Farming, Fascism and Ecology

The life of Jorian Jenks (1899–1963) has great potential to upset settled assumptions. Why did a sensitive and intelligent man from a liberal family become a fascist? How did a Blackshirt go green? The son of an eminent academic, from his childhood onwards Jenks instead longed to farm. Lacking the means to do so, he worked as a farm bailiff and then, in New Zealand, as a government agricultural instructor. Finally, a legacy permitted him to come home and become a tenant farmer. Struggling to survive in the economic depression of the 1930s, he became an author and activist for rural reconstruction. Then, having lost faith in the established parties, he joined the British Union of Fascists. Becoming one of the Blackshirts’ leading figures, he was imprisoned without trial during the war. On his release, Jenks returned to the struggle, this time in the cause of ecology, becoming a pioneer of today’s organic movement and a founder of the Soil Association. This book draws on an extensive range of sources, a large proportion of which was previously unseen by historians. For the first time, it portrays the private and public life of this unusual man, revealing many hitherto un-glimpsed facets of Jenks’ life.

Philip M. Coupland is a researcher and author. He has published a book on the British churches and European integration, and has written widely on aspects of British interwar fascism. Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right Series editors: Nigel Copsey, Teesside University, and Graham Macklin, Teesside University

This new book series focuses upon fascist, far right-wing and right-wing politics within a historical context. Fascism falls within the far right but the far right also extends to so-called ‘radical-right populism’. Boundaries are not fixed and it is important to not to overlook points of convergence and exchange with the mainstream right. The series will include books with a broad thematic focus suitable for students and teachers. These will be available in hardback and paperback. It will also include more specialist books, aimed largely at subject specialists which will appear in hardback and e-book format only.

Titles include: Cultures of Post-War British Fascism Nigel Copsey and John E. Richardson France and Fascism: February 1934 and the Dynamics of Political Crisis Brian Jenkins and Chris Millington Searching for Lord Haw-Haw The political lives of William Joyce Colin Holmes Farming, Fascism and Ecology A life of Jorian Jenks Philip M. Coupland Fascist in the Family The tragedy of John Beckett MP Francis Beckett What Did You Do During The War? The last throes of the British Pro-Nazi Right, 1940–45 Richard Griffiths Farming, Fascism and Ecology

A life of Jorian Jenks

Philip M. Coupland First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Philip M. Coupland The right of Philip M. Coupland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Coupland, Philip M., 1966– author. Title: Farming, fascism and ecology: a life of Jorian Jenks / Philip M. Coupland. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in fascism and the far right Identifiers: LCCN 2016012064 | ISBN 9781138124349 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138688629 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315648170 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Jenks, Jorian E. F., 1899–1963. | Fascism—Great Britain— History—20th century. | British Union of Fascists—History. | Soil Association—History. | Fascists—Great Britain—Biography. | Environmentalists—Great Britain—Biography. | Great Britain—Politics and government—1910–1936. | Organic farming—Great Britain—History—20th century. Classification: LCC DA574.J44 C68 2017 | DDC 320.53/3092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012064 ISBN: 978-1-138-12434-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-68862-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64817-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra Jorian Jenks To Donna Contents

List of illustrations ix Abbreviations xi Acknowledgements xiii

Prologue 1 1 Roots 5 2 Shoots 13 3 Agricultural education 22 4 Wander-Lust 28 5 London interlude 37 6 Superphosphate 42 7 A small legacy 50 8 Devon 60 9 An Interesting South-Coast Farm 67 10 Farming and Money 79 11 Another Cobbett 86 12 The Land and the People 94 13 Pigs and Pen 108 viii Contents

14 A farmer’s philosophy 116 15 War 130 16 18B/2732 138 17 J.J. Zeal 148 18 The Rural Reconstruction Association 154 19 Church and Countryside 161 20 Untouchable 170 21 Through the tunnel 175 22 The organic movement 185 23 A young plant of great promise 194 24 Resurrection of the RRA 205 25 The Soil Association 213 26 From the Ground Up 227 27 Rural Economy Ltd 234 28 Feeding the Fifty Million 241 29 The Whole Works 257 30 Return 271 Epilogue: Jorian Jenks’ legacy: Green and Black 286

Further reading 293 Index 295 List of Illustrations

1.1 Jorian Jenks with his mother Dorothy and sister Barbara, early 1900s 7 1.2 Edward Jenks, ca.1930 7 6.1 Jenks (fourth from the left) outside the Te Kuiti Club, 1927 46 8.1 Jenks, early 1930s 60 8.2 Sophie Chester, with her mother Lydia and brothers Stan and Norman, late 1920s 62 9.1 The farmhouse, Ecclesden Farm, during Jenks tenancy in the 1930s 67 9.2 Jorian, Edward and Oliver Jenks, Ecclesden Farm, ca. mid 1930s 68 9.3 Jenks, Ecclesden Farm, January 1937 70 9.4 Jenks rolling mustard seed, Ecclesden Farm, 1935 71 12.1 The Land and the People (1937) 96 14.1 Spring Comes Again (1939) 117 14.2 Jenks, marching with Mosley (on the left), BUF march, May Day, 1939 123 16.1 Robert Saunders (third from the left). Alexander Raven Thomson, another of Jenks’ main collaborators in the fascist movement is also shown, (first from the left). William Joyce, later notorious as ‘Lord Haw Haw’, is on the right of the photograph; mid 1930s 142 16.2 Derek Stuckey, late 1930s 143 x List of Illustrations

22.1–3 The three men who Jenks credited in 1958 with doing most to shape his ‘present outlook’: Montague Fordham, H.J. Massingham and Laurence Easterbrook 188 23.1 Jorian, Sophie and Patsy Jenks, ca.1940s 200 23.2 Jorian, Oliver and Patsy Jenks, Woolacombe, summer 1946 201 29.1 Jenks and Sally Stuckey, ca.1950s 263 29.2 Esther Browning, with Patsy and Oliver on the back seat, ca.1950s 263 30.1 Jorian Jenks, 1957 272 30.2 Elizabeth Howard, ca.1950s 274 Abbreviations

AA Archives = Architectural Association School of Architecture Archives Archit. Assoc. J. = The Architectural Association Journal AERI = Agricultural Economics Research Institute Archives NZ = Archives New Zealand Balliol Oxf. = Balliol College, Oxford BL = British Library, London BLPES = British Library of Political and Economic Science Bodl. Oxf. = Bodleian Library, Oxford BUF = British Union of Fascists BUQ = British Union Quarterly CCC = Council for the Church and Countryside CPA = Conservative Party Archives CUL = Cambridge University Library Devon RO = Devon Record Office, Exeter ERC = Economic Reform Club FFA = Faber and Faber Archive FOM = Friends of Mosley FQ = Fascist Quarterly Glos. RO = Gloucestershire Record Office, Gloucester Hants. RO = Hampshire Record Office, Winchester HAU = Harper Adams University ICF = Industrial Christian Fellowship KCAC = King’s College Archive Centre, Cambridge KCC = King Country Chronicle KH = Kinship in Husbandry Lincs. Arch. = Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln xii Abbreviations

LPL = Lambeth Palace Library MB = Monthly Bulletin ME = Mother Earth ML = Mary Langman Papers NEW = The New English Weekly NFU = National Farmers Union NZJA = New Zealand Journal of Agriculture NLA = National Library of Australia NUAW = National Union of Agricultural Workers OUA = Oxford University Archives Parl. Arch. = Parliamentary Archives of the United Kingdom RE = Rural Economy RRA = Rural Reconstruction Association SAA = Soil Association Archive SLNSW = State Library of New South Wales StP = Derek Stuckey Papers TNA: PRO = National Archives of the United Kingdom, Public Record Office, London U. Reading, RHC = University of Reading, Rural History Centre U. Sheffield LSC = University of Sheffield Library Special Collections U. Sussex = University of Sussex, Brighton U. Warwick Mod. RC = University of Warwick, Modern Records Centre, Coventry UM = Union Movement UMAG = Union Movement Agriculture Group W. Sussex RO = West Sussex Record Office, Chichester WT = Western Times WR = Weekly Review Yale U., Beinecke L. = Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library YP = Yorkshire Post Acknowledgements

During the seven years over which this book was researched and written, I benefited from the help of a great many people. I am thankful to Oliver Jenks, who readily agreed to be interviewed, courteously answered my many subsequent emails, commented on the manuscript and provided family photos and other unique sources. Dr Jenks also introduced me to Campbell Main and, in Australia, Betty and Dick Chester and Myrtle Wilson, for whose help I am also grateful. Sadly Dr Jenks died as this book was being prepared for the press. Without the assistance of Clare Downey and the Stuckey family this book would be a shadow of what it is; they welcomed me into their home and gave me unrestricted access to the late Derek Stuckey’s treasure trove of private papers. On my visits, I was delighted to meet Sally Stuckey, Derek’s widow and a friend of Jorian Jenks, who regrettably also passed away before the completion of this book. Thanks are also due to Andrew and Ewa Howard, who helped me understand Jenks’ second marriage to the late Elizabeth Howard; sadly Andrew died in 2014. Dr Norman Burman, a founder member of the Soil Association, invited me to his home and shared his recollections of Jenks, with whom he worked closely in the preparation of Mother Earth. All of Jorian Jenks’ other friends and colleagues had passed into memory before I began this project, but I was often able to make contact with their relatives and almost always received a helpful response. Jeremy Fordham gave me his own privately published volumes of family history, photographs of Montague Fordham and his grandfather’s unpublished memoir ‘Nine Lives’. Simon Loftus made me copies of letters between Jenks and his grandfather, Pierce Loftus. I am grateful to Mary de Rachewiltz for her help and for permission to quote from Ezra Pound’s Canto 45 (copyright courtesy of ND Publishing Co.). I was also helped by Bernhar d von Barsewisch, Lady Mary Rose Beaumont, Debra Clift, Amanda Daniel, David xiv Acknowledgements

Duke-Williams, Arthur Fitzroy Somerset, Sir Patrick McNair-Wilson, Lord Northbourne, Ian Peddie, John Penty, Joanna Ray, Sarah Priestman, Miriam Peck and Robin Whittleton. John Ayre, the current tenant of Ecclesden Farm, helped me to put Jenks in context as a Sussex farmer and Betty Partridge showed me Tawton House. I visited most places in England associated with Jorian Jenks but it was not fea- sible to follow in his footsteps to New Zealand. This deficiency was mitigated by the help that was given to me so readily by the natives of that land. I am especially indebted to Marinus La Rooij who researched in the archives for me, commented on draft chapters and brought to my notice the precious correspondence between Sir William Beveridge and the Jenks family. Michal Were of Te Kuiti sent me a previously unseen photo of Jorian Jenks – published here courtesy of Te Kuiti and District Historical Society – and other sources and put me in touch with Raema Warriner, who helped me with recollections of the late Maurice Reeve-Smith. I also received help from staff at Auckland City Libraries, most especially David Verran, and from Archives New Zealand. Jackie Berry of the Alexander Turnbull Library arranged a free loan of microfilms of local papers and I am also grateful to the New Zealand Society of Genealogists and Philippa Jamieson of Organic NZ. Over the Tasman Sea, the staff of the State Library of New South Wales and National Library of Australia provided copies from the papers of Mary Fullerton and her friends. Andrew Chandler, who has done much to help and encourage me over many years, proposed me for the honour of Fellowship of the Humanitas Foundation, which gave me the means to continue my research during a lean time. Philip Conford, whose scholarship has been the indispensable foundation for all subsequent historical writing on the organic movement, made incisive and constructive comments on this book and helped me in many other ways. I also benefited from contact with Anna Bramwell, another pioneer historian in this area, who translated and provided commentary on a review of Jenks’ work by Jean Piel. My friend Stephen Cullen, one of the first and most insightful historians of interwar fascism in Britain, maintained an unflagging interest in this project. Among the other colleagues who responded to my requests for help and information were Anne Williamson, Alan Munton, Sylvia Martin, Brunhilde Bross-Burkhardt, Peter Staudenmaier, Charmian Brinson, Matt Reed, Erin Gill, Brian Simpson, Michael Thorn, John Paull, Ulrich Loening, John Jones and Nigel Copsey. The following libraries and archives opened their collections to me as a reader or sent me material: University of St Andrews, Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Palace Library, Bundesarchiv, BBC Written Archives Centre, University of Sheffield, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Devon Archives, Random House Group Archive and Library, Florida State University, Bodleian Libraries, Royal Artillery Museum, University of Sussex, University of Cambridge, University of Sussex, Churchill Archives Centre, London School of Economics Acknowledgements xv and Political Science, Parliamentary Archives, King’s College Cambridge, Glouces- tershire Archives and University of Liverpool. I am also grateful to the staff of Northamptonshire Libraries. My research was also greatly assisted by access to a number of private collections. Angela Iliff arranged for me to use the archives and library of the Soil Association. Stephen Page graciously granted me access to files concerning Jenks at Faber and Faber and Robert Brown assisted my visits there. Julie Brook, of Harper Adams University, and Anne Sander, at Balliol College, provided me with copies of Jorian Jenks’ student files. Edward Bottoms provided me with access to the archives of the Architectural Association. I am also thankful to Jim Bourlet and Joanna Wood of the Economic Research Council, Robert Buckolt of The Farmers’ Club, Michael Hickling and David Joy of the Yorkshire Post and Oliver Gadsby of Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. I also made many fruitful contacts among the community of ‘weekend’ historians whose enthusiasm and knowledge is to be treasured. Jeff Wallder and his colleagues in Friends of Mosley (FOM) searched their archives and provided copies of rare documents and photos. Peter Wallis, the author of the first major article on Jenks, generously gave me not only his research materials but also visited the archives of the University of Exeter on my behalf. Ron Stilwell made me copies of Howard Biggs’ private papers, which are now in the care of the University of Sheffield. I was also helped by Susan Pittman of the Farnham Society, Neil Rogers- Davis of Angmering Village Life, Geoffrey Harding of Exeter Local History Society, Peter Rowe and Lord Richard Dickinson of Painswick Local History Society and by Dick Greenaway. My thanks are also due to Craig Fowlie and Emma Chappell at Routledge and to the four anonymous referees who read and commented on what was then a much longer and less polished piece of work. Finally, my loving gratitude goes to Donna Coupland, who shared me with Jorian Jenks for much longer than we originally anticipated, read and corrected several drafts of this book and discussed many related questions during our walks and talks. 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In the early 1950s an American visitor wrote of how ‘[w]hen you look at Jorian Jenks you will see why they say that “there will always be an England.” His face is regular-featured, but it breathes a vigorous ruggedness which is British all the way through.’1 A few years earlier, that prolific elegist of the English rural way of life, H.J. Massingham, described his friend as a ‘yeoman, a member of the rural middle class that formed the first story of the national building’, a representative of a tradition stretching back to the thirteenth century and beyond.2 Another colleague, Robert Saunders, who worked with the soil all his life, echoed this, writing that ‘[h]e looked what he had indeed been: a typical Yeoman farmer’.3 Massingham and Saunders were both well qualified to make such an attribution but its truth was not a simple one. Jenks was English to the core but distant from any yeoman lineage, his background being urban and upper-middle-class. His father was an eminent academic, his mother the daughter of a prominent Liverpool merchant and city father. Jenks was himself an alumnus of Haileybury and Balliol, who spent the first decade of his working life as a government officer in New Zealand. Later he became an articulate voice for the reconstruction of the neglected British countryside and later still for ecology and the early ‘organic’ movement. Even during the 1930s, when he was one of England’s ‘“dirty-boot” farmers’, there was always ink on his fingers besides the mud on his boots.4 As well as being a tenant farmer, he was then also an author, the Agricultural Correspondent of The Yorkshire Post and a lecturer at the Architec- tural Association’s avant-garde School of Planning. Despite all this, there were – are – good reasons to identify Jenks with the yeoman farmer, if that figure represents not only a love of husbandry and rural life but also a belief in the possibility of a healthy society rooted in the soil, living in harmony with nature. Despite spending much of the 1920s as an Instructor in Agriculture, 2 Prologue encouraging farmers to use chemical fertilizers, followed by time at the centre of the new, emerging model of mechanised, large-scale farming, the Agricultural Economics Research Institute at Oxford, he came to work for a different future. Refusing both the depressed rural scene of the interwar years and the empty green factory floor of modern ‘agri-industry’, Jenks spoke for a countryside busy with people at work, amid a patchwork of family farms and self-sufficient villages, of fields of fertile soil, sleek beasts and ripening crops. Then, to one unorthodox opinion, Jenks added another: in the early 1940s he became one of the little band of prophets and pioneers, who, observing the deserts and dust bowls left by humanity’s rapacious exploitation, and the sick bodies and shallow life of the city, argued for a different way. As a leading member of what became known as the ‘organic movement’ and the Editorial Secretary of its most important body, the Soil Association, Jenks wrote of the deadly futility of the ‘con- quest’ of nature and argued that farming and social life generally should instead respect ecology, acknowledging humanity as an integral and dependent part of nature. During the same period he was also a leading figure in Montague Fordham’s Rural Reconstruction Association and – being a Christian by conviction – the Church of England’s Council for the Church and Countryside, established under the authority of Archbishop William Temple in 1943. For the latter, he wrote The Country Year (1946) and once spoke alongside John Betjeman on ‘The Survival of England’; for the RRA, he drafted its report Feeding the Fifty Million (1955), about, in today’s terms, national food security – a topic of continuing concern.5 Following Jenks’ early death in 1963, Donald Wilson described his departed Soil Association colleague as ‘a foundation stone of the Association’; for J.A. Gagliardi, of the New Zealand Organic Compost Society, he was ‘one of the most far-sighted men of this age’; one of Jenks’ mentors, the journalist Laurence Easterbrook, wrote of his friend:

His […] editorials were invariably first class, clear, well-reasoned andincisiv e. […] This gift came to Jorian naturally, and perhaps this is not surprising, for it is allied with good manners and consideration for others. He believed simply and pas- sionately in the things he wrote about and his faith shone out through his work.6

These were typical demonstrations of the high esteem in which he was held during his career at the Soil Association. In stark contrast, four decades later, in 2001, Jonathan Dimbleby, then President of the Association, in the foreword of Philip Conford’s history of the organic movement in Britain, described Jenks’ beliefs as ‘foolish and foetid’, the man a ‘fatuous romantic’, a scrap among the ‘dirty linen’ of the movement.7 Just as Jenks’ ruralist and organic beliefs would make him a heretic from the orthodoxy of ‘agri-industry’, this polite and contemplative Englishman was also politically heterodox, having become a fascist. During the 1930s, having despaired of the established parties, he became a member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Prologue 3

Union of Fascists, which, during the war, caused him to be gaoled without trial.8 Later, during his service to the Soil Association, he was involved with Mosley’s post- war Union Movement. It is this conjunction of the black and the green that today causes Jenks to be drawn out of historical obscurity, usually to deliver a blow against the environmental movement. At its silliest extreme, this discourse does not blink at accusing ‘greens’ of being simultaneously ‘liberal’ and ‘fascist’.9 But even away from the murky words of climate change deniers, mainstream commentators as politically diverse as, on one hand, Jenny Diski of the London Review of Books and Jonathan Meades in The Observer and, on the other, Ross Clark and Geoffrey Hollis in The Times have employed Jenks in this way.10 Bringing glee to the enemies of the organic movement and shame and consternation to its friends, Jenks has become either a convenient stick to beat the greens with or an appalling error to be confessed. For polemical purposes it is enough to state the bald fact of Jenks’ politics without further explanation: The word ‘fascist’ has so many grossly negative connotations, so deeply dyed in by longstanding association, that to attach the word to anyone is to seemingly put them beyond the pale of human sympathy or even, in many cases, honest and rational discussion. Therefore, it is hoped that this book may provide some scope for better comprehending this conjunction of black and green, that many still find unexpected and are poorly equipped to understand. The pages below give as full account as possible, of not only how Jenks became, to use Matt Reed’s phrase, a ‘rebel for the soil’,11 but to chart his personal journey from the liberalism of his upbringing to espouse a British variant of fascism. Previously, there have been two articles about Jenks and his career is surveyed in Philip Conford’s two volumes, which are deservedly regarded as the definitive history of the organic movement in Britain.12 These works were all necessarily limited in their aims and used only a fraction of the sources employed in this biography. Mention is also often made to Jenks in other scholarly writing on green history and in the ever-growing literature on British fascism. Regrettably even these brief treatments contain many errors of fact and other dubious material, some of which has escaped to spread and mutate across the internet. Although reference has been made to all extant works mentioning Jenks, the account below is based exclusively on primary sources. The following pages draw on extensive material from archives and in private hands around the world, much of which was either previously unseen by researchers or had not been used before in this context.

Notes 1 J.I. Rodale, An Organic Trip to England (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books, 1954), p. 19. 2 H.J. Massingham, ‘Introduction’, pp. v–xi in Jorian Jenks, From the Ground Up: An Outline of Real Economy (London: Hollis and Carter, 1950), p. v. 3 Robert Saunders, ‘The Dorset Farmer’, pp. 21–26 in Mosley’s Blackshirts: The Inside Story of the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940 (London: Sanctuary Press, 1986), p. 24. 4 Prologue

4 ‘A Countryman’s Outlook’, FQ, Vol. 2, No. 3 (July 1936), pp. 396–404. 5 Jorian Jenks, The Country Year (London: SPCK, undated; 1946); U. Reading, Rural History Centre, SR CPRE C/1/169/1: Handbill for CCC public meeting held on 28 March 1949; Feeding the Fifty Million: A Report of the Rural Reconstruction Association Research Committee on the Increase of Agricultural Production (London: Hollis and Carter, 1955). 6 ‘In Appreciation’, ME, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 1964), pp. 3–4. 7 Jonathan Dimbleby, ‘Foreword’, pp. 11–14, in Philip Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2001), p. 13. 8 Founded in 1932 as the British Union of Fascists (BUF), the name of Mosley’s movement was later changed to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists (BUFNS), finally becoming British Union (BU). Excepting quotations, the original form is used throughout the book. 9 See, for example, James Delingpole, The Little Green Book of Eco-Fascism (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2013). 10 Jenny Diski, ‘Short Cuts’, London Review of Books, Vol. 32, No. 21 (4 November 2010), p. 24; Jonathan Meades, ‘You Aren’t What You Eat: Fed Up With Gastroculture by Steven Poole – review’, The Observer, 21 October 2012 (viewed on www.guardian. co.uk, 21 October 2012); Geoffrey Hollis, ‘Best not to swallow this stuff’, The Times, 29 April 2005 (viewed on Lexisnexis.co.uk, 27 March 2010); Ross Clark, ‘Thunderer: It’s opponents of GM crops who are harming farmers’, The Times, 26 July 2013 (viewed on www.thetimes.co.uk, 26 July 2013). 11 Matthew Reed, Rebels For The Soil – The Rise of the Global Organic Movement (London: Earthscan, 2010). 12 Peter Wallis, ‘Jorian Jenks: A Keeper of the Agrarian Tradition’, Lodestar, No. 17 (winter 1990/91), pp. 1–14; Richard Moore-Colyer, ‘Towards “Mother Earth”: Jorian Jenks, Organicism, the Right and the British Union of Fascists’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (July 2004), pp. 353–371; Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement; Philip Conford, The Development of the Organic Network: Linking People and Themes, 1945–95 (Edinburgh: Floris, 2011). 1 Roots

If Jorian Jenks had done nothing of note in his life, his extraordinarily rare Christian name would still have distinguished him. He commented that he was

called Josiah, Julian, Joriah, and even Jeremiah, in fact the choice of misspell- ings and mispronunciations is almost endless. Worst of all is the incredulous look which people give you when you assure them it is your real name and not an alias.1

Nonetheless he usually signed himself ‘Jorian Jenks’ and, as an author, this became his preferred style.2 His mother, Dorothy, said only that the name ‘came out of a book’;3 one possible source was a character in Samuel Rutherford Crockett’s The Red Axe, published the year before Jenks’ birth, in 1898; other possibilities were George Meredith’s The Adventures of Harry Richmond and Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth, staples of Victorian popular literature. Whatever the reason for its selection, ‘Jorian’ was an unintentionally prophetic choice, being a variant of the Greek name Georgios, a derivative of georgos: ‘farmer’ (from ge ‘earth’ and ergein ‘to work’).4

Dorothy and Edward Born on the 4th of April 1899, at the family home in Oxford, Jorian, Dorothy’s first child, was given as his other names Edward and Forwood, his father’s Christian name and mother’s maiden name. Edward Jenks was born in Stockwell, South London in 1861, where he lived over the family’s furniture business. His father, Robert, later overreached himself such that, when the firm was wound up in 1891 there was scarcely money left to cover its 6 Roots liabilities, but, by that point, Edward was already on the track by which, through his ability and determination, he would successfully climb the social hierarchy by a different path. A scholarship boy at Dulwich College, he left at age sixteen to become a solicitor. Despite performing brilliantly in his finals, he did not join a firm, instead deciding on an academic career. In 1883, he entered King’s College, Cambridge, where he read law and history, whilst concurrently reading for the Bar. At King’s he became a protégé of Oscar Browning. ‘O.B.’, as he was known, was a champion of teacher training and liberal education, did a great deal to assist Jenks’ early career and was a considerable influence on him.5 Politically, Browning was a committed liberal, and Edward Jenks became a lifelong liberal, par excellence. In 1887, he did a stint at Toynbee hall, the Universities’ Settlement in East London, a rite of passage for many of the most significant liberal reformers of the twentieth century.6 Although not destined to be a great scholar, Edward made his talents go a long way, through a mixture of hard work, a projection of self-confidence and his assid- uous cultivation of contacts. By 1888 he was Director of Studies in Law and His- tory at Jesus College and lecturer at Pembroke College and, in 1889, he was elected to a fellowship at King’s. That same year – his 29th – he left Cambridge to become Professor of Law and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne. Edward Jenks’ time in Australia was not a success, but it was personal tragedy that accelerated his departure. His first wife, Annie, died in childbirth in 1891, leaving him in charge of an infant son, Alan.7 By March 1892, Edward Jenks was back in England, initially returning to Cambridge, before becoming professor in the Faculty of Law at University College, Liverpool. In 1896, he moved to Oxford to become Reader in English Law at the University of Oxford and Law Tutor at Balliol; Balliol had a reputation for brilliance and among Jenks’ pupils was William Beveridge, who would have a cordial relationship with his old tutor thereafter.8 During his time in Liverpool, Edward Jenks met his second wife, Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Bower Forwood. If Edward epitomised the mind of the new society of Victorian liberalism, the Forwoods of Liverpool represented its commercial engine. They were a mercantile family, significant shipowners, and steeped in Victorian entrepreneurial spirit. Dorothy’s father was knighted for his service to local government and, a dedicated supporter of the established church, he raised the money to build Liverpool’s cathedral.9 Dorothy brought to the marriage a dowry that helped the couple to live in suitable style, as Edward had no family money. Although having the limited education of a daughter of her class, she was nonetheless a highly capable person. Dorothy Jenks’ grandson, Oliver, who came to know her very well, described her as ‘kind, caring’ but also as having a ‘dominant personality. She allowed quite a lot of freedom […] [but] there was strong and firm disapproval for transgressors, and one did not wish to go against her, as she seemed reasonable and sensible.’ Oliver Jenks observed the ‘very strong bond’ between Dorothy and his father and that, whilst they might ‘discuss’, they never argued.10 Figure 1.1 Jorian Jenks with his mother Dorothy and sister Barbara, early 1900s Source: Oliver Jenks

Figure 1.2 Edward Jenks, ca.1930 Source: Oliver Jenks 8 Roots

Throughout his life Jorian Jenks was afflicted with asthma, bringing with it periods of debilitating illness and a number of crises. Although some aetiologies of asthma trace its origin to a ‘stifling’ relationship between mother and child, it is difficult to see how cause can be distinguished from effect.11 Certainly the course of Jenks’ adult life suggests that, whilst Dorothy was always a fortress for him, he was able to live independently and form new relationships. Dorothy – known as ‘Dolly’ in the family – had a determination that matched her husband’s but also possessed a warmth that witnesses recalled long afterwards.12 Edward’s character was more complex. One colleague described him as having a ‘rather formal and precise manner […] not a man to adapt his views or the expression of them to the weaknesses and ignorance of other people’;13 another believed him ‘too much a disciplinarian’ to be ‘really popular’ with either colleagues or his students, and knew him to have a sharp temper.14 Nonetheless, Robert Chorley considered that, although ‘his rather dry demeanour sometimes alienated people’, he was, however, ‘a man of real charm, and passed that great test of character, popu- larity and friendliness with little children’.15 Certainly Edward Jenks took his responsibilities as a parent seriously, but formal correctness could not fill an emotional gap. The middle-class Victorian family encouraged distance between fathers and their children and this separation was reinforced by Edward’s earnest pursuit of his career and his dedication to study.16 It seems also that his own insecurities predisposed him to only be at ease with those who offered no challenge to his self-esteem, such as young children and compliant subordinates. In later years it would be shown that the son’s scope for self-development could only go so far before the father’s brittle composure would crack. Jenks senior’s life was also punctuated by debilitating periods of mental illness, characterised by lassitude, low spirits and anxiety; towards the end of his life he wrote of ‘my old trouble, neurasthenia’.17 This was yet another probable source of distance between father and son. Some years later a sensitive observer disclosed Edward’s reputation for being a ‘bit morose’. Turning to family relationships she wrote that ‘Jorian and he are not much to each other, I think, no temperamental sympathy’, ‘but Jorian and his mother are devoted to each other’.18 In the poem ‘Upon an Anniversary’, which Jorian Jenks probably composed in his middle twenties, he wrote: ‘Were all Earth’s airy titles mine/ I’d cherish one:/ Mine by inheritance divine, / My Mother’s Son’.19

Oxford The Jenks’ home was not far from the centre of Oxford, a substantial mid-Victorian house at the southern end of Banbury Road. Nearby was St Giles Church, where Jorian, with a sprinkling of water and the sign of the cross, formally received his name.20 The 1901 census shows that the family had three servants, including Lucy Bean, Jorian’s nurse. In 1903, he was joined by a sister, Barbara Frances.21 Roots 9

During the years that the family were there, Oxford was at the height of its patrician powers, dominated by the University, whose scholars came almost entirely from the nation’s upper classes. Whilst all this was distant from a child’s world, it nonetheless was a constituent of the atmosphere of Jenks’ life, as were the hierar- chies of the house, of husband and wife, mistress and servants. Vistas of the great world beyond the garden gate were also open to sight and imagination. Before the Great War, Oxford was not yet ‘modern’ in the fullest sense; the old, landed aris- tocratic society, generally waning before the waxing might of industry, commerce and imperialism, was still in power in Oxford. It was also a city that was still visibly connected with the countryside: cattle were brought each Wednesday for sale at the Oxpens and No. 7 Banbury Road was only a short walk to the green acres of the University Parks. Whereas the effect on Jenks of all of this can only be guessed at, there was one early experience, the memory of which remained with him until the end of his life. Aged around 4 or 5 years he enjoyed ‘the thrill of being allowed to stand beside the driver of a horse tram’.22 Although whereabouts were not mentioned, Oxford, which retained its horse trams up to 1914, was the likely location and there were tramlines outside the Jenks’ home.23 As Jenks later put it, he became a boy ‘addicted to horses’,24 but they were horses at work, rather than merely the sleek, majestic beasts looked up to by a child. This was a love of the horse not primarily as a representative of Nature in an aesthetic sense but of its vital, creative power.

Farningham In July 1903, Edward Jenks left Balliol to become Principal and Director of Legal Studies to the Law Society in London.25 Although travel from Oxford to London by train was straightforward, around 1905 the family moved from Oxford to the Kent village of Farningham.26 Although only seventeen miles from London, and with two railway stations close by, the village, with the River Darent running through its centre, was situated in rolling countryside, a mixture of crops, pasture and woodland. The Jenks took Hillside House, one of the largest residences in the village.27 Besides its proximity to the capital, there may have been other factors behind the choice of a rural location. Edward – who included ‘tramping’ among his recreations – loved the coun- tryside28 and the matter of Jorian’s health may have also been decisive. There was a long-standing association of asthma with ‘bad air’, with a corresponding belief that the ‘purer’ air of the countryside or coast mitigated its symptoms.29 With hindsight, it is possible to see Farningham as a village already committed to its transformation from a largely self-sufficient community based around agriculture, towards the late modern iteration as a dormitory and recreation ground for affluent middle-class people. Indeed the presence of the Jenks was a token of this revolution. Despite these great changes and the agricultural depression, which, 10 Roots beginning in the 1870s, would not truly abate until the 1940s, in 1905 Farningham retained much of its traditional form. Farming remained its primary economic activity and this was probably the milieu in which Jorian Jenks found his life’s purpose: he recalled how he was ‘[f]irst shown how to milk a cow and sit on a horse at the age of six’ and that he ‘never wanted to be anything but a farmer.’30 In this way, Jenks’ desire to become a farmer was not born of mature and rational calculation, but rather, early in his life, a deep, emotional connection was made to that primitive part of the psyche, often called the ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. Whereas many partisans for the soil were seized by romantic or aesthetic attachments to rural tradition or natural beauty, Jenks’ primary attachment was to husbandry. That which first resonated in him was the work of man with the horse. He later wrote about what he called the ‘land hunger’ of the young in a way which suggested the visceral, preconscious childhood dawning of his own:

these young people have no false ideas about eternal sunshine or easy money. They know that farm life is mostly mud, muck and sweat, with long hours and few holidays. But in them is the primitive urge to go out into the field and take part in the creative work of Nature, to till the good earth, to tame powerful horses, to coax the best out of plants and animals, to live to the full a natural life. It is land-hunger, strong, deep and eternal.31

Essential to the human species is to be homo faber, man the maker, possessing a natural drive to create so strong that the alienating qualities of wage labour and the industrial mode of production have not extinguished it. As an adult, Jenks came to attach an almost sacramental value to work and especially physical work. Later in his life, when discussing the ultimate purpose of life in a metaphysical sense, he held that work was integral to humanity’s harmonious working out of God’s purpose on earth and added that, even when it was repetitive, exacting or apparently ‘mundane’, he almost always experienced it as good: ‘I may be unusually fortunate, but I’ve seldom failed to find some interest in the work I’ve had to do.’32 Work ‘whether it is spreading dung or spreading ideas’ was equally worthy, as an ‘interest and […] a medium for self-expression’.33 His own physical delicacy, the asthma which was always threatening to incapacitate him, may have reinforced this and the cultural connotations of the disease – the affliction of the coddled, too sensitive child, becoming an effete and ineffective adult – may have also given him something to react against.

Holt’s Particulars of Jenks’ earliest schooling have not survived; he did not attend either of the Church of England elementary schools in Farningham and may have been educated at home.34 Certainly a love of reading was first fostered in him there, when, at around age eight, Rudyard Kipling’s anthropomorphic short story about Roots 11 polo horses, ‘The Maltese Cat’ was read to him. Being ‘addicted to horses’ he sought out Kipling’s other equine stories before exploring more widely. From then on, Kipling was for Jenks ‘the prince of story-tellers’, who remained with him all his life, ‘round the world and up and down it’. Whilst describing himself as a reader for ‘relaxation rather than a student of literature’, he admitted that at times he ‘aspired to imitate’ his hero.35 The year in which Jenks began at his preparatory school is not known – the usual age was around 8 years. The 1911 census, conducted the day before his twelfth birthday, found him as a boarder at Northdown Hill Preparatory School, in Margate. This small school, in Cliftonville, was commonly known as ‘Holt’s School’ after its owner and headmaster, James Deacon Holt.36 Jenks’ half brother, Alan, had been sent to the Oxford Preparatory School (now called the Dragon School), which had a distinguished reputation.37 In comparison Holt’s was obscure, its choice almost certainly prompted by the health-giving properties attributed to its coastal location.38 Many of Holt’s boarders were there for this reason and Edward Jenks spent the early part of his own schooling in Margate, and may have suffered from asthma himself, the condition tending to run in families.39 The school is indisputably a mill from which children emerge much changed, and not always to their good – Jenks’ few references to his education evince no strong emotions. He was at Holt’s until 1913, when, aged fourteen, he moved north of London to Haileybury, one of the leading English public schools.40

Notes 1 StP: Jenks to D. Stuckey, 24 February 1943. 2 BL, Add. 63278, Society of Authors Archive, Vol. LXXIII, Fol. 97: Completed application form, undated; April 1944 (see Fol. 99: Jenks to U. Kay, 8 April 1944). 3 Interview with Oliver Jenks, 25 May 2009. 4 A Dictionary of First Names (Oxford: OUP, 2006), p. 108. 5 Ian Anstruther, Oscar Browning: A Biography (London: John Murray, 1983); KCAC, OB/1/876/C: passim. 6 Lord Chorley [Robert S.T. Chorley], ‘Edward Jenks, 1861–1939’, Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law, Vol. 1 (new series), No. 2 (1947), pp. 114–117. 7 KCAC, OB/1/876/C: E. Jenks to O. Browning, 13 November 1889; 30 August 1890; 23 February 1891; 15 November 1891. 8 See Jose Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997; f.p. 1977), pp. 72, 124–125. 9 William B. Forwood, Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant, 1840 –1910 (Liverpool: Henry Young and Sons, 1911), pp. 66–67. 10 O. Jenks to P. Coupland, 9 June 2009. 11 Mark Jackson, Asthma: The Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2009), pp. 2, 140–146. 12 O. Jenks to Coupland, 30 August 2009. 13 In Lee, Edward Jenks, p. 11. 14 Chorley, ‘Edward Jenks, 1861–1939’, pp. 114–117. 15 R.S.T.C. [Robert S.T. Chorley], ‘Edward Jenks’, The Modern Law Review, Vol. 3, No. 3 ( January 1940), p. 2. 16 KCAC, OB/1/876/C: E. Jenks to O. Browning, 31 August 1912. 17 BLPES, Personal File of E. Jenks: E. Jenks to J. Mair, 8 August 1936. 12 Roots

18 NLA, MS6608: fragment (undated, ca. early 1931). 19 Jorian E.F. Jenks, Poems (London: Arden Press, undated; ca. 1925), p. 7. 20 Anne Dutton to Coupland, 14 July 2011. 21 O. Jenks to Coupland, 11 February 2010. 22 FFA, RdlM 306: Review Copies and Publicity Questionnaire, Jorian E.F. Jenks, The Stuff Man’s Made Of (undated, ca. 1958). 23 Harold W. Hart, ‘The Horse-Trams of Oxford, 1881–1914’ Oxoniensia, Vol. 37 (1972), pp. 221–225. 24 ‘A Scarcity of Women’, The Kipling Journal, No. 143 (September 1962). 25 The Times, 23 July 1903, p. 3; Lee, Edward Jenks, p. 15. 26 Unless otherwise indicated, the source for this section is Hilary Harding, Farningham and its Mill: A History of a Village in Kent (Farningham: Wadard Books, 2005). 27 Kelly’s Directory for Kent (1905) and Electoral Register’s for Dartford Electoral District for 1907 and 1909 (information from Anne Entwistle, Centre for Kentish Studies, 24 June 2011). 28 HUA: E. Jenks to P. Hedworth Foulkes, 1 October 1919; ‘Jenks, Edward’, Who Was Who, 1929–1940 (London: A. and C. Black, 1941), p. 711; BLPES, Personal File of E. Jenks: E. Jenks to W. Beveridge, 27 August 1926; KCAC, OB/1/876/C: E. Jenks to O. Browning, 30 August 1890. 29 Jackson, Asthma, pp. 70, 79, 106. 30 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 31 Action, 26 February 1938. 32 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/5: Jenks to R. Saunders, 25 December 1948. 33 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/7: Jenks to Saunders, 6 January 1949. 34 Centre for Kentish Studies, C/ES 145/4/1: Register for Farningham Church of England School, Infants, for the years 1876–1907; C/ES 145/3/2: Register for Farningham Church of England School, Mixed, 1906–1916 (Entwistle to Coupland, 20 August 2011). 35 Jenks, ‘A Scarcity of Women’. 36 Unless stated otherwise, this section is based on: Charles Robb, Northdown Hill and Clare House: The Story of Two Preparatory Schools (No Place: Northdown Hill School Society, 1983), especially pp. 1–6, 41–51. 37 The Times, 8 August 1917, p. 4. 38 Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009; Jackson, Asthma, p. 119; H. Evelyn Crook, Margate as a Health Resort (Margate: Harman Keble, 1895). 39 Lee, Edward Jenks, p. 3; Jackson, Asthma, pp. 94, 113, 172. 40 HAU: Student File for J.E.F. Jenks: Form for Application for Admission, 6 May 1916. 2 Shoots

Besides their ostensible curricula, schools like Haileybury educated a boy in how to be, how to be an English man of the better classes at the zenith of imperial power. In September 1913, when Jenks started at his new school, this order of things seemed eternal; with hindsight, 1913 became a date lost in the shadows cast by the years that came after.

Haileybury Eighteen miles from London, Haileybury College was originally the East India College, which had provided civil servants for the East India Company.1 The Master in 1913 was Frederic Blagden Malim; he was the first Master not to be ordained, although the Anglican influence remained strong. As Jenks later admitted, his career at the school was ‘undistinguished’.2 The Haileyburian included not a single mention of him in any context, scholarly or sporting – team games deemed as being as much a means to develop ‘character’ in the boys as the chapel. Similarly the practice of ‘fagging’, whereby a junior boy acted as a servant to a senior, was thought to accustom one party to give orders and the other to obey them. Jenks, in a rare reference to his school days, stated that he had fagged for John Smeal and, given that the latter remained to him ‘a very good chap indeed’, the practice was not necessarily as degrading as we might imagine.3 Both boys belonged to Colvin house, named after John Russell Colvin, killed in the Indian Mutiny in 1857.4 As with public schools generally, Haileybury was biased towards the classics, but, following criticism in a school inspection, Malim had instituted reforms, generally raising the esteem in which science was held. Jenks benefited from this, taking chemistry, together with physics, and ‘mechanics’ to a lesser degree.5 14 Shoots

He may have opted for chemistry because of its applications in farming, for since the nineteenth century the ‘scientific’ approach to fertility increasingly supplemented traditional husbandry. In Britain, this development was symbolised by the Rothamsted Experimental Station – not far away from the College – established by John Bennet Lawes and Joseph Gilbert in 1843. In the same year Lawes had patented superphosphate, one of the artificial ‘fertilizers’ which would become seemingly indispensable to agriculture, hence Rothamsted might be regarded as the birthplace of ‘modern’ agriculture in Britain. Although Jenks later wrote of his ‘sad lack of a classical education’, Harper Adams’ College, which he later attended, favoured the sciences.6

1914 Haileybury was close to London, where the Jenks family had moved in autumn 1908, taking a house at 46 Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington.7 Jorian probably spent at least some of the summer of 1914 there, but, wherever he was, he would not have escaped the tension mounting between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28th June and the British declaration of war on 4th of August. His father supported the war strongly, arguing that ‘we have a good cause and are out to destroy an accursed and brutal system of military despotism’ and glibly predicted ‘we shall beat Germany and beat her thoroughly’.8 By the time Jenks returned to Haileybury for the new term, thirty of the boys had already volunteered. As has often been related, the casualty rate for junior officers on the western front was very high and the British Army looked to the public schools as its chief source of young men with the aptitude for leadership. Another public school boy, Gerard Wallop, who, as Lord Portsmouth, would be a colleague of Jenks in the 1940s, wrote of how at this time ‘all our school life was patterned to war’.9 In addition to the ever-lengthening list of names on Haileybury’s roll of honour, Jenks had a close family connection to the war. His half-brother Alan had served with the Territorial Force from 1908 and, in January 1914, he joined the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps, being commissioned at the outbreak of war.10 He was in the Royal Engineers, being qualified as a civil engineer, having gained a first through the University of London.11 Posted to the front in June 1915, a month after his arrival in Flanders, Alan Jenks was awarded the Military Cross.12 In contrast, Jorian spent his summer in 1915 cramming for the University of London matriculation examination in September. Edward Jenks recalled ‘coaching him in Latin […] for the exam, and finding him extremely apt at the subject’.13 His son achieved a respectable place in the second division for English, mathematics, Latin, chemistry and French.14 Jenks went back to Haileybury at the beginning of the new school year, but only stayed until the end of the Lent term, leaving in April 1916.15 Shoots 15

Harper Adams Whilst Jenks’ school days brought him no colours or prizes he had the precious gift of purpose: he knew what he wanted to be. The next step to that end was Harper Adams Agricultural College, in Shropshire. Although his father had ‘no sympathy’ with his son’s desire to farm, Jorian stuck obstinately to his purpose and Edward was prepared to support him in doing so.16 That Jenks, after passing matriculation in September 1915, first returned to Haileybury and then applied in May 1916 to join Harper Adams may suggest a change of plans. Possibly it was expected that he would, like Alan Jenks, go to university; Edward later stated that Jorian ‘missed’ doing so at the ‘usual time’, ‘owing to the circumstances of the war’.17 Certainly the war disrupted all universities – Balliol College, where Edward was once a tutor, was now full of men doing their officer training. When Jorian Jenks started at Harper Adams, at the beginning of the summer term in 1916, it was still a relatively young institution, founded in 1901.18 Among the new places for training in agriculture, Harper’s was only one that had its own farm, which may have been why Jenks opted to go there. It was also a fact that most agricultural colleges had suspended operations for the duration of the war.19 The college photo for the 1916–17 session shows thirty-eight students – including Jenks – and nine members of staff, and suggests the intimacy of a small community. However, that year, alongside those attending the college for 2 years to study for the Certificate or Diploma in Agriculture, there were 131 students – nearly all women – on short courses. The bulk of the student accommodation was in dormitories, but there were also study bedrooms available at an additional cost.20 Edward Jenks knew the value of privacy for a student and opted to pay the extra.21 On applying to the College, Jorian Jenks gave his ‘probable future Occupation’ as ‘Farming in Canada’, a choice which will be discussed below. To prepare for this he opted for the two-year course leading to the College Certificate.22 This included some science but had a bias towards practice, and was the preferred choice for the sons of better-off farmers.23 Jenks also indicated that he expected his studies to be interrupted by military service: he would spend two terms there, before beginning his army training, and only return in January 1919.24

Officer material Edward Jenks later wrote that his son had registered under the ‘Derby scheme’.25 Towards the end of 1915, because recruitment was failing to keep pace with the need for manpower, a scheme of voluntary registration was initiated by the Director- General of Recruiting, Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby. However, it is unlikely that Jenks joined the army this way as he was under age and still at school whilst it was in operation. Conscription under the Military Service Act replaced the scheme 16 Shoots from February 1916 but this was not Jenks’ route into the army either, instead he volunteered for officer training before his eighteenth birthday and, in 1917, was in an Officer Cadet Battalion.26 Given his father’s profession and connections, it was natural that Jenks applied to the Inns of Court; some element of rivalry with his elder half-brother may have been involved too. Hedworth Foulkes, Principal of Harper’s, wrote him a laudatory reference, which stated:

It is with very much pleasure that I support his application for admission into the Inns of Court Officers Training Corps, as I consider that there are few young men as fitted for undertaking the duties and responsibilities of commanding men as Mr Jenks. […] His high sense of duty combined with an enthusiasm for hard work will carry him to the top of whatever branch of the service he enters. He possesses ability of no mean order and his public school and College training have fitted him to deal with men and holding a post of command.27

However, although Alan Jenks was a decorated graduate of the Corps, and his father a major figure in the legal profession from which it, as a territorial unit, was raised, Jenks was rejected. Overall, the Inns of Court only took about one in ten applicants. Its commanding officer, Major James Hay, indicated that letters of recommendation carried little weight in comparison with the impression that the applicant made before the board and that, in deciding on whether a candidate had leadership qualities, sporting prowess was very important.28 Here Jenks’ ‘undistinguished’ career at Haileybury counted against him. Instead Jenks was accepted into one of the other Officer Cadet Battalions. By the summer of 1917 there were twenty-three such units, to feed the war machine’s voracious appetite for infantry subalterns. At this time in the war only candidates with previous military experience were admissible for officer training; this included time in a school Junior Training Corps, and Jenks was a member at Haileybury.29 For unknown reasons he did not successfully complete officer training. The most likely reason is that a crisis in his health caused him to be discharged as medically unfit. This fits best with what is known about his health and his service in the remainder of the war. If he had failed, he would have been transferred from his OCB to another unit as a private soldier, and this does not seem to have occurred. There was ample opportunity for a severe asthmatic attack or to catch pneumonia, as military training brings with it extreme exertion, cold and damp conditions, and psychological stress. Although he may have already been discharged by this date, the Jenks family also received a terrible blow at the end of July 1917. On the afternoon of the 31st, Alan Jenks – now an acting Major – was killed by a German sniper whilst on reconnaissance in no man’s land.30 Shoots 17

Painswick It is possible that elements of Jenks’ experience later went into his children’s book, The Valley in the Woods, ‘Rupert’, at the outbreak of another war, is eager to ‘volun- teer for something’. His father responded:

That’s the right spirit, my boy, but not much to the point at the moment. Now we’ve got conscription it’s not a question of men so much as the staff to train ’em. You’re not trained, you’re a good bit under age, and we’re not sure if you’d pass the doctor. On the other hand, agriculture’s going to be right in the front line.

