'Into every home, into every body': Organicism and anti-statism in the British anti-fluoridation movement, 1952-1960

Twentieth Century British History

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 330-349

  Whipple, Amy C ^a  

^a XAVIER UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; FLUORIDATION; HISTORY; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; PUBLIC OPINION; UNITED KINGDOM;

FLUORIDATION; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; PUBLIC OPINION;

EID: 77956162061     PISSN: 09552359     EISSN: 14774674     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwq016     Document Type: Article

References (108)

1. 'Voters' veto campaign is to be organized', Andover Advertiser, 10 February 1956, 8
2. 'Vicar condemns council's fluoridation decision', Andover Advertiser, 17 February 1956, 8
3. 'Former mayor has own "pure" water supply', Andover Advertiser, 21 September 1956, 4
4. 'Council to go on with fluoridation project', Andover Advertiser, 4 January 1957, 1, 8
5. Paul Castle, The Politics of Fluoridation: The Campaign for Fluoridation in the West Midlands (London, 1987)
6. David J. Borrett, Something in the Water (Andover, 2002).
7. In contrast, the fluoridation controversy in America has received a great deal of attention as a national controversy
8. See, for instance, Donald R. McNeil, The Fight for Fluoridation (New York, 1957).
9. A. Green, 'Ideology of anti-fluoridation leaders', Journal of Social Issues, 17 (1961), 13-25.
10. Brian Martin, Scientific Knowledge in Controversy: The Social Dynamics of the Fluoridation Debate (Albany, 1991)
11. Gretchen Ann Reilly, "'This poisoning of our drinking water": the American fluoridation controversy in historical context, 1950-1990', PhD thesis, George Washington University, 2001
12. Christopher Sellers, 'The artificial nature of fluoridated water: between nations, knowledge and material flows', Osiris, 19 (2004), 182-200
13. Scholars have also looked at the debates over fluoridation in New Zealand and Canada as national controversies
14. See Jill Wrapson, 'Artificial fluoridation of public water supplies in New Zealand: "magic bullet", rat poison, or communist plot?' Health and History, 7 (2005), 17-29
15. Catherine Carstairs and Rachel Elder, 'Expertise, health, and popular opinion: debating water fluoridation, 1945-80', Canadian Historical Review, 89 (2008), 345-71
16. David Matless, 'Bodies made of grass made of earth made of bodies: organicism, diet and national health in mid-twentieth-century England', Journal of Historical Geography, 27 (2001), 357
17. The British Housewives League noted that Cardiff also declined an invitation, but there is no evidence of an official invitation being extended in the Ministry of Health minutes
18. The National Archives: Public Record Office, Kew (TNA:PRO), MH 58/533, Fluoridation Steering Committee meeting minutes, 9 December 1954
19. Scholarship on the BHL has remained focused on the early years of the organization
20. For an excellent investigation of the origins and political allegiances of the League in the late 1940s, see James Hinton, 'Militant housewives: the British Housewives' League and the Attlee Government', History Workshop Journal, 38 (1994), 129-56
21. On the conservative ideology of the organization, see Beatrix Campbell, The Iron Ladies: Why Do Women Vote Tory? (London, 1987), 75-82
22. Gregory Field, 'Flushing poisons from the body politic: the fluoride controversy and American political culture, 1955-1965', in Jurgen Heideking, Jorg Helbig and Anke Ortlepp (eds), The Sixties Revisited (Heidelberg, 2001), 469-85
23. David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London, 1998), esp. Ch. 3 and Ch. 4.
24. Philip Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement (Edinburgh, 2001), esp. Ch. 9.
