A Forum for Organic Husbandry: the New English Weekly and Agricultural Policy, 1939-1949 /3}, PHILIP CONFORD
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A Forum for Organic Husbandry: The New English Weekly and Agricultural Policy, 1939-1949 /3}, PHILIP CONFORD Abstract This article identifies the New English Weekly, a review of economic, political and cultural issues which ran from 1932 to 1949, as the most important publication in the development of the British organic husbandry movement. It defines this movement and summarizes its various strands, including concern about health and nutrition, rural reconstruction, de-forestation, and the dangers of a mechanistic approach to natural processes, all of which were to be found in the New English Weekly. The article concentrates on those strands most concerned with agriculture, and on the period from the outbreak of war to the paper's closure, a decade which saw the movement coalesce and define its philosophy of husbandry. A study of the New English Weekly during this period demonstrates that all the major figures in the organic movement could be found in its pages as it dealt with questions of farnfing policy and food production; the consequences of mechanization; the threat of soil erosion and dwindling fertility; and methods of restoring and maintaining the soil's humus content. Although the paper was not primarily aimed at a farming readership, many of its contributors became founder members of the Soil Association. The years following the New El~lish Weekly's closure saw agricultural policy develop i,a an entirely different direction fi'om that which it had advocated, but it had played a central role in establishing an environmental philosophy which would make itself heard more strongly from the 196os onwards. RIOR TO the establishment of the the NEIq,"s significance will more probably p Soil Association in 1946, the most lie in its advocacy of organic faroring and important journal in the history its environmental concerns than its com- of the organic husbandry movement was a mitment to monetary refomx. The two 'Review of Public Affairs, Literature and naovements overlapped considerably, but the Arts', founded to propagate the monet- whereas Social Credit is now a historical ary reform doctrines of Social. Credit, and curiosity the organic movement has grown including on its editorial board T S Eliot, in influence. poet and critic, and P L Travers, the author Before some of the evidence supporting of Mal T Poppins.' In June ~94o a reader this claim for the NEW's importance is complained to the journal in question, the considered, an explanation of the term 'I'm a little 'organic husbandry movement' is required. New English Weekly (NEW): m suspicious of the "manure-complex" of It is used in this article to refer to that the N E W... Maybe you're right; but this group of people who, during the I93os 'vegetation myth and magic" business and I94OS, were concerned about the fol- seems to me to be playing the very devil lowing perceived issues: rural decline and with Social Credit'.-" In retrospect, though, the imbalance of urban and rural in Britain; agriculture's central importance to national ' Social Credit was an economic theory developed by Major C H life, and the desirability of greater self- l)ouglas, which attacked the banks' monopoly of credit creation and urged the distribution of a National Dividend to enable all sufficiency; the spectre of soil exhaustion members of the nation to buy the goods which the nation produced. and the need to increase humus; the poss- For a full account of its development and ideas, see J L Finlay, Social Credit: The English On:gins, 1972. ible dangers of mechanization and wide- ~Nelv English Weekly [NF.[,H, 27June 194o, p i24. spread use of artificial fertilizers; the social Ag Hist Rev, 46, 2, pp t97-21o I97 198 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW benefits of encouraging smaller, mixed, experiments in India on diet, the early days family farms in preference to large-scale of the Pioneer Health Centre in south commercialized specialist ones; the poor London, and the work of EdgarJ Saxon in quality of national nutrition, and the promoting natural health and a wholesome relationship between food production diet through his journal The Healthy Life methods and health. Underlying all these (re-constituted as Health and Life in 1934). concerns was the conviction that living Following the crisis of 1931 the move- processes must be interpreted biologically ment's political and economic aspects grew and ecologically, and that any chemical, more prominent. Social Credit was offered mechanistic or purely economic approach as the solution to the nation's ills, and to agriculture was at best inadequate and ruralist movements took on a nationalist at worst destructive. Human beings should tinge, opposing liberalism and free trade in seek through science to understand and favour of a revived peasantry. McCarrison