Jenks may have later wondered if his enthusiasm might have been better directed in 1917.31 Following his discharge it is likely that he went to Gloucestershire. In 1917, the Jenks family were once more residing in the country, at Painswick, near Stroud.32 The earliest mention of their presence there was in a document dated 25th June 1917, but the precise date for their relocation is not known.33 Up to 29th March 1917, Dorothy worked as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse at the Red Cross war hospital in Balham.34 German bombing of the capital may have prompted this significant dislocation.35 In October 1915, bombs exploded close to Edward’s chambers.36 Evacuation, whilst not undertaken on the scale seen in the next war, was common among those who were able to. Alternatively, Painswick may have been chosen as a site for Jorian Jenks’ convalescence. The June 1917 date mentioned above fits with later evidence of Jenks’ health, which shows that he often had an acute period of asthma around that time, when grass pollen was airborne; a witness of its consequences wrote: ‘it is a horrible thing and puts him out of action while it lasts. He was indoors most of the time [… and] gets winded with the least exertion.’37 Charles Hyett, who had built Painswick House in the 1730s, moved there in the hope of easing his asthma and the village was the location of Painswick Sanatorium, which promised ‘brac- ing hill air’.38 Whatever the circumstances that brought the Jenks to Painswick, Edward Jenks intended to make it his permanent address, buying Croft House.39 At the time the house was sublet, requiring the Jenks to rent a temporary home, The Poultry Court.40 In the event, after Edward and Dorothy were finally able to move into Croft House, or ‘High Croft’ as they called it, they were there for only a year, until autumn 1919.41 Edward had thought to retire to Painswick, hoping that his employers would ‘release him’, such that he ‘might have shaken off the dust of London for ever’.42 The reasons he gave for leaving the village were seemingly muddled: in one letter he attributed it to the Law Society having remained ‘obdurate’; in another to his ill health.43 Elsewhere he described himself as having ‘a mind distorted by illness 18 Shoots out of all semblance of sociability’, making him ‘shrink even from the kindest of friends’.44 Edward Jenks also alluded to the period in the Cotswolds as ‘our time of trial’ and Painswick as a place ‘where we have received so much kindness, which has helped us to bear certain heavy trials’.45 This certainly referred to Alan Jenks’ death, which occurred after they had moved there, and possibly to his younger son’s problems and his own poor health. Dorothy Jenks’ Red Cross service card states that on 1917 she was ‘Seconded for Work on Land’.46 Her secondment was more likely to be a consequence than the cause of the move to Painswick. There is a hint that, following his discharge from the army, Jorian Jenks also joined the national effort to boost food production, launched in 1917, as a response to the successful German submarine campaign against British shipping. He later referred to the ‘hastily-improvised Food Campaign of 1917, with its plucky but inadequate army of women, pensioners, lads and discharged soldiers’.47 If Jenks took part in the food campaign following his discharge, it was probably among the landscape that he later described in his poetry. In ‘Fiddler Blind’, composed during the 1920s in a spirit of homesickness when he was far from England, Jenks wrote of his longing to ‘walk once more through the rain/On the clean sweet limestone ranges/In the Cotswold countryside again’. Although not naming Painswick, a reference to ‘empty mills’ within the text is suggestive of the village, which was once a centre for woollen textiles.48

225578 It is likely that, at some point in 1918, Jenks was called before a medical board and classified as ‘grade II’, meaning that, although unsuitable for frontline service, he was judged fit for garrison service abroad or at home.49 This classification is likely because, despite the acute need for men in Flanders in 1918, he served at home.50 Within the Royal Artillery, to which he was posted, it was normal practice for grade II men to be allocated to home defence units and other formations in the United Kingdom.51 Although Edward Jenks later stated that his son was too young for service abroad, this was not so as he attained the minimum age of nineteen in April 1918.52 Thus, in the final year of the war he was Gunner Jenks, service number 225578, a soldier in the 1205th Battery, Royal Field Artillery.53 The version of his service remembered by his family was that ‘he couldn’t sign on originally because of his health and only in the last months of the war he was accepted and went to an anti-aircraft battery on the east coast’.54 Although this supports the argument made for why Jenks did not complete his officer training, he did not serve with an anti- aircraft battery. The 1205th was an independent battery based at Colchester and armed with 18 pounder ‘QF’ field guns, AA artillery being the remit of the Royal Garrison Artillery.55 Shoots 19

In Jenks’ own terse summary of his military career he stated: ‘Served in 1914/18 war as gunner and driver R.F.A; learnt how to handle horses.’56 Memories of this aspect of his service remained vivid afterwards:

No one who has ever heard them can quite forget the hoarse, commanding notes of the trumpet, or the music of hooves, wheels and harness at the trot. Nor can any mechanized unit hope to inherit the indefinable air of gallantry and adventure which pervades a well-horsed squadron or battery.57

After the flood Although the Great War is always imagined in terms of mud and blood, as Jenks’ life shows, there were actually many different experiences of war. His references to his war were rare, what his hero Kipling called the ‘public school mask’ remained in place. The one place where he did express himself was in his poetry, written in the first half of the 1920s. In ‘The Battery’ and ‘Demobilised’ Jenks used his experiences as a gunner and as an ex-soldier and went on to make general critical points about the nature of war and society’s treatment of the men who fight in it. To achieve this he moved beyond his personal experience to embrace the viewpoint of the men of the ‘trenchocracy’: the warlike glory of the galloping battery becomes ‘Red wreckage ’neath the sunset’s kiss’; the soldier who once ‘slept ’neath the wings of Death’ in peacetime is compelled to ‘haggle and barter, and pinch and save’. In contrast, ‘The Best of Them’ was more personal. In this piece, Jenks discharged some of his survivor’s guilt and indebtedness to those who, like Alan Jenks, had entered into ‘the mud and slime, stench and confusion’ and perished there: ‘Hold we in trust and ward, in our clumsy fingers,/The fruits of their sacrifice’.58 The effects of Alan’s death on Jorian Jenks and on his relationship with his parents can only be imagined, but no doubt, in the English way, the pressures stayed mainly below the surface: as we have seen, Edward Jenks would only allude to the ‘trials’ that he and Dorothy had undergone. If, at the time of Alan’s death, Edward described him as ‘[t]he best of sons’, what then was the measure of the son who had striven, failed and survived?59

Notes 1 Unless otherwise indicated the reference for Haileybury College here is Imogen Thomas, Haileybury, 1806 –1987 (Haileybury: The Haileybury Society, 1987). 2 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 3 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to R. Gardiner, 30 December 1944. 4 T. Parker to Coupland, 10 December 2011. 5 HAU: Student File: Form for Application for Admission, 6 May 1916. 6 Action, 8 May 1937, p. 4. 7 BLPES, WALLAS 1/38: E. Jenks to G. Wallas, 16 November 1908. 20 Shoots

8 The Observer, 20 September 1914, p. 14. 9 Lord Portsmouth, A Knot of Roots: An Autobiography (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1965), p. 25. 10 F.H.L. Errington, Inns of Court Officer Training Corps During the Great War (London: Printing-Craft, undated), p. 217; TNA: PRO, WO339-13599: Attestation Form (E501) of Jenks, Alan; Lee, Edward Jenks, p. 25; The Times, 8 August 1917, p. 4. 11 The Times, 2 August 1911, p. 13; 8 August 1917, p. 4. 12 The Times, 8 August 1917, p. 4. 13 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to Lindsay, 2 July 1928. 14 Ibid.; University of London, matriculation certificate, 28 September 1915. 15 HAU: Student File: Haileybury College, certificate, 5 May 1916. 16 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 18 July 1926. 17 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to Lindsay, 2 July 1928. 18 Heather Williams, The Lure of the Land: A Century of Education at Harper Adams (2000), pp. 64–66. 19 Ibid., p. 69. 20 Ibid., pp. 55–56. 21 HAUCA, Student File: Application for Admission, 6 May 1916; E. Jenks to P. Hedworth Foulkes, 1 October 1919. 22 Williams, The Lure of the Land, p. 33; HAUCA, Student File: Application for Admission, 6 May 1916. 23 Williams, The Lure of the Land, pp. 31, 33. 24 HAUCA, Student File: Application for Admission, 6 May 1916. 25 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to C. Orwin, 14 June 1928. 26 ‘Addition to Service List’, The Haileyburian, Vol. XXI, No. 467 (18 October 1917), p. 616. 27 HAU: Student File. 28 C. Messenger, Call to Arms: The British Army, 1914–18 (London: Cassell, 2005), p. 306; J.A. H[ay], ‘The Depot’, pp. 40–43 in Errington, Inns of Court Officer Training Corps, p. 41. 29 T. Parker to Coupland, 10 December 2011. 30 The Times, 8 August 1917, p. 4. 31 ‘Roger Noakes’ (pseud for Jorian Jenks), The Valley in the Woods (London: Dent, 1945), p. 214. 32 F.A. Hyett, Glimpses of the History of Painswick (Gloucester: New British Publishing, 1957; first published 1928), pp. 67–80. 33 Glos. RO, D1405/5/15: unsigned note to Messrs. Davis and Champion Auctioneers, 25 June 1917. 34 British Red Cross Archives, Joint War Committee Collection: VAD Record Card for D.M. Jenks. 35 N.W. Routledge, Anti-Aircraft Artillery. 1914 –55 (London: Brassey’s, 1994), pp. 25–26. 36 J.A. H[ay], ‘The Depot’, pp. 40–43 in Errington, Inns of Court Officer Training Corps, p. 43. 37 NLA, MS6608: M. Fullerton to Family, 13 June 1933. 38 Hyett, Glimpses of the History of Painswick, pp. 102–104; The British Medical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2922 (30 December 1916), p. 31. 39 Glos. RO, D1405/5/15: Jones and Blakeway, Solicitors to Davis and Champion, 23 June 1917; unsigned note to Messrs. Davis and Champion, Auctioneers, 25 June 1917; annotated auctioneers particulars for the sale of Croft House etc., on 26 June 1917. 40 BL and 56732 Society of Authors Archive, Vol. CLVIII, Fol. 31 (17 July 1917), E. Jenks to G. Herbert Thring; Fol 44: 24 August 1918, E. Jenks to Thring. 41 HAU: Student File: E. Jenks to P. Hedworth Foulkes, 1 October 1919. 42 Glos. RO, D6/F167/12: E. Jenks to F.A. Hyett, 27 May 1920. 43 HAU: Student File: E. Jenks to P. Hedworth Foulkes, 1 October 1919. 44 Glos. RO, D6/F167/13/2: E. Jenks to Hyett, 8 September 1919. 45 Ibid., Glos. RO, D6/F167/12: E. Jenks to Hyett, 27 May 1920. Shoots 21

46 British Red Cross Archives, Joint War Committee collection: VAD Record Card for D.M. Jenks. 47 Action, 9 April 1936, p. 11. 48 Poems, p. 11. 49 J.M. Winter, ‘Military Fitness and Civilian Health in Britain during the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 1980), pp. 211–244: 220–221, 228–231. 50 Charles Messenger, Call-to Arms: The British Army, 1914 –1918 (London: Cassell, 2005), p. 279. 51 Martin Farndale, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery: The Forgotten Fronts and the Home Base 1914 –1918 (London: Royal Artillery Institution, 1988), p. 373. 52 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to C. Orwin, 14 June 1928. 53 Soil Association Library, inscription on front end paper of Jenks’ copy of A.D. Hall, The Soil (London: John Murray, 1915). 54 Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 55 Routledge, Anti-Aircraft Artillery, pp. 1–22; P. Evans (Royal Artillery Museum) to Coupland, 17 and 18 May 2011. 56 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. In two official letters (see HAUCA, Student File) Jenks was described as a ‘Signaller’ rather a Gunner but this was probably an error of transcription. 57 ‘A Countryman’s Outlook – II’, FQ, Vol. 2, No. 4 (October 1936), pp. 521–529. 58 Poems, pp. 26–29. 59 The Times, 8 August 1917, p. 1. 3 Agricultural education

Although an armistice brought the war to an end on the 11th of November 1918, the khaki behemoth could not be dismantled at a stroke and even at the beginning of 1920 some thousands of conscripts remained in service.1 In contrast, Jenks was among the first to be ‘demobbed’ and was able to start the new term at Harper Adams in January 1919, beginning the remaining year and a half of the two-year course he had interrupted in 1917.2 Agricultural workers were marked by the authorities for early demobilisation, so Jenks’ plans to train in that field may explain his early release.3 Similarly, at the end of the war, there were already thousands of soldiers working on the land and urgent orders for men to be released for the harvest were also issued, a policy to which Jenks later referred.4

Harper Adams As part of demobilisation, the government provided for the re-training of ex- soldiers. The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries offered a limited number of schol- arships and grants, and the Officers Training Branch of the Board’s Intelligence Division operated a scheme from January 1919.5 Despite not having served as an officer, Jenks was eligible for the awards, which were also open to ‘men of like standing’.6 He applied for a scholarship, of which only fifty were available. Com- petition was ‘very strong’ and his application, although supported by a glowing reference from Harper’s, failed. However, in September 1919, he was awarded an ‘interrupted training grant’, worth a useful £120 per year.7 Although Jenks’ time at Harper Adams was successful and happy, the same could not be said about the College generally. Many of the new students of the 1919–1920 and 1920–1921 sessions at Harper Adams were former soldiers and some of these Agricultural education 23 men, released from the disciplinary regime of the army, tended to buck at the stric- tures of a staff accustomed to boys fresh from public school.8 The College was also weak financially, a constant problem during its early life. State support for agricultural education was niggardly and the College was dependent on the income from student fees, but constantly struggled to raise the money to invest in new facilities. The budget for staff salaries was squeezed as a consequence, making it harder to recruit and retain a capable staff. Reduced student numbers during 1914–1918 also caused income to fall. Immediately after the war the situation reached crisis point: student numbers soared and there were insufficient accommodation and teaching facilities; the building programme to address this was also beset by problems.9 Although the problems of the College would not reach their denouement until a year or so after, when Hedworth Foulkes was forced to resign, the tensions were already showing.10 Jenks was adversely affected by the acute pressure on space in the college, his father wrote to the Principal to seek better accommodation for his son and clearly all was not well, in September 1919, when it was not possible to say on what date the new term would begin.11 As Jenks later wrote, students at Harper Adams gained their knowledge from ‘field and book’: days were divided between the college farm and lectures in subjects including veterinary science, horticulture and botany.12 Reflecting the direction of agriculture at that time, there was a chemistry laboratory and the use of artificial manures was taught. As already noted, Jenks had studied chemistry at Haileybury and in his coming career this part of his training would come to the fore.13 On the practical side, students experienced every type of farm work.14 The Certificate Course that Jenks took required that a practical exam also be passed, which included harnessing a horse, making a horseshoe, and ploughing.15 He preferred the practical side of his studies, commenting: ‘My training was quite orthodox, although, looking back, I seem to have spent more time with carters and stockmen than even agricultural college students are normally encouraged to do.’16 Besides its carthorses and shires, from about 1916 onwards the college acquired a range of modern machinery, with wartime labour shortages causing agricultural mechanisation to be accelerated.17 When, years later, Jenks admitted to having only ‘occasionally driven a tractor’, Harper Adams was the most likely location for this.18 College was not just work; Jenks recalled the singing of ‘[o]ld boisterous songs’ and ‘happy idle hours’ enjoyed over the hill in Newport. Elkes’s was a favourite destination – a Newport bakers and confectioners, with dining room attached.19 He was awarded the Harper Adams College Certificate in Agriculture in 1919 and, the following year, the National Diploma in Agriculture.20 Jenks recalled later being examined by Sir John M’Fadyean – ‘the great M’Fadyean’ – Principal of the Royal Veterinary College, before whom he ‘once stuttered as a mere N.D.A. candidate’.21 His achievement was by no means typical, as only five students from the College were awarded the NDA in 1920, indicative of poor conditions at the 24 Agricultural education

College.22 Jenks crowned his achievements by also earning Harper Adam’s own Diploma, which normally required 3 years’ training.23 As he did not come from a farming background, Jenks’ success was indicative of both hard work and a passionate attachment to his purpose. Foulkes noted that he was a great reader and his copy of Sir Daniel Hall’s classic work The Soil was marked with his army service number.24 From the College’s point of view, Jenks was a highly successful student. Foulkes wrote: ‘[h]e is an excellent type of practical student and possesses considerable ability. He is very keen and earnest over his work and is a man who thinks out problems.’25 Edward Jenks believed that he would

feel deeply the wrench of parting from a life in which he has taken such an active part. Especially during the last year and a half, and will always look back with affection and gratitude upon his career at the college.26

In retrospect, Jenks was ambivalent about the value of college education. Theoretical knowledge and classroom instruction came a poor second to hands-on experience, especially if gained by an apprenticeship to a successful farmer, which he judged ‘the best form of training’. The money spent on college fees might better be kept as farming capital. However, he added a rider that probably referred to his own experience, that in ‘the case of a boy […] under eighteen years of age’ a course at an agricultural college would allow him to ‘meet farmers’ sons of his own age and pick up a lot of useful knowledge while he is rounding-off his education’.27

Farm bailiff When Jenks left Harper Adams in July 1920 the outlook for British agriculture still seemed bright.28 Before the war, farming had been in the doldrums for decades, but wartime scarcity brought a rapid improvement of its fortunes. Although costs had risen steeply, farming was a popular choice for many former soldiers. In consequence, prices for land and stock reached unprecedentedly high levels. Although these were boom conditions and therefore necessarily transient, even a cautious man could afford a degree of confidence: during the war the government had taken steps to manage the nation’s agriculture, including providing price guaran- tees for wheat and oats through the Corn Production Act (1917). These principles were carried into peacetime via the Agriculture Bill and made law in December 1920. This guaranteed a minimum price for the same crops and stipulated that the guarantee could be terminated only after 4 years’ notice, the span of a conventional rotation.29 During the summer of 1920, Jenks secured his first job as a working manager or bailiff on Yattendon Court estate, in Berkshire, which comprised ‘two or three mainly arable farms’, totalling around 900 acres.30 The estate belonged to the Waterhouse family, purchased in 1878 by Alfred Waterhouse, the scion of a wealthy Quaker Agricultural education 25 family and an acclaimed architect.31 When Jenks arrived in 1920, the estate was the home of his eldest son, Paul, also a successful architect.32 Family connections may have eased the way to Jenks’ first appointment: like the Forwoods, the Waterhouse family were prominent Liverpool merchants and Edward Jenks also had some associations with the family, having been called to the bar by the Middle Temple only a year after Paul Waterhouse’s brother Samuel.33 It was Edward’s practice to write a personal letter alluding to such connections when it might help his son’s cause. During his service Jenks lived alone at Yattendon Farm, built in 1702 by the then lord of the manor, Sir Edward Norris, on the edge of what was once a moat around the Manor House.34 The land around was steeped in English history and had been farmed long before the village’s first appearance in the Domesday Book.35

Agricultural economics When Jenks started his new job in September 1920, his father commented that his son would ‘gain some insight into the practical difficulties of farming on business lines’.36 Whatever he learned of farm management, he was to receive a sharp lesson about the overarching realities of agricultural economics. The post-war boom was not only brief but followed by a deep slump in prices, the collapse beginning in the spring of 1921 and continuing until the end of 1922, by which time prices had returned to pre-war levels. In May 1921, the Minister of Agriculture, Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, warned that the price guarantee promised by the Agriculture Act (1920) would need to be implemented that autumn. In June, Lloyd George’s cabinet decided that the country could not afford to honour its promise and repealed the guarantee and the four-year term of notice. Part of the reasoning behind the original Act was that farmers, obedient to the national call, had ploughed up pasture to plant corn during the war and were thus liable to the greater costs entailed in converting to arable agriculture. It was estimated that fulfilling the guarantee would have cost the country as much as £30 million per annum; by dishonour ing it, this cost was instead borne by the farming community. The government also scrapped the machinery for the central management of agriculture, powers to enforce minimum standards of husbandry and to regulate agricultural wages. Henceforth, the government was content to leave farming to its fate in the free market.37 The events of 1921 were commonly known as the ‘great betrayal’ and left behind a heritage of distrust among farmers, towards the state.38 Jenks lost his Yattendon job and attributed it to the slump and repeal of the Corn Production Act.39 He later wrote:

Farmers, many of whom had been compelled or encouraged to buy their land at high prices, were hit hard by the collapse of values; they, like their fellows overseas, to say nothing of millions of ex-Servicemen, had abruptly been abandoned by the very system they had rallied to defend.40 26 Agricultural education

The episode was one of several major lessons in agricultural economics, and their social consequences, that he would learn from personal experience.

Notes 1 Stephen Richards Graubard, ‘Military Demobilization in Great Britain Following the First World War’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (1947), pp. 297–311. 2 HAUCA, Student File: Index card. 3 HC Deb, Vol. 110 (14 November 1918), col. 2899–900; TNA: PRO, CAB/24/70: Report of the Food Production Department for the week ending 26 November, 27 November 1918. 4 TNA: PRO, CAB/24/70: Report of the Food Production Department for the week ending 19 November, 20 November 1918; Action, 15 February 1940, p. 6. 5 TNA: PRO, CAB 24/70: Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, Report of the week ended 19 November 1918; CAB/24/72: Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, Report of the week ended 31 December 1918. 6 TNA: PRO, CAB 24/69: ‘Demobilisation and Reconstruction Schemes: Interim Report by the Demobilisation Committee of the War Cabinet’, 14 November 1918. 7 HAUCA, Student File: Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (Officer’s Training Branch) to Hedworth Foulkes, 12 May 1919; Hedworth Foulkes to T.J. Young, 14 May 1919; E. Jenks to P. Hedworth Foulkes, 1 October 1919; C.R. Williams to J.E.F. Jenks, 21 May 1920. 8 Williams, The Lure of the Land¸ p. 34. 9 Ibid., pp. 81, 83. 10 Ibid., pp. 93–95. 11 HAUCA, Student File: E. Jenks to P. Hedworth Foulkes, 1 October 1919. 12 Poems, p. 30; Williams, The Lure of the Land¸ pp. 29–30. 13 Jorian Jenks, The Stuff Man’s Made Of: The Positive Approach to Health Through Nutrition (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), p. 9. 14 Williams, The Lure of the Land, pp. 58–60. 15 Ibid., p. 33. 16 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 9. 17 Williams, The Lure of the Land¸ pp. 60, 77–78. 18 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 7 January 1945. 19 Poems, p. 30. 20 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to C. Orwin, 14 June 1928; A. Harris to P. Wallis, 28 October 1988; HAUC, Student File: Index card for Jorian E.F. Jenks. 21 ‘Autobiography Without Frills’, ME, Vol. 7, No. 1 ( January 1953), p. 75. 22 Williams, The Lure of the Land, pp. 83, 90. 23 HAUCA, Student File: E. Jenks to H. Foulkes, 1 May 1920; Index card for J.E.F. Jenks. 24 HAUCA, Student File: Foulkes to J. Young (Board of Agriculture and Fisheries – Officer’s Training Branch), 14 May 1919; Soil Association Library: A.D. Hall, The Soil: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of the Growth of Crops (London: John Murray, 1915). 25 HAUCA, Student File: Foulkes to Young, 14 May 1919. 26 HAUCA, Student File: E. Jenks to Foulkes, 17 September 1920; E. Jenks to Foulkes, 1 May 1920. 27 ‘Young Men for Young Countries: An Overseas Farm as a Career and a Home’, The Empire Review, Vol. 52 ( July 1930), pp. 38–43. 28 HAUCA, Student File: Index card for Jorian E.F. Jenks. 29 Edith H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume VIII, 1914–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 118–122; 132–137. Agricultural education 27

30 HAUCA, Student File: E. Jenks to Foulkes, 17 September 1920; FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire; A. Harris to P. Wallis, 28 October 1988; O. Jenks to Coupland, 9 June 2009. 31 Colin Cunningham, ‘Waterhouse, Alfred (1830–1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/36758, viewed 6 January 2011). 32 P.S. Worthington, ‘Waterhouse, Paul (1861–1924)’, rev. Catherine Gordon, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36759, viewed 6 January 2011). 33 William B. Forwood, Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant, 1840–1910 (Liverpool: Henry Young and Sons, 1911), p. 46; The Solicitor’s Journal, Vol. 30 (1886), p. 203. 34 Dick Greenaway to Coupland, 16 January 2011; Berkshire Record Office, C/CL/ R1/30/1: Electoral Register for 1921; Alison Day to Coupland, 13 January 2011. 35 Dick Greenaway, Yattendon for Visitors (2004), pp. 8–12, 15–17. 36 HAUCA, Student File: E. Jenks to Foulkes, 17 September 1920. 37 Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, pp. 139–141. 38 Edith H. Whetham, ‘The Agriculture Act, 1920 and its Repeal – the “Great Betrayal”’, The Agricultural History Review, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1974), pp. 36–49. 39 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 40 ‘British Agriculture Between the Wars’, The Scythe, unnumbered ( June 1945), pp. 19–24. 4 Wander-Lust

Having lost his job at Yattendon, Jenks’ prospects for finding a similar opening in the midst of a slump were poor. A lack of capital ruled out having his own farm so, like many young men at that time, he decided to try his luck farming in the Empire.1 It was a period of his life which he would style as one of ‘Wander-Lust’ in a poem of that name, wherein he wrote of ‘[…] a restless soul that frets/To range,–and wand’ring,–finds a restless peace’.2 Jenks was taking a path that was not unprecedented in his family: Edward Jenks’ ambition had taken him to Australia, Dorothy’s brother Reginald emigrated to the USA, and later Jenks’ sister Barbara would spend a few years in Canada. The Jenks were a family in tune with the new, more interconnected world that was emerging courtesy of the steamship, the telegraph and free trade. This was the system that made the fortune of the Forwood family and one that Edward Jenks believed in unreservedly. It seems likely that, at the outset, Jorian Jenks would have shared his father’s opinion, but step-by-step, through experience and reflection, he would develop an antithesis to the dominant wisdom of the age. Personal experience had a major role in Jenks’ developing thought. As he later stated, his point of view was ‘derived primarily from personal observation’.3 Jenks prized the insights so gained above lessons in the classroom or the printed word. He was also, he admitted, ‘a slow thinker’, who needed ‘time in constructing and expressing ideas’.4 His maturing thought was consequently a distillate of long meditations on the forces that were larger than himself in the world around him: his brief career on the Yattendon estate made personal the transformation of British agriculture from wartime prosperity and necessity to peacetime insolvency and apparent irrelevance; the years which followed showed him the same economic forces, but working on a global scale. Wander-Lust 29

‘Immigrant’ On the 16th March 1922 Jenks sailed from Southampton on the Waimana, whose final destination was Wellington, New Zealand.5 He described it as an ‘emigrant boat’ and nearly everyone on board was hoping to make a new life, as either ‘nominated’ passengers sponsored by a New Zealand resident or, like Jenks, as former servicemen, covered by the Overseas Settlement Scheme.6 Under the terms of this scheme, which would close at the end of 1921, a third- class passage was granted to any ex-serviceman or woman to a dominion of their choice, subject to them having assured employment there, or being accepted by a dominion as an approved settler.7 It was hoped that assisted migration would strengthen the empire with new blood and reduce the danger of post-war unemployment in Britain, with its concomitant political risks, which, in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, haunted the imagination of the political elite. If, as we have seen from as early as May 1916, it had been Jenks’ intention to farm in Canada, why then did he go instead to New Zealand? A clue may be found in a letter published under the pen name ‘Immigrant’ in the King Country Chronicle in April 1923, on the subject of ‘New Zealand land values’.8 Given that its author was both highly literate and a recent arrival to the country, but more familiar with the history and present conditions of settlement in Canada, it was almost certainly by Jenks. ‘Immigrant’ wrote of ‘such restrictions [which] were placed upon immigration in Canada that it fell away to negligible numbers’.9 Canada at the beginning of the 1920s seemingly offered a ready opportunity to a keen but impecunious young man wanting to farm. Since the nineteenth century, the Canadian government had promoted immigration to develop the country’s agricultural sector.10 This continued post-war, with returning servicemen offered advantageous terms to buy government land. In May 1919, the Canadian Soldier Settlement Act was extended to British ex-servicemen. However, if Jenks did apply under the scheme there were several reasons why he might have been unsuccessful. If he had applied after he left Harper Adams in July 1920, he would have needed to demonstrate that he had a deposit of £200 and cash sufficient to cover 20 per cent of the costs of land and other essentials and, as his father confessed, ‘want of capital’ was the main thing stopping him from having his own farm.11 Applicants also had to be fit enough to endure the rigours of Canadian farming, an area where he was inevitably suspect. The Canadian representatives were ordered to enforce the regulations rigorously, and that year only sixty-nine British ex-servicemen were given assistance. If Jenks applied after leaving Yattendon, he would have found the bar lifted even higher, for, in January 1921, the worsening economic situation caused the Canadians to withdraw their London representatives and to stipulate that applicants would henceforth be screened in the Dominion itself. This was tantamount to closing the door to British hopefuls. 30 Wander-Lust

‘Immigrant’ described longingly the ‘rich, black soil, many feet in depth, and ready for the plough’ available in Canada for a mere ‘£2 per acre’ and asked, rhe- torically, where anything to compare might be found in New Zealand. The answer was nowhere, with high land values being one reason why it did not have a similar settlement scheme. Nonetheless, Prime Minister W.F. Massey’s Reform Party government was eager to accept British migrants who could buy their own farm or were trained for farm work. Besides desiring to increase the size of the country’s population, this was a response to the drift from the countryside into the towns and a declining birth rate. The country had also lost a greater proportion of its young men in the war than any other allied country. In October 1921, the New Zealand High Commission in London was instructed to recruit ‘one hundred unmarried ploughmen, dairy workers and experienced general farm labourers’; without doubt a man like Jenks would have been readily accepted.12 After more than a month’s voyage the Waimana arrived at Wellington on 25th April 1922. It was noted that the migrants aboard included ‘representatives of nearly every branch of industry’ and that many had their sponsors waiting for them.13 Although a specific promise of work or sponsorship was generally necessary under the scheme it was not mandatory. Jenks later wrote that he ‘landed with £50 and plenty of optimism’.14 Walking down the gangplank with just the money in his pocket and confidence in his own abilities, suggests a resilient spirit. The New Zealand press was full of stories of bankruptcy and farmers burdened with colossal debts. Two other young Englishmen, who had worked their passage as stewards on the Waimana, tramped the countryside looking for work but ended up in the magistrates’ court, charged with vagrancy.15 Jenks later indicated that during his first year he had worked on ‘farms’ in the plural, which suggests that he was briefly employed elsewhere, in the weeks between landing in Wellington and arriving in the Waitomo area, part of the region known as the King Country, where he would find his first solid job in New Zealand.

The King Country The King Country had been the final bastion of the Maori kings following the wars of the 1860s, and it was one of the last areas to be opened up to Europeans, in the 1880s. Full-scale settlement was only viable with the arrival of the railway, which reached Te Kuiti, the regional centre, in 1901. Before the Great War, roads were few and farms were still being hacked and burned out of the bush and forest. As Spencer Westmacott, who settled in 1910, wrote, ‘here all was forming’.16 Ten or so years later the infrastructure had somewhat improved and the virgin lands had been largely converted into farmland, but it was still a society of settlers. Despite the vast distance that separated it from the old country, New Zealand was very much a British community in its mores, practices and institutions. This Wander-Lust 31 was certainly true of Te Kuiti: the union jack flew, the toast raised at the ANZAC reunion was ‘The British Empire’ and R&P Cotter, family butchers, advertised ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’.17 The country’s political identity and foreign policy still closely overlapped with that of the mother country and although trade with the United States of America was of growing importance, New Zealand’s vital economic relationship was with Britain. The area epitomised the country’s dependence on agriculture; as the local paper stated: ‘The prosperity of Te Kuiti depends on the countryside surrounding it, and the interests of both are closely interwoven.’18 New Zealand’s culture valued the self-made man and Jenks found work with such an individual, Maurice V. Reeve-Smith, who although not long in the country himself and an agricultural novice, was establishing himself as one of the leading farmers of the area. How Jenks came to work for him is unknown but it may have been through an advert placed in the local paper, the King Country Chronicle, which was published in Te Kuiti. In mid-May 1922, under ‘Situations Wanted’, it was stated: ‘Position Working Manager, sheep and cattle farm, used to all implements, fencings, stock, etc., excellent references.’19 The description fitted Jenks closely and appeared not long after his arrival.

Aria Before the war, Reeve-Smith had been a schoolmaster. Whilst serving as the captain of a labour company in France, he had been gassed and was sent to the War Hospital at Duston, Northampton. There he met Kathleen, the daughter of the Hospital’s Superintendent, whom he married.20 Despite being recent settlers, the Reeve- Smiths quickly became pillars of the local community.21 Their farm was located in the Aria district, about eighteen miles south west of Te Kuiti. It was still a raw place: when the Reeve-Smiths arrived in 1920 poor roads and bad weather meant that it was six weeks before their furniture could be brought from the railhead in town.22 As with elsewhere in King Country, dairy and sheep farming dominated the area. Dairying had been growing in importance since the development of refrigerated shipping from the 1880s and the Aria Co- Operative Dairy Company, in which Reeve-Smith served as secretary, dominated the community.23 Reeve-Smith’s farm was close to the Co-Operative’s factory, which processed the milk of his pedigree Jersey herd.24 Jenks described the farm as being of: ‘about a thousand acres, mostly grass, of course, but pretty well farmed for that part of the world, and one of the best herds of Jerseys in N.Z., besides sheep.’25 Jenks’ employer, being relatively new to farming would have benefited from Jenks’ training. In economic hard-times New Zealand responded to falling prices by producing greater quantities of its staple exports. In these circumstances, although few farmers could afford to employ a skilled man like Jenks, for those who could, it was money well spent. 32 Wander-Lust

He described the typical ‘daily routine’ on such a farm:

Milking starts at 5 am and is over by 7.30 am, […]. The cream is then taken out to the roadside stand, the machines are washed and the pigs and calves are fed. After breakfast the farmer catches the team, usually three half-draft horses, carts out feed for the cows and is kept busy with cultivation work of some kind until 3 pm, with a brief halt for lunch. Afternoon tea at 3.30 pm is followed by milking again at 4 pm, and the day ends with tea at 7 pm.

In the typical farming year the pastures had to be ‘top-dressed’ with fertilisers between April and August, autumn and winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Arable cultivation was between September and November – spring – and haymaking was done in the summer months of December and January. The work was, Jenks wrote, ‘exacting and fairly strenuous […] but the life is healthy, and the climate renders pleasant its necessary simplicity’.26 A couple of years after his own time on Reeve-Smith’s farm, Jenks sought a suitable young man to go there as a ‘working assistant’. He described his former employers as ‘educated people’ who wanted a ‘boy of some refinement who could live practically as one of the family’ and could expect a ‘comfortable home and congenial surroundings’.27 These statements reflected his time in Aria; it was later written of Reeve-Smith that ‘his genial manner, friendly disposition, and ready sympathy in the troubles of others placed him high in the esteem of his fellows’.28 Jenks came to regard his employer, who was 12 years his senior, as his principal friend in New Zealand.29

The Department of Agriculture Whilst Jenks would remain in close contact with the King Country throughout his years in New Zealand, in 1923 a significant new opportunity presented itself. His years in the Dominion left him with no illusions about the challenges of farming overseas, which he described as ‘a grim business’, in which ‘only the resourceful optimist’ stood any chance of success.30 He instead sought a government agricultural post, a course that he had previously rejected.31 The New Zealand government established the Department of Agriculture in 1892, firstly, as a response to the growing importance of the refrigerated trade and, secondly, to translate scientific discoveries into practical advice to farmers.32 The early twenties saw a change of policy in the Department which would be crucial to Jenks’ fortunes. Its Fields Division commanded a large portion of the budget and, by 1910, had established nine experimental farms.33 However, in 1922, a report questioned the educative value of these farms and recommended that a staff of specialised advisers be appointed instead.34 This was Jenks’ opportunity and, around September 1923, he joined the Fields Division as an Assistant Instructor.35 Wander-Lust 33

As Edward Jenks wrote, his son gained his position ‘without introduction or influence, simply on his merit’; it was also true that agricultural education was in its infancy in the country and there were few qualified men to recruit as advisers.36 The head of the Fields Division was Alfred H. Cockayne. Cockayne’s training was as a botanist and, a firm believer in the value of research, he became a key figure in the ‘grasslands revolution’, which was fundamental to the success of New Zealand’s agriculture. Cockayne eschewed bureaucratic methods for select- ing his staff and directing their business, instead choosing those who he intuited shared his enthusiasm for the work and leaving them with wide scope to make their own path.37

Auckland Jenks’ first posting in September 1923 was to the Auckland province, where he took over from P. W. Smallfield.38 The city of Auckland straddles the isthmus at the top of the North Island. Political wrangling had caused the capital to be moved from there to Wellington in 1865, but Auckland remained the Dominion’s most popu- lous, fastest growing, and most economically significant city; like most boomtowns, it gained a louche reputation.39 At the Department of Agriculture’s office in the city, Jenks’ superior was Instruc- tor in Agriculture, T.H. Patterson.40 Besides Jenks, the Fields Division in Auckland had one other Assistant Instructor, C.J. Hamblyn.41 The scope of their responsibility was impossibly large: ‘lecturing, advisory and experimental work throughout Auckland province (about three times the size of Wales).’42 As Jenks explained, ‘frontier’ conditions were still common:

[g]etting from place to place in New Zealand is not always an undertaking to be lightly entered upon. It may be something of an adventure. […] country roads in many parts are still unmetalled and in a very primitive state, motor- ing in the winter months is by no means devoid of adventure.