25. Dan Stone, 'The far right and the back-to-the-land movement', in Julie V. Gottlieb and Thomas P. Linehan (eds), The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (London, 2004), 182-98.
26. 'Fluoridation of water supplies', The Times, 12 July 1965, 11
27. Hinton, 'Militant housewives'
28. Campbell, The Iron Ladies
29. Caitriona Beaumont, 'Housewives, workers and citizens: voluntary women's organisations and the campaign for women's rights in England and the post-war period', in Nick Crowson, Matthew Hilton, James McKay (eds), NGOs in Contemporary Britain: Non-State Actors in Society and Politics (New York, 2009), 59-76
30. Also see Beaumont, 'Citizens not feminists: the boundary negotiated between citizenship and feminism by mainstream women's organizations in England, 1928-1939', Women's History Review, 9 (2000), 411-29
31. On the middle-class identity of the BHL, see Hinton, 'Militant housewives', 137-9
32. 'Housewives and the cost of living', Housewives Today (HT), 7 (May 1955), 3
33. Brian Martin, 'Analyzing the fluoridation controversy: resources and structures', Social Studies of Science, 18 (1988), 333-4
34. TNA:PRO, MH 58/533, Fluoridation Steering Committee meeting minutes
35. Hinton, 'Militant housewives', 145-8
36. 'Making history', HT, 2 (September 1949), 3
37. Doris Grant, Dear Housewives (London, 1954), 21
38. HT, 4 (1951), 8
39. Annual General Meeting report, HT, 4 (1952), 2
40. Philip Conford, Origins, 17, 29-41
41. Doris Grant, Your Daily Bread (London, 1944)
42. 'The Brighton branch', HT, 5 (November 1952), 9
43. 'Lady Eve's address', HT, 5 (December 1953), 1
44. 'Education and the foundations of health', HT, 4 (December 1953), 2-7
45. 'The sins of the fathers', HT, 5 (February 1953), 4
46. For more on holistic attitudes towards physical health in the inter-war years, see Christopher Lawrence, 'Still incommunicable: clinical holists and medical knowledge in interwar Britain', in Christopher Lawrence and George Weisz (eds), Greater Than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920-1950 (New York, 1998), 94-111
47. Abigail Beach, 'Potential for participation: health centres and the idea of citizenship, c. 1920-1940', in Christopher Lawrence and Anna K. Mayer (eds) Regenerating England: Science, Medicine, and Culture in Inter-war Britain (Amsterdam, 2000), 203-30.
48. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 'Raising a nation of "good animals": the new health society and health education campaigns in interwar Britain', Social History of Medicine, 20 (2007), 73-89
49. Conford, Origins, 50-3
50. Matless, Landscape, 155-7
51. Grant, Your Daily Bread, 15
52. HT, 3 (October 1950), 5
53. 'Pasteurized milk', HT, 5 (January 1953), 9
54. 'Strongly against', Andover Advertiser, 20 January 1956, 5
55. 'The Perth rally', HT, 5 (July 1953), 4-5
56. 'Mrs. Pattullo's experience of fluorine poisoning', Northern Echo, 7 November 1955, 6.
57. 'Fluorides in water supply', Andover Advertiser, 11 November 1955, 8
58. 'This fluorine business', HT, 6 (October 1953), 2
59. Sykes, in particular, took reading the scientific literature on fluoridation as a serious responsibility. She was often the person who highlighted dissenting opinion.
60. See, for instance, 'Many Darlingtonians sign fluoridation protest', Northern Echo, 7 April 1955, 6
61. And 'Mass dosing', Andover Advertiser, 16 December 1955, 7
62. TNA:PRO, MH 55/2178, exchange of notes regarding request by Soil Association for speaker suggestion, 29 March 1956-5 April 1956
63. London School of Economics Archives (LSE), Lord Douglas of Barloch papers, Box 6, letters between Barloch and Woolton, 7 January 1943-22 March 1943
64. LSE, Lord Douglas of Barloch papers, Box 2, letter to Bevan, 4 April 1946
65. Parliamentary Debates (Lords), 172, 4 July 1951, 624-52; Parliamentary Debates (Lords), 174, 29 January 1952, 900-15; Parliamentary Debates (Lords), 185, 27 January 1954, 488-522
