Ill fares the Land? The concept of national food self sufficiency in political discourse 1880-1939. Item Type Thesis Authors Hargreaves, David William Rights <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by- nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. Download date 26/09/2021 07:46:39 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10454/5720 University of Bradford eThesis This thesis is hosted in Bradford Scholars – The University of Bradford Open Access repository. Visit the repository for full metadata or to contact the repository team © University of Bradford. This work is licenced for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence. ILL FARES THE LAND? THE CONCEPT OF NATIONAL FOOD SELF SUFFICIENCY IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE 1880 – 1939 David William HARGREAVES M.Phil SCHOOL OF LIFE SCIENCES, Department of Archaeological and Environmental Science UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD 2012 David William Hargreaves Ill fares the Land? Keywords: Autarky, Back to the Land, Free Trade, Protectionism, Self Sufficiency, Land Nationalisation, Politics, Rearmament, Defence, NFU. Abstract ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After the repeal of the Corn Laws ended the policy of protectionism which had enabled Britain to feed herself from within her own resources, free trade resulted in domestic food production constituting only 30% of the British diet. This study looks at the political discourse from 1880 to 1939 when the ‘empty countryside’ became a symbol of agricultural decline. Emerging radical and socialist narratives put forward approaches for rural regeneration and increased food production. Other narratives suggested that agricultural decline was one manifestation of national decline whereby a self sufficient and proud nation was being betrayed by Capitalism. Both Left and Right offered up the prospect of different solutions predicated upon shared perceptions of ‘Englishness.’ The experience of Irish famine failed to inform political action or policy making. The study notes the importance of War upon the development of food policy. Increasingly, the State joined forces with the NFU in a corporate endeavour which sought to manage, rather than increase, food i production and created structures which became increasingly important in the context of rearmament. Increased food production was rejected upon defence grounds in that free trade and a navy were seen as appropriate safeguards. Those countries which sought to follow self sufficiency – or autarky – are portrayed as warlike in their intentions; by 1939 all mainstream political parties rejected the notion of artificially increased food production. Those who continued to press for increased food production concentrated either upon earlier pre Capitalist societies or were attracted by Fascism and strong leadership. After such searches became increasingly problematic there was emphasis upon the soil, with the adoption of an approach which was both practical and mystical. ii Acknowledgement This work would not have been possible without the resources and the staff of the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, an institution which has a collection ‘capturing the stories and struggles of ordinary people’s efforts to improve their world.’ The Library was founded by Ruth and Eddie Frow; both lifelong Socialists who took more interest in food policy than many on the Left, possibly on account of Eddie having been born in 1906 as a child of tenant farmers in Lincolnshire. The collection in Salford was enhanced by the acquisition of some of the libraries of Michael Barratt Brown and Eric Heffer, both people who appreciated the value of lifelong learning and self improvement. My studies would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support of George Sheeran and Paul Jennings of the University of Bradford and formerly members of staff in SLED (School of Lifelong Education and Development) which sadly closed in 2012. Universities may feel that they no longer need enthusiastic adult learners, but we’ll be back. And, above all, thank you Janet. iii Table of Contents ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv Introduction and Review of the Literature v Chapter 1 Everyone Forgets Ireland. 1 Chapter 2 Radical and Socialist perspectives on 12 Agriculture 1880 – 1900 Chapter 3 The Royal Commission of 1905 51 Chapter 4 Conservatism, Agriculture and the 61 First World War Chapter 5 1919 – 1923 A New Age? 91 Chapter 6 Food and Agriculture 1923 – 1939 113 The Conservative Party. Chapter 7 Food and Agriculture 1923 – 1939 134 The Labour Party. Chapter 8 Administrative Triumph 158 Chapter 9 On the Edge. 186 Chapter 10 Conclusion. 219 Appendix 1. 1905 Commission Evidence 234 Appendix 2. Tables 259 Bibliography. 261 Journals. 289 iv ‘Ill fares the Land?’ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This work examines sixty years of food self sufficiency in political discourse. The main focus of this work is to allow those who have advocated food self sufficiency to speak and to foreground the books, pamphlets and speeches written between 1880 and 1939 and place them in the wider political discourse. Many of the voices presented in this work have been forgotten or, critically, put forward reasoned arguments for growing more food in this country at times when the supply of food from the rest of the world was taken for granted. Clearly, the Second World War is most often associated with the notion of self sufficiency through ‘Dig for Victory.’ However, that notion is problematic given that it does not take into account the extent to which the country had become dependent upon imported food or the fact that such dependency might have been seen as being in the national interest. For sixty years a number of people and organisations argued that dependency upon imported food either imperilled the nation or was symptomatic of national, imperial or moral decline. The first chapter moves outside of the chosen time frame of 1880 – 1939 in order to ascertain the extent to which successive Irish famines, but especially the major one from 1845 onwards influenced the political discourse. Whilst the brief treatment of the politics of the famine does v not do justice to the scale of the tragedy, any work which seeks to examine food self sufficiency must identify the extent to which such a famine was important in having influenced the view of food provision. In order to locate those voices, the principal focus of the work has been to carry out extensive archival research. This task has been made easier by the comprehensive collection housed at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford at http://www.wcml. The material in Salford is complemented by the nearby Manchester resources, the Co- operative archive at www.archive.coop/ and the People’s History Museum at www.phm.org.uk. Locally, the West Yorkshire Archive Service branches in Halifax and Huddersfield (http://www.archives.wyjs.org.uk/) have yielded important background information. The works for non violent social change collected by the Commonweal Collection at the University of Bradford, http://www.bradford.ac.uk/library/libraries-and-collections/commonweal- collection/ show the breadth of thinking that has taken place on food and society. More generally, the study presents the voices of those engaged in Parliamentary Debate as recorded in Hansard at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/ or through local and national newspapers at http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product- highlights/history/19th-century-british-library-newspapers.aspx or vi through significant material on organic gardening and health gathered together at http://www.soilandhealth.org/index.html. There are some excellent agricultural histories of this period notably that of English Farming Past and Present by Lord Ernle (1936), a respected historian, agricultural expert, politician and administrator whose work has the mark of authority. Similarly, the many works of C.S. Orwin and E.H. Whetham cover the technical and scientific changes in agriculture in some detail, and explain how successive Governments have endeavoured to influence agricultural policy and practice. Two particular works by Whetham, the Agrarian History of England and Wales 1914 – 1939 (1978) and The Economic Background to Agricultural Policy (1960) have been essential to an understanding of the period. Works such as History of British Agriculture by Orwin and Whetham (1964) also sought to challenge the underlying assumptions contained in such an authority as Lord Ernle. The ‘official’ histories of the Second World War – Agriculture by K.A.H. Murray (1975) and Food: the Growth of Policy by R.J. Hammond (1951) – contain important summaries of the events which shaped food policy and production in wartime. Both make explicit the close links between the brief period of food control in the last year of the First World War and the comprehensive approach of the Second World War. The politics of agriculture are well covered in The State and the Farmer by Self and Storing (1962) but