There were, Jenks related, ‘settlers and even tiny townships beyond the reach of wheels of any sort, where saddle-hack and pack-horse are the only recognized means of land transport’.43 One responsibility closer to Auckland itself, was the Department’s experimental farm at Albany, just to the north. The farm’s purpose was to study the problem of what was known as ‘gumland’.44 These were lands once covered with forests of the kauri tree, which, when they died, left soil so denuded of fertility that only scrub and ferns could live on it. The ‘gum’ was the tree’s fossilised resin, then used in the manufacture of paint and varnishes. By the 1920s, little resin was left in the ground, which was left scarred and pitted. In his first signed article, Jenks described the operation of the Albany experimental area in 1923–1924.45 34 Wander-Lust

Despite the daunting task confronting instructors like Jenks, they were crucial to the development of New Zealand farming, providing a conduit whereby scientific knowledge became husbandry practice. The historian of the Department of Agriculture writes: ‘Instructors were at once educators, practical researchers and technical advisers and came to be held in high regard by the farmers.’46 Concern- ing Jenks’ own recollections of ‘instructing farmers in technical developments, more especially in the use of chemical fertilizers’, he allowed modestly: ‘If, as I suspect, these farmers taught me more about farming than I taught them about fertilizers, they were at any rate kind enough not to say so.’47

Return to home Whereas Jenks wrote later of how the ‘young migrant’ needed to be ‘prepared to make the new land his home; in the fullest sense of the word, to become a citizen of the country of his adoption’ he remained deeply ambivalent about his new life.48 He resigned at the end of March 1925 and sailed from Auckland on the Niagara on the 14th of April.49 No statement of his reasons for returning to England has survived, but they are not difficult to guess. His overriding ambition was to be a farmer, but lacking the one thousand pounds that he estimated to be the minimum required, and in the absence of government subsidy, this was impossible. Men of few means had occasionally attained that goal, but only ‘at the cost of many years of self-denial and almost superhuman toil’; he concluded that, in any case, ‘[t]o-day, such a course is nearly impossible’.50 His government work left him dissatisfied; he later confessed: ‘teaching farmers how to farm: that struck me as being approaching “false pretences”.’51 The yearning to return to loved ones, in particular his mother, must also have been compelling. Jenks sailed back via the Pacific and he took the opportunity to see more of the world. He arrived in Vancouver on the 1st of May and travelled by railway across the interior of the continent, where: ‘one can travel for hour after hour across the Canadian prairies and never see a tree or running water.’52 He may have wanted to see whether there was yet any future for his ambition to farm in Canada. He certainly visited one or more farms, including one near Calgary.53 He later recounted visiting farmers on the ‘northern edge of the wheat belt’ who, because of the long, harsh winters had to ‘pack a whole year’s farming into the space of a few months’.54 Financial considerations aside, Jenks’ constitution was unlikely to have withstood such rigours. When he landed in Canada, he specified the United States of America as his intermediate destination and later alluded to some experience of farming in that country, although his itinerary there is unknown.55 Although Jenks spent only about three weeks in North America, what he saw would later be an important point of reference for him. Having crossed the continent, he sailed from Quebec, on the Montroyal. Wander-Lust 35

Notes 1 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 18 July 1926. 2 Poems, p. 9. 3 ‘The Cart and the Horse’, NEW, Vol. 23, No. 16–19 (26 August 1943), pp. 137–138. 4 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 30 December 1944. 5 Passenger list of the SS Waimana, departing Southampton, 16 March 1922 (viewed at www.findmypast.com on 27 May 2009). 6 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire; Evening Post, 18 April 1922, p. 8. 7 The Times, 21 May 1919, p. 13; HC Debates, 4 August 1922, Vol. 157, cols. 1899–1900; Kent Fedorowich, ‘The assisted emigration of British ex-servicemen to the Dominions, 1914–1922’, pp. 45–71 in Stephen Constantine (ed.), Emigrants and Empire: British Settlement in the Dominions Between the Wars (Manchester: MUP, 1990). 8 KCC, 10 April 1923, p. 5. 9 Ibid. 10 John A. Schultz, ‘“Leaven for the lump”: Canada and Empire settlement, 1918–1939’, pp. 150–173 in Stephen Constantine (ed.), Emigrants and Empire: British Settlement in the Dominions Between the Wars (Manchester: MUP, 1990); Kent Fedorowich, ‘The assisted emigration of British ex-servicemen to the Dominions, 1914–1922’, pp. 45–71 in ibid.; K. Fedorowich, Unfit for Heroes: Reconstruction and Soldier Settlement in the Empire Between the Wars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 70–104. 11 HAU: E. Jenks to The Principal, 19 February 1927. 12 Stephen Constantine, ‘Immigration and the making of New Zealand’, pp. 96–149, in Constantine (ed.), Emigrants and Empire, p. 137. 13 The Evening Post, 18 April 1922, p. 8; 22 April 1922, p. 5; 26 April 1922, p. 9. 14 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 15 KCC, 23 May 1922, p. 5. 16 Spencer Westmacott, The After-Breakfast Cigar: Selected Memoirs of a King Country Settler (Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1977), p. 124. 17 KCC, 27 April 1922, p. 4; 28 December 1922, p. 1; 19 October 1926, p. 1. 18 KCC, 4 September 1923, p. 4. 19 KCC, 16, 18, 20 May 1922, p. 2. 20 TNA: PRO, WO374/56743: untitled and unsigned note from 9th Battalion, Hereford Regiment, 12 February 1912; Arrival Report, 30 September 1918; reference from Waikato Times, 6 August 1987 in M. La Rooij to Coupland, 12 December 2014. 21 Warriner Family Papers: Obituary of Mr M.V. Reeve-Smith (undated cutting, ca. February 1954); KCC, 22 June 1922, p. 5; 8 March 1923, p. 5. 22 Raema Warriner to Coupland, 5 and 8 November 2010. 23 KCC, 6 June 1922, p. 4; 13 September 1923, p. 4; 3 May 1923, p. 5; 9 November 1926, p. 5. 24 KCC, 3 May 1923, p. 5. 25 HAU, Student File: Jenks to C. Crowther, 5 September 1925. 26 ‘Dairy Farming in New Zealand: IV – A Typical Farm’, The Field, 30 July 1925, p. 184. 27 HAU, Student File: Jenks to C. Crowther, 5 September 1925. 28 Warriner to Coupland, 9 April 2010; Obituary of M.V. Reeve-Smith. 29 Jenks gave Reeve-Smith’s name and address as his point of contact in New Zealand when sailing back to England in 1925 (Seattle Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882–1957: List or Manifest of Alien Passengers sailing for the United States, RMS Niagara, 14 April 1925). 30 ‘The Road to Open Spaces’, The Empire Review, Vol. XLIX, No. 339, (April 1929), pp. 216–224, 217. 31 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 18 July 1926. 36 Wander-Lust

32 Tony Nightingale, White Collars and Gumboots: A History of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1892–1992 (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1992). 33 Ibid., pp. 38–39. 34 Ibid., p. 71. 35 Date of commencement based on a recorded seven months of continuous service at 31 March 1924 (The New Zealand Gazette, 14 October 1924, p. 2415). 36 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to C. Orwin, 14 June 1928; Nightingale, White Collars and Gumboots, pp. 71, 134–142. 37 P.W. Smallfield, The Grasslands Revolution in New Zealand (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), p. 9. 38 New Zealand Herald, 10 September 1923, p. 8. 39 Gordon McLaughlan, The Life and Times of Auckland: The Colourful Story of a City (North Shore, NZ: Penguin Books, 2008), p. 296. 40 Smallfield,The Grasslands Revolution, p. 9. 41 The New Zealand Gazette, 14 October 1924, p. 2415. 42 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 43 ‘Travel in New Zealand: Off the Beaten Track in the North Island’, English Review, Vol. 42 (May 1926), pp. 619–621. 44 David Verran, ‘The Albany Experimental Farm’, Albany & East Coast Bays News, 9 March 2011, p. 19. 45 ‘Albany Experimental Area: Operations in 1923–24’, NZJA, Vol. 24 (November 1924), pp. 325–327. 46 Nightingale, White Collars and Gumboots, p. 74. 47 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 9. 48 ‘Young Men for Young Countries: An Overseas Farm as a Career and a Home’, The Empire Review, Vol. 52 ( July 1930), pp. 38–43, 38. 49 The New Zealand Gazette (digital version); Seattle Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882–1957: List or Manifest of Alien Passengers sailing for the United States, RMS Niagara, 14 April 1925. 50 Jenks, ‘Young Men for Young Countries’, p. 39. 51 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/24: Jenks to Saunders, 17 March 1950. 52 Library and Archives Canada: RG76 – Immigration, series C-1-I, 1925, Vol. 2, p. 189; ‘J.J. Zeal’ ( Jorian Jenks), ‘Soil Erosion in New Zealand and Elsewhere’, NEW, Vol. 21, No. 10 (25 June 1942), pp. 84–85. 53 Ibid. 54 ‘The Countryman’s Outlook’, BUQ, Vol. 1, No. 3 ( July–September 1937), pp. 84–95. 55 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 18 July 1926; CUL, GBR/0012/ MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 November 1943. 5 London Interlude

When the Montroyal arrived into Liverpool on the 29th May 1925, on the ship’s passenger list Jenks’ ‘country of intended permanent residence’ was given as ‘England’, but an additional annotation of the letters ‘NZ’ may indicate equivocation on his part. His occupation was given as ‘farmer’, which certainly signified desire rather than fact.1 He travelled on to his parents’ home at 19 Campden Hill Road, Kensington.2 Although Edward Jenks had concluded his service with the Law Society the previous year, he had not escaped the capital’s grip, having been headhunted for the Chair of English Law at the London School of Economics, by its Director, his old student Sir William Beveridge.3

Looking for a living Jorian Jenks’ critical task was to find employment, and he applied for a junior post related to his developing interest in economics, in the Ministry of Agriculture, but was disappointed. He also investigated possibilities at the Colonial Office, fruitlessly. Lacking a degree, Jenks believed that his qualifications were not the strongest and, rightly or wrongly, he doubted the value of those he had. The problems of Harper Adams had reached crisis point in 1922 and, following the ‘reconstruction’ under Dr Charles Crowther, he believed that graduates of the old regime were ‘at a dis- count’. He also regretted his lack of ‘friends of any standing in agricultural circles’ who might open a door for him.4

Author Jenks also busied himself with his writing. As mentioned above, he was first published in The New Zealand Journal of Agriculture in 1924, as part of his duties for the 38 London interlude

Department of Agriculture.5 He had his own literary ambitions, and in London submitted other work for publication. The Field – a long-established weekly, catering for the better-off country set – carried four articles about farming in New Zealand.6 This work demonstrated the economy, restraint and clarity that would characterise Jenks’ later agricultural journalism, but he was experimenting with what kind of writer he could be. The English Review published an evocative piece of travel writing.7 This was also the time when he collected his poetry in a slim volume entitled simply Poems. Besides his later adoption of the name of the Roman farmer–poet, ‘Virgilius’ as a nom de plume and a single poem published around the outbreak of the 1939–1945 war, there are no other references to poetry in Jenks’ published work or letters.8 Although Poems was undated, it was printed in London and its contents pin it to this time with some certainty. The volume was intended for private circulation.9 Its contents suggest a young man seeking to find himself on the page, the poetic form giving licence to reveal feelings and preoccupations whose expression was otherwise proscribed by the culture of masculinity or the utilitarian speech code of the professional agriculturalist. This verse shows how Jenks’ sensibilities exceeded those of a purely practical and scientific man. Fields were not merely soil capital, but also the landscape of life – individual, social and cultural – with multitudinous symbolic and emotional connotations. The poems about his mother and war service have been mentioned above, but it was the land, husbandry and its crops and animals to which he devoted most space. For example, ploughing with horses, a skill in which he found much pleasure, was the subject of ‘Plough Songs’, ‘Spring Ploughing’ and ‘A Plough Song’. These were celebrations of rural tradition, evocations of the beauty of the landscape and hymns in praise of the virtue of work: ‘The red soil, the damp soil,/Ah, that is balm for me./The clean toil, the sweet toil,/Ah, that is rest for me.’10 This writing came from a side of Jenks’ character with which his mother was familiar, when, a couple of years on, she fondly described him as having been ‘rather a dreamy absent minded beggar’; she considered that New Zealand had changed him in this regard, writing that his

self assurance is a new trait in his character […] and it shows what a great awakening he has had. This country does not allow of dreaming and Jorian has woken up a man with all a man’s clear vision and earnestness of purpose.11

Dorothy Jenks was undoubtedly correct that her son had been forced to ‘grow up’, but the imaginative, ‘dreaming’ part of him would never be entirely absent. Jenks’ Poems was also intended to be a love token offered to the ‘Marjorie mine’ of the penultimate piece in the volume.12 Chance would soon bring a new love into his life. London interlude 39

Disappointment, and a plan Having been unsuccessful in his search for a position, Jenks decided to return to New Zealand. The Department of Agriculture there thought enough of him to have kept his job open, so at least he was sure of a living. As he remarked a few months later:

The irony of the situation is that while I have to a large extent inherited my father’s brains, and have a very thorough knowledge of English agriculture, the only place where I seem to have any market-value is New Zealand.

Overall, he came to regard this time spent back home as ‘disappointing in every way’ and admitted to have indulged in some unspecified excesses, a rare lapse for a man who left few traces of anything other than strict personal propriety:

I fear I made rather a mess of things when I was Home last year. A young man with a little money is apt to break loose a bit when he is free from an existence that has been distinctly a dreary one.

Despite these regrets he did not depart without a larger plan, although it was not a strong one, of saving the capital from his government salary, sufficient to eventually return to England and farm.13

Sophie Jenks sailed from London on New Year’s Day, 1926, aboard the RMS Cathay.14 Among his fellow second-class passengers was a young Australian woman, Sophie Isabel Chester, on her way to Melbourne in the company of her mother Lydia, the two women having spent six months in Britain touring and staying with a relative, Mary Fullerton. Sophie was twenty-one, slim and vivacious, eager for male attention. In a letter to her maiden aunt in London, she recorded that she was occupying her time on board with ‘sports, dancing etc.’.15 She was the daughter of a farmer, the late Henry Chester, whose farm ‘Chesterfield’ was near the Glenmaggie town- ship, in the northern part of Gippsland, Victoria. On a long voyage there was ample opportunity for a spark of attraction to be struck and fanned into a flame; family tradition holds that by the time the Cathay reached Australia, Sophie and Jenks were ‘practically engaged’.16 The ship finally arrived at Melbourne, the Chesters’ port of disembarkation, on the morning of Monday, 8th of February. Jenks had originally planned to get another ship to Auckland, on the 11th. Instead, he stayed for another month in Australia, presumably with the Chesters.17 When he later stated that he was able to ‘see a little of […] Australian farming’, he was referring to this moment and at least one later visit in 1928.18 40 London interlude

When Jorian and Sophie parted, it was surely a sad moment. However, besides the enormous distance separating them, another barrier to their happiness soon descended, when Jenks found out that his parents, but most especially his father, did not share his joy. In the first few days in February 1926, Edward Jenks suffered such a breakdown that his doctor prescribed him six months’ rest. Publicly his collapse was blamed on over-work, but its likely cause was a telegram telling of his son’s romance, the father’s illness coinciding with the arrival of his son’s ship in Australia.19 Edward Jenks was a brittle man, sensitive to the smallest slight, and, as a previous episode during the Great War showed, he was also prone to depression. His son only discovered the full magnitude of the shock he had caused when a letter from his father arrived in Auckland, over two months later. He wrote towards the end of April:

As you know, my father has suffered greatly of late from nervous trouble. I have just received a letter from him that speaks volumes. I fear I have seriously worried him over an escapade of mine in Melbourne, which is now over.20

However, it seems likely that news of his father’s disapprobation had been imparted before this, perhaps by telegram, as, only two weeks after his return, Jenks sailed back to Australia, presumably to tell Sophie that he must break off the engagement.21 In response to his father’s letter, Jenks sent a cable to report what he had done, which he believed would ‘reassure’ his parent. However, time would show that, if there was a breach between Sophie and Jorian, it was a temporary one.

Notes 1 Passenger list of SS Montroyal, arriving Liverpool, 29 May 1925 (viewed at www. ancestry.com, on 29 May 2009). 2 HAUC, Student File: Jenks to Charles Crowther, 5 September 1925. 3 BLPES, Personal File of E. Jenks: E. Jenks to Beveridge, 27 and 28 October 1923; Beveridge to G. Foster, 23 November 1923; E. Jenks to Beveridge, 23 November 1923. 4 BLPES, BEVERIDGE2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 26 April 1926 and 18 July 1926; E. Jenks to Beveridge, 14 December 1926. 5 Nightingale, White Collars and Gumboots, p. 158. 6 ‘Dairy Farming in New Zealand: 1. – Puzzle: Find the Reason for Success’, The Field, 9 July 1925, p. 86; ‘Dairy Farming in New Zealand: II – Soils and Climate’, The Field, 16 July 1925, p. 127; ‘Dairy Farming in New Zealand: III – Feeding Breeding and Co-Operative Marketing’, The Field, 23 July 1925, p. 169; ‘Dairy Farming in New Zealand: IV – A Typical Farm’, The Field, 30 July 1925, p. 184. 7 Jouan [sic] E.F. Jenks, ‘Travel in New Zealand: Off the Beaten Track in the North Island’, English Review, Vol. 42 (May 1926), pp. 619–621. 8 ‘J.’, ‘Wanted – For Duration Only’, Action, 16 September 1939, p. 7. 9 The only known examples are an annotated proof copy, the possession of the Jenks family and another inscribed with his sister’s name in the Shaw Collection, of Florida State University Libraries (B. Altmann to Coupland, 9 February 2010). 10 Poems, pp. 17–18. London interlude 41

11 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: D. Jenks to Beveridge, 28 May 1927. 12 Poems, p. 6. 13 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 26 April 1926; 18 July 1926. 14 HAUC, Student File: E. Jenks to The Principal, 12 February 1927; passenger list of the SS Cathay, departing London, 1 January 1926 (viewed at www.findmypast.com, on 27 May 2009). 15 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 26 January 1926. 16 M. Wilson to Coupland, 6 July 2009. 17 Passenger list for the SS Marama, departing Sydney, 12 March 1926 (viewed at https:// familysearch.org, on 19 December 2014); The Argus, 9 February 1926, p. 17; 9 March 1926, p. 1; New Zealand Herald, 16 March 1926, p. 7. 18 ‘Jorian E.F. Jenks, B.Litt. N.D.A’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 5 (January 1959), p. 360. 19 BLPES, Personal File of E. Jenks: E. Jenks to Beveridge, 20 May 1926. 20 BLPES, BEVERIDGE2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 26 April 1926. 21 Passenger list for SS Aorangi, departing Auckland, 29 March 1926 (viewed at https:// familysearch.org, on 19 December 2014); Evening News (Sydney), 1 April 1926, p. 12. 6 Superphosphate

From the 8th April 1926 Jenks was back in his old post as Assistant Instructor in Agriculture, Auckland, with his salary increased from £300 to £335.1 Initially he returned to Auckland, taking a room at the British Isles Club, but soon transferred to Te Kuiti, the base for the remainder of his time in New Zealand.2

Te Kuiti Whereas Jenks was only transferred to Te Kuiti in June 1926, he had maintained links with the King Country ever since he left Reeve-Smith’s farm in 1923.3 He was back in Aria in October 1923, not long after he began work for the Department of Agriculture, to begin trials in top-dressing on the Department’s experimental plots.4 This was in response to lobbying by the local MP, John C. Rolleston, himself a farmer, who had requested that the Minister of Agriculture send an expert.5 In July 1924, Jenks spoke about his research at the annual general meeting of the Aria Dairy Co-Operative, appealing for greater co-operation from farmers.6 At the same meeting Reeve-Smith was elected as a director of the Co-Op – and their friendship can only have helped Jenks in his official duties. This research into top-dressing with artificial manures, which had previously been curtailed due to government financial stringency, was on land in poor condition, ‘typical of deteriorated fern-country pastures’.7 The context of the research was a shortage of economically cultivable land and the existence of substantial areas of deteriorated land on the lower slopes of the hills. Only a few decades previously, this land had been native forest and, as Jenks explained later, whilst this was a pattern ‘admirably planned by nature to ensure the stability of soil and vegetation’, it provided no grazing and so offered ‘few attractions to man’.8 Hence, this land was Superphosphate 43 turned into pasture by the process of cutting, burning and then sowing grass seed. Initially, the soil was highly productive, but the fertility endowed by the wood ash was rapidly exhausted; when fern appeared it was indicative that poor husbandry – probably overstocking – had left a soil so denuded of fertility that it could no longer sustain grass. The ‘object of the Aria experiments’, were, Jenks wrote, ‘to demonstrate not merely the suitability of this land for farming purposes […] but the various ways in which it can be cropped so as to improve the farm economy of the district’.9 Jenks alluded to the challenges he faced in the trials:

It is always difficult to conduct careful experiments on a co-operative basis, however helpful (as in this case) the co-operating farmers may be, but in the meantime the Aria experimental area is serving both as an object-lesson and an encouragement to a district that needs and appreciates both.10

Even with personal knowledge of the people and area involved, this was testing work for a young man, who maintained a quiet confidence, but was no extrovert.

The Deteriorated Lands Act Before Jenks’ transfer in 1926, Te Kuiti did not have its own Fields Division officer, and his move was part of the official response to the crisis in the country’s agriculture and economy. As already noted, fertility was vital to the productivity of New Zealand farming, but when the depression of world commodity prices in the 1920s demanded increased production to maintain incomes, the supply of virgin territory was nearly exhausted, good agricultural land was expensive and, in many places, the soil was degraded. In the King Country, Jenks came face-to-face with the coincidence of two man-made crises, one in nature, the other in the capitalist economy: ‘[T]his deterioration started to become serious just about the time of the big post-war slump from 1921 onwards, which knocked most of the settlers straight into bankruptcy.’ By 1926, of the 3,000 significant holdings in the area, one-third had been abandoned and – he estimated – 75 per cent of the remaining farmers were in fact bankrupt but hanging on because they had nowhere to go and it was not in the interest of lenders to foreclose; he recalled that ‘one could ride for miles past deserted homesteads, empty paddocks and sagging fences’.11 The solution for ‘deterioration’ was artificial manures or ‘fertilizers’, in particular ‘superphosphate’. The main constituent of superphosphate was – is – phosphatic rock, composed of fossilised bird droppings, the chief source of which for New Zealand was the pacific island of Nauru, whose reserves were finally exhausted in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Since its formation in 1907, the Fields Division had been in the vanguard of demonstrating the efficacy of superphosphate.12 Crucially, its use permitted permanent pasture, without rotations to replace 44 Superphosphate lost fertility and, in tandem with improved grass species, this was the basis of New Zealand’s ‘grasslands revolution’. During the 1920s, ‘super’ became a panacea for farming and the economy, and its gospel was preached both by the officers of the Department of Agriculture and the local press. By late 1926, Jenks could note that top dressing, which had begun there only 4 or 5 years previously, had only become ‘general’ during the course of the trials that he had been supervising. As he wrote: ‘[s]ettlers are rapidly adapting themselves to this new piece of farm routine.’13 However, in the harsh economic climate of the 1920s, capital to invest in artificial fertilizers was often beyond the grasp of hard-pressed farmers. The government’s answer was the Deteriorated Lands Act, of October 1925, which provided for rent relief and revaluations of deteriorated Crown land and for loans for fencing materials, lime and manures.14 Measures of this type had been suggested in January 1924 by Jenks’ immediate superior, Thomas Patterson.15 By April 1926, plans to implement the Act had been drawn up, including the posting of additional personnel to work under Patterson in the target areas.16 By May, the Deteriorated Lands Committee had commenced work in the King Coun- try, and at the end of that month, the Reform Party Prime Minister, Joseph Coates and the Minister of Lands, A.D. McLeod paid a visit.17 At the beginning of June, an office at the Departmental Building in Te Kuiti was requested for Jenks and he took up the post from the 16th of that month.18 His duties were described as being ‘partly to make a close study of local problems, partly as a reporting link between the settlers and the research workers’.19 The scale of the task was such that J.M. McKenzie, usually an Inspector for the Livestock Division, was also transferred to this duty. It was the beginning of a period of intense work; of long days on backblocks farms and paperwork in the departmental office until midnight.20 In view of the number of farms that had to be assessed under the Act and the colossal area of the territory, Patterson made clear that Jenks and MacKenzie could not hope to complete their duties without each having a car.21 Concerning the first of Jenks’ duties, top dressing was expensive and so for reasons of both efficiency and economy, experiments on different local soils and terrains were of great importance. He was responsible for conducting ‘carrying- capacity’ trials, to measure the effect of top dressing on the number of ewes that could be wintered on various types of land and comparative manurial trials to test the efficacy of different ratios of super and other artificial manures.22 This added up to considerable work, top-dressing being done by hand, either on foot or from horseback. Presumably the farmers provided much of the labour, but Jenks too became an adept ‘broadcaster’. As with other manual labour, he took joy from it, later commenting: ‘I’ve seldom failed to find some interest in the work I’ve had to do – even sowing artificials!’ and that ‘broadcasting seed by hand […] it’s the most perfect example I know of the interdependence of rhythm and workman- ship’.23 Jenks’ experimental work was successful and, by 1928, he was able to give Superphosphate 45 guidelines for the application of fertilizers.24 Dr E. Bruce Levy, an expert on grasses in the Department of Agriculture and with whom Jenks collaborated, considered his work ‘excellent’.25 Jenks was also charged with making assessments of eligibility under the Act. By May 1927, he could report that ‘steady progress’ was being made, with hundreds of cases investigated and that ‘in the vast majority of instances the settlers are well satisfied that they have been given all possible assistance and encouragement’; ‘every case’, it was reported, ‘has been investigated in a sympathetic and practical way’. He described the role he played in relation to the farmer as giving ‘practical advice and helpful supervision’, to men who, although familiar with their own land, might ‘lack the facilities for gaining the most recent and reliable information’. The sensitivity that Jenks exercised when working with such men, who often had decades of farming experience behind them, was indicated in comments that it was ‘encouraging to find that the agricultural officer is regarded not as an overseer, but as a consultant on matters of vital importance to the settler’s welfare’.26 At the time he wrote, ‘I have given advice to hundreds of farmers involving expenditure of very considerable sums, and I have never had that advice questioned.’27 Years later, with the wisdom that comes with years, he returned to this time, recalling

with particular gratitude the unfailing hospitality of struggling settlers in the “deteriorated” hill country of New Zealand and the patience with which they listened to the callow young Englishman sent to instruct them how to cope with their almost insuperable problems.28

Underlining the pivotal role of the Deteriorated Lands Act and fertilisers in the restoration work, Jenks stated that the ‘greater part’ of the money made available to the settlers was ‘being invested in fertilisers’.29 Locally, the response to the Act was an ambivalent one, with disquiet at the King Country being labelled as an area for special treatment.30 Nonetheless, the King Country Chronicle deemed that the Act had been beneficial, and believed that the moment would be remembered as ‘the time when the tide of fern was stemmed and the King Country gained fresh courage, and with it renewed prosperity’.31 That winter, an ‘unprecedented amount’ of superphosphate was used and the press announced that the ‘King Country never looked better than at the present time and this state of things has been brought about by top-dressing’.32 That Jenks, despite his short and broken previous service, was transferred to Te Kuiti and rapidly promoted, moving from Assistant to Instructor in Agriculture from the 3rd September 1926, shows how he gained the confidence of his superiors.33 His work in the King Country was not merely in conformity with official policy but backed by his personal conviction. Even after his resignation from the Department in 1925, Jenks was an evangelist for the use of artificial fertilizers, writing approvingly in The Field of ‘thrifty farmers’ whose lands: ‘consume an almost 46 Superphosphate incredible amount of phosphates and yield in return a still more striking amount of butter-fat.’34 Jenks was not only convinced of the economic benefits of artificials but their importance in preventing deterioration of the land, arguing that if they had been used a decade earlier ‘there would be very much less deterioration today’.35 However, he also saw land so damaged as to be beyond such a solution. Regarding the economic and thus social consequences of this, he later observed that ‘a man may own thousands of acres of fern or bare rock and still be a pauper’.36

Agricultural Instructor Besides Jenks’ responsibilities under the Deteriorated Lands Act, he had the usual duties of an Agricultural Instructor to fulfil, travelling from settlement to settlement and farm to farm. For example, at the ‘Farmers’ Day’, held at Aria in March 1927, he was on hand to explain his work on the experimental area.37 It was also Jenks who pushed for Te Kuiti to be included in the series of ‘farm schools’ organised across the country.38 During the week of the school in June 1927, he organised visits to the experimental plots and spoke at the Municipal Hall on top dressing. His lecture demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the science involved and its practical applications. A point that would occur again and again in his writing was scepticism concerning laboratory work, which could not replicate all the variables present in farming: ‘practical experience and field trials were the best guides.’ Also

Figure 6.1 Jenks (fourth from the left) outside the Te Kuiti Club, 1927 Source: Te Kuiti and District Historical Society Inc. Superphosphate 47 prominent was the economic dimension and he made clear to his farmer audience which manure would ‘pay’ on a given soil.39 Jenks’ work also brought him further opportunities for agricultural journalism, with the King Country Chronicle publishing several articles.40

Homemaking Following his transfer to Te Kuiti, Jenks either took lodgings in the town or shared the Departmental residence with his colleague McKenzie.41 In December 1926, he joined the Te Kuiti Club, whose president was J.C. Rolleston MP.42 Providing newspapers and comfortable rooms, it could also offer members a proper drink. The temperance movement was strong in New Zealand and the King Country was a ‘dry area’ where public sale of alcohol was forbidden. The only known photograph of Jenks in New Zealand was taken outside the Club in 1927, showing him on horseback, out for a ride with friends. As already alluded to, Edward Jenks’ opposition to his son’s engagement to Sophie Chester did not fatally damage that relationship and, by the end of 1926, events suggest that he had accepted the match. Sophie, this time travelling alone, departed Melbourne for New Zealand, arrived a few days before Christmas, and spent most of three weeks with Jorian.43 Their engagement placed new responsibilities on him and it was during the visit he bought a plot of land, on which, presumably, to build their matrimonial home. He chose a site near Auckland, on the Titirangi estate, a settlement near to the small town of New Lynn – now a suburb of Auckland.44 The area was beautiful and fashionable so, at £240, the land was by no means cheap and time would show that he had bought dear.45 It may have been Jenks’ engagement to marry that prompted Dorothy Jenks to make the long journey from England to visit her son in early 1927.46 She broke her journey in Australia and although there is no mention of such a visit, she would have had ample time to meet her prospective daughter-in-law.47 If Dorothy did meet Sophie, it seems likely that the visit was a success, as neither mother’s nor son’s letters home convey the tiniest hint of discord, with Jenks describing it as ‘a great thing for both of us’.48 Dorothy stayed at Te Kuiti for around two and a half months, departing for home on the 15th July.49

Notes 1 HAUC, Student File: E. Jenks to The Principal, 12 February 1927; The New Zealand Gazette, 14 October 1926, p. 2932; 6 October 1927, p. 3176. 2 BLPES, BEVERIDGE2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 26 April 1926. 3 The New Zealand Gazette, 29 July 1926, p. 2376. 4 KCC, 6 October 1923, p. 3; Archives NZ, AAFZ, W5704, 412 Box 426, Ag. 55/7/4 Part 1: cutting from New Zealand Herald, 15 January 1924. 5 KCC, 27 March 1923, p. 4; 2 August 1923, p. 5. 48 Superphosphate

6 Te Kuiti Historical Society: Records of the Aria Dairy Co-operative: Minute Book, Minutes for the Annual General Meeting, 26 July 1924, p. 178. 7 ‘Field Experimental Work in the King-Country: Operations at Aria’, NZJA, Vol. 30 (March 1925), pp. 191–195. 8 ‘The Prodigal’s Return’, ME: Introduction to the Soil Association (1946), pp. 25–28. 9 ‘Field Experimental Work in the King-Country’, pp. 191–195. 10 Ibid. 11 ‘The Prodigal’s Return’, pp. 25–28; ‘Soil Erosion in New Zealand and Elsewhere’, pp. 84–85. 12 Nightingale, White Collars and Gumboots, p. 64. 13 ‘Top Dressing of King-Country Hill Lands: A survey of Its Various Aspects’, NZJA, Vol. 33 (November 1926) pp. 330–333. 14 Smallfield,The Grasslands Revolution, pp. 35–36. 15 Archives NZ, AAFZ, W5704, 412 Box 426, Ag. 55/7/4 Part 1: T. Patterson to Director of the Fields Division [A. Cockayne], 17 January 1924. 16 Archives NZ, ABWN W5021 6095 Box 754, 31/30: C. Reakes, ‘Memorandum for the Hon Minister of Agriculture: Assistance to Occupiers of “Deteriorated Farms”’. 17 KCC, 20 May 1926, p. 5; 27 May 1926, p. 5; 29 May 1926, p. 5. 18 Information from Archives NZ, AAQB W3950, box 291, 24/1127, cited in Glen Humphries to Coupland, 19 December 2010; The New Zealand Gazette, 29 July 1926, p. 2376. 19 KCC, 12 August 1926, p. 5. 20 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: D. Jenks to Beveridge, 28 May 1927. 21 Archives NZ, ABWN W5021 6095 Box 754, 31/30: T. Patterson to The Director, Fields Division [A. Cockayne], 28 October 1926. 22 ‘Top-Dressing of Hill-Country Pastures. Trials on King-Country Farms’, NZJA, Vol. 36, No. 6 ( June 1928), pp. 371–375. 23 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/5: Jenks to Saunders, 25 December 1948; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 30 August 1944. 24 ‘Top-Dressing of Hill-Country Pastures’, p. 375. 25 Archives NZ, AAFZ, W5704, 412 Box 426, Ag. 55/7/4 Part 1: cutting from New Zealand Herald, 15 January 1924; BWN W5021, 6095, Box 755, 31/20: R. Waters, Memorandum to The Director, Fields Division [A. Cockayne], 8 March 1928; KCC, 17 September 1927, p. 2. 26 KCC, 7 May 1927, p. 5. 27 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 18 July 1926. 28 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 9. 29 KCC, 7 May 1927, p. 5. 30 KCC, 22 February 1927, p. 4. 31 KCC, 7 May 1927, p. 5. 32 KCC, 26 August 1926, p. 5; 14 September 1926, p. 4. 33 The New Zealand Gazette, 9 May 1928, p. 1554; 28 October 1924, p. 3040; Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to C. Orwin, 14 June 1928. 34 ‘Dairy Farming in New Zealand: II. – Soils and Climate’, The Field, 16 July 1925, p. 127. 35 ‘Top Dressing of King-Country Hill Lands’, pp. 330–333. 36 ‘The Prodigal’s Return’, pp. 25–28; ‘Soil Erosion in New Zealand and Elsewhere’, p. 85. 37 KCC, 3 March 1927, p. 4; 12 March 1927, p. 2. 38 KCC, 16 September 1926, p. 5; 21 September 1926, p. 4. 39 KCC, 27 June 1927, p. 2. 40 Balliol College Library: E. Jenks to C.S. Orwin. 14 June 1928; KCC, 18 December 1926, p. 2; 1 February 1927, p. 2; KCC, 8 October 1927, p. 2. Superphosphate 49

41 KCC, 14 September 1926, p. 3; Jenks, ‘Top-Dressing of Hill-Country Pastures’, pp. 371–375. 42 Membership ledger of the Te Kuiti Club; KCC, 2 December 1922, p. 5. 43 Passenger list of RMS Niagara, departing Sydney, 16 December 1926 (viewed at https://familysearch.org, on 22 December 2014), New Zealand Herald, 21 December 1926, p. 11; passenger list for SS Maunganui, departing Wellington, 7 January 1927 (viewed at https://familysearch.org, on 22 December 2014. 44 Archives New Zealand, BBAE 5632 552/u 1946/5211: Application No 46/5211 under the Serviceman’s Settlement and Land Sales Act, 1943; Valuer’s Report on Urban Property, 29 July 1946. 45 The New Zealand Gazette, No. 70, 6 October 1927, p. 3176. 46 BLPES, BEVERIDGE2/B/26/1: E. Jenks to Beveridge, 14 December 1926. 47 Passenger list of the SS Esperance Bay, departing London, 1 February 1927 (viewed at www.findmypast.com, 27 May 2009); National Archives of Australia: KS269/3: passenger list of the SS Esperance Bay, arriving Fremantle, 3 March 1927; passenger list of SS Esperance Bay, arriving Sydney, 14 Match 1927; passenger list for SS Ulimaroa, departing Sydney, 23 March 1927 (viewed at https://familysearch.org, on 21 December 2014). 48 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 15 May 1927; D. Jenks to Beveridge, 28 May 1927. 49 Passenger list for SS Remuera, departing Auckland, 15 July 1926 (viewed at https:// familysearch.org, on 21 December 2014). 7 A Small Legacy

With his preparations for married life and a successful career, Jenks’ life in New Zealand might have appeared to be increasingly deep-rooted, but this was illusory; he remained homesick and fundamentally dissatisfied with his situation and it was only the lack of opportunity in England that kept him there.

Sir William Beveridge Although disappointed in his bid to find a livelihood in England, Jenks had not returned to New Zealand in low spirits; his description of himself as having been ‘very much in my dreams when I left again for N.Z.’ suggests an insouciant air. It was his father’s distress following his engagement to Sophie that caused him to be ‘woken up with a shock’ as he put it, and to take the very forward step of writing a confidential letter to his father’s boss at the LSE, Sir William Beveridge, asking for help in finding a post. Describing his situation: ‘My whole heart […] is with England and my parents, who need me very badly [… I feel] very strongly that I am in the wrong place.’ At the same time, he was convinced that his father would be upset if he left New Zealand without some prospect of finding a living back home.1 Beveridge agreed to help, and over the next 2 years he was Jenks’ stalwart supporter.2 First of all, Sir William turned to his friend Stephen Tallents, Secretary to the Empire Marketing Board.3 With his knowledge of the Dominions and other experience, Jenks was confident that he was suitable for the Board, but Tallents could offer little hope.4 Dorothy Jenks later met him and added that her son would consider a posting to Canada, partly because it was only a week or so away by sea.5 Beveridge also approached Sir Francis Floud, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry A small legacy 51 of Agriculture.6 Floud’s reply is lost, but it offered sufficient hope for Jenks to sub- mit an application, which also came to nothing.7 Further approaches were made to Sir Robert Greig, Permanent Secretary of the Department of Agriculture for Scotland, and Beveridge tried to pull strings at The Field.8 Jenks also gave his father authority to ‘accept […] any suitable position connected with scientific agriculture’. Edward Jenks did what he could, contacting the Principal at Harper Adams about a vacancy. The College was discouraging, highhandedly discounting the value of Jenks’ overseas experience.9 Despite Jenks’ earnest desire to return to England, following the improvement in his father’s condition his letters to Sir William suggested a greater tolerance of his life in New Zealand and his purchase of land for a matrimonial home shows that remaining there was a real possibility. His parents also believed he was becoming ‘really interested’ in his work in the King Country.10 It is reasonable to imagine an alternative future for Jenks in New Zealand, born out of necessity but forged into permanence by the passage of time and, through marriage to Sophie and other factors, an ever-stronger weave of ties.

‘A small legacy’ It was not to be. On the 23rd March 1928, Jenks’ grandfather, Sir William Forwood, died whilst on holiday in Madeira. Sir William left his nephew £3,100, a sum which equates today to around £150,000.11 At a stroke, Jenks’ circumstances were transformed and he immediately decided to return to England: his service with the Department of Agriculture concluded on the 30th April, which suggests that he resigned more or less as soon as he received the cable with the news.12 He left Auckland on the 11th May and his subsequent itinerary suggests that he spent a couple of weeks with Sophie Chester on the way back.13 The previous year, Edward Jenks had stated that his son’s ‘special ambition’ was ‘the practical running of a farm’ but that he could not ‘afford to run one on his own account, for want of capital’.14 This barrier was now removed, but there were a number of options to be considered, as Dorothy Jenks explained to Beveridge: it was now possible for her son ‘to go up to one of the older universities to take that longed-for Degree’, but she wondered if he might consider that a career break would damage his prospects and instead work in London whilst studying in his spare time. There was also, as Dorothy explained:

a third possibility – that he may throw all thoughts of a ‘future’ to the winds, and go back to his first love – a farm of his own. But life in the Col- onies has taught him many lessons, and he is no longer the idealist he was when he went [illegible] six years ago and he will – (we hope) – reserve that dream – till he has made his way – and rather more money! – in other directions.15 52 A small legacy

Dorothy sought for her son to meet Sir William and obtain his advice, which, according to his mother, he believed was invaluable in deciding his next step.16 At the same time Edward Jenks’ anticipated his son’s return by seeking a place at Oxford for him, writing to Charles S. Orwin, who was Director of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute and a Fellow of Balliol College. Edward explained that his son was ‘keen on taking a degree’ and exerted what influence he had to secure a late admission.17 Edward stated that he expected his son to cable ‘from Colombo as to his wishes’, which suggests that his plans were still fluid.18 The Master of Balliol, A.D. Lindsay, invited Jorian to an interview either with himself, Orwin or with General Sir Harold Hartley, stating that the College would ‘favour- ably consider admitting him’.19 However, in the meantime, the matter was ‘tragically complicated’ by a telegram reporting that, during the latter stages of the voyage, Jenks had developed pneumonia, of such seriousness that he had been brought ashore at Toulon. True to form, Dorothy Jenks left for the south of France straight away; Edward hoped to hear better news soon but was prepared to be summoned to his son’s side ‘at any moment’.20 Dorothy found Jorian to be ‘pretty bad’, but after a couple of weeks, he had recovered sufficiently to be worrying about the disruption of his plans.21 Excepting that the drama was enacted far away, this crisis was typical of the medical emergencies that punctuated his life.

Balliol It is not known whether Jenks met Beveridge after he returned, but he satisfied Balliol College that he was worthy of membership and went up that October.22 By so doing, he joined a famous Oxford college, whose alumni densely popu- late the pages of Who’s Who. As a modest and reflective person, transported from the backblocks of New Zealand to an elite institution, and as a man of nearly 30 years, whose fellow students were generally youths lately come up from the sixth forms of England’s public schools, it is easy to imagine Jenks spending his Oxford days monkishly. His achievements during his 2 years at Balliol show that he applied himself thoroughly to his work, but that he also had time for friendship and a wider enjoyment of life. It was at Oxford that he made one of his few close friends, Anthony Crawley (1908–1995). Nine years younger than Jenks, Tony Crawley had come up to Oxford from school the previous year.23 He was from Tiverton in Devon and, after Edward’s retirement in 1929, Jenks’ parents moved to Bishop’s Tawton in that county. Although little is known of their friendship, it was a last- ing one. A gentle and scholarly man, apart from his war service, Crawley spent his working life as a classics master at Wellington College.24 At Oxford afternoons were often given over to sport and Jenks took up rowing, a serious matter at Balliol.25 This shows how, despite living in the shadow of ill health, he was otherwise a vigorous man.26 He rowed in the Balliol second boat in A small legacy 53 the Topids, an inter-collegiate rowing competition, which was unsuccessful but just to have been picked for a Balliol crew was a notable personal victory for him and it was with pride that, years later, he wrote of how he ‘took up rowing at age 29’.27 At the time, Jenks was photographed with his fellow crew members: bespectacled and wearing a well-loved tweed jacket; with all three buttons firmly done-up, he gives an impression of self-sufficiency, containment and perhaps guardedness, an impression also conveyed by his strong and set jaw. Away from the river, although Jenks was something of a ‘joiner’, he did not make his mark at the Union or in any other Oxford forum. One body with which he was involved was Toc H, an interdenominational Christian organisation devoted to fellowship and social service, whose roots were in the Great War and whose members initially were mostly former servicemen. In December 1929, Jenks carried the banner for Toc H’s Christchurch, New Zealand branch, at a ceremony to celebrate the fourteenth birthday of the organisation at the Albert Hall.28 Edward, Prince of Wales, handed out lamps to the new branches – an oil lamp of the pattern of biblical times being the Toc H symbol. Because Christchurch is in the South Island, with which Jenks had no links, it is most likely that he volunteered to carry the banner to assist “Ormy” Wilson, who had come to Oxford from Christchurch, and received the lamp granted to his branch.29 Jenks may have been involved with Toc H in Auckland, a group having been active there since 1925.30

Agricultural Economics Turning back to the main purpose of Jenks’ time in Oxford, his personal tutor at Balliol was General Hartley.31 Harold Hartley, who was knighted in 1928, was Natural Science Tutor at Balliol and Bedford Lecturer in Physical Chemistry; during the Great War he had been the army’s expert in chemical warfare.32 However, his most important academic relationships at Oxford were at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute. Jenks was deeply interested in economics by this point, he wrote to Beveridge: ‘Economic problems have a far greater fascination for me than have the natural sciences, to which agricultural students usually tend to gravitate’ and Dorothy Jenks believed that he was ‘anxious’ to read for a ‘Degree in Economics’.33 From Harper Adams onwards, Jenks had progressively widened his grasp of economics. His initial focus was on how a farm might be run on business-like terms, but as time went on he increasingly understood how the fortunes of each farmer were also dependent on the national and global economies that overarched them. His time in New Zealand was especially instructive: the country had farming at the heart of its life, with the operation of the rural economy as part of what might be called the ‘real economy’ – a term that Jenks would later use – which signifies the system which creates the goods and services necessary to life, closely overlapped with the country’s capitalist economy as a whole. The different factors impinging 54 A small legacy on the rural economy there were continually discussed by press and politicians with even a provincial paper like the King Country Chronicle carrying detailed analysis. The increasing maturity of Jenks’ economic thinking was demonstrated by a 1925 article in The Field, which discussed the ‘puzzle’ presented by the survival and growth of New Zealand farming, despite so many disadvantages. He noted:

Considering then, that the prices obtained for their produce are, by reason of the 12,000 miles between farm and consumer, decidedly less than those realised by the English farmer, one naturally asks how it is that New Zealand dairying exists at all.34

It was not without irony that, in returning from New Zealand, Jenks moved from a country where the rural economy and the national economy were closely linked together, to one where farming was a neglected sideshow, in a system centred on the financial interests of the City of London. His future studies, at Oxford and afterwards, would be preoccupied with understanding the how and why of these circumstances, of solving the puzzle of why farmers, in what were otherwise ideal conditions for agriculture, could often scarcely survive.