work with the natural order, instead of returned to England in the I93OS, as did exploiting the environment in order to the agricultural scientist Sir Albert Howard, satisfy ever-increasing demands. whose researches in India were central to the organic movement. Throughout the decade he promoted the system of corn- I posting whose positive effects on plant and This outline demonstrates that the organic animal health he had demonstrated at the movement involved much more than Institute of Plant Industry in the state of opposition to artificial manures and the Indore. The I93OS also saw develop, ILothamsted approach to fertilizer science. through the Anglo-Catholic 'Ch,'istendom' It drew together various concerns which movement, a religious philosophy based on had been gathering strength since the late the idea of a Natural Order, which, it was nineteenth century. Anxiety about the use argued, provided the justification for obey- of artificials had been expressed between ing the 1Lule of Return, through which 189o and I914 by Poore, Elliot and Eiloart, man co-operates with God's creation. 4 who had warned of the possible dangers of In 194I a loosely-organized group, the abandoning the 'P,.ule of Return' of wastes 'Kinship in Husband/3,', was formed to the soft. As Gould and Marsh have in order to promulgate this outlook. recounted, this period also saw consider- Called together by the Wessex farnaer able interest m various attempts at 1Lolf Gardiner, it sought 'to percolate rural reconstruction, though the Rural many movements', including the Rural rZeconstruction Association itself was not 1Leconstruction Association and, later, the founded until 1926, when the post-war Soil Association. Several key figures in the 'Great Betrayal' of farnaing was followed organic naovement were members or guests by severe agricultural depression? of the Kinship. In addition to Gardiner During the 192os the health and these included the landowners Viscount nutrition strand of the organic movement developed, with Robert McCarrison's 4 On McCarfison's experiments ill diet, see R. McCarrison, Nmrition and Health, 1961. On the Pioneer Health Centre, see I H Pearse and L H Crocker, 77w Peckham Experimem, x943. On mralist s For pre-1914 concern about soil fertility and the possible effects of nationalism, see A Bramwell, l-colog), in the Tll,entieth Century, 1989, artificials, see G V Poore, Essa),s on Rural l-l}~iene, 1893; 1~ H pp 1o4-3o and I33-5o; R Grifl]ths, Felhm, Travellers of the R(~,ht, Elliot, 77~e Clifton Park System of Farming, t943; and A Eiloart, N0 1983, pp 317-29; G C Webber, 77se Ideolq~!), of the British R(~lht: Plant Disease, nd [1913 in Bodleian Library catalogue]. For dis- 1918-039, ]986, pp 57-68; and P Wright, The Village that Died.fi,r cussions of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century concerns Fmgland, 1996, pp 15o-2o2. On Howard's work in India, see L E about rural reconstruction and 'back to the land' movemem.s, see Howard, Sir Albert Holl,ard ht hldia, 1953. For an example of the P C Gould, Earl), Gree~t Politics, Brighton, 1988, and J Marsh, Back work of the Christendom Group, see M 13 P, eckitt, ed, Prosl,ectlbr to the Land, 1982. Chdstcmlom, 1945. THE NEW ENGLISH WEEKLY AND AGRICULTURAL POLICY 199 Lymington (later the Earl of Portsmouth) orthodoxy on their own ground. 6 But it and Lord Northbourne; the writers was only in the pages of the NEW that all Edmund Blunden and H J Massingham; these strands were brought together and farmer-writers Adrian Bell and Ronald worked into a coherent view of agri- Duncan; the agricultural journalist culture's nutritional, social and spiritual Laurence Easterbrook; Jorian Jenks, first importance to national life. More compre- editorial secretary to the Soil Association; hensively, the journal's philosophy of hus- and Philip Mairet, editor of the NEWfrom bandry provided a critique of the way in I934. s Howard and McCarrison influenced which industrial civilization was treating this group, as did Sir George Stapledon, the natural world. the agronomist and grassland expert, and The NEW was founded by A 1L Orage, Dr G T Wrench, who, like Howard and who edited it until his sudden death in McCarrison, had spent several years in 1934. When in charge of the journal the India. Howard also influenced the Wiltshire New Age (from I9O8 to 1922) he had been farmer and racehorse-breeder Friend Sykes regarded by many as the most brilliant and the fenland market-gardener Roy editor of the time. At first an advocate of Wilson, both of whom practised and advo- Guild Socialism, he was converted to cated his methods; while McCarrison's Major C H Douglas's panacea, Social studies of nutrition and deficiency diseases Credit, in I919. He left the Neu, Age to influenced the general practitioners Dr K E spend nearly a decade abroad studying and Barlow and Dr Lionel J Picton, and the teaching the esoteric system of G I founders of the Pioneer Health Centre, Dr Gurdjieff.