Kenneth Barlow. Dick Kitto was an expert on composting techniques. Commander Robert L. Stuart had farmed and gardened organically since the 1940s, and in the 1960s and 1970s ran Soil Association Weeks at his home at Chirnside, on the Scottish Borders. These conferences featured some of the most distinguished organic personalities, such as the agriculturalist Professor R. Lindsay Robb. Working Weekends on Organic Farms newsletter March 1974 [Coward]; May 1977 [Kitto] 4; August/September 1978 [Stuart] 5.
27. Sykes's Humus and the Farmer (1946) and Massingham's The Small Farmer (1947) were recommended in the January 1975 issue, 6.
28. In the summer of 1979 an International Organic Assembly was held at Malvern Wells, featuring 'two crusty (and amazing) old crowd-pullers', Lawrence Hills and Richard St. Barbe Baker: Newsletter June-July 1979, 4.
29. On Mairet, see Conford, Origins, 164-74 and 191-94.
30. On John Seymour see Paul Peacock, A Good Life: John Seymour and His Self-Sufficiency Legacy (Preston, 2005).
31. Interviews with Dinah Williams, Borth, 7th to 8th June 2005.
32. Interview with Mary Langman, North Cadbury, 28th June 2000
33. interview with Patrick Holden, Bristol, 26th April 2006. Some of Langman's correspondence relating to the Soil Association's inner conflicts is held in the Association's archives.
34. Interview with Julian Rose, Pangbourne, 2nd June 2000
35. interview with Richard Young, Broadway, 27th April 2005.
36. Kenneth Barlow and Peter Bunyard (eds), Soil, Food and Health in a Changing World (Berkhamsted, 1981).
37. Walter Yellowlees, A Doctor in the Wilderness (Aberfeldy, 2001).
38. OGA Newsletter 6 (July 1982), 2.
39. Segger, interview, 9th June 2005.
40. Holden, interview, 26th April 2006.
41. Deavin, interview, 6th April 2005.
42. Clunies-Ross, 'Agricultural Change', p. 170.
43. Ibid., p. 121.
44. Frost and Wacher, 'New Incarnation', 9N.
45. Interview with Massingham's widow Penelope, Long Crendon, 12th August 1998.
46. On Massingham, see Nicholas Gould, 'A Eulogist of Traditional Husbandry', Ecologist, May 1976, pp.128-31,
47. and R. J. Moore-Colyer, 'Back to Basics: Rolf Gardiner, H. J. Massingham and "A Kinship in Husbandry"', Rural History 12:1 (2001), 85-108.
48. Interview with Roger Newman Turner, Letchworth, 17th July 2006
49. Angela Bates, interview, 3rd March 2007
50. interview with David Stickland, Swaffham, 8th November 2007.
51. Frost and Wacher, 'New Incarnation', 11N.
52. Frost and Wacher, 'New Incarnation', 9N.
53. On the significance of Purpose, the New English Weekly and Dmitri Mitrinovic for the early organic movement see Conford, Origins pp. 169-70, 174-89 and 166-68.
54. Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, A Private Correspondence (London, 1963), pp. 30-31
55. Alfred Perles, 'Goethe - A Letter to Henry Miller', Purpose 11:1 (January-March 1939), 17-25. Miller refers to W. T. Symons, editor of Purpose and one of the editorial board of the New English Weekly as a friend who supplied him with books, in The Books in My Life (London, 1952), 323.
56. For the influence of Mitrinovic on Alan Watts see his autobiography, In My Own Way (London, 1973), pp. 109-13.
57. Faber published two books by the American environmentalist Fairfield Osborn, Our Plundered Planet (1948) and The Limits of the Earth (1954), in the latter of which titles we might perceive a pre-echo of the environmentalist work of the early 1970s, The Limits to Growth.
58. Faber also published Ill Fares the Land (1945) by CareyMcWilliams, a study of the destructive effects of agribusiness techniques on agricultural workers and the soil. Environmentalist concerns existed years before the publication of Silent Spring and the emergence of the counter-culture.
59. On Rodale, see Carlton Jackson, J. I. Rodale: Apostle of Nonconformity (New York, 1974)
60. see also the Rodale Press publication, The Basic Book of Organically Grown Foods (New York, 1973): 'a hope for the future quality of life', as its back cover puts it, a book which pays tribute to the influence of Howard and McCarrison.