The Institute During Jenks’ time at Oxford, the study of agriculture was divided between three bodies, supervised by the Committee for Rural Economy: the School of Rural Economy, the Agricultural Engineering Institute and the Agricultural Economics Research Institute.35 The AERI (until 1927 the Institute for Research into Agricultural Economics) was, from its inception in 1912 until his retirement in 1945, under the direction of Charles S. Orwin, who was one of the first professional agricultural economists in the country and highly influential on British agriculture.36 Orwin’s road to Oxford was more practical than academic: his initial training was at the South Eastern Agricultural College at Wye, where he became friends with the principal, Sir Daniel Hall, one of the most influential figures in British agriculture. Orwin initially worked as a land agent, before returning to Wye, where he lectured for 3 years; in 1906 he became estates manager for Christopher Turnor. In 1912, Hall persuaded the University of Oxford to sponsor an institute to study agricultural economics and Orwin was appointed to direct the new body, the first in the country.37 The AERI described itself:

As a National Research Institute set up for the purpose of studying the structure of the economic organisation of farming in this country, the inter- relation of politics and farming, and the effect of international – foreign and colonial – agricultural systems and development on British farming policy.38 A small legacy 55

Although formally connected to the University, it received most of its funding from the state and Orwin described its relationship with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries as ‘very close and cordial’.39 During his first year, 1928–1929, Jenks worked towards a Diploma in Rural Economy.40 The teaching program of the Institute was organised primarily for the Colonial Office probationers who spent two terms at Oxford as part of their training as administrators in the empire, and other Institute students also attended this course.41 The syllabus included: agricultural economics, agricultural economic geography, agricultural co-operation, statistical methods, agricultural costing and accounts, farm economic surveys, international trade in agricultural products and the marketing of farm products. Students additionally attended lectures on plant genetics, given by Professor J.A.S. Watson of the School of Rural Economy and were recommended to attend lectures on economics elsewhere in the university.42 If this course of study lived up to its specification, Jenks would have emerged equipped with a comprehensive grasp of the basic elements of the economy of food production and exchange. Students were also directed to ‘do a special piece of work’ and, at the end of his first year, Jenks submitted a dissertation entitled ‘The History and Evolution of Land Settlement in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 1830–90’.43 This drew on an interest that dated back to his school days and he continued with this theme in his second year, preparing a thesis entitled ‘The Evolution of Modern Land Set- tlement Policy in Australia and New Zealand’, for which he received the research degree of B.Litt.44 This placed him in a select company, as only six other scholars at the Institute were awarded such a degree up to the 1939–1945 war.45 Although his thesis has not survived, William Morrell, another Balliol man referred to it in his history of New Zealand,46 and Jenks’ articles ‘The Road to Open Spaces’ (1929) and ‘Young Men for Young Countries: An Overseas Farm as a Career and a Home’ (1930) probably also drew on it.47 In the first article, Jenks gave an unromantic summary of the human, physical, economic and political ‘obstacles’ that impeded settlement within the Dominions and proposed a practical solution of settlement through private land companies. In contrast to the systemic focus and prescriptive qualities of the 1929 piece, Jenks’ article the next year looked at the same issue, but discussed in detail the practical factors to be considered by a settler. Both articles appeared in The Empire Review, the journal of the Royal Empire Society and in October 1929, Jenks was elected a Resident Fellow of that body and he would remain a member (as an Associate after 1941) until the end of his life. He was proposed by Charles E.R. Sherrington, MC, the son of Professor Sir Charles Sherrington, President of the Royal Society and seconded by The Rev. S. Gordon Ponsonby, former Chaplain at Trinity College, Cambridge.48 It is likely that his sponsors were acquaintances of Edward Jenks. That Jenks joined the Society, suggests that he had not entirely forgotten the possibility of working for the Empire Marketing Board. 56 A small legacy

The future of farming Whatever the importance of Jenks’ reading and research at Oxford to his later work, it was equalled or surpassed by the significance of the contacts that he made in these 2 years. One of these was Archibald Bridges, who was responsible for the supervision of students and was the Research Officer at the Institute since 1921, and, from 1930, its Deputy Director.49 However, the most important connection Jenks made was with the Director himself. Orwin was a tall and impressive figure, described by a contemporary as ‘a good type of English gentleman’.50 He supervised Jenks’ B.Litt. thesis and the younger man seems to have gained the Director’s confidence.51 Although Jenks was still in contact with Orwin in the early 1950s, none of their letters has survived; despite this, the chapters below suggest that Orwin’s support was a decisive factor at several crucial points in Jenks’ career.52 John Cripps – son of Sir Stafford – wrote of Orwin that he was

[g]enerous in his affections and opinions, he could be easily hurt, for he was a deeply sensitive man. He gave short shrift to the sillinesses of cleverer men, but to the young he reached out with an especial and characteristic courtesy.53

Besides any temperamental affinities there may have been between Orwin and Jenks – they were both quiet and reflective – Orwin had also from childhood wanted to be a farmer but had been unable to do so, for want of family capital, and both men came to agricultural economics not from theory, but practical work.54 Orwin was also, like Jenks, ‘deeply attached to the countryside’, but was no romantic, being one of the most influential voices for ‘modernisation’, which saw the rural scene transformed radically in the twentieth century.55 His thinking was laid out in The Future of Farming, published not long after Jenks left Oxford. Orwin began from the generally agreed position that the condition of British agriculture was a consequence of the rise of industrial capitalism and free trade, since the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The cumulative result of this revolution was to raise the cost of farm labour, as men were drawn from the fields to the factories, and simultaneously lower the prices of agricultural commodities by opening the British market to cheaper imports. By the 1920s, large sections of British agriculture were no longer profitable, uncompetitive against both the inefficient but cheap peasant farming of continental Europe and the industrialised agriculture of the USA and the Dominions. As Orwin saw it, British agriculture was likely to collapse and nothing less than an ‘agricultural revolution’ could save it. In place of a multitude of small and medium-sized farms, farmed with horses and producing a multiplicity of animal and vegetable commodities from the traditional rotational system, he argued for the ‘factory farm’: each consisting of thousands of acres, run by managers making A small legacy 57 the fullest use of scientific management techniques. Hedges should be grubbed out to bring more land into cultivation and make fields suitable for tractors; the abandonment of mixed farming and the replacement of animal manure with artificials would allow specialization in one or two products and diminish the unproductive periods when fields in the rotational system were fallow or growing fodder crops. To bring this revolution about, a major change in land ownership was essential, bringing it under state ownership and control. With the exception of the question of land ownership, Orwin’s vision of the future was influential and prophetic. At the time that he wrote it, it also largely represented Jenks’ perspective. Jenks read The Future of Farming and his years in New Zealand showed his recognition of the necessity of proper accounting in farm management and the value of systematic research over received wisdom, both fundamental aspects of Orwin’s approach.56 Similarly, he was familiar with the value of specialisation, mechanisation and the economic advantages of artificial manures. There is no doubt that Orwin was aware of Jenks’ stance, as he thoroughly demonstrated it in an article about the economics of New Zealand dairying, prepared during his first year of study, with the Director’s assistance.57 It was also around the same time that Jenks’ first letter was published in The Times, which also showed his understanding of why extensive agriculture in Canada was successful and ‘intensive’ farming on the traditional English model was not; he concluded: ‘it is surely better to have one family living in comfort on 500 acres than five families living hand to mouth on what the colonial pointedly calls “cabbage patches”’.58

Notes 1 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 26 April 1926. 2 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Beveridge to Jenks, 26 May 1926. 3 Harris, William Beveridge, pp. 176–178, 232, 235; BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Beveridge to E. Jenks, 2 December 1926; Beveridge to S. Tallents, 2 December 1926. 4 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 20 November 1926, 15 May 1927; Tallents to Beveridge, 11 December 1926. 5 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: D. Jenks to Beveridge, 13 December 1927. 6 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Beveridge to E. Jenks, 13 December 1926; Beveridge to F.L.C. Floud, 13 December 1926. 7 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 15 May 1927; Beveridge to F. Floud, 15 July 1927; F. Floud to Beveridge, 18 July 1927. 8 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Beveridge to R. Greig, 13 October 1927; D. Jenks to Beveridge, 4 December 1927; BEVERIDGE 2/B/27/2: Beveridge to D. Jenks, 6 December 1927. 9 HAU, Student File: E. Jenks to The Principal, 12 February 1927; The Principal to E. Jenks, 19 February 1927. 10 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: E. Jenks to Beveridge, 3 December 1926. 11 Proved Will and Codicil of Edward Bower Forwood, 28 May 1928. Sir William Forwood’s wealth at the time of his death was £356,090 ( J.R. Killick, ‘Forwood, Sir William Bower (1840–1928)’, (viewed at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/47004, viewed on 2 April 2012; http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/ result.php, viewed on 2 April 2012. 58 A small legacy

12 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to C.S. Orwin, 14 June 1928; New Zealand Gazette, 9 May 1928, p. 1554; BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/27/7: D. Jenks to Beveridge, 13 June 1928. 13 Passenger list for SS Marama, departing Auckland, 11 May 1928 (viewed at https:// familysearch.org, on 22 December 2014); Evening Post, 12 May 1928, p. 12; The Argus, 29 May 1928, p. 19. 14 HAU, Student File: E. Jenks to The Principal, 19 February 1927. 15 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/27/7: D. Jenks to Beveridge, 13 June 1928. 16 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/27/7: Beveridge to D. Jenks, 16 July 1928; Beveridge to Tallents, 17 July 1928. 17 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to C. Orwin, 14 June 1928. 18 Ibid. 19 Balliol Oxf.: A. Lindsay to E. Jenks, 1 July 1928. 20 Balliol Oxf.: E. Jenks to A. Lindsay, 2 July 1928; BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/27/7: D. Jenks to Beveridge, 13 July 1928. 21 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/27/7: D. Jenks to Beveridge, 13 June 1928; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 November 1943. 22 I. Elliot (ed.), Balliol College Register 1900–1950 (Oxford: Charles Batey, 1953), p. 290. 23 O. Jenks to Coupland, 26 May 2009. 24 S. Priestman to Coupland, 13 June 2010. 25 Jones, Balliol College, p. 241. 26 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire; Balliol College Register 1900–1900, p. 290. 27 The Oxford Magazine, No. 13, 20 February 1930, pp. 508; No. 14, 27 February 1930, pp. 538–540; No. 15, 6 March 1930, p. 581; FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 28 Evening Post, 23 January 1930, p. 4; ‘The Fourteenth Birthday Festival’, Toc H Journal, Vol. 8 ( January 1930), pp. 12–28. 29 Toc H Journal, Vol. 8 ( January 1930), p. iv. 30 Evening Post, 5 September 1925, p. 9; 21 December 1925, p. 12; 7 May 1927, p. 5; 1 January 1928, p. 9. 31 Balliol College Register 1900–1900, p. 290. 32 E.J. Bowen, ‘Hartley, Sir Harold Brewer (1878–1972)’, rev. K.D. Watson, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31207, viewed on 6 April 2012). 33 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 15 May 1927; BEVERIDGE 2/B/27/7: D. Jenks to Beveridge, 13 December 1927. 34 ‘Dairy Farming in New Zealand: 1. – Puzzle: Find the Reason for Success’, The Field, 9 July 1925, p. 86. 35 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE1/1: Copy minutes and agenda papers of the Committee for Rural Economy: untitled memorandum page, no date or author. 36 Edith H. Whetham, Agricultural Economists in Britain, 1900–1940 (Oxford: Institute of Agricultural Economics, 1981), pp. 30–35; 42–48. 37 Bodl. Oxf., OUA: ‘Institute of Agricultural Economics’ (OUA, 1994, revised 1996 and 2004); AE6: Director’s Report, Trinity Term, 1929. 38 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE11/1: Anon., ‘Colonial Office Scholars. Memorandum on Oxford Training’ (undated, ca. 1928). 39 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE22 (Director’s general correspondence file, 1928–48): Anon [prob. C.S. Orwin], Typescript headed ‘Agricultural Economics Research Institute’ (undated, ca. 1943). 40 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE6: Director’s Report, Trinity Term, 1929. 41 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE11/1: Minutes of the Meeting of the Staff of the Institute held on Tuesday, 1 October 1929. 42 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE11/1: Anon., ‘Colonial Office Scholars. Memorandum on Oxford Training’ (undated, ca. 1928). A small legacy 59

43 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE11/1: Minutes of the Meeting of the Staff of the Institute held on Tuesday, 1 October 1929; AE6: Director’s Report, Trinity Term, 1929. 44 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE36: Card index of students giving details of thesis titles, 1926–62: Card for Jenks, J.E.F., Balliol; ‘List of Theses in Economics and Allied Subjects in Progress in Universities and Colleges in Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, Economica, No. 29 ( June 1930), pp. 231–241: 235. 45 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE22 (Director’s general correspondence file, 1928–48): Anon [prob. C.S. Orwin], Typescript headed ‘Agricultural Economics Research Institute’ (undated, ca. 1943). 46 W.P. Morell, New Zealand (London: Ernest Benn, 1935), p. xi. 47 ‘The Road to Open Spaces’, The Empire Review, Vol. XLIX, No. 339 (April 1929), pp. 216–224; ‘Young Men for Young Countries: An Overseas Farm as a Career and a Home’, The Empire Review, Vol. 52 ( July 1930), pp. 38–43. 48 R. Row to Coupland, 4 and 8 August 2011. 49 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE6: Committee for Rural Economy, Advisory Sub-Committee for Agricultural Economics, ‘Memorandum by the Director of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute for the information of the Sub-Committee’ (undated, 1928); Director’s Report, Hilary Term, 1930; ‘Some Economic Aspects of New Zealand Dairy Farming’, Scottish Journal of Agriculture, Vol. 12, No. 4 (October 1929), pp. 376–382. 50 The Times, 1 July 1955, p. 15. 51 ‘List of Theses in Economics and Allied Subjects in Progress’, p. 235. 52 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 21 August 1952. 53 John Cripps and John Martin, ‘Orwin, Charles Stewart (1876–1955)’, rev. John Martin, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/35335, viewed on 12 October 2011. 54 Ibid.; Whetham, Agricultural Economists in Britain, p. 33; C.S. Orwin, The Future of Farming (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), preface. 55 The Times, 1 July 1955, p. 15. 56 Jenks’ personal copy is now in the Library of the Soil Association. 57 ‘Some Economic Aspects of New Zealand Dairy Farming’, p. 382. 58 The Times, 2 September 1929, p. 20. 8 Devon

In view of Jenks’ previous resignations from the New Zealand Department of Agriculture and his misgivings about such work, it is surprising that, after Oxford, he applied to become District Lecturer in Agriculture for East Devon. The short-listed candidates were all well qualified and came from as far away as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which shows how scarce professional work in agriculture was at the beginning of the Depression.1 In his application, Jenks gave the address of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute, which suggests that, besides his wealth of experience, Charles Orwin also backed his application.

Figure 8.1 Jenks, early 1930s Source: Oliver Jenks Devon 61

District Lecturer With a salary of £250 per annum, Jenks’ new job compared poorly with his New Zealand position, which had paid him £380.2 More positively, he was based in Exeter – he lodged at Northlands, St David’s Hill – about thirty miles away from his parents’ new home.3 Devon had been a favourite place for holidays for the Jenks family and on Edward’s retirement from the LSE in 1929 he bought Tawton House, a large dwelling in the picturesque village of Bishop’s Tawton.4 The physical geography and agricultural practices of East Devon were not entirely dissimilar from those Jenks had known in New Zealand. The undulating terrain was predominantly grassland and although, traditionally, pasture had been interspersed with pockets of arable farming, during the 1920s there was a reduction in the acreage of arable crops. This had not been balanced by an equivalent rise in grassland: land was often too poor or deteriorated to be farmed profitably and left to the weeds. Farmers were primarily occupied in rearing ‘store’ sheep and cattle, to be fattened for meat and, most importantly, dairying. Although the market for English butter had declined, as imports increased, Devon was still a major provider of milk for London.5 Jenks began his new duties on the 1st October 1930 and one of his first public engagements was at the annual dinner of the Hele and District Ploughing Associa- tion. The centrepiece of the evening was a speech by Sir Francis Acland, the local Liberal MP who was also known as an authority on farming. Unlike many agriculturalists at the time, Acland was a convinced free trader, and this topic was the subject of his address. The local paper called it an ‘outspoken speech’, on account of his rejection of any measures of protection or state aid, even at a time when the outlook was particularly grim. What Jenks thought of Acland’s opinions was not disclosed, but he proposed a toast to the Association and to Agriculture as a whole, before going on to endorse the work of ploughing match associations in counter- acting the ‘tendency among lads to despise farming’.6 The flight of the sons of farmers and labourers to the bright lights and better wages of the cities was a problem. Jenks was a life-long enthusiast for rural skills and at this time was involved in various ploughing and hedging competitions and judged the work of students of butter making and general dairy work.7 Even such innocent occasions were not without their ironies, inasmuch that English butter was no longer competitive against that of the New Zealand farmers whom Jenks had lately advised. Another aspect of Jenks’ Devon work, which compared with his duties in the King Country, was the reclamation of derelict land on Luppitt Common, whose success was attributed to the advice received from him and his predecessor, J.N. Sharrock. Although not demonstrating the specialisation that Orwin stressed, the reclamation scheme made significant use of modern techniques within a conventional mixed farming system, including intensive use of artificial manures and mechanisation and it was expected that the farm’s last horse would soon be replaced by a tractor.8 62 Devon

This last development cannot have sat very easily with Jenks as it was here that a crack in his modernist façade was already showing. Speaking to the Sidmouth Junc- tion Agricultural Discussion Society on horses in farming, he argued that despite ‘great improvements to farm tractors’, the adaptability of the horse team made it ‘indispensable’, the cost for maintaining horses had been falling and, except on farms with large arable areas ‘there was hardly room for both horses and tractors’. Summing up Jenks’ argument, the newspaper declared: ‘the farm horse was still one of the farmer’s best friends and one in whom he could rely in the future as in the past.’ Although Jenks’ appeal was not to sentiment but backed up by a careful calculation of costs, it is hard not to see this as a moment when head followed heart.9

Farmer’s wife No matter how seriously Jenks took his work as District Lecturer, it must have had a degree of artificiality because of two great changes he set in train around the time he began his new duties. The first of these, decided around the time of Jenks’ new appointment, was to finally marry Sophie Chester. In November 1930, she left Australia and her aunt, Mary Fullerton, who would be her chief supporter in the coming months, indicated that her departure was a ‘sudden decision’.10 It may have been that Jenks’ success in securing his lecturing job was the trigger for his fiancée to leave home, but it is more likely to be consequent on the other major development around this time.

Figure 8.2 Sophie Chester, with her mother Lydia and brothers Stan and Norman, late 1920s Source: Dick and Betty Chester Devon 63

This was that Jenks was finally to be a farmer, having taken the tenancy of Ecclesden Farm, near the village of Angmering, in West Sussex. The outgoing tenant was required to give a year’s notice by Michaelmas Day, the traditional end and beginning of the farming year. Consequently, on or before the 29th September 1930, the landlord would have been looking for a new tenant.11 By taking Ecclesden Farm, Jenks also secured the necessary matrimonial home, meaning that the marriage could go ahead. He would stay in digs until the wedding, after which the newlyweds moved into temporary accommodation, rented for the three months prior to moving into their new Sussex home in the autumn of 1931.

A colonial girl Sophie arrived in Hull on the 13th December 1930, and during the months between her arrival and her wedding day – in June of the next year – she divided her time between Devon and the London home of her aunt Mary.12 Mary Fullerton (1868–1946) was an author and poet, who had moved from Australia to England in 1922 and lived with Mabel Singleton. Mary and Mabel met through the women’s suffrage movement in Melbourne and they continued to be ‘progressive’ in their opinions. Their relationship, which is discussed in detail by Sylvia Martin, might today be described as ‘lesbian’, a label that Mary would probably have shrunk away from in horror.13 Towards the end of Sophie’s time with Mary and Mabel, a third friend, the better-known Australian writer Miles Franklin, author of My Brilliant Career (1901) joined them.14 Sophie was a grandchild of the settlers of Gippsland, in the state of Victoria, whose rugged lives were described by Fullerton in Bark House Days (1921).15 By the time Sophie was born, in 1904, the third child of Lydia and Henry Chester, the pioneering quality of this life had largely gone, but it was still an existence removed from metropolitan modernity. Sophie spent the first years of her life at ‘Chesterfield’, the family’s dairy farm, attending the little local ‘bush schools’.16 Although it is difficult to translate British notions of social class into an Australian setting, the Chesters were respectable, ‘middling’ people: serious, hardworking, nonconformist in their Christianity, educated and not without culture. When Sophie’s father died in 1915, at the age of only 46, although the farm remained in the family, Sophie, with her mother and elder brothers, moved to Melbourne for some years. There she attended the Methodist Ladies’ College and this education, together with her time in the metropolis, gave Sophie a little more polish than other farmer’s daughters of that era. One contemporary, who met her in the 1920s, thought her the most ‘glamorous’ young woman she had met.17 However, that which glittered in Gippsland lost its sparkle on the way to England. If family tradition on the Australian side is correct, there were definite tensions, with Sophie’s family ‘very worried’ that she was ‘trying to marry too far above her own station’. It is likely that the crisis caused by Edward Jenks had left a residue of apprehension on the Australian side and another reason for these worries – and 64 Devon evidence of the Jenks’ anxieties too – was that Dorothy Jenks is remembered as having made it a condition of the marriage that Sophie first attend ‘a finishing school’: ‘the colonial girl had to learn the correct ways for the society she would be marrying into in England.’18 Although not a ‘finishing school’, Sophie did spend a term at The University College of the South West of England, in Exeter, living in Bradninch Hall, the women’s hall of residence.19 What she studied there is not known but she may have taken elocution lessons to domesticate her ‘colonial’ accent.20 Whatever Sophie may have felt in retrospect, at the time she seems to have enjoyed her time at the college and, on the Sunday before her wedding, she spent time with the friends she had made there.21 Looking back from a time when the English class-system in its old form has been much eroded and its code of speech, dress and manners blurred with an egali- tarian gloss, it is difficult to comprehend how heavily accents and details of apparel could weigh at this time. No matter that Jenks had mixed with men of all classes and occupations, no matter that he would soon be a struggling tenant farmer, he was still a son of the English upper-middle classes. In these circumstances, Dorothy’s stipulation that Sophie should be helped to fit into her new life, whilst paying hom- age to snobbishness, was also pragmatic. Aunt Mary, well aware of the challenges facing an Australian farmer’s daughter in this social context, seems to have tacitly agreed with the need to adapt, commenting of her efforts to make the wedding a success, ‘I wanted no remarks behind the scenes about a Colonial girl’.22

St David’s Church In comparison to his parents’ wedding, when the church was ‘thronged’ and they received 200 wedding presents, Jorian and Sophie’s nuptials in June 1931 were modest.23 The principal guests were eighteen in number, mostly from Dorothy’s large family, with the Chesters represented by Emma and Captain Harold Toop. One noticeable absentee was Jorian’s sister, Barbara, who had left England in January 1930 to work as a schoolmistress in Vancouver. Jenks’ friend Tony Crawley was his best man.24 The couple were married by Edward Jenks’ brother, the Rev. David Jenks, who had a distinguished career in the Anglican missionary movement.25 Sophie, ‘looking very charming indeed in her frock of primrose voile’, was given away by Harry Toop. In comparison, Jorian was ‘dressed plainly’. Leaving the church, the married couple ‘got a fusillade of confetti all over them’ from Sophie’s college friends. The party retired to the Imperial Hotel for lunch, where, true to the understated nature of the event, there were no speeches; Harry Toop proposed a toast to the couple’s health and Jenks replied. Not long after the meal was finished, the newlyweds left for their honeymoon.

* * * Devon 65

Looking back on the day, Mary wrote of hearing ‘many favourable comments’ about Sophie’s ‘dress and general appearance’ and, in contrast to fears that she might have let the side down, Mary felt that her niece ‘looked and bore herself well enough for a prince and I know they all were very cordial and pleased with her’. Mary wrote of the couple, that Sophie ‘seems truly fond of Jorian and he of her’ and, concerning the whole wedding, ‘she seemed quite happy in doing it, alls well’, statements which were positive but also slightly tentative.26 Mary understood that Dorothy had previously been the central female figure in Jorian’s life and believed that that the future success of the marriage required great sensitivity from Sophie in her relations with her mother-in-law:

Jorian and his mother are devoted to each other. Had Mrs J not liked Sophie it might have been difficult a girl cutting in and taking him, but Mrs J has accepted her affectionately and is all interest, and S on her part is wise and inseeing [sic] enough to keep Mrs J in the swim and no cutting out spirit. S discussed it with me and I found she is most understanding of Mrs J so that is good for all parties.27

Notes 1 WT, 12 September 1930, p. 7; Devon RO: Minutes of the Devon Country Council Agriculture Committee, 10 September 1930; ‘Appointments’, The Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture, Vol. 37, No. 8 (November 1930), p. 844. 2 Devon RO: Minutes of the Devon County Council Agriculture Committee, 10 September 1930; The New Zealand Gazette, 9 May 1928, p. 1554. 3 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to L. Chester et al., 24 June 1931. 4 Betty Partridge, ‘Notes on Tawton House’, undated and unpublished typescript. 5 Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume VIII, 1914–1939, pp. 40–41, 192–194, 311–312. 6 WT, 24 October 1930, p. 7. 7 WT, 7 November 1930, p. 9; 24 April 1931, p. 14; 8 May 1931, p. 14; 29 May 1931, p. 9. 8 WT, 2 September 1932, p. 7. 9 WT, 16 January 1931, p. 2. 10 SLNSW, MLMSS 364/CY2055: Fullerton to M. Franklin, 29 October 1930; NLA, MS6608: fragment (undated, ca. early 1931). 11 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘all’, 17 November 1931. 12 Passenger list for SS Moreton Bay, arriving Hull, 20 December 1930 (viewed at www.ancestry.co.uk, on 27 May 2009); SLNSW, MLMSS 364/CY2055: Fullerton to Franklin, 29 October 1930. 13 Sylvia Martin, Passionate Friends: Mary Fullerton, Mabel Singleton and Miles Franklin (London: Onlywomen Press, 2001). 14 Ibid., p. 137. 15 Mary E. Fullerton, Bark House Days (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1964; first published 1921). 16 M. Wilson to Coupland, 6 July 2009; E. Chester to Coupland, 17 and 18 August 2009. 17 Ibid. 18 M. Wilson to Coupland, 6 July 2009. 19 SLNSW, ML MSS 2342/2: address book of Mary Fullerton, entry for Sophie Chester. 66 Devon

20 Yearbook of the University of Empire (London: G. Bell, 1932), pp. 276–279. 21 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to L. Chester et al., 24 June 1931. 22 Ibid. 23 Westmoreland Gazette, 26 March 1898, p. 5. 24 Passenger list for SS Antonia, departing Liverpool, 26 January 1930 (viewed at www. ancestry.co.uk, on 27 May 2009). Barbara returned to England in autumn 1931 (BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/30/1: E. Jenks to Beveridge, 31 August 1931). 25 The Times, 25 March 1935, p. 19; 29 March 1935, p. 21. 26 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to L. Chester et al., 24 June 1931. 27 NLA, MS6608: fragment (undated, ca. early 1931). 9 An Interesting South-Coast Farm

After their honeymoon, Jorian and Sophie lived in a rented cottage in the Exeter area.1 Jenks resumed his lecturing work but we might imagine that they were both preoccupied with preparations for their new life. Jenks’ successor was approved on the 9th September, and he took over Ecclesden Farm on or around Michaelmas day, the 29th September 1931.2 By the time Mary Fullerton came to stay on the 5th November, they were well established on the farm and in their new home.

Figure 9.1 The farmhouse, Ecclesden Farm, during Jenks tenancy in the 1930s Source: Oliver Jenks 68 An Interesting South-Coast Farm

Figure 9.2 Jorian, Edward and Oliver Jenks, Ecclesden Farm, ca. mid 1930s Source: Oliver Jenks

Angmering and Ecclesden Farm The farm house was situated on the flank of Highdown Hill, a short walk from Angmering village. A few miles to the south was Worthing, a popular destination for holidaymakers; to the north was Horsham, where Jenks’ cousin, Miles ‘Bobby’ Main (1908–1992), had Hobshorts Farm. Like Jenks, Main had fallen in love with farming and the two were friends.3 Angmering had been settled since the earliest times;4 in 1936, Roman remains were discovered on Jenks’ land and, over the next 2 years, Worthing Archaeologi- cal Society, who stored their tools in his barn, conducted excavations.5 However, by the time the Jenks arrived, it was a community entering the final stages of its transition from the old rural world to a brave new one of the suburban bungalow, the motorcar and the wireless. As Jenks wrote of this revolution a few years later: ‘Country folk […] dart off by car or bus to patronize the multiple-shop and the cinema. Electricity, gas, piped water and the telephone are gradually entering into common use.’6 At the end of the 1930s, one of the village manors was turned into a golf course.7 Jenks later referred with disgust to: ‘an exceptionally fertile farm […] converted into a species of country club, with a golf-course and a few large houses designed for people who can afford to live almost anywhere.’8 Ecclesden Farm was itself venerable, ‘Ecclesden’ being an earlier name for High- down Hill.9 The date inscribed over the threshold of the house was 1637, but parts were probably older. At 313 acres, it was one of the largest farms in the parish; located to the east of the village; it was in a long strip, beginning on the north side An Interesting South-Coast Farm 69 of Water Lane (today the A280), continuing over the ridge of Highdown Hill and finishing towards the southern edge of the parish. The farm belonged to the Somerset family of Castle Goring and when Jenks arrived, the landlord was Gwendoline Somerset and her husband, Arthur managed it. Arthur Somerset was also a JP and, in November 1934, he chaired the bench when an unsuccessful prosecution was brought against Sir Oswald Mosley, subsequent to a public meeting in Worthing.10 Somerset had thought highly of his previous tenant, Samuel Pyle, but did not disclose to his diary what he thought of Jenks.11 In 1937, towards the end of Jenks’ tenancy, Somerset died and the estate work was taken over by his son, also called Arthur.12

Family life The large farmhouse was a fine basis on which to build a family life. Around it was a mature garden, with a tennis court and, tucked away in the corner, a two-seater privy, mains water and sewerage having not yet reached the farm. This meant that water needed to be drawn from the well by hand, via a pump in the scullery. This suggested a life of toil for the farmer’s wife, but Sophie ‘inherited’ Mrs Bowerditch, who had worked for the Pyles, and it was she who did ‘the brunt’ of the household chores.13 Jenks had a large ground floor room for his office, with a view across the valley. Besides the fields, this was his other place of work: ‘There he has his big bookcase, office table typewriter and his personal effects of that kind. A big fireplace in it. A large table too and all convenience so the ordinary living rooms are free of all writing paraphernalia.’14 Aunt Mary’s letters home suggest that Jorian and Sophie made a successful start to married life. In September 1932, they were both ‘very well’, and Sophie ‘full of zest’.15 At that time she was about four months pregnant with their first child and gave birth to a boy on the 5th February 1933.16 Four months after the birth, she was still too physically delicate to use the cranking handle on the car, but Mary considered that, otherwise: ‘she looks awfully well […] and seems as fit as a fiddle.’17 Named Oliver Chester, the baby was baptised on the 23rd April.18 According to Mary, the couple were blessed with an ‘easy’ baby, with a ‘calm disposition’, who went to sleep without ‘rocking no nursing and la la-ing’.19

Dirty boots Despite having closely observed the economic perils of farming, Jenks retained an essential optimism that he could succeed where others had failed; as he had written several years earlier: ‘it is my opinion that with a little enterprise, farming in England could be made a very profitable business.’20 Mary Fullerton, who, as a farmer’s daughter was not entirely unqualified to judge, wrote that: ‘I think J will make a do of it, he has so much practical knowledge and as well scientific, the latter without the former not much good but with it an added string to the bow.’21 70 An Interesting South-Coast Farm

Figure 9.3 Jenks, Ecclesden Farm, January 1937 Source: Oliver Jenks

Success at Ecclesden would require both hard work and a great deal of intelligent management, for – as he recognised – it was not an ‘easy’ farm, due to its intermediate size and variation in soil types.22 These ranged from poor clay at the north end, through better although heavy soil given to grass and wheat, then thin An Interesting South-Coast Farm 71

Figure 9.4 Jenks rolling mustard seed, Ecclesden Farm, 1935 Source: Oliver Jenks chalky soil on Highdown Hill, on which usually grew ‘barley, sainfoin and rape and turnips for sheep-feed’. The farm culminated in what Jenks praised as ‘some of the finest arable land in Sussex’, which had previously produced ‘heavy crops of wheat and barley’. By his own admission, this was ‘just the class of farm which is difficult to work at a profit, there being enough tillage to absorb a good deal of labour, but not enough to warrant the extensive use of machinery’.23 Jenks’ tenancy began well, the farm being left in good order by the previous tenant.24 Traditionally, Ecclesden was a ‘sheep and corn’ farm, a pattern that Jenks substantially maintained, whilst introducing other enterprises and refinements in a bid to increase cash returns. In came a flock of Dorset Down ewes, crossed with the Southdown, which lambed in January and were managed so that a ‘larger and quicker turnover is secured, and the shepherd is released for farmwork during the busy months’.25 Jenks also employed the technique of ‘close-folding’, whereby sheep were restricted to a portion of an arable field, eating the root crop grown there and manuring the soil at the same time. Close-folding was disappearing in the 1930s, due to its high labour cost and Jenks later admitted that it entailed ‘hard work and careful planning’.26 Although heifers were bought in to be fattened and sold on, cattle were not important on the farm, which, without mains water, was not suitable for dairying. Pigs were also kept, with the weaners sold to be fattened elsewhere. Here too, he believed he had found a profitable niche in the market, arguing that there was ‘considerably more profit’ to be made on capital invested in breeding pigs for sale than in fattening them up.27 Another innovation was to use the fertile southern portion of the farm to grow potatoes and market garden 72 An Interesting South-Coast Farm produce.28 Horticulture featured strongly in the area, fresh vegetables being one of the few commodities not yet imported cheaply from abroad. When he took over the tenancy, Jenks had four men, all living with their families in tied cottages.29 To these were added two more. These six, with a little assistance from contractors as required, did the work of the farm, together with eight horses.30 As a purchaser of waged-labour, Jenks was a capitalist farmer, but was also a working manager, one among those whom he described as England’s ‘“dirty-boot” farmers’, the ‘“guv’nor”’, but nonetheless ‘accustomed to working alongside their men and sharing with them the discomforts as well as the pleasures of farm routine’.31 In a photograph from May 1935, Jenks is shown following the team rolling mustard seed, in his shirtsleeves, pipe in mouth.32 The farm day began early, when the men gathered in the stable to be allotted their tasks, and was long, especially from May to September, when all worked for 70 hours a week, with more during haymaking.33 Jenks wrote of how: ‘[n]ature is inexorable, and when there are crops to be won every hour of daylight is precious; in fact most of us have, at some time or other, finished a long day’s harvesting by moonlight.’34 On one occasion, when visitors called during harvest, Jenks could not get away and everyone took tea in the fields.35

Modernist to traditionalist? After about 6 years as a farmer, Jenks wrote of how, when he was at Oxford, he had preached ‘[t]he gospel of larger farms and more machinery’.36 His ambivalence about this future was already apparent when he was in Devon, but from Ecclesden onwards he firmly set his face against it. Thereafter, he never budged from his argument for an England of small and medium-sized family farms, operated on the traditional model of mixed husbandry and intensive in their use of animal labour. In the hundreds of agricultural articles he wrote in the 1930s it was as if the internal combustion engine had not been invented. It was no accident that the Sussex pho- tographer George Garland, who specialised in capturing nostalgic farming scenes, visited Ecclesden Farm several times.37 However, it would be mistaken to conclude that Jenks had lapsed into ‘romanticism’ and forgotten about efficiency. Rather, it was as if he had taken it upon himself to prove his old tutor wrong about the future of farming, whilst continuing to respect Orwin’s scientific methodology and farm economics. Jenks admitted the disadvantages of mixed farming over specialisation: a multiplicity of enterprises complicated management of crops and animals, labour and capital; he also admitted that mechanisation, the purchase of materials and marketing of goods were generally more expensive and less efficient on such farms. Despite this, he argued that mixed farming was a successful adaptation to the varied conditions which pertained on many farms, including his own. The four-course rotational system also conserved soil fertility by returning animal manure to the An Interesting South-Coast Farm 73 land, a point that anticipated his later organic beliefs. Fertility could be maintained with chemical ‘fertilizers’, but a mixed farm offered an economic benefit by using its own by-products. In contrast to monoculture, mixed farming also offered a degree of insurance against the effects of disease, by spreading the risk and because rotations allowed the soil to be periodically ‘cleaned’ by ploughing. Most important of all, for the farmer ‘with no capital behind him but his own slender resources’ – a description which applied to Jenks – mixed farming spread financial risks, rather than coupling a farmer’s fortunes to a single commodity. It was, he wrote, ‘seldom that misfortune overtakes all branches of farming at the same time’.38 In general, he believed that the traditional model of husbandry could be saved by a combination of superior practice on the individual farm and by state intervention in the rural economy as a whole. For example, he admitted the particular disadvan- tage of the mixed farmer in ‘marketing small unstandardised consignments’, when they often lost out to the middleman, but the solution was not to ‘revolutionise systems of production but to reform systems of marketing’.39 At the level of the individual farm, a ‘businesslike’ approach was essential; when lecturing in Devon in 1931, he counselled his audience ‘to concentrate on greater efficiency in farm organisation, rather than to lay land down to grass in despair’.40 At Ecclesden, Jenks hoped to achieve profitability through careful planning and a range of well-chosen enterprises. His response to mechanisation was similarly complex. ‘Power farming’ was central to the emerging orthodoxy, and Jenks fought a dogged rearguard action to show that the horse was better for husbandry and a good business proposition. In 1932, he entered the fray in The Times, against D.N. McHardy of the Engineering Department at Harper Adams and Lewis Sutherland Anderson of the University of Edinburgh. Jenks argued forcefully that, for certain crops, horses were more efficient and cheaper and machines were also blamed for compressing the soil. On farms of ‘moderate’ size, Jenks argued that, once again, careful planning and intelligent adjustments could make a difference: there was more to be gained by ‘speeding up horse work with cheap and simple implements than by loading the holding with expensive machinery’, which might soon be obsolete. Jenks quoted his own costs per acre for using horses and asked what he had to gain by ‘sinking much needed capital in a tractor’. It was ‘curious’, he concluded, ‘how many seem to take the economic “superiority” of the tractor for granted.’41 Whereas Jenks suspected that the engineer regarded ‘manual labour and animal traction as survivals of mediaevalism’, he contrasted this position with the pragmatic farmer who found those things to be ‘not only cheaper but actually more efficient’. Part of the reason for this was that the farmer viewed his holding not as a ‘collection of jobs’ but as an ‘economic unit’. He was disinclined to sink scarce funds in machinery whose value would depreciate, preferring to keep his capital liquid. Furthermore, the commonplace pattern of the mixed farming system on small units made it unlikely that the range of expensive machinery required would 74 An Interesting South-Coast Farm receive sufficient use to give an economic return. Jenks admitted that there was a solution to this: specialisation and the large farm, but argued that ‘just as farming methods must be adapted to the nature of the land, so farming machinery must be adapted to farming methods, and not vice versa’. He was also doubtful whether the increased productivity promised by machines was necessarily beneficial when the prices for commodities were often low. In circumstances where only one in ten farmers had a tractor, what was needed was ‘a few cheap and simple “gadgets,” such as a one-man hoist, a portable milking-machine and an all-purpose drill’.42 Jenks was also an enthusiast for a technique yet older than ploughing with horses: broadcasting seed, the practical and economic benefits he argued for in several articles.43 With gentle humour, he was sometimes referred to as ‘that well- known broadcaster’.44 Despite Jenks’ defence of the horse and broadcasting, he was not opposed to all new technology. There were machines whose use on the farm he readily endorsed, such as cars and grass drying machines. The former he described as the ‘lineal descendent of the farmer’s gig’.45 He even sometimes admitted the utility of the tractor: ‘where the scope is adequate for a tractor, there can be no question about the satisfaction derived in seeing the land turned over rapidly.’46 Once again, the inclusion of a condition relating to the size of the holding allowed him to reconcile his love of the horse with his training as a rational and progressive agriculturalist. A few years later, he went a stage further and admitted that: ‘In all the major operations, the modern tractor is undoubtedly cheaper than the traditional pair-horse team’, but even then he held out for the horse as being more economical in some circumstances.47 Although he did not like it, Jenks was too honest not to admit that he had glimpsed the future, but still he could not say where it might ultimately lead, writing that ‘those who have a sentimental regard for the horse need have no fear. There will always be need for this form of power.’48 Jenks’ approach to mechanisation was connected to his beliefs about the part that physical labour played in a fulfilled life. At times, the most he seemed to concede to machinery was that it might reduce drudgery. He also linked his opinions about mechanisation in agriculture to a wider critique of modernity, writing that:

[f]arming is one of the few industries in which Man is not yet dominated by the Machine, in which the small producer still has a chance to preserve his independence. It is in the national interest that it should remain so.49

The mention in his later work of two texts, first published in the 1920s, may suggest that his attitudes at this time did not come exclusively from empirical sources but was also buttressed by reading. The first, L.C.A. Knowles’ The Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in Great Britain during the Nineteenth Century (1921) was a university textbook and Jenks may have encountered it at Oxford. Knowles’ thesis was that mechanical innovation was the primary force behind the great changes An Interesting South-Coast Farm 75 transforming industrial and agricultural production and social life. Jenks may also have been influenced by Arthur Penty’s Post-Industrialism (1922), which similarly identified mechanisation as the pivotal element of industrial modernity and demanded ‘a return […] to handicraft as the basis of production, using machinery only in an accessory way’.50 Penty was one of the little band of Christian socialists, Guild socialists and Distributists who spoke in favour of human autonomy and against the apparently ineluctable expansion of the state, industrialism and large- scale capitalism. Like Jenks, he would also be drawn towards fascism in the 1930s. The place of the machine in farming and human life generally would be a problem that Jenks would return to again and again. His complex response to modernisation bespoke a struggle to accommodate a host of different ideals within a model of farming which could be efficient, profitable and bountiful as an industry, providing a good standard of living for all those employed within it, whilst retaining the social and individual goods of farming as a tradition. His opinions may also have been in some way a rationalisation of his actual situation: he was the tenant of a modest farm, with little capital to finance improvements. However, the deepest roots of Jenks’ resistance to modernity were more personal. The independence of the yeoman farmer or the ploughman’s skill were authentically good in themselves but also carried a high aesthetic and emotional value for him. Not having been born into farming, but having fallen in love with it from outside, it was the practices and symbols of husbandry as seen in his early years which still captivated him; within the man was the child who loved horses. Having finally achieved his ambition to farm, Jenks found that the life he had longed for was either decadent with neglect or being transformed out of recognition by modernisation. He fought against these trends on every front, working to save traditional husbandry in his writing, by personal example, and – in time – by taking political action.

Our Agricultural Correspondent In May 1933, Jenks returned to the Agricultural Economics Research Institute, almost certainly at Orwin’s invitation.51 Although the purpose of their meeting can only be surmised, it is unlikely that the former student was making a purely social call. By this time, Jenks had established something of a parallel career as a writer, with a growing number of articles in periodicals and newspapers; as we have seen, he had tried through Sir William Beveridge to find an opening at The Field. Orwin was a regular writer for several important papers including The Manchester Guardian, The Observer and The Yorkshire Post. The latter was – is – one of England’s most influential regional papers.52 It is likely that through his recommendation Jenks became the Agricultural Correspondent of the Post, because the only known mention of his link to the paper is in association with the Institute.53 76 An Interesting South-Coast Farm

Despite this marking his breakthrough into agricultural journalism, Jenks’ left behind him no mention of the appointment. Probably it was only through such secrecy that his work for the Post could continue alongside his fascist allegiance during the second half of the 1930s. The paper was published by the Yorkshire Conservative Newspaper Company and supported that party. Under editor Arthur Mann, it was not partial to fascism in Britain and opposed appeasement.54 That said, it is an illustration of the complex political alignments of the time that the paper also included among its writers Hugh Ross Williamson and Collin Brooks.55 Williamson was, at the very least, a BUF fellow traveller and Brooks went on to work for Lord Rothermere’s The Daily Mail and The Sunday Dispatch, which gave Hitler and Mussolini a good press and were the only national papers to back Mosley for a period in 1934. He was also an associate of a little-known group of Tory ‘ultras’, the English Mistery.56 For the first years of his work for the Yorkshire Post, Jenks’ articles appeared every Saturday and Tuesday in the series ‘agricultural notes’. Because every piece was unsigned and no internal documentation has survived at the paper, it is difficult to state with complete certainty when he started writing for it. However, the articles in the period following Jenks’ visit to Oxford correspond to his usual style and exhibit his preoccupations and opinions. The regular cheques from Leeds would have been a useful contribution to the Jenks’ straitened domestic economy, but the necessity to provide regular copy, irre- spective of the demands of the farm, must have sometimes caused the lamp to burn in Jenks’ study late into the night.

Notes 1 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘all’, 17 November 1931. 2 Devon RO: Minutes of the Devon County Council Agriculture Committee for 9 September 1931. 3 Interview with Campbell Main, 6 August 2009; C. Main to Coupland, 19 February 2010; NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 13 June 1933. 4 C.R. Elrington, ‘Angmering’, pp. 29–60 in C.P. Lewis (ed.), A History of the County of Sussex: Volume V Part 2, Littlehampton and District (Arundel Rape, South-Eastern Part, Comprising Poling Hundred) (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Institute of Historical Research/ Boydell and Brewer, 2009), p. 34. 5 G.P. Burstow and A.E. Wilson, ‘A Roman Bath, Highdown Hill, Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections Relating to the History and Antiquities of the County, Vol. 80 (1939), pp. 63–81. 6 Jenks, The Country Year, p. 6. 7 Directory of Worthing and Neighbourhood for 1938 (London: Kelly’s Directories, undated), p. 675. 8 ‘Save Our Soil’, Everybody’s, 13 February 1943, p. 3. 9 Elrington, ‘Angmering’, p. 35. 10 W. Sussex RO, MSS 75: Diary of A.W.F. Somerset, 8, 12 and 14 November 1934. The charge against Mosley for assault was dismissed, but he and the other defendants were committed to trial at the Sussex assizes for riotous assembly, where they were found An Interesting South-Coast Farm 77

not guilty (The Times, 15 November 1934, p. 9; 16 November 1934, p. 11; 19 December 1934, p. 5). 11 W. Sussex RO, MSS 75: Diary of A.W.F. Somerset. 12 J. Fitzroy Somerset to Coupland, 13 and 28 September 2011. 13 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘All’, 17 November 1931; Fullerton to Family, 13 June 1933. 14 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘All’, 17 November 1931. 15 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 3 September 1932; Fullerton to ‘Soph’, 28 December 1932. 16 Certificated Copy of an Entry of Birth given at the General Register Office; Kelly’s Directory of Worthing and Neighbourhood for 1932, p. 445. 17 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 13 June 1933. 18 W. Sussex RO, Par 6/1/2/5: ‘Register of Baptisms solemnized in the Parish of Angmering in the County of Sussex in the Diocese of Chichester, from A.D. 1931 to 1965’, p. 16. 19 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 13 June 1933. 20 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 2/B/26/1: Jenks to Beveridge, 18 July 1926. 21 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘All’, 17 November 1931. 22 ‘An Interesting South-Coast Farm’, Town and Country News, 29 December 1933, p. 7. 23 Ibid. 24 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘All’, 17 November 1931. 25 ‘An Interesting South-Coast Farm’, p. 7; NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘All’, 17 November 1931. 26 The Times, 17 May 1949, p. 5. 27 YP, 28 July 1934, p. 9; 24 November 1934, p. 7. 28 ‘An Interesting South-Coast Farm’, p. 7. 29 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘All’, 17 November 1931. 30 ‘An Interesting South-Coast Farm’, p. 7. 31 ‘The Countryman’s Outlook’, FQ, Vol. 2, No. 3 (July 1936), pp. 396–404. 32 W. Sussex RO, Garland Collection: N11376, May 1935. 33 Jenks, The Country Year, p. 16. 34 ‘A Countryman’s Outlook-II’, FQ, Vol. 2, No. 4 (October 1936), pp. 521–529. 35 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 3 September 1932. 36 Action, 28 August 1937, p. 4. 37 In April and May 1935, February 1936 and January 1937 (W. Sussex RO, Garland Collection). 38 YP, 13 October 1934, p. 14. 39 Ibid. 40 WT, 16 January 1931, p. 2. 41 The Times, 13 June 1932, p. 18; 20 June 1932, p. 18; 4 July 1932, p. 18; 18 July 1932, p. 18 and 25 July 1932, p. 17. 42 YP, 20 July 1935, p. 21. 43 YP, 8 December 1934, p. 16; 5 December 1936, p. 6. 44 Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 45 YP, 18 July 1936, p. 11. 46 YP, 5 March 1935, p. 3. 47 YP, 19 June 1937, p. 17. 48 YP, 5 March 1935, p. 3. 49 Jenks, ‘A Countryman’s Outlook’, pp. 396–404. 50 Arthur J. Penty, Post-Industrialism (London: Macmillan, 1922), p. 63. 51 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE167: Visitors book of the Institute of Agricultural Economics, 1933–70, entry for 24 May 1933. 78 An Interesting South-Coast Farm

52 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE 73: Drafts of articles on aspects of agricultural policy by C.S. Orwin for the Yorkshire Post Trade Review, 1926, 1930–40, 1953. 53 Agricultural Economics, 1913–1938: Being the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute (Oxford: AERI, 1938), p. 74; Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE35: Card index of research students giving nature of research and details of subsequent appointments up to 1938, record card for J.E.F. Jenks. 54 Mildred A. Gibb and Frank Beckwith, The Yorkshire Post: Two Centuries (Leeds: The Yorkshire Conservative Newspaper Co. Ltd, 1954), pp. 70, 81–88. 55 Ibid., p. 86. 56 Stephen Dorril, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (London: Penguin Books, 2007; first published 2006), pp. 296, 329, 334, 353–4, 397, 414, 433–4, 445, 456, 470, 547. 10 Farming and Money

As we have seen, from the time Jenks arrived at Angmering, he sought to resist the incoming tide of change by showing that the traditional model of farming was still viable. However, his energies were also increasingly directed to the radical revision of agricultural policy, a mission that would eventually bring him to the fascist movement. Initially, this inclination found its focus in monetary reform, the obscure world of thought and activism inspired by thinkers including Silvio Gesell, Major Douglas and Frederick Soddy, men commonly dismissed as ‘currency cranks’; Jenks remarked in 1939: ‘I was a monetary reformer long before I was a Fascist’.1 As the pages below suggest, he probably joined the BUF in early 1934, but aside from his collaboration with John Taylor Peddie in 1934 – to be discussed below – no other trace of this part of his career has been found.

Monetary reform The most significant movement of this type was ‘social credit’, a system created in the early 1920s by Major C.H. Douglas. Social credit had a small but noisy following in Britain during the interwar years and some successes in the Dominions. In New Zealand, the social credit influenced Country Party was represented in Parliament between 1928 and 1938 and in Canada, a social credit government was elected in Alberta in 1935. Jenks could have become acquainted with the theory in New Zealand for, although it was not significant there until the 1930s, there were earlier stirrings.2 However, despite occasional references, there are no indications that he was ever a social crediter.3 During the 1930s, he was absent from the journals that supported the movement and never espoused a ‘national dividend’, Douglas’ trademark remedy to the shortfall in effective demand within a capitalist market economy. 80 Farming and Money

Although not a system of monetary reform in itself, the ‘Distributist’ movement provided a home for many who favoured such ideas. Distributism, whose most important thinkers were G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and A.J. Penty, was an adjunct of Roman Catholic and Anglo Catholic social theology. It emerged in the 1920s, out of the wreckage of Guild Socialism: when the National Guilds League fragmented, with many members joining the early Communist Party of Great Britain, others were drawn to distributism and social credit and the Distrib utist League was founded in 1926. Once again, there is no evidence for his involvement with distributism after his return from New Zealand. There was certainly opportunity: in Oxford, in the late 1920s, the local branch of the League was named in honour of one of Jenks’ heroes, as ‘The Cobbett Club’;4 in Sussex, in the 1930s, there was a branch headed by Commander Herbert Shove, who also became a fascist.5 However, whilst he seems to have left no earlier trace, from the mid-1930s onwards, Jenks adhered to the major tenets of distributism, advocating the widest distribution of property in land, the recreation of a yeoman class as the bedrock of the national social order, and being generally sceptical of industrial modernity. Although he did not appear in G.K.’s Weekly, from the late 1930s onwards he would write for its successor, The Weekly Review.