66. HT, 6 (March 1954), 1
67. 'Fluorine flare-up in Kilmarnock', Kilmarnock Standard, 13 November 1954, 5
68. 'Infringement of personal liberty', Andover Advertiser, 27 January 1956, 8
69. Doris Grant, Housewives Beware (London, 1958), 5
70. 'Hands off our water, say townspeople', Northern Echo, 14 April 1955, 5
71. Matless, Landscape, 118
72. Conford, Origins, 146-54
73. Stone, 'The far right', 182-98
74. As both Conford and Stone note, not everyone affiliated with these organizations necessarily deserves the label 'fascist' or 'anti-Semitic'
75. Matless, Landscape, 125
76. Rolf Gardiner, 'Can farming save European civilisation?', in A. Best (ed.) Water Springing From the Ground: An Anthology of the Writings of Rolf Gardiner (Fontmell Magna, 1972), 196-8.
77. Quoted in Matless, Landscape, 104
78. Hinton, 'Militant housewives', 135
79. This was the aforementioned B.M. Palmer, who was involved with Social Credit in 1940.
80. Hinton, 'Militant housewives', 135
81. 'A memorable book', HT, 5 (November 1952), 7
82. Lord Hewart of Bury, The New Despotism (London, 1929), 16
83. 'A little ship', HT, 4 (April 1952), 1
84. For a good overview of responses to the comment, see Richard Toye, "'The gentlemen in Whitehall" reconsidered: the evolution of Douglas Jay's views on economic planning and consumer choice, 1937-47', Labour History Review, 67 (2002), 187-204
85. 'The Victorian father lives in Whitehall', HT, 6 (November 1953), 7
86. HT, 2 (May 1950), 5
87. 'Clean food or pure food? Why not both?', HT, 6 (February 1954), 2
88. 'Leeds branch report', HT, 6 (September 1953), 4
89. See, for instance, TNA:PRO, HLG 50/2557, letters to Macmillan, 22 May 1952 and 29 May 1952
90. 'This fluorine business', HT, 6 (October 1953), 2
91. 'First bread-now water', HT, 5 (October 1952), 5
92. TNA:PRO, HLG 50/2557, letter from Mary Blakey to Ministry of Health, 19 October 1953 and letter from SHL to Ministry of Health, 29 October 1953
93. It is unclear whether indemnification was offered to the local councils of each test site. The Secretary of State for Scotland did offer it to the Kilmarnock council, and the Darlington Anti-Fluoridation Committee reported a similar offer to its local council.
94. See HT, 6 (June 1954), 12
95. 'Hands off our water, say townspeople', Darlington Northern Echo, 14 April 1955, 5
96. HT, 6 (June 1954), 12
97. The role of the aluminium industry in promoting fluoridation remains a point of contention in fluoridation debates today. Carstairs and Elder characterize the supposed connections between ALCOA and the promotion of fluoridation by the US Public Health Service as unfounded. Brian Martin argues that the aluminium industry gained far more 'symbolic benefits' than 'material benefits' from fluoridation, i.e. the perception of fluoride as a healthy substance meant the public would not see its fluoride emissions as harmful.
98. Carstairs and Elder, 'Expertise', 365
99. Martin, 'Analyzing the fluoridation controversy
100. 'The by-products of the aluminium industry', HT, 6 (October 1953), 5
101. Also see 'First bread-now water'
102. 'Mrs. Pattullo's experience of fluorine poisoning'.
103. British Library, British Housewives League Unbound Pamphlets, 'Fluoridation. Why and how to stop it', 1959.
104. British Library, 'Fluoridation'
105. 'Clean food or pure food? Why not both?' HT, 6 (February 1954), 4
106. Campbell, Iron Ladies, 75-6
107. Powell was Minister of Health from 1960 to 1963, and Joseph was Secretary of State for Social Services from 1970 to 1974. For their attitudes on fluoridation see TNA: PRO, MH 148/177, speech by Powell, 17 May 1963; TNA: PRO, MH 148/504, letter from Joseph to William Whitelaw, 20 October 1970.
108. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 84, 24 October 1985, 503