John Taylor Peddie It was thanks to Orwin that Jenks came into contact with John Taylor Peddie. Towards the end of March 1934, Peddie visited the Institute, and its Director introduced him to Jenks. By May, they had begun their collaboration on what would be the first book bearing Jenks’ name, Farming and Money.6 Although he never mentioned Peddie afterwards, there is ample reason to believe that it may not have been the easiest partnership. Although now almost forgotten, John – or ‘Jack’ – Taylor Peddie was a minor public figure in the early twentieth century. Born in Glasgow, he was brought up in Canada, before moving back to Britain around the turn of the century. An engineer by training, he became an entrepreneur, whose wheeling and dealing took him to court and into bankruptcy.7 By 1931, he had ‘nothing left but debts’.8 Besides his business activities, in his entry in Who’s Who, Peddie described himself as a ‘monetary specialist, economist, philosopher and theologian’. He was a prolific writer and a persistent presence on the fringes of politics and economic debate. Peddie lobbied the rich and influential tirelessly. At the beginning of the 1930s, Major Joseph Ball of the Conservative Research Department (CRD) gave a candid assessment of him:

Frankly our experience here of Taylor Peddie in the past has been of an unpleasant kind. […] [H]e used to pester us with letters, first of all begging us to Farming and Money 81

examine his schemes which were invariably fantastic, and subsequently accusing the Party of stealing his ideas and giving him no recognition. […] Taylor Peddie, besides being a currency crank well-known to the Treasury, is also from our experience a potentially dangerous individual. He used to assure me that he had the cordial support of prominent people whom he had seen, statements which I afterwards found on personal enquiry to be without foundation.9

Although the CRD never took him seriously, Peddie successfully latched onto influential people and public bodies.10 In 1930, he talked himself onto the Conserv ative Finance and Industry Committee, commonly known as the ‘Macmillan Committee’, as the chief witness for the Master Cotton Spinners’ Association.11 The committee was dominated by John Maynard Keynes but also conferred a degree of legitimacy to Peddie. From 1931 onwards he added a theological dimension to his thinking and this religious aspect would play some part in his collaboration with Jenks.12 Peddie’s interest in agricultural matters developed around the same time. Through the Master Cotton Spinners’ Association, he had contacts with a number of agricultural bodies and also claimed to be involved in the Central Chamber of Agriculture’s discussions concerning the Wheat Act (1932).13 Ironically, Peddie opposed a standard price for wheat, which Jenks would regard as a rare positive action from government.

Farming and Money Few insights into the preparation of Farming and Money – published in early 1935 – have survived. It is likely that it was mostly Jenks’ work, and there is a suggestion that he had a draft on hand before Peddie’s involvement.14 In Jenks’ own words, it was ‘written in conjunction’ with the Scot, who knew little of farming.15 Almost the entirety of Farming and Money was drawn from Jenks’ experience and training, with a little religious content as a garnish, and Peddie’s monetary mechanisms inserted at various points. In these sections, a cloudy vagueness appears, and at two points Peddie is specifically identified as their source.16 It is most likely that the two men worked together during 1934 to revise Jenks’ existing draft before its publication at the beginning of 1935. Orwin did not escape further involvement: Peddie visited him again in August 1934, and claimed that the Director had read the manuscript and thought its authors’ arguments were ‘unanswerable’.17 Farming and Money was Jenks’ first comprehensive statement of a position that he would, with some changes of detail, maintain throughout the 1930s. It was his alternative to Orwin’s ‘future of farming’; although Jenks’ old tutor was not named, he was undoubtedly among those agricultural reformers who advocated ‘industrialisation […] mechanisation and rationalisation’.18 Neither did Jenks align himself with another common position, associated with the Distributists, among others, whom he accused of seeking ‘a return to more primitive conditions’, in effect peasant farming.19 82 Farming and Money

What Jenks wanted was a national agriculture based on family-owned, medium- sized farms.20 The argument for this proposal was not primarily an economic one, but based on social and cultural imperatives: it would maintain a rural population, acting as ‘a human reservoir, supplying industry and commerce with recruits of good physique’ and ‘balancing’ the debilitating effect of ‘urban life’.21 Such assumptions were not unusual at the time, being prominent, for example, in Professor R.G. Stapledon’s The Land: Now and Tomorrow, also published in 1935.22 As noted above, Jenks was backing the type of farm that Orwin deemed to be uneconomic and destined to disappear. Beyond Jenks’ claims for the social and cultural goods preserved by this type of agriculture, for him this was the natural scale for husbandry: ‘Agriculture is a primitive industry, and experience indicates that it is best conducted in relatively primitive lines, that is in units sufficiently small to be personally controlled by one man.’23 ‘Standardisation’ was unsuitable because the ‘apparent anomalies’ of the complex patchwork of British farming were the outcome of ‘centuries of experience’, practical and wise responses to an ‘extraordinary diversity of soil and climate’.24 There were economic advantages to the small intensive farm but he admitted that it was incompatible with modernisation as conventionally understood: ‘it does preclude the application of large-scale organisation and mechanisation such as have lowered working costs in other industries.’25 Farming and Money made an argument for the revival of the nation’s agriculture which harmonised with Jenks’ own sensibility and philosophy. However, whilst a moderniser might have dismissed his vision as reactionary, the means through which he sought a renaissance of the English yeomanry were strikingly modern, entailing national planning and state action on a great scale. Fundamental to the whole scheme was monetary reform, to resolve what was then commonly spoken of as the paradox of ‘poverty in the midst of plenty’,26 that is, the existence of want when society’s technological resources were capable of producing enough for all; hunger and deprivation increased as land was withdrawn from cultivation, and investment in, and employment on, the land slashed back. As with other proposals which began on this premise, Jenks’ and Peddie’s answer was to increase demand, directly, by boosting the capacity of consumers to buy goods and, indirectly, by increasing economic activity in farming, which would also stimulate growth in the wider economy that supplied its means of production and purchased, processed and retailed its produce.27 The means to this end was the ‘Central Reserve Standard’, which was Peddie’s main contribution. As already mentioned, the working of this system is by no means transparent, but it apparently sought to balance supply with demand by increasing the consumer’s spending power via their wages.28 Although an ‘equitable distribution’ of national wealth was mentioned, no fundamental changes to capitalism were detailed, which presumably meant it would continue to extract surplus value to be paid to shareholders.29 If so, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Peddie’s scheme was fatally flawed. However, in the context of the evolution of Jenks’ thinking, the specific failings of his collaborator’s mechanism are not so important as Farming and Money 83 the general aim of increasing effective demand, which, thanks to Keynes, from the 1930s onwards was gradually moving into the political mainstream. However, the benefits of increased purchasing power in the home market would be lost if British agriculture still had to compete against cheap imports. A system of ‘selective control’ of imports was proposed, conducted according to the principle accepted (although not implemented) at the Dominion conference in Ottawa of 1932, of: ‘“Home producer first, Empire producer second and Foreigner third.”’30 The system envisaged would end free trade, protecting the British market and restricting trade to a barter system for commodities that could not be supplied by domestic producers.31 Consequent on these new economic circumstances, the proportion of home- produced food in the national diet would grow substantially, with self-sufficiency as the ideal.32 The new institutions through which agriculture would provide this great increase would include agricultural banks and, although the independent yeoman farmer would be the basis of the new national agriculture, his activities would be co-ordinated by powerful collective institutions. Among them would be marketing boards, which was, Jenks noted, a development of measures implemented by the National Government; ‘full-time Agricultural Authorities’, responsible for ‘stimulating the intensification of production’, providing better housing, higher wages and employment insurance for farm workers, and maintaining an ‘agricultural ladder’ whereby suitable men might ascend to their own farm.33 Finally, a ‘Central Land Commission’ would stabilise land-values and rents and would encourage owner occupation.34 Whilst all this was to be created by the state, Jenks remained suspicious of the centre, stressing that: ‘centralisation must be reduced to a minimum’.35 Conse- quently, these institutions were to be organised on a county basis and constituted not from civil servants but drawn from the corporate associations of agriculture. A ‘Central Agricultural Authority’, elected at county level, would connect the local to the Minister of Agriculture. It was also this body that would administer an ‘Agricultural Development Fund’ of £75 million, to pay for these new institutions, prime the pump for new industries (including tobacco, ethanol for motor fuel and flax) and programmes of land reclamation.36

‘No action’ When Jenks sent Farming and Money to Sir William Beveridge, with a request for comments; the carbon copy of the acknowledgement was annotated ‘no action’, undoubtedly the usual response to the volume.37 Peddie sent an inscribed copy to Orwin, which the recipient promptly donated to the Institute’s library.38 It can only have been as a kindness to his old student that Orwin gave the book one of its few reviews, in The Manchester Guardian, providing a brief factual summary of a thesis that he could have had little sympathy with.39 In one of its few other notices, in The Economist, it was ‘well-meant’ but the reviewer noted the ‘circular reasoning’ of its monetary scheme and that it was ‘unsatisfactorily defined’.40 84 Farming and Money

Jenks’ involvement with Peddie included the stillborn Christian State Mov ement, for which there are only two known references: in the first edition of Farm- ing and Money and in a contemporary pamphlet.41 The preface of the book was dated 7th January, 1935 and it appeared under the imprint of the Christian State Publishing Co. Ltd, and included a note that it had ‘been officially adopted by The Christian State Movement’, which was based at Peddie’s address.42 When the second edition appeared in September, there was no mention of the CSM, which was the latest of a succession of important sounding but ephemeral organisations that Peddie conjured up.43 However, although the CSM was Peddie moonshine, it would not be the last time that Jenks would be involved with a project that fused rural reconstruction with Christianity and, to a greater or lesser degree, this was a mixture present in all of his activism. After his collaboration with Jenks, Peddie took a break from campaigning; in all likelihood, with all his credit exhausted, he was forced to. His next venture employed his new agricultural knowledge and involved cheese making and fattening pigs in the vicinity of Melton Mowbray, the home of the pork pie.44 For Jenks, Farming and Money was a dead end, although it permitted him to work out many of the major themes of his thinking.

Notes 1 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to E. Pound, 1 August 1939. 2 Evening Post, 15 January 1927, p. 5; Derek Challis, The Book of Iris: A Life of Robin Hyde (Auckland University Press, 2002), p. 201; Marinus F. La Rooij, ‘Political Antisemitism in New Zealand during the Great Depression: A Case Study in the Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy’ (unpublished MA thesis, submitted to Victoria University of Wellington, 1998), pp. 117–120. 3 From the Ground Up, p. 97; ‘The Countryman’s Outlook’, BUQ, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April–June 1937), pp. 91–102; Jorian Jenks, Spring Comes Again (London: Bookshelf, 1939), pp. 44–46. 4 G.K.’s Weekly, 8 September 1928, p. 415. 5 Michael Thorn, ‘Filling the Gap in the Distributist Record: 1930–1936’, Chesterton Review, Vol. 24, No. 3 (August 1998), pp. 297–319: 316. 6 Devon RO, the Papers of Leonard K. Elmhirst, LKE/9/S6/C: J.T. Peddie to L.K. Elmhirst, 19 May 1934 and 12 April 1935; Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE167: Visitors book of the Institute of Agricultural Economics. 1933–70, entry for 28 March 1934. 7 U. Warwick Mod. RC, MSS.19A/3/2/4: MS. note on Peddie (ca. 1906); The Times, 23 October 1915, p. 2; 23 October 1915, p. 2; The Economic History Review (1968), p. 488; J.M. Bruce, ‘A History of Martinsyde Aircraft’, The Aeronautical Journal, Vol. 72 (1968), p. 770. 8 Bodl. Oxf., CPA, CRD1/15/3/164–165: Peddie to J. Ball, 22 June 1931. 9 Bodl. Oxf., CPA, CRD1/15/3/4–6: Ball to Lord Stonehaven, 18 September 1935. 10 Bodl. Oxf., CPA, CRD1/15/2/77: Ball to G. Bowyer (undated, ca. May 1930); /66: Ball to N. Chamberlain, 5 March 1931. 11 Bodl. Oxf., CPA, CRD1/15/2/146: A. Fosbroke-Hobbes to Lord Eustace Percy, 25 February 1930; /70: Peddie to Chamberlain, 24 February 1931; /68: Chamberlain to Peddie, 4 March 1931; /19: Ball to Chamberlain, 22 April 1931; CRD1/15/3/100–101: W. Craven-Ellis to Chamberlain, 22 July 1931; /34–46: ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee on Finance and Industry’, 19 June 1930. 12 J.T. Peddie, The Economic Mechanism of Scripture (London: Williams and Norgate, 1934), p. vii. Farming and Money 85

13 Bodl. Oxf., CPA, CRD1/15/2/122: Peddie to Ball, 5 May 1930; CRD1/15/3/169–170: CRD1/15/2/98–99: Viscount Wolmer to Peddie, 4 June 1930; Peddie to Ball, 17 June 1931; W. Philip Jeffcock, Agricultural Politics, 1915–1935: Being a History of the Central Chamber of Agriculture during that Period (Ipswich: Ancient House Press, 1937), pp. 21–23. 14 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/A2/165: Jenks to Saunders, 1 September 1936. 15 Action, 28 November 1936, p. 7. 16 J.E.F. Jenks and J. Taylor Peddie, Farming and Money (London: Christian State Publishing, 1935), pp. 19, 51. 17 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE167: Visitors book of the Institute of Agricultural Economics. 1933–70, entry for 10 August 1934; Devon RO, the Papers of Leonard K. Elmhirst, LKE/9/S6/C: Peddie to Elmhirst, 12 April 1935. 18 Farming and Money, pp. 76, 85. 19 Ibid., pp. 80–85. 20 Ibid., pp. 44, 93–94. 21 Ibid., p. 45. 22 R.G. Stapledon, The Land: Now and Tomorrow (London: Faber and Faber, 1935), pp. 226–233. 23 Farming and Money, pp. 56, 85–86. 24 Ibid., pp. 76–77. 25 Ibid., pp. 56, 76–78, 73. 26 Ibid., p. 14. 27 Ibid., pp. 35, 37–38, 43, 46, 51–2, 59–62. 28 Ibid., p. 21. 29 Ibid., p. 20. 30 Ibid., p. 22. 31 Ibid., pp. 39–41. 32 Ibid., pp. 24, 36–7, 46–7, 61. 33 Ibid., pp. 49–50, 62–6, 80–4, 98–104. 34 Ibid., pp. 23–27. 35 Ibid., p. 25. 36 Ibid., pp. 50–51. 37 BLPES, BEVERIDGE 9B/52: Jenks to Beveridge, 9 April 1935; 9A-6-5: L.T. to Jenks, 11 April 1935. 38 Peddie’s inscription was dated 6 March 1935 and a librarian’s annotation shows that the book was donated on the 9th of the same month (copy now in the library of the University of Reading, RHC). 39 The Manchester Guardian, 30 April 1935, p. 7. 40 The Economist, Vol. 121 (9 November 1935), p. 911. 41 Anon., The Central Reserve Standard: The Key to Monetary Reform and Economic Revival; Why it is Needed and How it Will Work (London: Christian State Publishing (undated, ca. 1935) (in BLPES, BEVERIDGE 9B/52). 42 Farming and Money, p. 4. 43 J.E.F. Jenks and J. Taylor Peddie, Farming and Money (London: Williams and Norgate, 1935; second edition). 44 Telephone interview with Ian Peddie, 30 October 2011; I. Peddie to Coupland, 15 November 2011; Devon RO, the Papers of Leonard K. Elmhirst, LKE/9/S6/C: Peddie to Elmhirst, 1 June 1936; Paul Abel, ‘Recent British Decisions in Trade Mark and Unfair Competition Cases, The Trade-Mark Reporter, Vol. 34 (1944), pp. 91–99. 11 Another Cobbett

By the 1930s, Jorian Jenks was in his thirties and had achieved his childhood ambition to be a farmer; he was also an author and journalist and had a wife and family. In other circumstances, he might have passed the rest of his years in ordinary obscurity but the times were neither prosperous nor peaceful.

Fascism Various accounts have been given of Jenks’ first involvement with fascism: Richard Moore-Colyer dates it to as early as the New Party, whose short life was between Mosley’s departure from the Labour Party in February 1931 and his founding of the British Union of Fascists in October 1932.1 Although no source is given, this may come from a misreading of Jenks’ book Spring Comes Again: A Farmer’s Philosophy (1939), which mentions the New Party but gives no hint of personal involvement.2 Jenks’ comments suggest a later date for his joining Mosley’s movement and, in any case, he had little opportunity for contact with the New Party in Devon in 1931, where it did not campaign.3 Moore-Colyer goes on to write of how Jenks ‘soon became an active proselyte for the BUF in Surrey and Sussex and was closely involved in Mosley’s 1933 East Anglia campaign, when he organized many of the garden parties and soirées addressed by the party leader’.4 This is all baseless too. The claim that Jenks was involved in the 1933 campaign may be from a misreading of Robert Skidelsky’s Mosley. The suggestion that he was active in Surrey is made by Skidelsky but also without foundation.5 Martin Pugh similarly claims that Jenks was recruited via the 1933 agricultural campaign but gives no valid source.6 There is a strong possibility that Jenks described how he joined the BUF in an anonymous article published in the fascist paper Blackshirt, at the beginning of 1935.7 Another Cobbett 87

The piece, entitled ‘Why I, A Farmer, Have Turned Fascist’, contains similarities to the style and content of his signed work and the author of this article also used a dialect style to evoke the English farmer, which Jenks often did. The possibility that he was the author is also suggested by two letters in the fascist press later that year, which, whilst pseudonymous, originated from ‘Farmer’ and ‘Agriculturalist’ of Sussex and dealt with the dumping of Argentine wheat and beef on the British market and other favoured themes of his.8 The Blackshirt article explained that it was disillusion with the National Gov- ernment, elected in 1931, partly on its promises to help home agriculture, that caused the writer to turn to fascism, which was a grievance repeated again and again in Jenks’ later writings. For example, a few years on he wrote of how: ‘The farming community expected great things from a protectionist and strongly Conservative Government, and it has not even received economic justice.’9 The author of the 1935 article described how, around January 1934, he first read of the Blackshirts:

Their aims and objects were to me the very thing the country needed: a straight-forward constructive policy of national regeneration, with ‘Britain First’ as its watch-word. I did not hesitate. Sick and tired as I was of seeing farming going to the dogs, I wrote up immediately for further particulars and enrolment forms. Ever since that day, I have become more and more convinced that the Fas- cist agricultural policy is the only one which will put us on our feet again.10

Although Jenks’ first probable letter in the fascist press did not appear until March 1935, the book that he had written together with Jack Peddie in the previous year contained little that a fascist could object to.11 Another sign of Jenks’ otherwise invisible political inclination, was in a letter to The Times of July 1934, which summarised the argument in his forthcoming Farming and Money and BUF agricultural policy.12

10 per cent When Farming and Money came out at the start of 1935 Jenks saw his book fall dead from the press. It may have been this disappointment which drove the incremental increase of his involvement in fascism. It is also likely that he recognised that, on their own, the proposals within Farming and Money had no hope of realisation. Jenks wrote in 1936:

I am […] a British Fascist […] not by conversion, but simply because Fascist policy seemed to be the only one to fit the realities of today, not only with regard to agriculture but with regard to our whole national life. I actually 88 Another Cobbett

wrote a book which I now know to be 90% Fascism before I ever came into contact with the movement.13

The missing 10 per cent was the political means to achieve the vision of Farming and Money. A few years later he admitted a major flaw in the plans of monetary reformers:

You cannot alter the Money-system without altering the whole political, economic and social fabric which has been built around it, and which is jealously guarded by its beneficiaries. Monetary reform alone […] cannot possibly stand by itself.

As Jenks explained, both Press and Parliament were dominated by those whose self- interests were vested in the status quo.14 Farming and Money had offered a blueprint for a new agriculture but did not offer the political means to overturn the existing order: ‘a power stronger than itself; that is to say the authoritarian state.’15 Fascism as a movement and a state seemed to Jenks to be the only means to further his vision for the future of farming.

Fascism and Agriculture If Jenks joined in early 1934, that would mean that over 2 years of fascist campaigning would pass before he became actively involved, in the spring of 1936. Even at the beginning of 1934, the BUF had more than a year of struggle behind it. Although Mosley and his Blackshirts are today associated with their agitation against the Jewish minority and the violence surrounding their campaigns in East London, from its beginnings in October 1932, the fascist movement had a comprehensive policy for the rebirth of the country into what it called the ‘Greater Britain’. Mosley’s fascist manifesto, The Greater Britain (1932, 1934), included the reconstruction of the nation’s agriculture and countryside.16 On the 26th September 1933, the first BUF agricultural campaign opened with Mosley declaring in the market place at Ashford, in Kent, that: ‘Fascism does not come to teach the farmer his job. Fascism comes to make the conditions in which the farmer can do his job.’17 Jenks later described Mosley as ‘another Cobbett’ and although this was in many ways an unlikely association, the fascist leader did have ties to Cobbett’s rural England; he was a scion of the old Staffordshire squirearchy, and had a longstanding wish to farm, which he would fulfil some years later.18 In 1933 and 1934, the Blackshirts’ interventions in the so-called ‘Tithe War’ received much publicity.19 Tithe rent charge dated back to the early Middle Ages; originally entailing a payment in kind by farmers to the Church, but by this point it was paid in cash. It had long been a cause of friction between countrymen and their clergy, but in the interwar years it became a matter of hot contention. Another Cobbett 89

When a farmer could not or would not pay, bailiffs would seize property to be sold at auction to pay the debt. From the early 1930s members of the National Tithepayers Association (NTA), resisted the bailiffs and, in 1933–34, fascists also intervened on the side of the farmers. Some of the engagements of the Tithe War were in the vicinity of Jenks’ parents’ home in Bishop’s Tawton and a BUF branch was opened at Barnstaple.20 An intelligence report indicated that Devon and Cornwall were then ‘almost’ the BUF’s ‘strongest district’, and Walter Milne-Bailey, of the Trades Union Congress Research and Economic Department, noted that there was ‘considerable alarm’ at the growth of fascism there.21 Although, as a tenant, Jenks did not pay the tithe, he had made clear in Farm- ing and Money that he considered it unjust and that the national church should be financed from general taxation.22 Apart from this, Jenks made little reference to an issue which divided two institutions he valued, the Land and the Church. Also, by the time that he was writing regularly for the fascist movement, the Tithe Act (1936) improved matters somewhat. In Jenks’ only detailed discussion of the matter, in 1939, he pressed for the abolition of the tithe, which had now become a payment to the state.23 Although the publicity generated by the Tithe War was welcomed by the BUF, it was problematic because such confrontations ran counter to its desire to be seen as a force for order. Obtaining the oxygen of publicity for fascism remained a challenge that was never fully overcome. Although local papers often reported fascist meetings, the BUF was invisible to the reader of the national dailies, except when the opposition to their meetings caused disorder and violence. The short-lived exception was when Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail and Sunday Dispatch for some months from January 1934 carried considerable positive publicity. This was a period of rapid growth, seeing fascist membership reach an estimated peak of around 50,000 and, in West Sussex, Worthing and Horsham became centres of BUF activity.24 During this period the BUF agricultural campaign also increased its tempo. Innovations of the time included a short-lived subsidiary organisation, the British Union of Farmers, and in May 1934, a detailed policy was published, Fascism and Agriculture, and a campaign began to hold meetings in every rural constituency.25 The biggest draw was always Mosley, who spoke at significant market towns, including Barnstaple, in October 1934.26 An intelligence report of the time stated that ‘very considerable Fascist support has been obtained from the farmer in certain areas’ and that some NFU branches had a 20 per cent fascist membership.27

Vergilius In contrast, in 1935 the BUF fell to its lowest ebb. It was inevitable that those attracted to the novelty of fascism quickly fell away, especially when it became clear that there would be no rapid ascent to power. However, in the second half of 1935 the BUF gained new impetus, most importantly from its growth in East London. 90 Another Cobbett

Although there were no agricultural campaigns, the topic remained central to fascist policy and propaganda. From June 1935 onwards, a regular series, ‘The Farmers’ Diary’, appeared in Blackshirt.28 Attributed only to ‘Our Agricultural Correspond- ent’, this unidentified writer, whose articles evinced decades of experience as an agricultural journalist, was Jenks’ predecessor. In February 1936, a major development of the BUF’s struggle for power was the launch of Action, its second attempt to create a popular paper, the earlier Fascist Week having been axed after a few months to save money. Action was aimed at the masses outside the fascist movement, by combining ‘popular’ content with political report- age.29 Despite serious financial and distribution problems, the paper survived to the end of the movement in 1940, although it is doubtful whether it ever broke out from the circle of the converted. It was through Jenks’ articles in Action, beginning not long after his 37th birthday, in April 1936, and only ceasing with the banning of the BUF and his arrest and gaoling in June 1940, that he would make his most important contribution to fascism. Jenks’ first article indicted the government for preparing to fight another war, whilst leaving agriculture weaker than before the last one. Mentioning the threat to food imports posed by submarine and air attacks on shipping, he referred to Ernest Dunlop Swinton’s short story the ‘The Green Curve’ (1909), which dealt with the ineluctable realities of starvation and death faced by a besieged city.30 Jenks’ position was hardly unorthodox; he had read a book by Sir Daniel Hall, called Agriculture After the War (1916), in which Hall had put the argument on strategic grounds for a massive increase in arable farming.31 The need to incorporate agriculture within British rearmament plans would be a theme of his writing until the outbreak of war. Initially, Jenks’ articles appeared every two or three weeks and he maintained his anonymity with the classical pen name ‘Vergilius’. He never explained his choice of name, but, like him, Publius Vergilius Maro, or ‘Virgil’, was both a farmer and a poet. Jenks referred to the poet’s writing on farming some years later.32

The School of Planning There were good reasons for Jenks to maintain his anonymity. Fascism was, at the very least, not respectable and for some odious, most especially for its identification with violence and disorder and association with foreign dictatorships and anti-Jewish agitation. The truth in all these matters was more complex than the stereotype allowed, but it certainly took some grit to become a Blackshirt. One contemporary wrote that ‘[t]o be a Fascist now requires as much social courage as once it required to be a Communist’.33 Besides the opinions of his family and neighbours, Jenks also had to consider his wider work as an agriculturalist for the Conservative Yorkshire Post and also in relation to another significant appointment, as a lecturer at the recently established School of Planning and Research for National Development. Another Cobbett 91

Beginning around the start of 1936, this was one of the more unexpected epi- sodes in Jenks’ professional life. From the beginning of the 1930s onwards, the prophets of ‘planning’ imagined a new age of reason, control and efficiency. The School of Planning was an offshoot of the Architectural Association; inaugurated at the beginning of 1935 by E.A.A. Rowse, its aim was to provide postgraduate training in the emerging technology of planning. As the prospectus stated, the intention was to weld ‘the work of the Engineer, the Surveyor, the Architect and the Local Government Official together with that of the Economist, the Sociologist and the Politician into that of the Planner’.34 After the School’s first year of operation, an expanded syllabus was created and more staff recruited, including Jenks as lecturer on ‘general agricultural development’.35 The inclusion of agriculture was not merely a token gesture, Rowse was also a farmer and, Jenks wrote, ‘a keen student of agricultural problems’.36 It was probably Christopher Turnor who suggested Jenks. Turnor, who was co-founder of the Central Landowners’ Association, was responsible for agriculture on the School’s Advisory Board and knew Orwin very well.37 Turnor may have also known Jenks through the Farmers’ Club, which the latter joined in 1935.38 The Club was an important nexus of influence, whose members and guests included many influential figures in the agricultural community, including ministers of agriculture, politicians, lobbyists and academics. It also provided a forum for new ideas, delivered as papers at its regular meetings.39 The School operated in the evenings, at 7 Bedford Square. Its approach was described as being like ‘a club, in which Members have an opportunity to meet, exchange ideas with, and learn from acknowledged experts in almost every walk of life’. Lectures were for an hour, followed by discussion.40 Jenks’ teaching duties were light, amounting to three lectures per year, in 1936 and 1937.41 Payment for each of these was £3.3.0, but the affairs of the School were so precarious that it only remained solvent through staff volunteering to forgo their fees and Jenks certainly made this sacrifice in 1937 and probably in the previous year too. Ironi- cally, it was a poorly planned venture, teetering on the brink of financial ruin from the beginning.42 The Architectural Association announced that the School would close at the end of its 1938 session.43 In the event, it carried on independently and although Jenks was no longer on its staff, he continued his association, appearing in February 1939 as a guest speaker.44 Among the other lecturers hosted in 1939 was J.D. Bernal, Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College and a prominent supporter of the Communist Party.45 Given its reputation for socialist sympathies, it is perhaps surprising that most of Jenks’ involvement with the School was whilst he was openly involved with the fascist movement. Despite the war and all that it brought with it, Jenks’ link to the School was not severed, and in 1949 Rowse collaborated with his former colleague’s work for the Rural Reconstruction Association.46 92 Another Cobbett

Notes 1 Moore-Colyer, ‘Towards “Mother Earth”’, p. 356. 2 Spring Comes Again, p. 79. 3 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/A2/165: Jenks to Saunders, 1 September 1936. 4 Moore-Colyer, ‘Towards “Mother Earth”’, p. 356. 5 R. Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley (London: Macmillan, 1990; first published 1975) p. 326. 6 M. Pugh, Hurrah for the Blackshirts: Fascists and Fascism in Britain between the Wars (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), p. 140; Pugh’s cited source (Mosley’s Blackshirts, pp. 10, 21, 60) does not mention Jenks. 7 Blackshirt, 4 January 1935, p. 5. 8 Blackshirt, 22 March 1935, p. 7; 5 July 1935, p. 7. 9 Action, 8 May 1937, p. 4. 10 ‘Why I, A Farmer, Have Turned Fascist’, p. 5. 11 Bodl. Oxf., CPA, CRD1/15/2/19: Ball to Chamberlain, 22 April 1931; Peddie, The Economic Mechanism of Scripture, pp. 320–321. 12 The Times, 14 July 1934, p. 17. 13 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/A2/165: Jenks to Saunders, 1 September 1936. 14 Spring Comes Again, pp. 44–45. 15 Ibid., p. 45. 16 O. Mosley, The Greater Britain (London: BUF Publications, 1932), pp. 110–111; (London: BUF, 1934; new edition), pp. 126–131. 17 Blackshirt, 13 October 1933, p. 3. 18 ‘The Countryman’s Outlook’, BUQ, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July–September 1937), pp. 84–95; Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley, pp. 23–35, 42–43. 19 Carol Twinch, Tithe War: 1918–1939: The Countryside in Revolt (Norwich: Media Associates, 2001). 20 Todd Gray, Blackshirts in Devon (Exeter: The Mint Press, 2006), pp. 111–133. 21 U. Warwick Mod. RC, MSS292/743/3: W. Milne-Bailey, ‘Fascism’, 22 February 1934. 22 Farming and Money, pp. 95–97. 23 Action, 1 July 1939, p. 5. 24 Blackshirt, 8 February 1934, pp. 3, 4. 25 The Fascist Week, 16–22 March 1934, p. 7; Gray, Blackshirts in Devon, pp. 201–204; U. Warwick Mod. RC, MSS.292/743/3: W. Milne-Bailey, ‘Fascism’, 22 February 1934; Blackshirt, 10 May 1934; The Fascist Week, 17 May 1934, p. 7. 26 Blackshirt, 1 June 1934, p. 3; 12 October 1934, p. 2. 27 U. Warwick Mod. RC, MSS127/NU/GS/3/35A: Unsigned memorandum, ‘The Development of the British Union of Fascists’ (undated, ca. 1934). 28 Blackshirt, 21 June 1935, p. 6. 29 Blackshirt, 24 January 1936, p. 2. 30 Action, 9 April 1936, p. 11. 31 Action, 26 June 1937, p. 4. 32 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 2, No. 2 (spring 1948), pp. 2–9. 33 H.W.J. Edwards, Young England (London: Hutchinson, undated; 1938), p. 39. 34 The Architectural Association, School of Planning and Research for National Development. London: AA (undated, ca. 1936), p. 14. 35 AA Archives, Box C305: Planning School Committee Minute Book, Minutes of the Committee of the School of Planning and Research for National Development of the Architectural Association (Incorporated), 27 June 1935; Minutes of the Planning School Sub-Committee of the AA, 27 November 1935; The Architectural Association, School of Planning and Research for National Development. London: AA (undated, ca. 1936), p. 21. 36 YP, 18 September 1937, p. 14. Another Cobbett 93

37 AA Archives, Box C305: Planning School Committee Minute Book, Minutes of the School of Planning Sub-Committee Meeting, 5 December 1934; Report by E.A.A. Rowse, ‘School of Planning and Research for National Development’, 25 January 1935; Lincs. Arch., 4 Turnor 3/3: C. Orwin to C. Turnor, 15 September 1930, 20 October 1930, 29 July 1931; Turnor to Orwin, 25 October 1930. 38 R. Buckholt to Coupland, 20 July 2011. 39 Kevin Fitzgerald, Ahead of Their Time: A Short History of the Farmers’ Club (London: The Farmers’ Club, 1968). 40 ‘School of Planning and Research for National Development’, Archit. Assoc. J., Vol. LI, No. 587 (January 1936), pp. 311–312; ‘Report on the School of Planning and Research for National Development’, Archit. Assoc. J., Vol. LII, No. 593 (July 1936), pp. 46–50. 41 AA Archives, A305: Planning School Ledger, 1936–1938. 42 AA Archives, Box 2007/63: Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Council of the AA, 7 June 1938; Box C305: Planning School Committee Minute Book, Minutes of the Planning School Committee of the AA, 28 June 1937, 14 October 1937 and 20 January 1938; 2006/S34: ‘Report of Board of Education's HM Inspectors on the Architectural Association School of Architecture and Planning (Holborn)’, Board of Education, May 1937; The Times, 8 December 1937, p. 12. 43 AA Archives, Box 2007/63: Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Council of the AA, 29 March 1938. 44 ‘The School of Planning and Research for National Development’, Archit. Assoc. J., Vol. LIV, No. 619 (September 1938), p. 90; Engineering, Vol. 147 (10 February 1939), p. 156. 45 Brenda Swann and Francis Aprahamian (eds.), JD Bernal: A Life in Science and Politics (London: Verso, 1999), p. 278. 46 StP: Stuckey to Members of the Research Committee, 26 January 1949. 12 The Land and the People

The previous chapter shows the tentative nature of Jenks’ initial relationship to fascism. Even in spring 1936, after more than two year’s allegiance to the BUF, he could still have withdrawn, reputation undamaged. In the summer of 1936, he crossed the line to become openly committed to fascism.

Prospective parliamentary candidate The first mention of Jenks’ name in connection to fascism was in August 1936, the context of his abandonment of anonymity being the BUF’s move towards electoral politics.1 Initially, Mosley had expected that fascism’s path to power would be through direct intervention, to save Britain from communism. This political crisis did not occur and, from 1935, the Blackshirts began to create a more conventional political machine. It was not ready for the election that year, only beginning in late 1936 to announce its first hundred parliamentary candidates, among them Jenks, who, it was announced in November 1936, was to stand for Horsham and Worthing.2 As already mentioned, by this point, fascism was not a respectable political choice. However, the opposition that Jenks must have anticipated most keenly was from his own family, and not long after the announcement of his candidacy, Mary Fullerton mentioned his parents ‘anger’ at his decision. Mary was surprised that not only was Jenks drawn to fascism but that Sophie ‘seems a fascist too’.3 Jenks could not have expected sympathy from his father. As we have seen, he was the embodi- ment of liberalism and, in 1931, protested against the oath of loyalty that the Italian Fascist government imposed on its academics.4 Although there was no permanent breach between father and son, Edward’s opposition to fascism was sustained and was made public in one of his final publications, in 1939.5 The Land and the People 95

Blackshirt activism The icon of fascist street politics was the famous ‘black shirt’ – styled after Mosley’s fencing jacket – but it is unlikely that Jenks ever wore one. Other considerations aside, the public display of the fascist uniform became illegal from the beginning of 1937, following the Public Order Act (1936). The photograph of Jenks as BUF candidate showed him in his customary tweed jacket and collar and tie, with his pipe. At this stage Jenks had grown a moustache, a fashionable style at the time, and one that he sported during the 1930s. With his thick, wavy, auburn hair, slim build and unlined face Jenks retained a youthful appearance and may have hoped that a pipe and moustache would give him added gravitas. Following the announcement of his candidacy, Jenks began to speak in public for the fascists. In the last days of 1936, he spoke to local supporters on his ‘experience of Democratic Government both at home and in the Dominions’.6 Then, in April 1937, Mosley introduced him as parliamentary candidate at the New Town Hall in Worthing. Jenks contributed ‘a vigorous speech’, and was reported as saying that: ‘the public should not judge the Movement though Press talk or the cackles of Westminster. Fascism alone could make agriculture prosperous again’ and that he had ‘chosen Mosley as his Leader’ and was ‘certain Mosley would lead Britain in the near future’. The Worthing Anti-Fascist Committee had been active and there were attempts to interrupt the fascist leader’s speech, with hecklers escorted from the meeting by Blackshirt stewards, but the proceedings were otherwise orderly. The crowd which had started to assemble outside was moved on by the police, who were no doubt conscious of the scuffles that had occurred after the last Mosley meeting in the town.7 Afterwards, Jenks was slated to address meetings ‘throughout the constituency’.8 West Sussex was a relative stronghold for the BUF, with branches in Chichester, Bognor Regis, Selsey, Littlehampton and Worthing, and smaller outposts elsewhere. Prominent Sussex members included Sir Archibald and Lady Hamilton in Selsey and Commander Charles E. Hudson, who was on the Bognor Regis Council.9 Although he had left the town by the time of Jenks’ candidacy, the person most associated with fascism in Worthing was Captain Charles Bentinck-Budd, who had lost an arm during the Great War. Budd was a town and county councillor and claimed to be the first Blackshirt to be elected to such offices; he had actually stood as an independent, but he did wear his fascist uniform to council meetings.10 Jenks became acquainted with the Captain at some point.11 The Worthing branch occupied large premises at 27 Marine Parade, opposite the busiest part of the promenade.12 Jenks spoke at outdoor meetings nearby on the seafront a number of times, addressing crowds from the Bandstand and at the spot known as ‘Splash Point’.13 On a few occasions he campaigned more widely: in autumn 1937, he toured North Norfolk – East Anglia being the only rural area where the BUF had any significant presence in the later 1930s.14 It is possible that Jenks also travelled north to speak – John Charnley, who was District Leader for East Hull, later recalled that he stayed with him when in the area.15 96 The Land and the People

Jenks was no Henry Dorgères, whose oratory stirred great crowds of stolid French peasants.16 He later confessed that, temperamentally, public oratory did not suit him:

I am less happy as a speaker than as a writer, largely because I am a slow thinker, feel the need for time in constructing and expressing ideas. But of course I can speak – in fact have had to speak to a wide range of audiences.17

Despite his reservations, he seems to have been an effective speaker, especially to more intimate audiences. After he was the guest at a ‘tea discussion’ organised by the Oxford University National Socialist Club, the organiser reported afterwards:

Jenks was great fun on Sunday. A thoroughly decent man, and the real type of gentleman farmer with a wide experience and knowledge and, at the same time, plenty of practical ideas. With that type of man on the agricultural corporation the farmers wouldn’t have so much to grumble about.18

The Land and the People During the first half of 1937, Jenks emerged as the leading figure in the BUF’s agricultural campaigning. Firstly, he took over as Agricultural Correspondent,

Figure 12.1 The Land and the People (1937) Source: Author The Land and the People 97 replacing the anonymous journalist who had been filling that role since 1935.19 Already a frequent contributor to Action, from April 1937 onwards, Jenks published a weekly article in a series entitled ‘The British Countryside’. The second development was that he became ‘Agricultural Adviser’ to the BUF, and revised the movement’s official policy, which was published as The Land and the People, in July 1937.20 This new document replaced Fascism and Agriculture (1934), by Alexander Raven Thomson, the leading BUF ideologue after Mosley.21 The Land and the People summarised Jenks’ fascist critique and vision for the restoration of farming and the rebirth of the countryside. The nation’s farming had been allowed to degenerate, to serve the interests of an elite whose wealth was drawn from international trade but most especially from the interest paid on overseas loans, which was derived from the export of agricultural commodities to Britain from debtor nations. A fascist government would ensure that farmers were paid a just price and protect them from undercutting by imported commodities, the consumer’s needs instead being met by an expansion of home agriculture. In the high-wage economy of the Greater Britain, all would be able to pay a fair price for a diet of ample good food. The standard of living of farm workers would be transformed, and the problem of rural housing solved. In social terms, town and country would be ‘rebalanced’, by the new rural livelihoods created by this programme. The Land and the People corresponded with much of Jenks’ earlier Farming and Money and was also broadly in line with its predecessor, Fascism and Agriculture, which may be because Raven Thomson, himself a townsman, probably took advice from Montague Fordham, of the Rural Reconstruction Association; Jenks would later credit Fordham as one of his three great influences.22 However, there were also differences, which signified both the development of Jenks’ own thinking and its relationship to BUF ideology. Compared to Farming and Money, the new pamphlet showed Jenks’ incorpora- tion of the central fascist concept of corporatism.23 This was no expedient or super- ficial change, but founded on mature reflection. He responded to a critic:

a much more important issue at the present time is whether or not we can evolve a workable alternative to dictatorship, Financial or Communist. And the Corporate State (i.e. functional self-government) is the only alternative which has yet appeared.24

The central fascist claim for the corporate system was that it introduced economic self-government to replace the liberal system wherein a democratic parliament was formally ‘in power’ whilst, in actuality, power lay with the unaccountable elites who controlled Britain’s economy. The fascist system would invest economic authority within a system of corporations, each representing a primary producing, manufacturing or service industry. Each corporation would be comprised of representatives of workers, proprietors and managers, and consumers. The representatives of the first two named would be elected under an occupational franchise, whilst consumers’ representatives would be selected by the state. 98 The Land and the People

Fascist plans were that the existing organisations for employers and workers, the National Farmers Union and the National Union of Agricultural Workers, would continue as parts of the corporate state. Jenks, who was an NFU member, took the stance of a critical friend towards the Union; in May 1939, he addressed the West Sussex Branch of the NFU on fascist agricultural policy.25 He was also sympathetic to the NUAW and its President, Edwin Gooch, although not when union activists manifested class war tendencies or sympathy for Soviet collectivisation.26 As Jenks wrote of the corporate system, linking it to the new technology of planning, it promised: ‘industrial self-government within a framework of national planning.’27 The occupational franchise would also be used to elect MPs to parliament, whose business would be the larger overarching questions of policy. Fascists claimed that the corporate system would not only replace ‘financial democracy’ with a genuine system of national self-government, but that it replaced an essentially amateur assembly, with a ‘specialised’ system, compatible with the complexity of modern life. Elsewhere, Jenks wrote of how farmer and farm worker, if allowed, were unified by ‘a spirit of service to Mother Earth’; and that: ‘there is only one form of government which provides for the union of employer and employee for their mutual advancement and in the national service, and that is the Corporate State.’28 Under the current system, Jenks considered that control of agriculture was increasingly given over to the ‘dictatorial control of Whitehall officials and politically appointed commissions’, who had neither a democratic mandate nor technical competency. The BUF would empower agriculturalists themselves. Importantly, for Jenks, this new ordering did not imply a centralised micro-management of farming, but the creation of ‘conditions under which the industry can adequately fulfil its function as the main source of food for the people’. This was a very important distinction for Jenks, who, whilst supporting the creation of an overarching system to facilitate the efficient production and marketing of commodities, always posited these mechanisms as controlled by farmers themselves. He wrote numerous articles subjecting the marketing boards and other measures of the National Government to detailed criticism. The Land and the People also included concern about the relationship of agriculture to national diet and health.29 Jenks went beyond the quantitative dimension of the question, noting that much of the British diet was ‘stale, preserved, imported food’, when what it needed was an ‘abundance of fresh wholesome food to enable it to resist disease and attain full physical development’. Jenks quoted from Sir John Boyd Orr’s influential report on the British diet, which was a fixture on the BUF reading list.30 The Minister of Agriculture commissioned the 1936 report, but when the government were disinclined to make its findings public, Orr published them himself.31 Jenks first learned of his findings in a paper read to the Farmers’ Club, in February 1936.32 One eventual consequence of the work of Orr et al. was free school milk after the war. Ten years earlier Jenks was stressing the importance of milk in children’s The Land and the People 99 diet and attacking the commercial and political interests who caused it to be priced beyond the pocket of poor families.33 He was a great believer in milk as a food and sceptical of any form of processing, even pasteurisation. This, Jenks believed, resulted in an ‘insipid liquid’ and, tilting towards nature mysticism, he wondered if processing caused the loss of ‘an invaluable “something” which is present in fresh milk’.34 His objections to the British Medical Association’s campaign against un-pasteurised milk caused a controversy in the pages of Action, involving a number of eminent medical men on both sides of the argument.35 Bread was another pillar of the national diet that was undermined in the interests of the few mammoth milling combines, which had replaced the stones and whole wheat bread of local millers with a few giant, port-side steel-roller mills and a ‘pretty white puffed-up loaf’.36 A couple of years after The Land and the People, Jenks would quote from another seminal report, the ‘Medical Testament’ from the Local Medical and Panel Committees of the County Palatine of Chester. This also emphasised the role of diet in sickness, as Jenks stressed: ‘the battle against disease should begin, not in the hospital, or even in the laboratory, but on the land.’37 Dr Lionel Picton was the driving force behind the Testament, which was publicised with the help of Sir Albert Howard and Sir Robert McCarrison, the two greatest intellectual influences behind Britain’s nascent organic movement.38 Here was one of the elements of Jenks’ later organic ‘conversion’, and Picton would be central to the formation of the Soil Association in the 1940s. In The Land and the People, Jenks devoted much space to the ‘back-to-the-land movement’, which reflected his personal experience of ‘land-hunger’.39 He also introduced the concept of a voluntary ‘Land Army’, which had associations with the militarised youth and labour organisations of Germany and Italy. Elsewhere he imagined: ‘healthy, well-sited camps full of well-fed, well-clothed men, played out to their task each morning by their own band, and returning each afternoon for sports and recreation.’40 After a period of apprenticeship, those in the Land Army who had the aptitude would be assisted to acquire their own smallholding or farm. This measure supplemented rather than replaced Jenks’ use of the concept of a ‘farming ladder’, whereby farm workers might ascend to ownership of their own farm; nonetheless his advocacy of a ‘Land Army’ was a deviation from the individualism and independence of the family farm. This ideal remained at the centre of his thinking, and he also called for ‘a special effort to increase and encourage that singularly valuable class of agriculturalist, namely the yeoman, or small working farmer, tilling his own land with the aid of his family’.41 As far as Jenks was concerned, the traditional scale for agriculture was both functionally and socially the ideal:

We believe in the small farmer because he is a good farmer. We believe in him, too, because he is a good citizen. His life may be arduous and his fare 100 The Land and the People

may be frugal, but his creative occupation, his daily contact with Nature, his pride of ownership, his dexterity of hand and ingenuity of mind, make him one of the soundest and sanest elements in society.

Fascist policy would increase the number of small farms, by creating the ‘conditions under which such farms can yield a decent standard of living’. The ‘Just Price’ for the farmer and the ‘Fair Wage’ for the worker would be crucial, but Jenks also believed that it was possible to give the small farmer the advantages associated with the large-scale enterprise. Within the Agricultural Corporation, under the leadership of a local farmer or landowner, farms would co-operate to share machinery, to make bulk purchases, and to process and market produce.42 Undoubtedly, such leaders would have to be gifted, as Jenks still expected that the independence of the farmer would be inviolable: ‘It will be no part of a leader’s duties to give orders to farmers or to teach them how to farm.’43 There was undoubtedly a potential for conflict here, as in Jenks’ general search for a synthesis of an independent and individualistic farming sector with overarching national planning and economic control. In the British case, the pursuit of synthesis was a general characteristic of fascist ideology, which also promised to transcend liberal modernity’s conflicts between labour and capital, man and woman, old and new. Because the aesthetics, culture and social order of the countryside were indissolubly linked to the means and relations of agricultural production, the creation of a synthesis of tradition with modernity would have required great wisdom. Compared to Raven Thomson’s Fascism and Agriculture, in Jenks’ personal struggle between a beloved past and an efficient present, sentiment tended to predominate and references to modernisation in farming technique were absent from The Land and the People. However, rather than being simply a romantic or reactionary, Jenks’ career shows him as a man in search of an alternative modernity to that created by the unfettered industrialism, economic values and acquisitive spirit of liberal individualism.

Rabbits As has been shown, the BUF platform was wider than its campaign against the Jews, a topic initially absent from its policies. Although from the beginning there were Blackshirts with deeply held negative opinions about Jewish people, it was a subject which was absent from Mosley’s The Greater Britain and was initially kept to the margins of fascist discourse. In this respect, as in many others, the BUF followed Italian Fascism, which did not adopt an anti-Jewish stance until later in the 1930s, and counted prominent Jews among its membership.44 The BUF also had Jewish members in its early days.45 In the years which followed, ‘the Jews’ were never entirely absent from fascist discourse and imagination, but even though the BUF came to be more influenced by The Land and the People 101 the Nazi movement, British and German approaches remained fundamentally different. Most importantly, the BUF’s ideology differed from Nazism because it never centred on a quasi-scientific concept of ‘race’ with its deterministic assumptions about the relationship between heredity and ethnic character; nor was it dominated by the social Darwinist model of history as a struggle between ‘racial’ groups. This is not to say that weak versions of these theories were not present. Jenks wrote of how:

One does not need to prove race purity in order to prove the biological existence of race. The blending of similar stocks, strengthened by generations of common environment, common culture and historical associations, has produced something well worth preserving, something which is unequalled as a basis for common endeavour.46

However, this differed little from the then commonplace assumptions of the role of heredity in personal, social and national characteristics. The relative weakness of these concepts within the fascist movement, was reflected in the almost complete absence of pronouncements about eugenics or the routine use of the concept of ‘race’. Mosley, in one of his rare utterances on the matter, stated that, because the British empire was comprised of ‘many different races’, it would be ‘bad […] to stigmatise by law any races within it as inferior or outcast’.47 His stance on the voluntary sterilization of the ‘unfit’ was similar to the Labour movement, from whence came, for example, a bill introduced into parliament by A.G. Church, MP, for the voluntary sterilisation of ‘defectives’ and support for similar measures by the National Conference of Labour Women.48 The fascist attitude to the Jews should be understood as a radicalisation of what were then popular assumptions. Although Jewish immigration had not been a major political issue since the Aliens Act of 1905, the Jewish minority in England remained ‘other’.49 Most Jewish people were either immigrants from the Russian Empire or the children of such, or had recently fled from persecution in Germany; all were to some degree differentiated by language, custom or appearance. The range of negative qualities attributed to the Jewish Other was extensive, including associations with both revolutionary communism and rapacious capitalism. It was because of the currency of all these beliefs that, in popular fiction of the time, Jewish characters were often cast as conspirators or agents of shadowy political or criminal powers.50 Fascists elaborated on these mainstream ideas, but their most important departure was to make explicit what was usually left unspoken and to incorporate it into a political platform. Between 1936 and 1940, Jenks’ fascist writings – comprising a short book, a pamphlet and around 188 articles of various lengths – contained relatively few anti- Jewish references, which were almost always brief, if sometimes striking.51 Only on one occasion, in his book Spring Comes Again (1939), did he write about the ‘Jewish problem’ per se; generally, if he referred to the Jews at all, it was an inessential addition to his existing position. 102 The Land and the People

In Spring Comes Again, Jenks revealed his basic assumptions on this topic, outlining his conception of the Jews as a group and explaining why they constituted a ‘problem’. He wrote that:

Considered apart, the Jew has certain admirable qualities. He is alert, intelligent, artistic; in certain spheres, he is nobly industrious. He maintains the family bond; he is good to his women and children; and the way in which he has remained loyal to his race and creed through centuries of exile and dispersion is one of the marvels of history.52

However, Jenks continued, ‘the Jew cannot be considered apart; he must be considered in relation to his Gentile hosts’. He considered: ‘the existence of Jews in any numbers in a Western community’ to be ‘invariably a disturbing factor, and often a demoralising one’. This was because, unlike liberal ideology, which largely ignored national difference as a social variable, for fascism, nationalism was ‘a vital factor in human progress’; emphasising the sociological function of this assumption, he wrote elsewhere of the nation as the ‘natural form of society’.53 For this reason, fascism could only regard: ‘as an acute problem the existence within the State of an intensely race conscious exotic community with strong international affiliations.’ If one considered that ‘irresponsible Money-power is the greatest enemy of our day’, then Jenks reasoned that ‘one must profoundly mistrust the infiltration of those whose outstanding characteristic is a gift for handling money’.54 Due to a range of cultural and historical reasons, Jewish people were over-represented in finance, commerce, mercantile, service and retail business and polemical arguments about the Jewish relationship with capitalism long preceded fascism.55 Antisemitic discourse in the British radical political tradition was exemplified by William Cobbett and, in the 1890s, the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party had blamed Jewish financial interests for Britain being drawn into war in South Africa.56 It remained not uncommon for critics of capitalism to drift into anti-Jewish feeling, a course that social credit also took in the later 1930s. Among the politically engaged such opinions became most developed, but they were popularly present, circulating – for example – in joke making.57 However, this association of Jews with financial power was inessential to Jenks’ critique of liberal capitalism, which was delivered countless times without any reference to the Jews. Jenks also linked the Jews to communism. There were four principal ‘international forces at work’, he wrote: ‘Finance, Jewry, orthodox Socialism and Com- munism’ and they were all ‘attempts to subordinate the peoples to the dictates of a super-State, to break down the natural claims of patriotism and racial brotherhood, and to substitute for them the rule of some soulless materialistic deity’. He considered the Russian Revolution to be ‘largely engineered by Jews and financed from Wall Street’ and that ‘International Socialism’ was ‘largely staffed by Jews’.58 During the interwar years much was made of the Jews among the The Land and the People 103

Bolshevik leadership of the October revolution in Russia and in the revolutionary parties and governments immediately after the Great War in Central and Eastern Europe; similar points were made in relation to the later Soviet state apparatus and to the Comintern.59 For fascists, this aspect was reinforced by the large Jewish membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, especially in London, which was to the fore in anti-fascist opposition, including physical attacks on Blackshirts.60 At first glance, the notion that Jewish financiers in Wall Street had financed a communist revolution seems fantastic, but in the 1920s, both Winston Churchill and Henry Wickham Steed, one-time editor of The Times, had publicised this idea.61 Jenks’ views were also informed by the commonplace perception that Je wish people were exclusively urban.62 It was this perception, allied with a general apprehension of the erosion of national homogeneity caused by a Jewish minority, which figured on several occasions in Jenks’ writing on rural depopulation. In July 1939, he referred to refugees from Germany, writing of how ‘[i]n sheer desperation a number of farmers have applied for refugee “trainees”’. Jenks considered that: ‘[t]hese refugees are townsmen and Jews at that, probably the least promising material that could be imagined’. He concluded in words that bespoke strong emotions: ‘Could there be a more effective method of completing the destruction of our rural population than by using alien hands to till British soil? It is the final degradation.’63 A fortnight later, he referred to ‘the outcast parasites who have for generations battened on the peasants of Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, […] summoned to the rescue of rural Britain’.64 As a farmer and agriculturalist, it was not unusual that Jenks lacked affection for the animals commonly deemed ‘pests’, most especially rabbits, but also other species. This may have also reflected his experiences in New Zealand, where the rabbit had proved to be a very unwise introduction; in 1936, he noted the development of the Myxomatosis virus to kill rabbits in Australia.65 On another occasion, he estimated that, in Britain, rabbits wasted ‘annually enough food to maintain three or four million people’.66 He also knew the cost of rabbit depredations personally, as a hard- pressed farmer. In the summer of 1935, Jenks’ landlord wrote in his diary of ‘a plague of rabbits’. ‘[A]nything to kill the rabbits’, Somerset wrote, and he and his men shot and gassed thousands of them.67 In The Land and the People Jenks specified ‘a corps of expert vermin-destroyers, equipped with up-to-date apparatus, who will clear each district systematically’.68 He wrote similarly about the problem for The Yorkshire Post.69 Several times Jenks also paralleled the issue of agricultural vermin to the ‘Jewish problem’. On one occasion, he compared the two issues, writing that: ‘There can be no truce with Brer Rabbit any more than there can be with the undesirable alien. If he is tolerated, he takes possession. He gives no quarter, and should be given none’.70 Of the rabbit, Jenks wrote:

[s]o long as you don’t have to foot the bill it’s easy to be sentimental about him as it is to be sentimental about the Jews. But the result in each case is that the poor defenceless creature ultimately takes possession. Any sensible person 104 The Land and the People

will agree that the best way to stop cruelty to rabbits is to abolish them, and if modern methods could be systematically applied, abolition is by no means impossible.71

A year or so later, Jenks commended Colonel Leonard Ropner, MP for his denun- ciation in the House of Commons of rabbits as a ‘plague’ and for his statement that: ‘If virtual extermination cannot be obtained, the next best thing is to provide effective control.’ In a scarcely veiled reference to the Jews, he continued that ‘[t]he attitude of British Union towards the rabbits is similar to its attitude towards the two-legged plague – Britons First’.72 Given the shadow cast over history by the German programme to extermi- nate the Jews during the Second World War, it is difficult to read these lines without imputing to Jenks a desire that Jews and rabbits should share the same fate. However, even in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, this was not the objective of policy; no matter how cruel and unjust the treatment was of the Jewish people there, systematic murder only replaced the policy of forced emigration in the particular conjunction of circumstances from 1941 onwards. Jenks was clear about what was required for the Jews:

There is then but one solution; to remove anti-Semitism by removing the Semite, to relieve irritation by removing the irritant, to end the circumstances which have made the Jew a parasite by bringing about the re-integration of the Jewish nation.

He suggested that this might be achieved in one of the ‘sparsely-populated but fertile areas, in Africa, in South America, in Asiatic Russia, in which a re-united Jewish race could create anew its nationality and establish a new home’.73 This echoed BUF policy, as detailed in Mosley’s Tomorrow We Live, which demanded the compulsory resettlement of Jews in Britain to a territory other than Palestine.74 Jenks’ prescription for the Jewish future was additionally connected to his central assumption that a healthy national society was one rooted in the soil:

In regaining contact with the soil, it would set the Jewish character on a broader basis; in regaining national dignity it would triumphantly fulfil its racial destiny. In withdrawing its disturbing influence from other nations, it would obtain peace and goodwill in place of strife and animosity.75

* * *

It is likely that Jenks’ opinions about the Jews were formed abstractly. His sole personal reference at this time was to someone he referred to as ‘a Jew-boy camper’, whom he caught stealing crops.76 The proximity of Angmering to popular The Land and the People 105 tourist destinations, meant that Jenks suffered from visitors who, either through ignorance or design, damaged his property, and it was a topic he wrote about a good deal.77 Although all Jenks’ antisemitic comments date from 1936 and afterwards, this does not necessarily mean that it was contact with the BUF that caused his opinions about the Jews to harden into antisemitism, although it probably caused them to be radicalised. Evidence from his earlier life is weak and inconclusive: during the 1920s, when he worked with Dr Bruce Levy, there is no sign of anything other than mutual respect between them, but, as will be shown below, this was equally true of his later interactions, when he did harbour prejudices. Although little is known of Jenks’ contacts with the subterranean world of monetary reform, which preceded his adoption of fascism, it is quite likely that the seeds were sown there. As already mentioned, critics of capitalism – Marx among them – have frequently slid into antisemitism. In later years Jenks continued to regard Jews with suspicion but was capable of changing his opinions and of fair dealing.

Notes 1 Action, 20 August 1936, p. 12. 2 Action, 28 November 1936, p. 7. 3 SLNSW, MLMSS 364/CY2055: Fullerton to Franklin, 8 December 1936. 4 The Manchester Guardian, 28 December 1931, p. 5. 5 Edward Jenks, ‘Democracy as Co-Operative’, The Hibbert Journal, Vol. 37, No. 2 (January 1939), pp. 303–310; The Ship of State: The Essentials of Political Science (London: Duckworth, 1939), pp. 157–168. 6 Blackshirt, 2 January 1937, p. 6. 7 Blackshirt, 17 April 1937, p. 8; The Worthing Gazette, 14 April 1937, p. 9; The Worthing Herald, 17 April 1937, p. 13. 8 The Worthing Gazette, 7 April 1937, p. 9. 9 J.A. Booker, Blackshirts-on-Sea: The Story of the British Blackshirt Summer Camps in West Sussex, 1933–38 (London: Brockingday Publications, 1999) pp. 1–11. 10 TNA: PRO, KV2/2309: Cross Reference, 22 December 1939: ‘Extract from letter from C[hief] C[onstable] West Sussex re BUF activities dated 19.6.1934’; Blackshirt, 23 August 1935, p. 2; TNA: PRO, HO45/25568: Hampshire Joint Police Force, memorandum on C.H. Bentinck-Budd, 30 December 1943. 11 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 4 September 1944. 12 Blackshirt, 20 December 1935, p. 8; Booker, Blackshirts-on-Sea, p. 8. 13 Action, 4 June 1938, p. 17; 30 July 1938, p. 17. 14 Blackshirt, 6 November 1937, p. 6. 15 John Charnley, Blackshirts and Roses: An Autobiography (London: Brockingday Publications, 1990), p. 100. 16 Robert O. Paxton, French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgères’s Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 17 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 30 December 1944. 18 StP: Oxford University National Socialist Club, newsletter issued for week ending Saturday, 29 October 1938; H. Biggs to OUNSC members, 18 October 1938; Biggs Papers: H. Biggs to E. and I. Biggs, 26 October 1938. 19 Action, 10 April 1937, p. 4. 106 The Land and the People

20 Action, 17 July 1937, p. 4; Jorian Jenks, The Land and the People: The British Union Policy for Agriculture. London: Abbey Supplies (undated, ca. 1937); ‘Politics and the Land’, BUQ, Vol. 2, No. 2 (April–June 1938), pp. 71–78. 21 Blackshirt, 4–10 May 1934; The Fascist Week, 11–17 May 1934, p. 7. 22 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 10; on Fordham and Raven Thomson see below, p. 156. 23 The Land and the People, p. 6. 24 WR, Vol. 28, No. 11 (10 November 1938), p. 211. 25 Action, 22 October 1938, p. 5; 16 October 1937, p. 4; 5 February 1938, p. 6; 28 January 1939, p. 5; 2 November 1939, p. 6; 14 December 1939, p. 6; 6 May 1939, p. 17. 26 Action, 23 December 1937, p. 4; 28 May 1938, p. 6. 27 The Land and the People, p. 6. 28 Action, 23 December 1937, p. 4. 29 The Land and the People, pp. 4–5. 30 John Boyd Orr, Food Health and Income: Report on a Survey of Adequacy of Diet in Relation to Income (London: Macmillan, 1936); Action, 19 March 1936, p. 11; ‘Select Bibliography’, BUQ, Vol. 4, No. 1 (spring 1940), pp. 75–77. 31 Lord [John] Boyd Orr, As I Recall (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 116–118. 32 YP, 25 February 1936, p. 3. 33 Action, 23 April 1936, p. 11; 10 July 1937, p. 4; 2 October 1937, p. 4; 25 November 1938, p. 8; 5 August 1939, p. 6. 34 Action, 17 April 1937, p. 4; 18 November 1937, p. 4; 9 July 1938, p. 6. 35 Action, 26 February 1938, p. 6; 19 March 1938, p. 6; 12 November 1938, p. 6; 19 November 1938, p. 16; 26 November 1938, p. 16; 7 January 1939, p. 15. 36 Action, 24 September 1936, p. 7; 11 March 1939, p. 8. 37 Action, 18 April 1939, p. 6. 38 P. Conford, ‘Introduction’, pp. vii–xxiii in Lionel J. Picton, Thoughts on Feeding (Soil Association, 2006; first published: 1946, London: Faber and Faber). 39 The Land and the People, pp. 7–8. 40 Action, 26 August 1939, p. 6. 41 The Land and the People, p. 8. 42 Action, 12 August 1939, p. 6. 43 Ibid. 44 Renzo De Felice, The Jews in Fascist Italy: A History (New York: Enigma Books, 2001), pp. 63–67. 45 In his unpublished report to the TUC, the investigator H.R.S. Phillpott stated in February 1934 that the BUF had ‘taken on a definite anti-Jew complexion’ and that ‘about 400 Jews left from various branches and their recruitment is now discouraged’ (U. Warwick Mod. RC, MSS 292/43/6: Supplementary note, 4 February 1934). 46 Spring Comes Again, p. 67. 47 O. Mosley, Fascism: 100 Questions Asked and Answered. London: BUF Publications (undated, ca. 1936), question 93. 48 Ibid., question 76; ‘Sterilization Act’, The Eugenics Review, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1931), pp. 153–154; ‘Eugenics, Socialism and Capitalism – Debate at Members’ Meeting’, The Eugenics Review, Vol. 27, No. 2 (1935), pp. 109–119; ‘Notes and Memoranda’, The Eugenics Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1936), p. 124. See also James Kerr, ‘The Control of the Unfit’, The Labour Magazine, Vol. 8, Nos. 10–11 (February–March 1930), pp. 449–451. 49 Colin Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871–1971 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 65–73. 50 Bryan Cheyette, Constructions of ‘the Jew’ in English Literature and Society: Racial Representations, 1875–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 51 Jenks made Jewish references in approximately 22 of his 188 articles in the fascist press. 52 Spring Comes Again, p. 62. 53 Ibid., p. 63; Action, 16 May 1940, p. 5. The Land and the People 107

54 Spring Comes Again, p. 63. 55 Jerry Z. Muller, Capitalism and the Jews (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 15–132; William I. Brustein and Louisa Roberts, The Socialism of Fools?: Leftist Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 56 William Cobbett, Rural Rides (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987; first published 1830), p. 395. For Cobbett’s attitude to Jews see ibid, passim; John Stevenson, ‘William Cobbett: Patriot or Briton?’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, Vol. 6 (1996), pp. 123–136; Claire Hirshfield, ‘The British Left and the “Jewish Conspiracy”: A Case Study of Modern Antisemitism’, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (spring 1981), pp. 95–112. 57 Holmes, John Bull’s Island, pp. 140–146; the anti-Jewish joke was certainly still current as late as the 1970s (see Seth Kravitz, ‘London Jokes and Ethnic Stereotypes’, Western Folklore, Vol. 36, No. 4 (October 1977), pp. 275–301, 284–287). 58 Spring Comes Again, p. 41. 59 Muller, Capitalism and the Jews, pp. 133–166. 60 Henry F. Srebrnik, London Jews and British Communism, 1935–1945 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1995); Stephen M. Cullen, ‘“I was trading punches with a member of the audience”: tales of fascist and anti-fascist violence’, unpublished paper. 61 Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1974), pp. 185–190. 62 Muller, Capitalism and the Jews, pp. 115–120. 63 Action, 1 July 1939, p. 6. 64 Action, 15 July 1939, p. 6. 65 Action, 7 November 1936, p. 11. 66 Action, 21 May 1938, p. 6. 67 W. Sussex RO, MSS 75: Diary of A.W.F. Somerset, 27 July 1935. 68 The Land and the People, p. 7. 69 Farming and Money, p. 26; YP, 10 November 1934, p. 17; 18 June 1935, p. 5; April 1937, p. 9; 25 September 1937, p. 17; 13 January 1940, p. 8; 17 February 1940, p. 11. 70 Action, 7 November 1936, p. 11. 71 Action, 21 May 1938, p. 6. 72 Action, 29 July 1939, p. 6. 73 Spring Comes Again, p. 64. 74 Oswald Mosley, Tomorrow We Live (London: Greater Britain Publications, 1938), p. 66. 75 Spring Comes Again, p. 64. 76 ‘A Countryman’s Outlook-II’, FQ, Vol. 2, No. 4 (October 1936), pp. 521–529. 77 Action, 3 September 1938, p. 6. 13 Pigs and Pen

All Jenks had ever wanted to do was to be a farmer but, by early autumn 1937, he was forced to give his landlord notice to quit, meaning that 1938 would be his final year at Ecclesden and – as it would turn out – his last year as a farmer. In retrospect, Jenks explained his decision to leave the farm as being due to ‘[i]ll health and hard times’.1 The former was significant: asthma and its associated mala- dies was always a spectre haunting him, but it was economics that were compelling. At the end of 1937, he wrote: ‘Men do not leave the land because they dislike it or even because they hope to earn a larger income in some other occupation. They leave because they must.’2 The legacy Jenks received from his grandfather was a useful sum, but had many calls upon it. Besides farming expenses, 2 years at Oxford did not come cheap and a wife and family needed to be supported; including school fees for Oliver who, on the 3rd March 1937, gained a sister, Patricia Anne, known as ‘Patsy’. It is probable that, from the outset, Jenks had insufficient capital to invest in his business. In The Valley in the Woods, his later children’s book set in Sussex, the farmer on whose land the action takes place was described as ‘“too pinched fer money to do the land proper”’.3 With the prices paid for commodities often barely covering the cost of their production, interest to be paid on an overdraft and on debts to creditors, and with banks disinclined to make loans, funds for investment were just a dream. Jenks wrote of the farmer:

He realizes only too well that obsolete implements and unsatisfactory breeding- stock ought to be replaced by something better, that it would be profitable to use better seeds or more fertilizer […] But in farming outlay must precede returns by many months, perhaps years, and the intervening gap simply cannot be bridged.4 Pigs and Pen 109

This was behind much of his anger at the petty irritants of the farmer’s life: the holidaymakers who trod down or stole his crops and broke the field gates, the rabbits that nibbled away at his slender profit margins. Arthur Somerset, who, after his father’s death in 1937, took over as estate manager, attributed his tenant’s failure to his not having fed his crops.5 Few knew better than Jenks the importance of maintaining fertility, so, if this was so, it is attributable not to poor farming but lack of capital. Perhaps the saddest sign of his predicament comes from June 1938, when a passing RSPCA inspector saw one of Jenks’ men working with two old horses that he deemed unfit for work. Despite this, the two animals were back in harness a few days later, which resulted in prosecution and a fine. Jenks, who pleaded not guilty, explained that he had detected no evidence of lameness and that, if he had known that the animals were in pain, he would not have worked them.6 What was not said was that he had no real choice – the horses were the only motive power on the farm and there was no money to replace them. With only meagre capital neither were there reserves to carry the farm over a poor year. Jenks’ tenancy coincided with low commodity prices and a succession of bad growing years due to the weather. Things began well, in June 1933, Jenks’ landlord considered that it was a ‘very good season for crops’.7 His tenant agreed that the ‘weather of 1933 and 1934 […] left pleasant memories’, but, he continued, ‘1935 gave us a raw deal.’ Crop yields were meagre and poor and the next year followed a similar pattern;8 1937 began poorly too but things improved and, by November, Jenks could report ‘one of the greatest boons the farmer can be granted – a mild and mellow Autumn’; Ecclesden Farm also avoided the foot and mouth outbreak that was then sweeping the country.9 Unfortunately, the best of years would not have helped by that stage. Two terrible years and one indifferent, on top of everything else, had drained Jenks’ resources. In the February of his last farming year, he wrote of the ‘land-hungry’ men who managed to ‘scrape enough money together to make a start’, only to be wiped out by the ‘next slump’, concluding ‘[f]ew indeed are the newcomers who establish themselves securely on the land’.10 Financially exhausted, his outstanding rent was paid by Edward Jenks.11 The revision Jenks’ father made to his will soon after was telling. In 1928, he had adjusted the sum to be left to his son by the amount of William Forwood’s bequest, so that his children enjoyed equal benefits, Barbara having only received £100 from the Forwood estate. In May 1939, Edward Jenks once again made his son an equal beneficiary.12 Jenks understood the ineluctable realities of farm economics and could work out the profitability of any farming operation in pounds, shillings and pence; he had seen hardworking farmers so burdened with debt that they had to ‘walk off’ their farms. Despite this, part of him was still the boy with dreams. He also had a perspective on farming that, whilst fundamentally true, opened a chink in his armour to the dart of failure. For Jenks, husbandry was too complex to be grasped entirely by reason and also needed the subtle hand of intuition. Farming, was ‘not 110 Pigs and Pen a thing of formula’, which might be ‘taught in a few months’, but ‘an art which can be acquired only by those of the right temperament and only then after long apprenticeship’.13 Correspondingly, he asserted that agriculture could not be ‘governed by the same laws that apply to other forms of economic activity’.14 This was not simply mysticism, there were very good reasons why agriculture should be a special case in economic terms: not only was it literally vital, such that it could not be allowed to fail, but its long-term nature and peculiar exposure to uncontrollable natural variables, most especially the weather, gave farmers good reason to expect additional consideration. Jenks was not arguing that economics could be ignored, but his ordering of things anticipated a better world, one with its priorities set aright. Unfortunately, he was farming in a world where economics came first.

Forest Row The finale of Jenks’ tenancy in September 1938 was a public sale of surplus tools and stock.15 A few years later he wrote of the typical Michaelmastide auction and the range of emotions it entailed: for some, there was almost a holiday atmosphere, as they hunted for a bargain and enjoyed the ‘subdued excitement’ of the bid- ding. There was also a ‘certain element of pathos’ in such sales, even when they marked the ‘inevitable conclusion of some ill-fated venture’ over which everyone had shaken their heads, an observation which perhaps revealed both his own feelings and what he believed others had thought of him.16 Jenks was at least spared the ultimate humiliation of being forced from the village ‘back to the city and its eternal struggle, not with nature but with fellowmen’.17 His cousin, Bobby Main, had moved from Horsham to Forest Row, in the north east of Sussex, where he had Brambletye Farm.18 His tenancy also included South Park Farm and it was in that farmhouse that the Jenks’ made their new home.19 Despite the disappointment of the failure of Jenks’ farming plans, Mary Fullerton’s letters home suggest that the change may have brought some relief. With the responsibilities of the farm gone, the following June, Sophie and Jorian were free to take a holiday together.20 During the summer of 1939, after a visit to London Zoo, the family visited Fullerton and she wrote that ‘they all looked happy here full of jolly talk and Jorian looking plumper for doing less manual toil, S[ophie] of course looking in the pink. It enlivened me to see them all so well and happy, J[orian] and S[ophie] such good friends’.21

Pigs and Pen Jenks’ stationery for his new address showed that he was now both ‘Agricultural Correspondent and Consultant’ and ‘Breeder of Tuberculin-Tested Pigs’. The pig was a particular favourite with him: ‘the one farm animal who is not overawed by the mental superiority of man.’22 It was to the pig, along with the horse, that he Pigs and Pen 111 attributed many of his insights into ‘physiology and psychology’.23 From Forest Row, he wrote:

I don’t read, or rarely read, the work of others. No disparagement intended; it’s simply that I haven’t the money to buy ’em or the time to read ’em. Instead I dig my garden and study my pigs, belly, muscles and mind being closely interconnected.24

He believed pigs to be a wise choice when time was short and capital scanty, but they were, at most, a sideline, ‘a source of those handy little cheques which are so invaluable for meeting expenses while crops are ripening and stock is maturing’.25 Even this may have been more a hope than a fact; a few years later he described pig breeding as ‘a personal hobby’.26 Jenks’ appointment as Agricultural Adviser to the BUF was an honorary one, so undoubtedly it was journalism which was intended to be the mainstay of the family economy and that, as has been written elsewhere, from autumn 1938 onwards, he made ‘his living entirely by his pen’.27 Unfortunately, his signed articles were unlikely to have provided a living for a solitary hack, starving in a garret. Much of Jenks’ writing appeared in journals run on a shoestring that could not reward their authors with more than a free subscription. It is likely that the considerable work he did for the BUF – by far the greatest part of his political journalism – was done for little or no payment. With the loss in 1937 of the secret subsidies paid by the Italians, savage cuts in the BUF payroll were made and it was increasingly dependent on the voluntary efforts of its adherents. Although it still managed to put on propaganda spectaculars, including its largest ever meeting at Earls Court in July 1939, Jenks commented at that time ‘funds are very scarce just now’.28 The work that Jenks did anonymously for The Yorkshire Post did provide some sinew in his family economy, but even this would have been reduced from the start of 1937, when the paper cut his Tuesday notes, leaving only the Saturday piece. This income, plus bits and pieces for other work and the sale of the pigs now and then, could not have supported the middle-class way of life expected of him and it seems likely that Jenks’ parents helped, with Oliver’s school fees, if nothing else.

The Yorkshire Post Jenks’ writing for the Post provides a unique opportunity to examine the output of a fascist, writing about the issues he is passionate about, but in a mainstream publication. Or, to put it another way, to what extent was The Yorkshire Post publishing BUF propaganda? Unlike his BUF writings, a large proportion of Jenks’ Post articles were practical treatments of farming theory and practice, but the rest of his output dealt with the same concerns as his fascist writing. As in Action, there was much written about the 112 Pigs and Pen strategic preparedness of agriculture to maintain food supplies in wartime. The loss of labour from the land to the cities and attempts at resettlement were also frequent topics. On at least two occasions, Jenks devoted articles to the relationship between farming, food, the economy and national health.29 The political and economic context of farming also filled many lines: critiquing government agricultural policy, the place of farming in the national economy and crucial trade relations between Britain, the Dominions and foreign states. The tenor of Jenks’ writing in the Post was calmer than his more aggressively polemical pieces in Action, but his message in both publications was essentially the same. Almost all of what Jenks prescribed for agriculture in Action and The Yorkshire Post was not ‘fascist’ per se and was included in the spectrum of opinion within the mainstream parties, although not usually in their official policy. Certainly most of it would have been palatable to a group like the Rural Reconstruction Association, which was ‘non party’ and included both Labour and Tory members. As will be shown below, Jenks would later work for the RRA. The way in which BUF policy differentiated itself, was through the means it sought to achieve these policies: not through a multi-party parliamentary system but through a corporate state. Although there were other advocates of parliaments for industry, it was only the fascists that meant to get rid of the party system altogether. Despite this, Jenks even managed to get corporatism into the Post, most notably in an article of May 1939, which examined a paper given at the Farmers’ Club by Christopher Turnor. Politically, Turnor was a Tory of the modernising, ‘Middle Way’ type, open to planning and new economic ideas. He rejected Mosley, but, as was sometimes the case among Tories, was more enthusiastic about fascism abroad, finding much to admire in the land settlement and reclamation, and national co-ordination of agriculture in Germany and Italy.30 Turnor made favourable reference to the fascist states in his Farmers’ Club paper, which was devoted to collaborative arrangements for farmers.31 Jenks heard him and, a few days later, he concluded an enthusiastic commentary on the speech for the Post, with a call for Britain to ‘move towards the corporate concept of national life’.32 It was a conclusion that could have equally served for the corresponding Action article a few weeks later.33

A Blackshirt on the BBC A few months after leaving Angmering, at the end of December, Jenks had the distinction of speaking on the West of England Regional service of the BBC.34 The other two contributors were Percy and Anthony Hurd, and a précis was later published in The Listener.35 Sir Percy Hurd was Conservative MP for Devizes, and a writer and newspaper editor; his son Anthony, was a farmer and was the Agricul- tural Correspondent of The Times and a Council member of the NFU. Jenks was introduced as a ‘working farmer, an agricultural journalist and agricultural advisor to British Union’, and he made the case for maximising national agricultural production and protecting its market. Pigs and Pen 113

Jenks’ broadcast was an exceptional occurrence inasmuch as, with the exception of a debate recorded in 1933, featuring Mosley and Megan Lloyd George MP, and a brief statement by the BUF leader after the disorder at the Olympia meeting in 1934, the fascist movement had been forbidden the BBC microphone. It was probably Viscount Lymington who suggested that he take part. When Lymington was contacted by the BBC, with a request that he participate in the same series, the Viscount offered to suggest other speakers.36 Lymington – from 1943 Lord Portsmouth – was a central figure in the rural reconstruction movement and present at the birth of the Soil Association a few years later. His book Famine in England (1938) was enormously influential and, in April 1938, Jenks welcomed it in an enthusiastic review.37 Although they did not collaborate until the 1940s, it is likely that Lymington was acquainted with Jenks much earlier. Both men belonged to the Farmers’ Club, and when Lymington gave a paper there in November 1936, Jenks made a comment with which the speaker concurred.38 Lymington had met Mosley and was broadly sympathetic to fascism.39 At the end of 1938, Lymington founded a monthly journal, The New Pioneer, which overlapped with, on one hand, ruralists and the nascent organic movement, and on the other, fascism, publishing past and current BUF members. It has been stated that Jenks wrote for the New Pioneer, but although it published a pseudonymous article on pigs, which could have been his, there is no certainty of this.40 From August 1938, he did write for The Weekly Review, which served a similar clientele, albeit with a distributist inflection.41 The Weekly Review had succeeded G.K.’s Weekly, after Chesterton’s death, and was edited by Reginald (Rex) Jebb, the son-in-law of G.K.’s collaborator Hilaire Belloc.42 Jenks explained that he wrote for the Review ‘in lieu of sub, and to keep in touch with useful near-Fascists’.43 These journals – and The New English Weekly, which Jenks would write for in the 1940s – were part of the political subculture constituted by those who were critical of liberal modernity but not socialists, or at least not of the mainstream sort, it being rooted in the Christian socialism of the late nineteenth century, guild socialism and the patriotic populism of the labour movement, which preceded the international socialism of Marx and Lenin. This part of the political landscape, whilst not being coterminous with fascism and sometimes rejecting it, was nonetheless connected to fascism in numerous ways. Jenks’ political career was emblematic of this part of British political culture. He was well thought of in these circles: J.L. Benvenisti, a journalist for The Catholic Herald, NEW and similar publications, referred to him as a ‘brilliant lieutenant’ to Mosley.44

Notes 1 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 2 ‘Agricultural England: The Problem of Preservation’, The Estate Magazine, Vol. 38, No. 1 (January 1938), pp. 1–4. 3 The Valley in the Woods, p. 212. 4 YP, 3 November 1934, p. 7. 114 Pigs and Pen

5 J. Fitzroy Somerset to Coupland, 13 and 28 September 2011. 6 Littlehampton Gazette, 17 June 1938, p. 4. 7 W. Sussex RO, MSS 75: Diary of A.W.F. Somerset, 14 June 1933. 8 ‘A Countryman’s Outlook’, FQ, Vol. 2, No. 3 (July 1936), pp. 396–404; see also, YP, 21 December 1935, p. 5; 23 July 1936, p. 3; W. Sussex RO, MSS 75: Diary of A.W.F. Somerset, 11 October 1936; Action, 24 September 1936, p. 7. 9 ‘The Countryman’s Outlook’, BUQ, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April–June 1937), pp. 91–102; ‘The Countryman’s Outlook’, BUQ, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July–September 1937), pp. 84–95; YP, 17 July 1937, p. 17; 13 November 1937, p. 14; NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, [no day] January 1938; Fullerton to Family, 10 April 1938. 10 Action, 26 February 1938, p. 6. 11 Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 12 Last Will and Testament of Edward Jenks, 29 September 1920 and Codicils. 13 Action, 2 July 1938, p. 6. 14 YP, 11 June 1938, p. 9. 15 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 26 September 1938. 16 The Country Year, p. 23. 17 Action, 26 February 1938, p. 6. 18 Interview with Campbell Main, 6 August 2009. 19 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘All’, 26 September 1938. 20 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 25 June 1939. 21 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 6 August 1939. 22 ‘The Countryman’s Outlook’, BUQ, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April–June 1937), pp. 91–102. 23 The Stuff that Man’s Made Of, pp. 9–10. 24 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 20 March 1940. 25 ‘The Paying Sow’, The Estate Magazine, Vol. 38, No. 8 (August 1938), pp. 598–600. 26 ‘The Homestead Economy’, pp. 149–195 in H.J. Massingham, The Small Farmer: A Survey by Various Hands (London: Collins, 1947), p. 171. 27 Moore-Colyer, ‘Towards “Mother Earth”’, p. 356. 28 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 1 August 1939. 29 YP, 2 February 1936, p. 3; 10 April 1937, p. 9. 30 Lincs. Arch., 4 Turnor 1/23: C. Turnor to Lord Bledisloe, 21 July 1934; 4 Turnor 1/24: C. Turnor, ‘Land Reclamation and Improvement in Italy’ (typescript, June 1937); C.H. Turnor, Land Reclamation and Drainage in Italy (London: P.S. King, 1938); Christopher Turnor, Yeoman Calling (London: Chambers, 1939), pp. 161–208. 31 Christopher Turnor, ‘The Control of Agriculture’, The Journal of the Farmers’ Club, No. 4 (May 1939), pp. 55–75. 32 The meeting was on 1 May 1939; The Journal of the Farmers’ Club, No. 4 (May 1939), pp. 67–68; YP, 6 May 1939. 33 Action, 20 May 1939. 34 Action, 31 December 1938, p. 11. 35 L. North (BBC Written Archives Centre) to Coupland, 9 June 2009; The Times, Wednesday, 14 December 1938, p. 9; ‘Setting Farming on its Feet’, The Listener, Vol. 20, No. 520, (29 December 1938), p. 1395. 36 Hants. RO, 15M83/F147/46/1-2: C.G. Beadle to Lymington, 16 May 1938; F147/47: Lymington to C.G. Beadle, 20 May 1938; F147/47/1-3: BBC memorandum, ‘The Position of Agriculture’ (undated, ca. 1938). 37 Action, 16 April 1938, p. 18. 38 Viscount Lymington, ‘The Place of Agriculture in Home Defence’, Journal of the Farmers’ Club, Part 5 (November 1936), pp. 77–93. 39 Hants. RO, 15M84/F147/40 Lymington to Raven Thomson, 4 July 1938; Lymington to O. Mosley, 11 November 1937; 15M84/F160/14: Lymington to Raven Thomson, 7 June 1939. Pigs and Pen 115

40 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorian_Jenks, viewed on 16 September 2012; ‘Porcus Peregrinans; When Pigs are Rationalised’, The New Pioneer, Vol. 1, No. 3 (February 1939), pp. 69–70. 41 ‘This Mechanisation Business’, WR, Vol. 27, No. 3 (18 August 1938), p. 449. 42 The Times, 19 April 1977, p. 16. 43 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 11 August 1939. 44 The Catholic Herald, 4 March 1938, p. 5. 14 A Farmer’s Philosophy

Jenks’ primary contact at fascist headquarters was the BUF’s main ideologue after Mosley, Alexander Raven Thomson. Thomson was a Scot, who, during the 1920s, had worked for a German engineering firm and attended Heidelberg University. After a short time in the Communist Party of Great Britain, he joined the BUF in 1933 and soon became a top official.1 He had a reputation as a philosopher, having written Civilization as Divine Superman (1932), a development from Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West (1918–1922). Contemporaries considered him ‘likeable, though reserved’, ‘a man of pleasant personality’.2 He summed up Jenks as a ‘sound writer, roots in soil’,3 and was involved with him initially as Director of Policy and editor of The British Union Quarterly and then, from April 1939, also as editor of Action. Jenks regularly visited London for meetings with Thomson and brought him his latest book, which was completed by May 1938.4 The Scot was probably among the ‘better-qualified students of national problems’, thanked in Spring Comes Again for providing ‘assistance and stimulus’.5 Originally, Jenks’ second book was to be published through the fascist book club that Thomson was planning.6 The second half of the 1930s was the moment of the political book club with the Left Book Club started by Victor Gollancz and the Right Book Club associated with W.A. Foyle and his daughter Christina.7 The British Union Book Club did not materialise and instead Spring Comes Again was issued in Spring 1939, under the imprint of The Bookshelf, of 85 Fetter Lane, in the City, the address of a BUF bookshop.8 Given the financial circumstances of the movement, it is probable that Jenks paid for all or part of its production. Spring Comes Again was, its preface stated, ‘[c]onceived literally at the plough- tail’ and ‘born in a Sussex farmhouse’. Jenks styled the book as the collation of his previous experience, ‘a rather crude attempt to thresh and winnow the miscellaneous harvest of an active life and an inquiring mind’ and the product of his meditations: ‘manual labour in natural surroundings has given me better opportunities than A farmer’s philosophy 117

Figure 14.1 Spring Comes Again (1939) Source: Author most men for constructive thinking’. It was also a book nurtured by the wisdom of ‘shepherds, carters, farmers, drovers, settlers, bushwhackers, mailmen, dealers, emigrants, seamen’, the practical men with whom he had ‘shared bed and board, work and leisure, long days in the wind and the sun and the rain’; men whose ‘real philosophy’ emerged from their days of labour.9 A little book with wide scope, it took in the historical origins of the contemporary social order, its present defects and possible future. It was also about ‘economy’, the result of Jenks’ constant curiosity about how the world worked, a speculation ‘about many of the things which make up the past and are shaping the future’.10

The Decay of Liberalism into plutocracy Unlike most of his writing, Spring Comes Again was not about agriculture but the social order as a whole and tells why Jenks rejected liberalism and why he made fascism or national socialism – he used both terms synonymously by this stage – his path to the good society. The first section, entitled ‘The Decay of Liberalism’, emphasised 118 A farmer’s philosophy how for Blackshirts like Jenks, who really understood their creed, the main foe was not socialism or communism, but liberalism. In this respect, Jenks’ second book was also an argument with his father; Jenks senior’s confident assertion that liberalism was ‘infinitely superior’ to fascism, appeared in the same year as Spring Comes Again.11 One of the book’s few reviews commented that ‘[a]fter so many pink programmes, this is refreshingly green. After so much neighing from the Marxist Trojan horse’s mouth, this odoriferous, fertile work […] is not unwelcome.’12 Most of the many critiques of liberal society from this age of crisis came from writers who had to some degree ingested Marxism. Nonetheless Jenks’ fascist critique had things in common with them, which he recognised himself, confessing in a private letter: ‘Basically I feel Mark [Marx] is right; interest is not only immoral but unscientific’ and ‘Fascism has something in common with Communism here’.13 Like Marxists, Jenks portrayed liberalism as a once progressive force, but which, by the 1930s, was increasingly unable to deliver either material prosperity, or the ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ written on its ban- ners. Society was dominated by a narrow elite who reaped a disproportionate share of its benefits and, on the basis of their economic power, dominated its political institutions and public discourse so as to render ‘democracy’ and ‘free speech’ empty shibboleths. The utopian claim of liberalism was that the unfettered exchange of goods and money would bring forth an efficient and beneficial ‘self-regulating’ economy, but the reality was that through this abdication from economic control, power passed to a moneyed elite. The people might have a vote, but whatever party was elected was a puppet of the ‘unseen, non representative power […] Finance’.14 Unlike Marxist critics, Jenks’ target was not capitalism per se, but rather aspects of it. He distinguished between profits ‘earned by the production of real wealth’, by those who made things and rendered useful services and those who made ‘profits out of Money itself’, an essentially immoral practice, the ‘prostitution of common property’. Finance was parasitic, inasmuch that the great fortunes garnered from financial speculation and money dealing originated in the ‘real’, productive economy. Jenks also explained how, because money created as credits was a prerequisite of production, Finance, because of its monopoly of the supply of credit, not only dominated the real economy but was also progressively taking it over. With every downturn in the trade cycle, producers were forced to pass even greater portions of real wealth to Finance, either via interest payments or through bankruptcy. Jenks wrote of how: ‘with each successive crisis the parasite draws strength from the host and acquires a firmer grip.’ Finance also dominated because it was international, beyond the grasp of national governments, who were ‘reduced […] to a mere shadow show’.15 The final stage of liberalism was what Jenks called the ‘Plutocratic State’, wherein the ‘Money standard’ was fundamental, the rich predominant in the ‘ruling class’, and the Treasury holding a ‘key position’ in a government which A farmer’s philosophy 119 deferred ‘to the City’. Free trade had also wrought a cultural revolution: ‘In the absence of authority, the Money Standard has become supreme, and has […] ousted all other standards over a wide range of activities. “Business is Business”; “Money Talks” and so on.’ ‘Everywhere’ Jenks saw ‘the signs of the Money cult’, whose belief was that ‘everything can be reduced to terms of Money’; he saw a ‘financial priesthood, maintaining what is virtually a materialistic form of religion, Money’.16 The plutocracy, he noted, had been in power since before William Cobbett lambasted them, and since that time industry had become increasingly the creature of Finance: ‘Power passed from the masters of machinery and organisers of labour to the masters of Money and the organisers of Big Business.’ By this process, industry became ‘impersonalised, a great inhuman machine’, and among its human consequences was that the working man, ‘divorced from the soil, unsupported by craftsmanship’, had become ‘the slave of the system’. Britain, Jenks maintained, was being ‘moulded subtly but remorselessly, into a docile proletariat’, ‘a flock of sheep’, which at election time could be ‘mustered and driven’ by the ‘working dogs’ of the financial oligarchy, the parties and the press.17

Socialism and national socialism Despite this, Jenks retained a basic faith in the people: ‘In their deep inartic- ulate belief in their own country they possess reserves of strength and independence which neither organised Plutocracy nor organised Communism can altogether destroy.’ Of the alternatives to liberalism, Jenks – like Marxist critics of the Labour party – believed that parliamentary socialism would inevitably sell out to its bourgeois opponents, as Labour leader Ramsey McDonald had in 1930. Socialism in its Marxist–Leninist variant would plunge society into a class war and open Britain to internationalism and materialism. The choice was either plutocracy or the equally monolithic and impersonal state of socialist bureaucracy. The only alternative was national socialism. Jenks defined liberalism and socialism thus:

Anyone who views society primarily as a collection of individuals and gives priority to the liberty of the individual is a Liberal […] Conversely, anyone who feels that the individual can exist and find expression only as a member of an organised society (national or international) is a Socialist.18

He rejected international socialism because the nation was the only workable basis for revolutionary changes. ‘[T]he rock on which true statesmanship must build’ was ‘the rock of national consciousness’.19 ‘[L]ove of country, pride of race and community of tradition’ were forces inherently stronger than internationalism, as recent European history had shown. National socialism was also a reaction against 120 A farmer’s philosophy the failure of international socialism. The nation was the ‘most workable unit for the purposes of revolution’ and Jenks believed that the economic and political independence of Britain would provide the scope to make concrete changes, to realise the ‘just price and the fair wage’, to permit the financial system to be oriented towards ‘production and consumption’.20 As to national socialism, the quality which distinguished it was that it possessed the ‘vital’ element that other movements lacked. This was not compulsion – the Soviet Union had used violence ruthlessly but without achieving the successes of the fascist countries, Jenks believed; ‘[n]o’, he wrote, ‘the secret of Fascism is its semi-religious fervour, the desperate eleventh-hour struggle of Western civilization for the recapture of its soul, the revolt of man against the tyranny of Money and the Machine.’ Fascism was ‘something fine and unselfish, almost breath-taking in its intensity and sincerity’, which ‘mobilises and gives expression to those spiritual qualities of service and sacrifice which should be the basis of all religion, but in this materialistic age, have been largely lost to the Churches’.21 The sensations of religious revival and personal rebirth are often identified with fascism. Earlier on Jenks may have experienced such feelings in Toc H, another organisation built on brotherhood and service, with its ceremonies and sacred symbols, but in fascism they were heightened. Jenks’ view of the world was one which reached up to the heavens as it stooped to the soil. The latter, which was the most influential, predisposed him to pursue the real – ‘real wealth’, ‘real economy’, ‘real philosophy’; he wrote in a private letter: ‘we need to get down to something real, I’m sick of these abstractions; too clever by half.’22 Fascism seemed to Jenks to be based in the natural, the authentic: it was organised along ‘natural racial and national lines’, built ‘on the natural foundation of race and soil’. Being natural, fascism, possessed a ‘soul’, whereas the bureaucratic machinery of the plutocratic state or international socialism had ‘no life’, having ‘no soul above its own statistics’. Whereas internationalism dealt in ‘abstractions and formulae’, fascism invoked ‘the age-old appeal of patriotism, going right down to the roots of man in his native soil’; fascism was inspired by that which was ‘real and the living’: ‘a great hushed crowd, a rich landscape, a noble river or mountain.’23

A Greater Britain In place of the inertia of the committee system would come fascism’s system of teamwork and individual leadership. Instead of the hypothetical liberty, equality and fraternity of liberalism, Jenks wrote that ‘Unity, Equity and Security were the watchwords of the Fascist Revolution’. In the iniquitous present, those who worked were forced to ‘eat stale food, live in poky rooms, and wear the cheapest clothing, while a few superior beings live softer lives than is good for their health’. Equity implied ‘apportioning work according to ability, rewards according to deserts, and A farmer’s philosophy 121 responsibilities according to capacity’. In contrast, the socialist’s abstract principle of ‘equality’, he believed, came ‘dangerously near violating several rules of nature’. In another reference to the real, Jenks also conceived of the private ownership of capital as a ‘natural phenomenon’ and attributed capitalism’s malaise to a ‘lack of co-operation, plus a vicious theory of economics, plus the monopolist tactics of certain groups’. The fascist revolution would create the conditions for security: ‘security against poverty, unemployment and destitution, against exploitation, against an uncared for old age.’24 This stress on security bespoke the vicissitudes of Jenks’ life and a few years later he would welcome Beveridge’s landmark report on social security.25 Jenks imagined in fascism’s Greater Britain other qualities which appealed to him. He alleged that both liberalism and socialism conceived the human being as a ‘consuming animal’ and so denied their ‘creative personality’.26 Jenks’ model of the subject was instead an expression of his love of work and the real and, although he may not have realised it, coincided with a long tradition of socialist thought which, in the British context, was represented by William Morris and John Ruskin. For an economic theory to be more than abstract formulae, Jenks contended, it must view ‘man as a whole, as a producer who produces, not only in order to be able to consume, but in order to find an outlet for his creative instincts’. Jenks believed that fascism could transcend a purely monetary model of economic activity: ‘Fascism’, he wrote, ‘provides a definite break with money- economics and is an approach to real economics, the standard of which is not Money but man and his needs.’27 In the corporate state too, Jenks found something which coincided with his values. In place of the ‘mechanistic concepts’ of liberalism and socialism, fascism modelled ‘national life upon the natural lines of human physiology’. Any model of society could be viewed through such a metaphor, but Jenks’ corporate state, because it reproduced ‘the natural processes of organic life’ was a healthy body. Like fascist economics, the corporate state was ‘built on the productive elements of society’. Jenks also emphasised how, under fascism, the modern tendency, whereby all forms of activity evolved towards colossal monopolistic entities, would be checked: ‘The individual unit will continue; the factory, the mine, the shop, the farm, will not pass under centralised control.’ At the same time, corporation would permit the co-ordination of this multiplicity of independent productive units. This, Jenks considered, was the way to secure the advantages of planning in ‘the way most consistent with the British character’.28 Spring Comes Again represented Jenks’ mature reflections on fascism, and was one of the most sophisticated texts of British fascism. Although congruent with Mosley’s thinking and BUF policy, it contained inflections which were particular to Jenks and reflected his values rooted in the real – in man the creator, living in harmony with Nature, a realm at once material and spiritual. The little book, priced at a shilling, with its cover showing a pipe smoking countryman, 122 A farmer’s philosophy received much promotion in the fascist press but little wider notice. Despite being priced at a democratic shilling, it probably found few readers outside of the BUF.

Ezra Pound A few months after Spring Comes Again came out, Jenks began one of the more unexpected of his correspondences, with the American modernist poet, Ezra Pound. Pound had lived in Italy since the early 1920s and was enthusiastic about the achievements of Fascism and was also a keen worker for the movement in Britain. Contrary to Humphrey Carpenter’s statement that Pound ‘and the Mosley supporters never came to a close understanding’,29 the reams of correspondence between his subject and leading BUF figures documents a close collaboration.30 Pound was in contact with the Blackshirts from 1933 onwards and, from 1936, he wrote numerous articles without payment for Action and for The British Union Quarterly, which he hoped – rather improbably – would scoop up the writers and readers of his friend T.S. Eliot’s Criterion when it ceased publication in early 1939.31 Although it was not until July 1939 that Pound and Jenks got in touch, Jenks had caught the American’s eye years earlier. Pound mentioned the Englishman many times, describing him as ‘always interesting’ and ‘always good’.32 In an article of November 1937, attacking the social credit clique, he wrote of Jenks as someone who: ‘for at least two years, to my knowledge has contributed directly to the clarification of the British mind.’33 It was during that period that Pound had composed cantos 41–51 of his great life work, which included canto 45 on usury, subtitled ‘With Usura’.34 This work would have spoken plainly to Jenks, especially its lines: ‘WITH USURA/wool comes not to market/sheep bringeth no gain with usura/Usura is a murrain’. Given that Pound finished this part of his opus at the beginning of 1937, when he was already familiar with Jenks’ writing, the Englishman may have had some small influence on him. The American offered the usury canto to Raven Thomson for Action, but various things delayed publication until the wartime proscription of the BUF made it impossible.35 Like Jenks, Pound was also a long time advocate of economic and monetary reform and it was on this subject that he wrote a pamphlet for the BUF, What is Money For?, the text of which he ‘particularly’ wanted Jenks to provide ‘a serious criticism of phrases and DETAIL’.36 Jenks praised the work and offered two and a half pages of remarks and suggestions.37 This met with Pound’s ‘100% agreement’, who also called for the comments to be published in Action as a review: ‘ALL Jenks’ points NEED to be hammered into ALL Action readers’; he also hoped to include Jenks’ comments in the pamphlet as an appendix, should it be reprinted.38 A farmer’s philosophy 123

This began an exchange of letters which only ceased when Italy entered the war in June 1940. Much of the Pound–Jenks correspondence was taken up with discussion about monetary reform and corporatism.39 Noting Jenks’ Forest Row address, he also recalled that he had ‘spent 3 winters there, at Stine Cottage […] As yet no memorial tablet’.40 He also introduced Jenks to another monetary reformer, Robert McNair Wilson, which prompted another ‘voluminous correspondence’ (now lost).41 Wilson was a surgeon by training, who became medical correspondent of The Times; as ‘Anthony Wynne’, he was also the author of detec- tive stories and wrote on monetary questions under his own name.42 Jenks also grappled gamely with Pound’s Guide to Kulchur (1938), confessing ‘90% Greek to a barbarian like me, but I shall try a second ploughing’; in exchange he sent Spring Comes Again out to Italy.43

The climax of the struggle? In the epilogue of Spring Comes Again, entitled ‘Spring on the Way’, Jenks portrayed the origins of the BUF in the politicians’ betrayal of the frontline genera- tion of the Great War and the frustration of Oswald Mosley’s efforts to make the Labour Party act on it socialist principles in 1930. After 6 years of struggle, Jenks believed that the BUF was reaching the climax of its battle to overcome the ‘apa- thy’ of the masses.44

Figure 14.2 Jenks, marching with Mosley (on the left), BUF march, May Day, 1939 Source: The Friends of Mosley Archive 124 A farmer’s philosophy

What Jenks – in common with many fascists – was anticipating was the critical moment of a new movement, at which time the mainstream parties undergo a crisis of legitimacy, thereby opening ‘political space’ for fascism to expand and take power. This had happened in Germany between 1930 and 1933 and, 6 years later, Jenks believed that ‘the threat of war and the imminence of the next slump’ would see the same occur in Britain. He predicted that in such circumstances, opposition to fascism would attain new heights of ferocity, but even so, he predicted victory, and, returning to his favoured naturalistic metaphor in the closing lines of his book, he wrote:

But there never was a spring without some wild weather, without a bitter north-easter, as winter slackens its grip. And no more than these rearguards of winter can stop the bursting of the bud and the uprush of the young leaf- blades can the rearguards of reaction stop the renewal of national life. British Union marches on. Spring comes again.45

There was no doubt much rhetorical pump-priming in Jenks’ words, but he and other fascists did believe that their moment was approaching. Certainly, although rearmament since the middle of the decade had boosted the economy, this only partially obscured its serious structural defects. When Jenks wrote that ‘the artificial prosperity of the loan-boom reaches its bursting-point’ he was anticipating the moment when the economy would once more slump and the BUF’s time would come. In anticipation of this and the next election, which was expected to be called in either autumn 1939 or spring 1940, the fascists carefully husbanded their scanty resources to pay campaign expenses. Although Jenks had moved out of the constituency, he remained the BU candidate for Horsham and Worthing and, in March 1939, Mosley spoke at Horsham Drill Hall and Jenks also made a short speech appealing ‘for local support for the movement’.46 At the beginning of August, although the menace of war increased every day, Jenks was confident that things were fundamentally moving in favour of the BUF, ‘Heaven knows what state of affairs will exist when we take over’, he wrote to Pound.47 Thus, in the closing years of the 1930s, the fortunes of the BUF were yoked to foreign affairs in a complicated way. The threat of war had prompted rearmament, boosting the economy and so buttressing the political status quo; at the same time, the BUF campaign against the threat of war was an important factor in its growth. Besides organic growth ascribable to its maturing organisation, a significant part of the increase of BUF membership was attributable to its campaign against the war. The Great War had left deep scars on the British psyche, which was reflected in such initiatives as the ‘peace ballot’ conducted by the League of Nations Union in 1934–35, the widespread relief when war was averted at the time of the Munich crisis in October 1938 and the growth of the Peace Pledge Union. It is difficult to estimate what the potential support for the BUF was and how reasonable its expectations of a breakthrough were. Conventionally the fascist A farmer’s philosophy 125 movement has been dismissed as an essentially fringe phenomenon, but in more recent years there has been a tendency to think again.48 Research has certainly shown that it was able to draw adherents from a broad social spectrum, a facility, which if sustained during growth into a mass movement, would have created a broad-based coalition akin to that built by the Nazis in Germany.

The peace campaign That the BUF was still very much alive was shown by some of its last propaganda spectaculars. For May Day, 1939 a march dedicated to the cause of peace was held on Sunday the 7th, with London Blackshirts assembling on the Victoria Embank- ment, before marching up to Ridley Road in Dalston. Jenks took part, and was filmed marching close to Mosley in the ‘Leaders party’, which demonstrated his status in the movement. In step with thousands of other feet marching to the beat of the Women’s Drum Corps, Jenks showed that he was not only a fascist of the study. On arrival at Ridley Road, crowds packed the thoroughfare to hear Mosley, and, at the end of his peroration, a multitude of arms were raised in the fascist salute. A couple of months later, in July, the BUF held its largest ever indoor meeting at Earls Court. Despite being called at very short notice and being publicised only by the Blackshirts’ limited resources, over 20,000 people attended. Extensive provision for the sale of literature was made and Action predicted that Spring Comes Again would be in the ‘best seller class’.49 These were just two of the many hundreds of marches and meetings of the peace campaign. The fascist policy concerning the threat of war in Europe had two major parts: with respect to the country’s ability to fight a war, it advocated the modernisation and expansion of the armed forces; concerning the commitment of those forces, it actively campaigned against any involvement in a conflict which did not involve Britain’s direct interests. ‘Mind Britain’s business’ was the slogan commonly used as the shorthand for this stance, first used at the time of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. This position was congruent with the fascist aim to move to economic nationalism, based on a self-contained system built on the British Empire. Undoubtedly, the fact that the European aggressors were ideologically kindred regimes, from which the BUF had either received financial support or hoped to do so, was also influential. Jenks had been writing about the role of agriculture in British preparedness for war since his first article in the fascist press.50 In 1939 he continued in this vein, but also began to write about foreign policy. He paid particular attention to perhaps the most obscure aspect of British diplomacy, its economic dimension. Even with the benefit of historical hindsight, the intentions of British foreign policy in this dimension during 1938–1939 remain a subject of debate: was their aim to contain German aggression or to ‘appease’ Hitler? Certainly, the £16 million credit given to Turkey, which, Jenks noted, was intended to protect Britain’s strategic interests at 126 A farmer’s philosophy the gateway to the Middle East. It was also the case that, after September 1938, Lord Lloyd, Chairman of the British Council, was acting as an unofficial envoy, promoting what has been described as an ‘alternative policy to appeasement in Eastern Europe’, which aimed to use the Balkan states as an anti-German bloc. Lloyd encouraged the purchase of Greek and Turkish tobacco and recommended that Rumanian oil and wheat be bought to keep it from Germany and draw Rumania towards Britain. In response, the government authorised the purchase of 200,000 tons of Rumanian wheat.51 From Jenks’ point of view this was not only dabbling in a part of the world outside Britain’s national interests but yet another blow to British farmers, who had a bumper crop to sell themselves.52 Just as the British money bags had been thrown into the balance against Napoleon, so Jenks saw liberalism now doing the same against national socialism: ‘Money is being poured out like water to avert the inevitable.’ As already suggested, Jenks’ understanding of the state as ‘plutocratic’ had much in common with the classic Marxist concept of the origins and function of the state in capitalist society. The government was only the visible part of a ruling class whose common interests, values and assumptions supported a much wider web of power. ‘Fully three quarters of the moves in this struggle are hidden from the public’, Jenks contended, ‘[n]ow and again some Minister or financial magnate refers pompously to “financial resources”, “political loans” or “economic assistance”’.53 Jenks’ model of the ‘plutocracy’ finds retrospective endorsement in the work of Scott Newton who argues that the ‘ruling elite’ of the interwar period was ‘centred on the treasury, the Bank of England and the City of London’.54 Newton’s argument is that the overriding intention of this elite was in fact to ‘appease’ Germany, which apparently runs counter to Jenks’ interpretation at the time. However, even if not an obviously belligerent approach to foreign policy, appeasement can be seen as a form of ‘passive’ aggression, seeking to draw Germany away from economic nationalism and back into the international trade system. Jenks believed that national socialist Germany had shown that it was ‘possible for nations to live and prosper without asking leave of Wall Street or the City of London, and without paying tribute thereto’, which was, he wrote, ‘one of the blackest crimes in the calendar of Financial democracy.’55 But it was all for nothing, Jenks believed: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, all had gone fascism’s way. The moves then underway in early 1939, to draw Franco from the Rome–Berlin Axis would go the same way. ‘Where will it end?’ Jenks asked and answered: ‘in the victory of national socialism over International Finance, in the overthrow of Money by mobilised and resurgent Man.’56

Saturday, 2nd September When Action appeared on Saturday, 2nd September, German forces were already in Poland and the British government’s ultimatum had been issued. A farmer’s philosophy 127

In his final contribution to the series ‘The British Countryside’, Jenks returned once more to his well-worn furrow of the strategic preparedness – or lack thereof – of farming for war. The country was not ready and he accused the Plutocracy of pushing the country into war to defend its interests but not being ready to build up farming to safeguard the people from its consequences. Jenks maintained that he was neither ‘a defeatist nor an alarmist’, he had no wish to see ‘starving mobs invading Whitehall’, no one ‘outside the Communist Party’ wanted that.57 The tone of his piece in The Yorkshire Post was more moderate but still questioned whether either farmers’ finances or the neglected land’s fertility would suffice to feed the country.58 Besides his usual agricultural piece, Jenks published two articles about foreign affairs, although one was attributed to a ‘farmer who has worked for years in Britain and the Dominions’. This last article surveyed the ‘five year harvest’ of the National Government’s interventions in foreign affairs since 1934, deemed to be ‘uniformly disastrous’ to Britain and the Empire: ‘Every step taken in foreign policy (with the possible exception of the Munich agreement) has resulted in humiliation for us […] [a]nd every step has brought us closer to war.’ Jenks’ argument was that Britain’s interests were outside Europe, in the Empire, and that it would have been better to have abstained from continental interventions, which had only worsened relations with Germany and Italy, the latter having been previously an ally of longstanding. He also believed that the Empire had been consequently neglected and noted the ominous signs that Japan was using these distractions as an opportunity to push forward its interests in the Far East.59 Jenks’ other article alleged that Britain was on the point of stepping into the jaws of a trap laid by Soviet Russia. He referred to a fundamental tenet of Marxism–Leninism, that the historical tendency of late capitalism was towards imperialism and war and that, as after the last world war, these circumstances would create the conditions for revolution. From this perspective, the Russo– German non-aggression pact, signed days earlier, was the ‘bold masterstroke’, whereby Germany would be used to destroy France and Britain, before ‘the Red armies are sent marching through a devastated Europe’.60 This interpretation was by no means eccentric. A similar view of the Comintern’s motivations appeared in The Times a few days earlier.61 Historians still argue over the intentions of Soviet Russia, whether it was pursuing the ultimate aim of world revolution or had decided to turn its back on historical materialism and coexist with capitalism. What is less open to debate is that the British declaration of war on Sunday, the 3rd September set in train a sequence of events ending not only in the defeat and destruction of Nazi Germany and fascism as a movement but also the dissolution of Britain’s empire and the end of that nation’s long reign as a great power. 128 A farmer’s philosophy

Notes 1 TNA: PRO, KV2/883: ‘Raven-Thomson, Alexander’, 30 October 1944; Peter R. Pugh, ‘A Political Biography of Alexander Raven Thomson’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 2002, pp. 33–4, 37–8. 2 U. Warwick Mod. RC, MSS292/743.11/2: Alexander C. Miles, ‘The Streets are Still. Mosley in Motley’, unpublished typescript memoir (undated, ca. 1937); TNA: PRO, KV2/883: ‘Raven-Thomson, Alexander’, 30 October 1944. 3 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/2344: Raven Thomson to Pound, 11 May 1938. 4 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 1 August 1939; Jenks to Pound, 20 March 1940. 5 Spring Comes Again, p. 3. 6 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/2344: Raven Thomson to Pound, 11 May 1938. 7 Terence Rogers, ‘The Right Book Club: Text Wars, Modernity and Cultural Politics in the Late Thirties’, Literature and History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (autumn 2003), pp. 1–15; John Lewis, The Left Book Club: An Historical Record (London: Gollancz, 1970). 8 HO144/21429/100 quoted in Julie V. Gottleib, Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923–1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), p. 86. 9 Spring Comes Again, p. 5. 10 Ibid. 11 E. Jenks, The Ship of State, pp. 165–166. 12 Anon., ‘Review’, NEW, Vol. 16, No. 26 (18 April 1939), p. 386. 13 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 29 April 1940. 14 Spring Comes Again, p. 30. 15 Ibid., pp. 31–34. 16 Ibid., pp. 10, 30, 34. 17 Ibid., pp. 35–36. 18 Ibid., pp. 36, 50–53. 19 Ibid., p. 54. 20 Ibid., p. 67. 21 Ibid., pp. 9, 58, 60. 22 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 27 September 1939; Jenks to Pound, 20 March 1940. 23 Spring Comes Again, pp. 51, 54, 55, 67. 24 Ibid., pp. 64–66. 25 The Catholic Herald, 24 December 1942, p. 5. 26 Spring Comes Again, p. 71. 27 Ibid., pp. 71–74. 28 Ibid., pp. 74–75. 29 Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), p. 553. 30 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/35/1495; 5/250-251; 32/1337-1338; 52/2338-2352. 31 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/52/2351: Pound to Raven Thomson, undated [March 1939?]. 32 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/32/1338: Pound to J.A. McNab, 14 April 1937; 3 May 1937; MSS43/52/2340: Pound to Raven Thomson, 7 November 1937; 52/2345: Pound to Raven Thomson, 2 February 1937; MSS43/52/2351: Pound to Raven Thomson, undated [March 1939?]; MSS43/52/2343: Pound to Raven Thomson, 3 May 1938. 33 Action, 18 November 1937, p. 9. 34 Carpenter, A Serious Character, pp. 545–547. 35 See correspondence in Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/52/2340, 2342, 2344, 2349, 2350, 2351; MSS43/35/1495. A farmer’s philosophy 129

36 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/52/2352: Pound to Raven Thomson, 5 July 1939. 37 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Director of Policy [Raven Thomson], 15 July 1939. 38 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/52/2352: Pound to Raven Thomson (undated, ca. July 1939); Raven Thomson to Pound, 14 and 20 July 1939. 39 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 1 August 1939. 40 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Pound to Jenks, 4 August 1939. 41 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 20 August 1939; Jenks to Pound, 27 September 1939. Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 20 March 1940. 42 Monarchy or Money Power (1933); Promise to Pay (1934); The Defeat of Debt (1936); ‘Select Bibliography’, BUQ, Vol. 4, No. 1 (spring 1940), pp. 75–77. 43 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 27 September 1939. 44 Spring Comes Again, p. 80. 45 Ibid., p. 80. 46 Action, 4 March 1939, p. 13. 47 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 1 August 1939. 48 See Pugh, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ 49 Action, 1 July 1939, p. 3. 50 For example: Action, 13 March 1937, p. 11; 24 April 1937, p. 4; 19 February 1938, p. 6; 26 February 1938, p. 10. 51 Scott Newton, The Profits of Peace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 87–94; Louise Atherton, ‘Kept Miserably Running in Low Gear’: Lord Lloyd at the Periphery of Politics and Diplomacy’, pp. 271–292 in John Fisher and Antony Best (eds.), On the Fringes of Diplomacy: Influences on British Foreign Policy, 1900–1945 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 283–284. 52 Action, 19 November 1938, p. 6. 53 Action, 18 February 1939, p. 8. 54 Newton, The Profits of Peace, p. 4. 55 Action, 19 November 1938, p. 6. 56 Action, 18 February 1939, p. 8. 57 Action, 2 September 1939, p. 6. 58 YP, 2 September 1939, p. 14. 59 Action, 2 September 1939, p. 7. 60 Action, 2 September 1939, p. 5. 61 The Times, 26 August 1939, p. 9. 15 War

When considering the wartime situation of Jenks and his BUF comrades, it is easy to project backwards their ultimate fate, to imagine a miasma of failure and impending oblivion. In actuality, despite severe problems, they still had grounds for optimism. First in Italy and then Germany, fascism had gone from one triumph to the next; the Popular Front had squared up to it over Spain but had been defeated. The stunning victory of the Wehrmacht in Poland gave them no reason to doubt that the march of history was going their way. Writing to Pound – in an allusive way because of the possibility of censorship – Jenks said of the war: ‘I shall be surprised if it doesn’t effect a considerable clearance among certain things which we have reviled loud and long.’1

War comes to South Park Farm However, like the rest of the country, in autumn 1939, Jenks was also much occupied with practical matters. Mary Fullerton recorded that he was ‘busy farm working’; with fine weather and official exhortations to plough and plant, he had little leisure.2 Because of the expectation of a devastating aerial bombing campaign, on the day that war was declared, he drove Mary from London to Forest Row.3 Oliver was away from danger, at school in Devon, and when Sophie visited him around this time it is likely that she left two-year-old Patsy in the care of Dorothy Jenks.4 With the introduction of rationing, there were worries about getting oil for heating and lighting and, facing the prospect of winter in an unheated house and worried that she was giving Sophie extra work, Mary moved to lodgings elsewhere.5 Her friend Mabel made a great drama of the matter, claiming that Mary was ‘very unhappy with Sophie and Jorian […] They are ardent followers of Moseley [sic], War 131 and were quite impossible in the treatment of Mary – mentally and physically. I have never seen her so distressed.’6 Mary gave no indication of distress, simply noting in her diary that the move was a ‘good idea and all approve’ and explaining in a letter, that the ‘chief thing was [the] impending oil shortage […] and if I’d been there S[ophie] would have been scrimping the house to give me heat and light’.7 The major event in Jenks’ private life at this time was the death of his father, on the 10th November. Edward, who was in his 79th year, had been in poor health for a long time. Jorian joined his mother and his sister for the funeral at Bishop’s Tawton.8 Edward Jenks’ bequeathed to his widow half of the income from his residual estate, dividing the other half between his two children. Edward was only comfortably off, the net value of his estate being £19,723, but the money would have been very useful to his son.

Emergency powers Whatever their beliefs about the historical destiny of fascism, the outbreak of war brought the BUF a host of problems. It lost many activists – the representative Blackshirt was young and male, and so eligible for conscription, if he was not already in one of the reserve forces. At 40 years of age, Jenks was only just under the maximum age for conscription of 41 but, in any case, his asthma rendered him unfit for service.9 A potentially much more serious threat was posed by the Emer- gency Powers (Defence) Act. Among other things, this allowed the state to censor publications and imprison subjects without trial. A number of individuals suspected of espionage were arrested at the outbreak of war, including two BUF members, although they were both soon released.10 The new conditions were apparent in the first wartime edition of Action, which appeared late, due to delays caused by the censors. On the front page, under the headline ‘Our Peace Policy – “Britain First”’, Mosley reiterated the BUF position, which was to fight if Britain or the Empire was attacked, but to keep out of ‘foreign quarrels’ and seek ‘a permanent peace and understanding among the great nations of Europe’.11 In the first wartime edition his usual agricultural article was absent, although he contributed a poem, a pastiche on Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘Tommy’, with the British farmer instead depicted as neglected and despised until war comes.12 The poem was signed only with an initial ‘J’, most of the articles being published without bylines to protect their authors, a practice that would last until the beginning of November.

‘Work like blazes’ In early 1940, alongside Jenks’ articles in The Yorkshire Post there often appeared an official exhortation ‘Don’t Delay … Plough Today!’, urging the farmer to work ‘day and night’ to ‘grow more feeding stuffs and free our ships and money’. The advert 132 War included the promise that farmers would receive a ‘reasonable return’ and the slogan that ‘Ploughing on Farms is as Vital as Arms’.13 This was what Jenks had been calling for since the middle of the 1930s, but it was too late. In the Post, he devoted much space to telling farmers how to best respond to these frantic measures to expand agriculture, whilst cautioning against a rash departure from good husbandry in what he believed would be a long war.14 There also remained much to criticise in the government’s performance, which, in the Post at least, Jenks delivered in a firm but calm voice. In Action, he took the gloves off. The exhortation to the farmer to ‘work like blazes’, delivered on the BBC by the Minister of Agriculture, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, was a phrase that Jenks would return to again and again, juxtaposing it with the failure of the government to guarantee that farmers would be fairly rewarded, a point made in the House of Commons on the 8th November, in its debate on food supply.15 There were reasons why Jenks should have been in favour of Dorman-Smith, whom he had met.16 He was a farmer and a stalwart of the NFU, who, in 1935, had stood successfully for parliament as a Conservative with the sponsorship of the Union.17 Although Jenks may not have known it, Dorman-Smith was also a member of English Mistery, a kindred organisation of an ultra-Tory sort.18 When, in January 1939, Prime Minister Chamberlain took the apparently ‘radical’ step of appointing him Minister of Agriculture, it might have seemed a good thing. How- ever, as was often the case, he was something of a disappointment, whom Jenks sometimes called ‘Dorman(t) Smith’, but generally cast as a man whose hands were tied by larger powers.19 When he was sacked by Churchill in May 1940, ‘earnest, well intentioned Reggie’ was replaced by Robert Hudson, the ‘bag-man and errand boy of International Finance’.20 Given the hours farmers worked, Jenks considered that Dorman-Smith’s direction to ‘work like blazes’ might have been ‘more skilfully worded’. He had many other grumbles: there was the government’s plans – ‘The Plans’ – which for months had been trumpeted but never properly explained. Prices, always a sore point, were also a matter of complaint: price control had been introduced but pegged at the low pre-war level. Farmers were willing to produce more, but could only do so if paid a price that reflected wartime inflation in the cost of inputs.21 In November 1939, he noted that even the usually compliant NFU was chiding its erstwhile president about the failure to increase prices.22 In the same month he noted that only 2,000 out of the 26,000 women trained by the Women’s Land Army had found jobs, a statistic attributed to the inability of farmers to pay for what was inevitably less productive labour.23 ‘Food Production’, Jenks wrote in the Distributist Weekly Review, was not ‘just a case of sticking a pretty Land Girl on a tractor and taking her photo for the Flapper Press’.24 The labour of the nearly 200,000 workers lost off the land since 1914 could not be replaced entirely by machines, and a land girl with a month’s training was no substitute for the skilled men being conscripted or drawn War 133 away by the better wages available elsewhere.25 In the Post at the beginning of 1940, Jenks likened British agriculture to:

a horse which has been turned out to grass – and poor grass at that – for a long period. It is simply not in a fit condition to do the gruelling work now demanded of it, and must be built up by an extended course of wise and generous treatment.26

Another important issue was the supply of feeding stuffs.27 Before the war, many farmers adapted to the economic situation by feeding cheap imported grains to poultry and pigs, using ‘farms as factories for the conversion of imported cereals into fresh milk, eggs and pork’.28 In wartime, these supplies were choked off. As Jenks pointed out, this was a foreseeable problem, but no stocks had been reserved to bridge the inevitable delay in expanding home production.29 By January 1940, the supply of feed was reduced to a dribble and its price had doubled. Farmers were losing money and sometimes forced to slaughter their stock; consumers would miss their bacon, whilst the pigs suffered pangs of hunger as they waited for the slaughterer.30 When these issues were angrily vented in the House of Commons, Jenks found much in Hansard that echoed his own pronouncements and stated the chilling possibility that the ‘fate which has already overtaken our pigs and poultry may also overtake our human population’.31 Two days later in The Yorkshire Post his anger was only slightly muted.32 This was not alarmism. Although the Battle of the Atlantic did not begin in earnest until the middle of 1940, at sea the first months of the war were not ‘pho- ney’. As Jenks wrote: ‘Day by day food-ships are being sunk and seamen are facing hardships and death.’ He was in no doubt that the origin of this national crisis was in the government’s attitude to agriculture, a stance symbolised by Neville Chamberlain’s notorious speech at Kettering in July, 1938, which had ruled out any further assistance before hostilities commenced. ‘It is the Kettering spirit, the Kettering blockade which is worse than a thousand U-boats or a million mines’, he wrote.33 In spring 1941, by which time Jenks was in an internment camp, the weekly publication of shipping losses was stopped to preserve public morale and the national diet fell to the poorest level of the war.34 Jenks did not merely criticise government policy but continued to lay out an alternative. The ultimate solution lay in the creation of a corporate state. However, in the meantime, to avert the danger of starvation he called, in both Action and The Yorkshire Post, for the government to create a ‘National Food Front’. This would replace the bureaucrats of the Ministry and the ‘well-meaning muddle-headed men’ of the County War Agriculture Executive Committees (WAEC) with ‘hard- headed men with real experience’, taking control under the national socialist ‘leadership principle’.35 134 War

The wrong political party The BUF campaigned against the war throughout the bitter winter of 1939–1940, with their candidates standing in several parliamentary by-elections. The fascists received a meagre share of the vote in these contests, showing that a breakthrough was distant. In the spring, larger events were set to intervene. On the 9th April, Germany invaded Norway and Denmark to forestall allied efforts to cut off vital supplies of Swedish iron ore. Jenks was most concerned with the fate of Denmark, in Action he discussed what the loss of imported eggs, butter and bacon from that country would have on British rations. Denmark was a country of which he warmly approved, because of the central place of the family farm in its economy and culture. Although Jenks publicly cast doubt on press claims that Germany was in the process of destroying Danish agriculture, he voiced his concerns to Pound, hoping that the ‘Germans don’t muck about with Denmark too much; they’re one of our best demonstrations’.36 A month later, on the 10th of May, the Germans unleashed their blitzkrieg on the Low Countries. In Action on the 16th, Jenks noted that the spread of war to Holland would further restrict Britain’s access to imported food.37 In a second piece he referred to the Labour Party’s action in joining the coalition recently formed under the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. For Jenks, this was a prophecy come true, and he wrote of how Labour ‘now finds itself in alliance with anti-Socialist financiers and politicians for the furtherance of a war which means the slaughter and impoverishment of British, French and German workers’.38 Four days after these words German forces reached the channel coast, leaving the British Expeditionary Force and other allied troops cut off, and on the 26th, the order was given to begin evacuations by sea. Jenks wrote in his last named article for the BUF, published on the 23rd May, the ‘enemy is nearing her gate’.39 Defeated in France, Britain was itself now endangered. The day before Jenks’ article was published, Parliament passed the Emergency Pow- ers (Defence) Act, which contained the new regulation 18B (1A). This allowed the detention without trial of anyone who was a member of an organisation deemed to be ‘subject to foreign influence or control’ or to have had ‘associations with persons concerned in the government of, or sympathies with the system of government of, any power with which His Majesty is at war’.40 As Brian Simpson notes, these criteria were drafted by MI5 in a loose way because of the lack of hard evidence of German funding for, or ‘control’ of, the BUF. The first batch of thirty three arrests on the 23rd May included Mosley and most of the BUF’s national leadership. Although decapitated, the BUF was not itself yet proscribed and a four-page edition of Action appearing a week later, on the 30th. However, as the war situation worsened daily, the Prime Minister ordered ‘all fifth columnists’ to be detained; a list of around 345 fascists was approved on the 30th May, with arrests taking place in early June, followed by another tranche later in the month.41 In the end, around War 135 a thousand fascists were detained. Jenks was probably arrested in early June; in The Yorkshire Post for 8th June, his usual column was instead written by a journalist known only by the initials ‘F.R.H.’42 It is likely that a piece from him was published anonymously in the very last Action, dated 6th June, by which time he was probably locked up. A commentary on a broadcast talk by the Minister of Agriculture was incongruous in pages otherwise devoted to the crises affecting the BUF and the country; but it was typical of Jenks that he should still be delivering his copy, no matter the circumstances.43

‘The Traitors’ Column’ The pretext of regulation 18B (1A) was the existence of a so-called ‘fifth column’ in Britain, a covert body of traitors and foreign agents who would act in concert with the German invaders. At the time, it was widely believed that fifth columnists were behind the rapid collapse of Holland and Belgium and that a similar potential was present in Britain. Jenks’ local paper was typical: in a column entitled ‘The Traitors’ Column’, it explained the origins of the term ‘fifth column’ in the Spanish Civil War, before going on to comment:

Those who advocate in war-time the overthrow of democratic government are little less obnoxious than the secret agents of their masters. The country is rightly impatient with all subversive activity at home when its manhood is valiantly striving on the battlefield.44

A week later, the same paper sought to restrain a growing mass hysteria, stating its ‘belief that the activities of the so-called “Fifth Column” in Holland and Belgium will not be possible here on any large scale’, but also commending the Home Sec- retary for ‘interning many enemy aliens, restricting the movements of the rest and arresting such native agitators as have aroused suspicion by their connections with Nazi Germany’.45 It was almost inevitable that Jenks, as a British fascist, would have some sympathy with a kindred movement in Germany, but neither that country nor its regime held any special place in his affections. He had not visited Germany and only rarely mentioned the country or its regime in his writings. His single detailed treatment, in 1937, called ‘Farming under National Socialism’, certainly gave a glowing account of agriculture in Germany, but anticipated criticism that he had ‘fallen vic- tim to totalitarian propaganda’ by quoting a similarly positive report from the columnist ‘Blythe’ in Farmer and Stockbreeder.46 If admiration for some aspect of Nazi Germany was a qualification for internment, then Jenks should have had much more company in gaol.47 The geography of Jenks’ mental world was dominated by Britain and, despite his own experience of the Dominions, he increasingly veered towards being a ‘little Englander’. 136 War

In reality, German agents and traitorous locals played little part in the war in the Low Countries and there was no fifth column in Britain. The internment of fascists, like Jenks – together with numerous enemy aliens, many of whom were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany – was a precautionary act and probably justi- fied in a national crisis. At the same time, it is understandable that detainees might feel that they had suffered a personal injustice in being held indefinitely without trial, not for what they had done – with only a handful of exceptions, Blackshirts were not charged or convicted of any offence – but what they might do. Jenks’ later terse explanation of his detention, that he merely belonged to the ‘[w]rong political party’, was essentially correct.48

Notes 1 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 27 September 1939. 2 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 18 September 1939; Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 27 September 1939. 3 SLV (State Library of Victoria) MS12343, Box 3131/1: Mary Fullerton Diary, 1938–1942: entries for 1, 2 and 3 September 1939. 4 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 18 September 1939. 5 SLV MS12343 Box 3131/1: Mary Fullerton Diary, 1938–1942: entries for 17 and 24 September 1939. 6 SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: M. Singleton to Franklin, 22 September 1939. 7 SLV MS12343 Box 3131/1: Mary Fullerton Diary, 1938–1942: entry for 17 September 1939; NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Soph, Bill and Annie, 5 November 1939. 8 The Western Morning News, 15 November 1939, p. 8. 9 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 18 September 1939. 10 A.W. Brian Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention Without Trial in Wartime Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 54–56, 71. 11 Action, 16 September 1939, p. 1. 12 Action, 16 September 1939, p. 7. 13 For example: YP, 30 March 1940, p. 13. 14 For example: YP, 30 March 1940, p. 13; 20 January 1940, p. 10. 15 HC Debates, Vol. 353 (8 November 1939), cc. 269–380. 16 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/52/2350: Raven Thomson to Pound, 10 January 1939. 17 Guy Smith, A History of the NFU: From Campbell to Kendall (Wellington, Somerset: Hasgrove, 2008), pp. 89–92. 18 For a contrary opinion see: Dan Stone, ‘The English Mistery, the BUF, and the Dilemmas of British fascism’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 75 (June 2003), pp. 336–358. 19 Action, 8 February 1940, p. 5; 4 April 1940, p. 3. 20 Action, 23 May 1940, p. 3. 21 Action, 23 September 1939, p. 6; YP, 7 October 1939, p. 5; 9 December1939, p. 8. 22 Action, 9 November 1939, p. 6; see also, YP, 4 November 1939, p. 5. 23 Action, 30 November 1939, p. 6. 24 ‘Won’t De Druv’, WR, Vol. 30, No. 4 (19 October 1939), pp. 67–68. 25 YP, 23 December 1939, p. 8. 26 YP, 6 January 1940, p. 8. 27 YP, 18 November 1939, p. 4. 28 YP, 28 October 1939, p. 4. 29 Action, 16 November 1939, p. 6; 21 December 1939, p. 6; YP, 18 November 1939, p. 4. 30 Action, 11 January 1940, p. 6; YP, 20 January 1940, p. 10. War 137

31 House of Commons’ Debates, Vol. 356 (25 January 1940), cc. 823–946; Action, 1 February 1940, p. 5. 32 YP, 3 February 1940, p. 8. 33 Action, 29 February 1940, p. 6; The Manchester Guardian, 3 July 1938, p. 20. 34 Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939–45 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), pp. 231–232. 35 Action, 11 January 1940, p. 6; YP, 7 January 1940, p. 8. 36 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 29 April 1940. 37 Action, 16 May 1940, p. 6. 38 Action, 16 May 1940, p. 5. 39 Action, 23 May 1940, p. 6; Jenks may have also been the author of a second piece entitled ‘Farmers Flouted’. 40 Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious, p. 173. 41 Ibid., pp. 185–190. 42 YP, 8 June 1940, p. 5. 43 Action, 6 June 1940, p. 2. 44 East Grinstead Observer, 1 June 1940, p. 6. 45 East Grinstead Observer, 8 June 1940, p. 4. 46 Action, 5 June 1937, p. 4. 47 Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–39 (London: Constable, 1980); Angela Schwarz, ‘British Visitors to National Socialist Germany: In a Familiar or in a Foreign Country’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 28, pp. 487–509. 48 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 16 18B/2732

There was no warning: a police car outside, a rap on the door, a hurried search for incriminating papers, before the detainee was taken away, leaving his or her family ignorant of where they were being taken and for how long. It is quite likely that Jenks was interrupted in the midst of some task in a field or barn, for spring’s return meant that he was much occupied with farmwork; Mary Fullerton reported that he was ‘busy with crops, pigs etc.’ and ‘getting all out the land possible’.1

Brixton Because the official files relating to Jenks’ detainment are not available, this important period of his life can only be roughly sketched. It should be added that most published references to Jenks’ internment are incorrect or questionable. Concerning the beginning of his incarceration, the Hull Blackshirt, John Charnley, recalled meeting Jenks on the 4th June at Walton Gaol, Liverpool. Charnley wrote of being surprised to find his comrade there rather than at Brixton, but that Jenks explained he had been brought there because he had been ‘living on his smallholding in South Wales’.2 Certainly Jenks would later be imprisoned with Charnley, but he had no link to Wales. It is not absolutely impossible that Jenks was at Walton – detainees from as far south as Dorset were brought there, but given the proximity of Forest Row to Brixton, it is unlikely that he was taken anywhere else initially. Certainly he was at HMP Brixton on the 30th July 1940, the date on an official label pasted into a book of his, and was there in October the same year.3 Although not criminals, the detainees were subject to the same regime as ordinary remand prisoners.4 On arrival, they were kept for some hours in one of a row of small wooden cubicles, before having their details recorded for the card index 18B/2732 139 and being issued with a prison number, in Jenks’ case 2732.5 Then came a bath in a communal facility, intended to rid the prisoner of parasites, although, as they soon found out, the prison itself was bug-ridden. Following this ceremony, the men were inspected by a doctor. Next, prisoners were deprived of their belongings except for the clothes they were wearing and issued with a set of coarse bed sheets, then led into the cell block, with its rows of armoured doors. Once the heavy door had slammed shut behind him, the prisoner found himself in a narrow cell of 7 feet by 11 feet, furnished with a small wooden table and chair, a chamber pot and various other chipped enamel vessels for washing, eating and drinking. Leaning against the wall was a sleeping platform of wooden boards and a lumpy coir-filled mattress. Having endured life in an English public school, army barracks, and roughing it in New Zealand, there was nothing especially novel in these experiences for Jenks, although he could never have imagined that he would experience them in a British gaol. The 7.00am start of the prison day was no hardship for a farmer either. The first duty was to ‘slop-out’ the chamber pots, followed by a breakfast of porridge, pallid tea, and bread with a little margarine. Jenks later praised the prison bread, saying how ‘the Home Office used to mill its own wholemeal flour and have a bakehouse in each prison, and when you’ve sampled the rest of the prison diet you realise why the bread is so good – it has to be’.6 Later in the morning the prisoners went out into the exercise yard for an hour, followed by a period of ‘association’ when men could talk and play chess or cards; Jenks sometimes played bridge with his comrades.7 At 11.30 came dinner-time, eaten in the cell. Afternoon was punctuated by another hour in the exercise yard, association and supper at 4.30pm. After that the prisoners were locked in until it all began again the next morning. Detainees were allowed to send and receive two letters a week, each no longer than twenty-four lines, and receive one visit per week of a mean 15 minutes. Because of the proximity of Forest Row to south London, Sophie was able to visit Jorian once a week, but the couple were never alone.8 Visits were closely supervised by a warden and physical contact of any kind was forbidden although some of the Brixton ‘screws’ might turn their back to overlook a tender infraction of the rules. For a man used to being continually occupied, the forced inactivity of prison life was hard to adapt to. Mabel Singleton wrote of Jenks’ plight, that the ‘idleness is terrible’ and she sent him her jigsaw puzzles.9 He probably played many games of patience too, as the game was a life-long pastime of his. He certainly read, at least one of the volumes from this time survives in the library of the Soil Association. He may even have been able to carry on with his literary work, if not at Brixton, perhaps at one of the camps that came after it. As the chapters below will disclose, he traced some of his most significant later work to this period. It has been stated that, whilst he was at Brixton, Jenks was among the fascists singled out for special attention at MI5’s interrogation centre at Latchmere House, on Ham Common, a place that used solitary confinement, hunger and psychological measures to try to break down the resistance of prisoners.10 Nowhere does Jenks 140 18B/2732 suggest this and no evidence for it has been found; his own brief account of his first year of imprisonment instead stresses the pettiness of the indignities inflicted on internees.11 The explanation that Jenks was sent to Latchmere House because he was one of those authorised to lead the BUF in the case of Mosley’s arrest, is also incorrect, as he was not one of the eight nominated individuals.12 Detainees were entitled to appeal to the Home Office Advisory Committee, chaired by Norman Birkett, QC. After lodging an appeal, they would for the first time receive a summary of the grounds for their internment, before being called before the committee, which could recommend their release. Taken by a Black Maria from Brixton to Burlington House, on Piccadilly, the detainee would be questioned as to their attitude to the war and Germany, about their work in the BUF and their past statements and associations. Even at this point the prisoner was not told what the evidence against them was, which was often little better than gos- sip. By autumn 1940, Jenks had entered an appeal and was waiting for a decision.13

Ascot and Huyton Nothing is known of Jenks’ appearance before the Advisory Committee, only that he was unsuccessful and that at some point afterwards he was transferred to a camp at Ascot in Berkshire.14 Ascot, which took its first prisoners at the end of July 1940, was originally intended for prisoners of war; such places were commonly described by BUF detainees, including Jenks, as ‘concentration camps’. Covering around six acres, about a mile and a half out of Ascot, the camp was surrounded by barbed wire, sentry posts and a machine gun was trained on the parade ground, where roll-call was taken twice a day. Before the war, Ascot had been the winter quarters of Bertram Mills Circus. Most of the accommodation was in brick huts, crammed with three-tier wooden bunks, ventilation was poor and the environment squalid; when the huts were full, the prisoners were accommodated in tents. The sewerage system was overloaded and in hot weather the place stank. The biggest contrast to Brixton was the shift from a predominantly solitary existence to one in which privacy was almost impossible. A few years later Jenks wrote of the animals reared under intensive pig farming as being ‘too much like Ascot conditions for comfort’.15 It seems very likely that the damp and cold would have exacerbated his asthma, he certainly remembered with affection Bill Wright, former District Leader for Hampstead, who ‘ran the nursing side of the hospital’. Jenks described Wright as one of the ‘kindliest and straightest men’ he knew, continuing: ‘I will never forget his unfailing thoughtful- ness and cheerfulness during those rather grim days at Ascot.’16 At the beginning of March 1941, the Ascot detainees were transferred to Huyton, near Liverpool, where a makeshift prison camp had been created by fencing off four streets of an unfinished council housing estate. The 650 inmates were divided up among the 150 houses, living two or three to a room. Because of the shortage of fuel much of the internal woodwork in the houses 18B/2732 141 had already been burned, leaving them in a rough condition. Jenks wrote about his circumstances:

My impressions of Huyton Camp are dominated by an atmosphere of [un]reality. Here are we, boxed up in a few suburban streets, surrounded by barbed wire, forbidden to do anything, write anything, almost to say anything, that is of the slightest significance.

He contrasted this state-imposed impotence with the urgency of the hour:

While all around us, practically before one’s eyes, events are taking place that will shape the course of history for decades, perhaps centuries to come. By the time this cataclysm is over, the world will have been altered out of all recognition.17

British Union Agricultural Group Jenks wrote of a ‘nightmarish atmosphere’, of months of ‘enforced idleness and con- tinual nervous strain’, in which the only ‘solid landmarks’ were ‘faith in our Leader and our Cause’. ‘Common faith and common loyalty’ had, he believed, ‘bred a spirit of comradeship’.18 Inevitably there was also disenchantment and factionalism, but whilst the BUF had been destroyed in the country outside, 18B kept fascism alive behind the wire and created the die-hard fascists who became the rock on which the fascist movement was rebuilt after the war. In Jenks’ case, these days fostered a number of important friendships and projects which would be central in his life after the war. A crucial development in this respect was the British Union Agricul- tural Group, which held lectures and social events, provided a forum for discussion and organised a library.19 The Group was not Jenks’ idea but originated at York camp, the first evidence of its activities being a list of lectures held in the first half of February.20 However, after the prisoners transferred to Huyton, Jenks was to the fore in the Group; when a further series of lectures was organised he gave a talk on ‘Staple Farm Crops’.21 The group also held an ‘Agricultural Dinner’ on the 14th April. Among the toasts proposed was ‘The King’, followed by ‘The Leader and the Movement’ and ‘Absent Friends and Comrades’. Jenks, together with two other colleagues, asked those assembled to raise their mugs to ‘The Land’.22 The diners signed the reverse of each other’s menu card and this, and other sources, shows the group’s membership to have been between twenty and thirty, including farmers, landowners and other related occupations; Walter Porter, for example, had been a District Organiser of the National Union of Agricultural Workers.23 Jenks would retain contact with many of these men after his release, however, it would be his friendships with Robert Saunders and Derek Stuckey that would be most important. Saunders (1910–1993) was a Dorset yeoman; although Jenks exchanged 142 18B/2732

Figure 16.1 Robert Saunders (third from the left). Alexander Raven Thomson, another of Jenks’ main collaborators in the fascist movement is also shown, (first from the left). William Joyce, later notorious as ‘Lord Haw Haw’, is on the right of the photograph; mid 1930s Source: The Friends of Mosley Archive a couple of letters with him in 1936, it was from this time that they became personally acquainted.24 Stuckey (1917–2007) had set up a small Berkshire dairy farm not long before the war. He had been the Secretary of the Oxford University Fascist Association but had graduated by the time Jenks addressed the group in autumn 1938. Stuckey – and Saunders probably too – transferred from York to Ascot in February 1941, and the three were then mostly together until their release.25 Jenks collaborated closely with Saunders in the work of the Agricultural Group. He recalled a few years afterwards how ‘Bob […] was with me in sundry concentration- camps, where we ran an active and stimulating little “farmers’ group” and had some notable discussions’.26 Reflecting on this time himself, Saunders considered:

I still feel that I gained far more that I lost from them, and certainly neither regret the past nor fear the future. I always feel that I owe you much for providing something in which one could take a real interest.27 18B/2732 143

Figure 16.2 Derek Stuckey, late 1930s Source: Clare Downey

Jenks’ reference to the ‘predictions of world famine’ that he made around this time shows that discussion ranged beyond practical matters to embrace larger issues.28 The question of ‘how far can Britain feed herself, and what can be done about it?’ was also discussed, the matter of self-sufficiency having been a central preoccupation of Jenks and the BUF before the war and would become a major thread in his work post-war.29

Peel Jenks’ transfer to Huyton was preparatory to yet another move, this time to the Isle of Man. On the 12th May, the detainees were marched to Huyton railway station, to go from there to Fleetwood, to embark on the crossing of the Irish Sea to Douglas. From there the men went to Peveril camp at Peel. It was another improvised affair, created from some large Victorian houses on or near the seafront, fenced off from the rest of the town. Once again, the men were mainly left to their own devices and life was conducted very much in the same way as at Huyton. The British Union Agricul- tural Group continued, although the programme of its activities has not survived.30 Sometime in late summer 1941, Jenks and others were sent back to Brixton, preparatory to going before the Advisory Committee again. Jenks’ transfer was almost certainly in August and Saunders, who was at Brixton at the same time, was transferred on the 25th.31 Saunders was called before the Advisory Committee and released on the 15th September; Jenks’ precise release date is not known but it was around early December.32 144 18B/2732

Consequences After nearly a year of imprisonment, Jenks was asked by his fellow detainee, the London Blackshirt, Charlie Watts, to contribute to a collection of essays by BUF prisoners. Jenks reflected that 18B detention was absurd and trivial – ‘like a puppet show’ – in comparison to the history-making events occurring beyond the wire, no matter that it was personally repugnant. He wrote of:

[t]he gross injustice of imprisonment without charge or trial, the petty vin- dictiveness of a corrupt administration, the buffoonery of stupid civilians masquerading in military uniform, the utterly unnecessary little hardships and indignities inflicted on us daily for no other reason than we sought to expose the betrayal of our country: all have become ludicrous, even comic, like a lapdog’s shrill defiance of a raging storm.

But there was one cause for real bitterness, Jenks continued: ‘In one respect only is it possible to take them seriously, namely the grievous hardship that has been inflicted on our wives and families. That will be remembered longest and with least charity.’33 This was not merely angry bluster; Jenks’ own family would suffer a very serious shock during 1941, and he probably had presentiments of this. Initially, life at South Park had carried on without apparent upset: Mabel Singleton visited in August 1940, and reported that ‘everything looked lovely’.34 Mary, who always tried to preserve the peace, kept Jenks’ arrest and detention from the family in Australia, and Sophie agreed to do the same. But, by October 1940, perhaps feeling the need to share a burdensome secret, Sophie wrote to her mother, telling her what had happened. Mabel felt this was a ‘very stupid thing’ to have done, on account of Lydia’s emotional sensitivity and because the Chesters were ‘very patriotic and L[ydia] will be so angry that J[orian] has put S[ophie] in the position of being alone, apart from anything else’. However, concerning Sophie herself, Mabel reported that she was ‘very cheerful and looks well and plump’.35 Mabel recorded that Jenks’ sister, Barbara, was spending weekends with Sophie and that Oliver and Patsy were living with their grandmother down in Devon.36 That her husband was still in Brixton may explain why Sophie did not join the children. Then, at some point in 1941, probably in July, she moved to Tawton House; certainly she was there on the 24th of that month, when she joined the Women’s Land Army.37 The reason for this move can only be speculated about: financial reasons may have been involved. Mabel reported in October 1940 that Sophie was expecting to have to take a job soon, which was indicative not only of the wartime drive for married women to take on war work but also the loss of Jenks’ income.38 It was also so that, after March 1941, he was moved north, meaning that there was no reason for Sophie to stay close to London. Alternatively, the cause may have been the need to find a home for Bobby Main’s father, Dr William Main, who moved into South Park sometime in 1941.39 18B/2732 145

On the 25th September, Sophie was added to the resigned list of the Women’s Land Army, on health grounds.40 Around this time she left for London, going first to St Thomas’ Hospital, Lambeth. Mabel Singleton did not disclose whether she was admitted, only that she left some grapes there that she had ‘“stolen” from the hot house’ at Tawton House. From St Thomas’ Sophie went to Mabel’s home at 181c High Street, Kensington, arriving with ‘a large suitcase full of dirty newspapers’, ‘in a state of collapse, and looking like a ghost’. She was not only seriously underweight, but in the midst of a serious mental disturbance, experiencing ‘delusions’, chiefly that ‘people were hypno- tizing her’, and insisting that ‘others’ were exerting ‘a mind power’ over her.41 By the time that Mabel wrote her account of the episode, on the 21st October, Sophie was somewhat improved, still prone to relapses, but the severity of her psy- chotic symptoms had diminished. Mabel believed that she had been ‘able to make her see that what she thought other people were doing was her own brain warring within her weary and weakened body’. Sophie stayed in her aunt Mary’s old room, sleeping a lot and beginning to eat again. Mabel reported that she was ‘much better and is putting on weight’. Despite this progress, she thought that Sophie ‘has a long road to travel yet before she is her dear old self once more’.42 As to the origins of this breakdown, Mabel attributed it to: ‘Too much worrying and fretting, too much hard work (she became a land girl), too much starvation.’ 43 However, anxiety and loss of appetite, even delusions, are consequences rather than the root of such a crisis. Sophie’s flight to London suggests that it was something in Devon that caused things to go awry. Mabel wrote of the ‘delusions’ Sophie ‘brought with her from the Devonshire home’ and that ‘[p]oor Mrs Jenks senior has had a shocking time with her’. When, earlier in the summer of 1941, Sophie left For- est Row for Bishop’s Tawton, she was returning to two children who had been in the care of their grandmother for at least a year, and possibly since as long ago as September 1939. Oliver and Patsy now looked to Dorothy as their parent and had inevitably changed to become somehow unfamiliar to Sophie, as indeed their mother had become to them.44 Years later, she alluded to the divisive consequence of this.45 The forced separation occasioned by evacuation made this a common occurrence, necessitating a long period of adjustment. However, in this case there was no space for this to happen. Despite the passage of years, Sophie was still the ‘colonial girl’, her feelings of inferiority merely covered over. Her mother-in-law was a woman of great warmth but also had an unfeigned confidence that came from her privileged social position. With Jorian absent as a mediating force and without the privacy of her own home, Sophie was without the scope or strength to manage what became crushing circumstances. Perhaps it was from her feelings of impotence and entrapment that Sophie’s delusions of being controlled externally came, and which prompted both the petty resistance of the ‘theft’ of a bunch of grapes and her exaggerated guilt about that act; Mabel wrote that she felt ‘very guilty about it by the time she got here’.46 This combination of circumstances would have been a tremendous strain on anyone. In Sophie’s case there are also hints of a prior history of illness: all the little comments in letters home reporting that she looked ‘well’ and ‘plump’ suggest a 146 18B/2732 desire to offer reassurance in light of some past crisis. There was also mental illness in the family. Sophie’s aunt Emily was described as ‘suffering from a form of neu- rethenia [sic] which makes them utterly unreasonable and quarrelsome’.47 ‘Neuras- thenia’ was the contemporary name for mental illnesses, including depression and schizophrenia. Her mother Lydia too was described as ‘curiously emotional [illegible words] – so very different from Mary’.48 Whatever the past, the future would show that this incidence was not an isolated happening.

* * *

In early October 1941, Mary Fullerton wrote to Australia with details of Sophie’s recuperation, omitting any mention of mental illness; concerning Jorian, Mary wrote he was ‘still near London where S[ophie] can see him. He never gets time to come in and he gives agricultural lectures between times!’49 This was a very economical version of the truth and it is doubtful that Sophie would have been well enough to visit Brixton. Even when she was well again, she would not live with Jenks at Forest Row or return to her children in Devon, instead living independently in London, where she worked as an ambulance driver.50 Of all the negative consequences of Jenks’ detention, those that affected his family were the most injurious: the balance of a delicate emotional economy was permanently disturbed, damage was done which would never be repaired.

Notes 1 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 18–19 May 1940 and 2 June 1940. 2 Charnley, Blackshirts and Roses, p. 100; see also Moore-Colyer, ‘Towards “Mother Earth”’, p. 362. 3 The Library of the Soil Association: The Agricultural Register, 1938–9 (Oxford: Agricultural Economics Research Institute 1939); SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 30 October 1940. 4 Unless otherwise indicated, descriptions of the conditions at Brixton are based on Charlie Watts’ unpublished memoir ‘It Has Happened Here: The Experiences of a Political Prisoner in British Prisons and Concentration Camps during the Fifth Column Panic of 1940’. Watts wrote his account during or immediately after his incarceration (Ibid., p. 89). 5 The Library of the Soil Association: The Agricultural Register, 1938–9, inscription on front end paper. 6 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 17 November 1945. 7 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C15/373: Saunders to Jenks, 5 October 1941. 8 SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 30 October 1940. 9 Ibid. 10 Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious, p. 241; repeated by Moore-Colyer (‘Towards “Mother Earth”’, p. 362, incorrectly attributed to Thomas Linehan) and elsewhere. 11 The probable source for this claim is the FOM newsletter Comrade which, erroneously attributed Charlie Watts’ comments about ‘the military Intelligence Hell at Ham Common’ to Jenks (‘Political Prisoner: The first twelve months’, Comrade, August/ September 1989, p. 3). This was corrected in the next edition of the journal (‘Sorry – Charlie, Jorian’, Comrade, October–November 1989, p. 5). 18B/2732 147

12 Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious, p. 241; TNA: PRO, HO283/48, cited in Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918–1985 (London: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 212. 13 SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 30 October 1940. 14 Unless otherwise indicated, descriptions of the conditions of confinement at Ascot are based on Watts, ‘It Has Happened Here’ and John Wynn’s unpublished 18B memoir (untitled), based on the diary he kept at the time. 15 U. Sheffield LSC, MS1199/C10/225: Jenks to Saunders, 8 January 1946. 16 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 1 September 1945. 17 Jorian Jenks, ‘Twelve Months in Detention’ (ca. June 1941), Comrade, October– November 1989, p. 5. 18 Ibid. 19 StP: Stuckey to Jenks, 11 March 1943; U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C15/373: Saunders to Jenks, 5 October 1941. 20 StP: typed sheet headed ‘Agriculture’, 3–14 February 1941. 21 StP: untitled notebook (ca. April–May 1941). 22 StP: Menu card for British Union Agricultural Dinner, Huyton Camp, 16 April 1941. 23 Ibid. See also Jenks to Stuckey, 3 November 1943; HO45/25570: Suspect File for Walter Porter, 19 March 1942. 24 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/A2/165: Jenks to Saunders, 1 September 1936; A6/307: Saunders to Jenks, 3 September 1936. 25 StP: E. Jarvis to Stuckey, 20 February 1941. 26 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 October 1949. 27 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C15/369: Saunders to Jenks, 7 January 1945. 28 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/224: Jenks to Saunders, 11 February 1946. 29 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 October 1949. 30 StP: Stuckey to Jenks, 11 March 1943; U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C15/373: Saunders to Jenks, 5 October 1941. 31 TNA: PRO KV2/3292: ‘Report on Robert Saunders’, 15 September 1941. 32 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C15/373: Saunders to Jenks, 5 October 1941; C15/372: 7 December 1941. 33 Jenks, ‘Twelve Months in Detention’, p. 5. 34 Fullerton to unknown, 11 August 1940, quoted in B. Chester to Coupland, 24 August 2009. 35 SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 30 October 1940. 36 Ibid. 37 Imperial War Museum, WLA Archives: Index card for Jenks, Mrs Sophie Isabel. 38 SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 30 October 1940. 39 C. Main to Coupland, 27 April 2010. 40 Imperial War Museum, WLA Archives: Index card for Jenks, Mrs Sophie Isabel. 41 SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 21 October 1941. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 45 M. Wilson to Coupland, 6 July 2009. 46 SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 21 October 1941. 47 SLNSW, MS264, CY2055: Fullerton to Franklin, 17 May 1937. 48 SLNSW, MS364, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 30 October 1940. 49 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to ‘All’, 4 October 1941. 50 SLNSW, ML MSS 2342/2: Mary Fullerton’s address book; Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 17 J.J. Zeal

On his release from Brixton in late 1941, Jenks returned to Forest Row, although to different circumstances than those he had left in June 1940. South Park farmhouse now being the home of Bobby Main’s father, he initially lived under his cousin’s roof at Brambletye Farm, before moving to ‘Lasswade’, a bungalow about half a mile away from the farm. He worked for his cousin and, although Sophie visited at least once, Jenks lived alone, doing his own cooking and so on, a ‘bachelor’ existence which he disliked.1 Neither was he entirely free: when an 18B detainee was released, the detention order issued against them was not revoked, merely suspended. This suspension was usually dependent on their object abstaining from political activity and complying with restrictions on their freedom of movement. Had Jenks also lost his purpose then days of hard manual work, followed by nights in an empty house would have been a bleak existence. Thankfully, he had left Brixton with his mind pregnant with new ideas.

The rape of the earth Among other things, Jenks continued his investigation of British agricultural self- sufficiency and drafted ‘a programme of food production’ which would be a source for a major post-war project.2 The first outward sign of activity was an article in June 1942, appearing under the pseudonym ‘J.J. Zeal’, in The New English Weekly.3 That journal was started in 1932 by the late A.R. Orage, and became an important forum for those interested in economic reform and rural reconstruction. Jenks’ use of a pen name was presumably prompted by political caution but the one chosen expressed a powerful new enthusiasm, aroused by a fundamental transformation in his view of the world. J.J. Zeal 149

In what was his first published writing on ecology, Jenks focused on what happened whenever ‘a virgin soil is exploited by reckless farming methods’. The consequences of such interruptions of the natural ‘Life-Cycle’, he explained, was the breakdown of the structure of soil and the depletion of its fertility, after which it was eroded by water and wind, leaving behind worthless scrub land and often, ultimately, a desert. Even in areas where erosion was not a serious problem, the loss of natural fertility made it necessary to use artificial fertilizers. Although he did not develop the economic aspects of the problem, they were strongly present in the background. Of the practice of burning native forests to clear land for pasture, he wrote: ‘The whole problem is a magnificent example of cashing capital, the accumulated capital of ages represented by the original forest, which it turned into soluble plant food by the action of the fire.’ Much of Jenks’ evidence came from his experiences in New Zealand, but he made it clear that it was a global problem.4 At the centre of this shift in Jenks’ thinking was his reading of G.V. Jacks and R.O. Whyte’s classic study, The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey of Soil Erosion, published in April 1939. The authors linked massive global losses of agricultural land to the free trade economy and left no doubt about the growing potential for world famine.5 Jenks made his first reference to the book in Action at the beginning of June 1939, but his later description of his conversion to the organic perspective suggests that he read and re-read the book during the war, such that he truly ‘digested’ it, as he put it.6 Although it was an authoritative and very influential study, collating a wealth of knowledge, the importance of this work to Jenks was not so much the new information that it imparted, but that it caused him to reorder what he knew and transform his general pattern of thinking. Throughout the interwar period Jenks had deepened both his knowledge of farming theory and practice and of its interconnectedness with human society. He was also aware of the implications of soil erosion. Two years before The Rape of the Earth, he warned of how easily ‘the abundance which was abused’ could be ‘replaced by famine’. Economists might suggest that the ‘law of supply and demand’ would step in but Nature was above that ‘law’. Much virgin land had ‘been reduced to arid dust-heaps’ or left ‘stripped completely of its soil’.7 What The Rape of the Earth did was to highlight and elevate Nature in his thinking such that, thereafter, Jenks was an ecologist, realising that all human activities were ultimately subordinate to Nature. As he later related, during the 1930s he had come across references to what he would later recognise as the organic approach but they seemed: ‘irrelevant […] to the pressing problem of earning a living’; as he continued: ‘It is never very easy for the working farmer with bills on his desk to think in terms of anything but economics.’ He had also ‘seen quite enough to realise how sensitive the land is to the malpractices of man […] and how surely effect follows cause in all our dealings with Nature’. First freed from his responsibilities as a farmer by the economics which finally overwhelmed him, and then having long stretches of inactivity forced upon him by internment, his reading brought about 150 J.J. Zeal the crucial shift: ‘the many examples I had encountered of disastrous land use began to come into focus as part of a much larger picture.’8 Jenks’ new ecological stance brought with it other subtle changes. As someone whose life’s work was closely yoked to farming, he could be hostile to those parts of nature which impeded the cultivator’s work, an attitude manifested in his attitude to rabbits and view of wild places as ‘waste’. His preference was not for nature in its raw state but humanised through wise husbandry, akin to William Cobbett’s ‘ideal landscape’ of ‘a “nice blend of pasture, ploughland and coppice”’.9 Although Jenks remained a farmer who had become an ecologist, his recognition of the sovereignty of Nature brought with it a gentler attitude towards the wild.

Ronald Duncan Jenks’ article in The New English Weekly was also a sign of his efforts to re-establish himself as a journalist. At the beginning of October 1942 he placed a small ad in The Times: ‘Food Production is News – Ex Farmer, many years freelance journalism, seeks connections. Agricultural Correspondent’.10 The previous month he published a piece in Farmers Weekly and another on the pros and cons of the disc- harrow in an obscure journal called The Townsman.11 This journal was edited by Ronald Duncan, whom Jenks called ‘the least orthodox person I know’.12 Duncan (1914–1982) was a poet and playwright but is best known today for his post-war collaboration with Benjamin Britten. Not long before the outbreak of war, he had taken on a neglected Cornish farm, which provided the material for a regular diary piece in The New English Weekly. His politics were complicated: as a youth, he dabbled with communism, before being influenced by Gandhi and becoming a pacifist.13 His friend Ezra Pound drew him into the outer fringes of fascism. Although not without criticism of fascist policy, Duncan came into contact with many Blackshirts, including Raven Thomson, and their fellow travellers, among them Viscount Lymington.14 Despite this the authorities limited their interest in Duncan to interviews and searches of his farm.15 Before the war, Pound encouraged Duncan to collaborate with Jenks, but it was a letter from Jenks in the Farmers Weekly, towards the end of 1939, which provoked Duncan to write to him.16 It is possible – their letters do not survive – that contacts with Jenks influenced Duncan in his unsuccessful efforts to compose a ‘constitution for agriculture’.17 In January 1940, Jenks submitted an article for The Townsman, but it was rejected; Duncan’s wife, Rose Marie, dismissed it as: a ‘bad copy’ of Lymington’s Famine in England, ‘liberally sprinkled with Mosley- isms – Most disappointing’.18 Jenks had little time for new writing at that time; from 1942, he would publish a series of pieces in the magazine and its successor, The Scythe. The two men were on sufficiently good terms that Jenks could cycle over from Bishop’s Tawton, spend the afternoon out on the farm with Duncan and stay the night.19 J.J. Zeal 151

Faber and Faber Jenks’ ecological perspective was also influential in the new book which he worked on in 1942.20 He had been contemplating such a project since at least as early as September 1939, and he indicated to Pound that it would incorporate his emerging ecological stance:

Am thinking seriously of writing new book on agriculture as basis of civilization, stressing effect on soil fertility of free-trade capitalist exploitation, weakness created by degradation of peasantry and dangers of excessive urbanisation. The main key man of the future, I feel, will be the small freehold co-operating farmer working his land intensively and in a husbandlike manner.

Jenks had doubted that it would be easy to find a publisher, and time would show that he was correct.21 Having completed a draft by the autumn of 1942, Philip Mairet, editor of The New English Weekly, read it and suggested that Jenks offer it to Faber and Faber. Jenks’ fellow Blackshirt, Henry Williamson made the same suggestion. Williamson, who is best known for Tarka the Otter (1927), had in 1936 taken on a ‘difficult’ farm at Stiffkey in Norfolk and the next year joined the BUF. Williamson was a Faber author, who had published The Story of a Norfolk Farm (1941), which provocatively quoted the interned Mosley on its title page. In November 1942, Jenks called at Faber and Faber’s offices in Russell Square, hoping to see Richard de la Mare, the editor of the publisher’s agricultural and horticultural list. Unfortunately, he was indisposed and Jenks was forced to leave his draft with a scribbled note. This showed it to be an expression of his new thinking: ‘a natural philosophy, taking as starting points the current phenomena of soil-erosion and falling birth-rates. It was conceived, though not written, while I was in prisons and concentration camps under 18B.’22 A fortnight later and impatient for an answer, Jenks wrote again asking for a meeting.23 There was a lot resting on the decision, as he explained to Stuckey:

I hope the farm goes well […] It’s quite impossible for me to start again on my own. Things are much too dear, even if I had the capital left […] so I’m trying to build up a journalistic connection again, which will be helped enormously if Fabers bring out my book.24

It was an uphill job, Jenks wrote of having begun: ‘to haunt publisher’s officers; all very friendly but rather apt to talk about the paper-shortage. Editors ditto.’25 Through his contact with de la Mare, Jenks began what would be one of the enduring relationships of his career as a writer. His efforts to re-launch himself in journalism were also starting to show movement but no breakthrough; besides the articles already mentioned, which would have been written gratis, he 152 J.J. Zeal started to publish occasional articles in the popular illustrated paper Everybody’s. He was probably introduced to the paper by Hilary Pepler, Mairet or someone else in the circle of The New English Weekly. Jenks rather dismissively described his work as ‘agricultural uplift’ but it was a fine, clear expression of the cause he was passionate about.26 The first piece, in February 1943, referred to the recent report of Lord Justice Scott’s Committee on Land Utilisation in Rural Areas. People, Jenks wrote, had been ‘behaving as if we had limitless expanses of land at our disposal instead of an exceedingly small portion of the earth’s surface’. Agriculture, he wrote, was ‘not simply an industry, but is the foundation on which society and industry stand’; this was the gospel that Jenks would preach hereon.27

Notes 1 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/229: Jenks to Saunders, 23 December 1942; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 24 February 1943; NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 17 October 1942. 2 StP: Stuckey to Members of the Research Committee, 24 June 1948. 3 ‘Soil Erosion in New Zealand and Elsewhere’, pp. 84–85. 4 Ibid. 5 G.V. Jacks and R.O. Whyte, The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey of Soil Erosion (London: Faber and Faber, 1939). 6 Action, 3 June 1939, p. 6; The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 10. 7 ‘The Countryman’s Outlook’, BUQ, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April–June 1937), pp. 91–102. 8 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 10. 9 ‘Agricultural England: The Problem of Preservation’, The Estate Magazine, Vol. 38, No. 1 (January 1938), pp. 1–4. 10 StP: E. Whittleton to Stuckey, 21 September 1942; The Times, Friday, 2 October 1942, p. 1. 11 ‘Disc for Victory’, Townsman, Vol. 5, No. 17 (September 1942), pp. 10–12. 12 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 3 November 1943. 13 Ronald Duncan, All Men Are Islands: An Autobiography (London: Rupert Hart Davies, 1964), pp. 128, 135. 14 Duncan, All Men Are Islands, p. 267; Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/14/634: R. Duncan to Pound, 5 April 1939; Duncan to Pound, 9 July 1939; Duncan to Pound, 6 March 1940; MSS43/14/635: Duncan to Pound, 14 October 1939; Duncan to Pound (undated, ca. late 1939); MSS43/14/636: Duncan to Pound, 4 April 1940; Pound to Duncan, 18 April 1940. 15 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/14/636: Pound to Duncan, 4 April 1940. 16 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/14/634: Pound to Duncan (4 August 1939); Pound to Duncan (30 August 1939); MSS43/14/636: Pound to Duncan (30 March 1940); Pound to Duncan (10 April 1940). 17 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/14/636: Pound to Duncan, 4 April 1940; Pound to Duncan (19 April 1940); Duncan, ‘Charter: Agriculture’, April 1940. 18 Ronald Duncan Archive, University of Exeter, Diary of Rose Marie Duncan, entry for 15 January 1940. 19 Ibid, entries for 18,19, 20 January 1943. 20 FFA, E7/4: Jenks to R. de la Mare, 5 November 1942. 21 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 27 September 1939; MSS43/25/1076: Jenks to Pound, 29 April 1940. J.J. Zeal 153

22 FFA, E7/4: Jenks to de la Mare, 5 November 1942 (written on Faber and Faber letterhead paper). 23 FFA, E7/4: Secretary to de la Mare to Jenks, 1 December 1942. 24 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 24 February 1943. 25 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 3 February 1944. 26 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/229: Jenks to Saunders, 23 December 1942. 27 ‘Save Our Soil’, Everybody’s, 13 February 1943, p. 3. 18 The Rural Reconstruction Association

With his efforts to re-launch himself into journalism offering some grounds for hope, Jenks left Forest Row and, from Christmas 1942 and for the rest of the war, made Bishop’s Tawton his base. Although this took him away from the centre of action in London, it allowed him to live rent free and avoid his own ‘rotten’ cooking. When he came up to ‘Town’ he stayed at the Farmers’ Club or with friends, usually Blackshirt comrades from internment.1 Jenks’ relationship with Sophie remained fractured and she continued to live away, now in Bath, where she was employed by Somerset War Agricultural Executive Committee.2 With his wife absent, Jenks needed to help his mother look after Oliver and Patsy during the holidays.3 This move, approximately a year after leaving Brixton gaol, may also be related to the lifting of restrictions imposed at the time of Jenks’ release. Unlike other released fascists, he was not on the ‘suspect lists’ of those to be arrested in the case of a German invasion, although MI5 continued to monitor him, with his post intercepted until at least June 1946.4

Montague Fordham At the end of 1942, Jenks also set out on what would become an important part of his activism after the BUF. On Christmas Eve, he told Saunders that he had been offered ‘a chance of doing some speaking and propaganda work’ for the Rural Reconstruction Association.5 The Association was the creation of the charismatic Montague Fordham (1864–1948), who, at 78 years of age, wished to hand over the active work to another. Fordham was one of the three men that Jenks later named as having done most to shape his outlook, whom he described as ‘an authority on rural history and […] that rare bird, an original thinker who could readily impart his ideas to others’.6 The Rural Reconstruction Association 155

Fordham entitled his unfinished memoir ‘My Nine Lives’, alluding to the extraordinary diversity of his activities.7 In this, he described a childhood spent in the ‘slightly feudal home farm of Odsey’, it was, he reflected, a lost way of life which had disappeared, but whose memory had a profound influence on his life’s work.8 Despite deep roots in the landed class, his family were a double anomaly by being both Unitarians and Liberals. He initially shared these politics, but later gravitated towards socialism, and joined the Fabians.9 However, it was not the urban poor but the countryside which Fordham made his cause. In 1908, he formed the Land Club Union which had as its bible his first book, Mother Earth (1907).10 The LCU sought the restoration of rural life and assisted with applications under the recent Small Holdings and Allotments Act.11 During the early 1920s, Fordham was at home in radical circles and his second wife was Vera Volkhovsky, the daughter of the Russian revolutionary Felix Vadimovich Volkhovsky.12 Although they were soon estranged, it may have been through Vera’s influence that, in 1921, Fordham joined the Society of Friends’ relief work in Russia. In the event, he was not allowed into Russia but instead assisted agricultural reconstruction in Poland.13 After his return, he advocated an analogous approach in his own country, in The Rebuilding of Rural England (1924).14 Although remaining very active in Labour politics, Fordham was increasingly alienated from the party’s mainstream on rural questions and the centre of his campaigning shifted outside of the party.15 From the mid-1920s onwards the RRA, which, although including Labour members, was a ‘non-party’ body, became the main vehicle for his politics. However, he never rejected Labour. In 1945, Jenks said of him that ‘he used to play quite a big part in the Labour party and still supports them, which is the only bone of contention between us’.16 Fordham himself made some large claims about his influence, stating that during 1939–1945 he had ‘carried out a very successful propaganda within the Labour Party, which was followed by what was substantially a reversal of their pre-war policy […] and the adoption of the opposite policy based on the analysis of this Association’.17 Labour’s Agriculture Act of 1947 was the foundation of British farming after the war.

The Rural Reconstruction Association The origins of the RRA were in the Special Committee on Rural Reconstruc- tion, formed in 1925, which published A National Rural Policy and, in January 1926, formed the Association at a meeting in London.18 The new body was closely related to the Le Play House group of sociologists, as the British Sociological Society was otherwise known.19 The Association did not seek a mass membership – the highest pre-war figure known is 120 – instead it gathered elite support.20 Prominent members included the Lords O’Hagan and Bledisloe and a number of Labour and Conservative MPs, including R.A. Butler from the Tories.21 From its foundation and throughout the 1930s, the Association lobbied energetically on issues including the introduction of ‘standard’ or ‘just’ prices for commodities, the organisation of 156 The Rural Reconstruction Association marketing and rural electrification. The vehicles for its campaign included lectures and publications, its detailed programme The Revival of Agriculture (1936), and much activity behind the scenes. As Jenks put it: ‘Fordham […] is a genius at putting over new ideas through old channels – committees, lobbying, contacting MPs and editors – real Fabian tactics.’ 22 It is very difficult to estimate the political clout of the RRA: Jenks argued that the state’s marketing schemes during the interwar period drew partially on the Asso- ciation’s thinking and went so far as to suggest that the group was behind the ‘rank heresy’ of the ‘Just Price’ concept, introduced as the ‘standard price’ of the Wheat Act of 1932.23 Certainly Fordham was a member of the council and the policy committee of the Central Chamber of Agriculture, when it was an active force in the deliberations behind that act.24 The Labour economist Colin Clark also blamed the RRA for spreading the standard price idea.25 The question of when Jenks first became involved with Fordham and the RRA cannot be answered with certainty, but it probably predated his active involvement after 1942. If not, it would be surprising that Fordham would have gone to a stranger contaminated with fascism and only recently released from internment. Jenks must have been at least acquainted with Fordham; for example, in 1936, they both heard Viscount Lymington speak at the Farmers’ Club, and asked related questions.26 During the late 1930s, Jenks was familiar with the work and policies of the Association, reading its publications and attending at least one of its meetings; he took the stance of a critical friend, agreeing with its policies but arguing that it was only through fascism that they could be realised.27 When the Association was fully reactivated after the war, Jenks was not one of those mentioned as a new member.28 The RRA had friendly contacts with the BUF going back many years. As early as December 1930, it was noted with approval that Mosley’s group of rebel MPs, had ‘declared their adherence’ to the RRA’s policy and the next year the New Party’s policies were given special notice.29 As suggested above, it is possible that Fordham assisted Raven Thomson in the creation of the BUF’s first agricultural policy in 1934, for Fordham named Thomson as a ‘friend’.30 Fordham’s books and RRA publications were reviewed in the fascist press, sold in Blackshirt bookshops and included on the movement’s reading list.31 The Penty family were also important in this regard. Arthur Penty was the primary parent of the guild socialist movement and an important influence on Fordham; the two men were close friends and collaborated in the founding of the RRA.32 In the closing years of his life, Penty joined the fascists and, after his death in 1937, his widow Violet and his son Michael were involved in the BUF and the RRA.33

The Economic Reform Club Jenks’ work for the RRA cannot be discussed separately from the Economic Reform Club, the two bodies having a collaborative relationship and overlapping membership.34 Jenks described the ERC to Stuckey ‘as a sort of umbrella affair for The Rural Reconstruction Association 157 anyone who is agin the money racket. Includes some wild cranks, naturally, but also a number of people who think along our lines.’35 The ERC was the creation in 1936 of Edward Holloway (1906–1985), ‘an ambi- tious young man who dreams, […] of making it a power in the land, [a] sort of twentieth century Jacobin Club’, Jenks wrote.36 During the 1930s, a monthly newsletter was published and meetings were organised, some of which were notable. In particular, in February 1939, a dinner was hosted at the Savoy Hotel in honour of Sir John Boyd Orr, who spoke on ‘Health and Agriculture’, Orr being a long-time member of the ERC.37 The dinner had a long list of illustrious supporters, including Ernest Bevin, Bledisloe, Dr Julian Huxley, and many others.38 The club did not lack for prominent supporters and, like the RRA, was a non-party body.39 In wartime, its membership grew strongly, rising to 1250 members by April 1945.40 It was perhaps this agitation for monetary reform by men of influence which caused MI5 to monitor the Club.41 The ERC may also have been suspect due to its links to fascism. An active BUF member, the pioneer aviator and manufacturer Sir Alliott Verdon-Roe was an ERC vice-president.42 Other individuals with overlapping fascist and ERC involvement included the monetary critic Arthur Kitson and the Northampton model manufacturer Wenman Bassett-Lowke.43 This is not to say that the ERC – any more than the RRA – was a fascist body in itself. Regarding the relationship of the Club to fascists, Jenks wrote of how Holloway had ‘behaved very well towards us, considering how much appeasement he has to do’.44 Earlier the Marquess of Tavistock, one of the Club’s vice-presidents, had been pressured to resign because of his opposition to the war.45 Tavistock was the founder of the British Peoples Party in 1939, which had former Blackshirts among its membership.

The ERC and agriculture The ERC’s interest in agriculture dated back to at least 1937, when Fordham addressed it on ‘The Economic and Financial Aspects of Rural Revival’, a speech later published in The British Union Quarterly.46 This interest was sustained in wartime, with continuing ‘friendly co-operation’ with the RRA. Viscount Lymington and Sir John Boyd Orr were appointed respectively ‘Adviser on Agricultural Questions’ and ‘Adviser on Questions of Nutrition’ to the ERC Council.47 In its ‘Statement of General Principles’ of March 1943, was included the: ‘Recognition of the land as the primary source of all wealth and insistence that its resources shall be utilised for the full benefit of the community.’48 Immediately before the war, the Club had created a special committee on agriculture and food production, later suspended when members could not attend due to ‘war conditions’. In December 1941, an unnamed correspondent wrote suggesting that an agricultural section be created and offering a programme for consideration, ‘conceived from the economic standpoint’.49 Given the coincidence of this 158 The Rural Reconstruction Association date with Jenks’ release from detention, it is tempting to wonder if he was behind this and that the ‘war conditions’ that caused the abandonment of the original committee were his internment? With Jenks’ long interest in monetary reform and the ERC’s interest in agriculture, it is quite possible that here too his involvement long-predated his visible activism from 1943 onwards. The stress on ‘economy’ from the unnamed correspondent is also suggestive, as Jenks was particularly concerned to broaden the ERC’s vision from currency panaceas. Later, he wrote of how the Club was ‘so busy discussing the mechanics of finance, its forgotten all about the economy. It might well be reminded, and re-educated on sound lines.’50 Throughout the war years, the ERC contributed to the debate about the ‘new’ Britain to be created after the war. In particular, it organised ‘The World We Want’ Conference, at Conway Hall, in May 1943, in collaboration with the Anglican Industrial Christian Fellowship, which had a notable session on health and agriculture, including contributions from Professor Sir George Stapledon, Boyd Orr, Sir Albert Howard and Lymington.51 It is quite possible that Jenks attended this conference, as he was in London around the same time, visiting his friend Eric Whittleton. Whittleton was a BUF founder member and fellow 18B detainee, who was a bank official and belonged to the C.ER 52 What is certain is that Jenks was much involved in the Agricultural Section from 1942 onwards, which he sought to use as ‘an instrument of reform’.53 He was first mentioned in September 1942 when his ‘J.J. Zeal’ article from The New English Weekly was re-published as an RRA pamphlet and described in the ERC’s Monthly Bulletin as ‘excellent’.54 It was in December 1942, the same month that he became active for the RRA, that the ERC’s committee finally agreed to the formation of an Agricultural Section.55 When it began publishing a bulletin from July 1943, its first edition drew on memoranda from members and was full of material congruent with Jenks’ views and his new ecological conviction.56 The next month, his name appeared for the first time. Following on from a historical survey of the fate of British agriculture and the world’s soils under liberalism, he outlined a ‘Five Points Programme’ for the future. Respecting the particular concerns of the ERC, Jenks prescribed a ‘reformed money system’, but also offered a new economy for the nation’s agriculture, based on self-sufficiency. Avoiding the word ‘corporatism’ – now tainted by its fascist associations – Jenks also stipulated ‘self-government’ for farming, along with every other ‘industry, occupation and profession’.57

Notes 1 Hants. RO, 15M84/F165/70: Jenks to Portsmouth, 12 August 1944; FFA, E7/5: Jenks to Miss King [Secretary to de la Mare], 19 February 1943; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 21 March 1943. 2 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 31 August 1945. 3 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C15/371: Saunders to Jenks, 14 February 1943; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 24 February 1943. The Rural Reconstruction Association 159

4 TNA: PRO, KV2/2245: Minute sheets of file for R. Gardiner; KV2/3328: Minute Sheet, para. 176a, intercepted letter from R. Tremlett to Jenks, 20 June 1946. Jenks’ MI5 file reference was PF51480 (TNA: PRO, KV2/891: Summary of letters intercepted on Home Office Warrant on Mosley, entry relating to Jenks to O. Mosley, 16 May 1946). Jenks’ personal file is not in the National Archives and MI5, being outside the remit of the Freedom of Information Act, will not say whether or not it still exists (T. Denham to Coupland, 11 May 2009). 5 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/229: Jenks to Saunders, 23 December 1942. 6 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 11. 7 Montague Fordham, ‘My Nine Lives’ (unpublished manuscript transcribed and edited by Jeremy Fordham), pp. 3–9. 8 M. Fordham, The Rebuilding of Rural England (London: Hutchinson, 1924), p. vi. 9 Fabian News, Vol. 17, No. 5 (April 1907), p. 33. 10 Ibid. 11 The Times, 22 February 1909, p. 1. 12 John R. and Mary Postgate, A Stomach for Dissent: The Life of Raymond Postgate, 1896– 1971 (Keele University Press, 1994), p. 95; M. Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution (1949) p. 57; John Slatter, ‘Bertrand Russell and the Volkhovsky Letters, 1920–26’, Russell, Vol. 2, No. 2 (winter, 1982–1983), pp. 7–19. 13 Fordham, ‘My Nine Lives’, pp. 30–39. 14 Fordham, The Rebuilding of Rural England, p. v. 15 M. Fordham ‘The Agricultural Problem’, The Socialist Review, Vol. 21 (1923), p. 144; ‘The Rural Problem’ in the Fabian Society, Syllabus of a Series of Lectures to be given at Essex Hall, [etc.]. London: The Fabian Society (undated, ca. 1925 or 1926); ‘The Countryman’s Politics’, The Socialist Review, Vol. 12–23 (1927); The Labour Year Book, 1927 (Harvester Press, 1973), p. 34; The Times, 13 October 1924, p. 21. 16 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 1 July 1945. 17 Agricultural Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 12 (July 1946), p. 6. 18 The Times, 25 January 1926, p. 18. 19 Montague Fordham, ‘The History of the Policy’, in A Special Committee on Rural Reconstruction, A National Rural Policy (London: Noel Douglas, 1925), p. 67; ‘The Reconstruction of Rural England, a lecture given at Le Play House on 14 November, 1923’, Sociological Review (January 1924), pp. 47–53. 20 RRA, ‘Report of the Executive Committee of the Year 1928’, January 1929. 21 Details of the membership of the RRA Council, Executive Committee come from: PA, Beaverbrook Papers: Fordham to Beaverbrook, 18 February 1930; Fordham to The Times, 10 April 1930; RRA, ‘The Case for Agricultural Revival: Correspondence with the Minister of Agriculture’, 1934; Pound Papers, 45/1974: M. Fordham to Pound, 24 December 1937. 22 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 1 July 1945. 23 ‘British Agriculture Between the Wars’, The Scythe, No. 24 (June 1945), pp. 19–26. 24 The Spectator, Vol. 146 (1931), p. 271; Jeffcock, Agricultural Politics, passim. The Home Office believed that by its last years, during the war, the Central Chamber was under fascist influence (TNA: PRO, HO45-25571: Suspect file for Edward Denis Rice (undated, ca. 1940s). 25 Colin Clark, ‘Medieval Economics’, The Tablet, 9 April 1955, pp. 10–11. 26 Viscount Lymington, ‘The Place of Agriculture in Home Defence’, Journal of the Farmers’ Club, Part 5 (November 1936), pp. 77–93. 27 Action, 11 June 1938, p. 6; 7 January 1939, p. 6. 28 StP: Draft Annual Report for 1946, January 1947. 29 RRA, ‘Report of the Executive Committee for the Year 1930’, January 1931; Montague Fordham, Britain’s Trade and Agriculture: Their Recent Evolution and Future Development (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1932), p. 201. 160 The Rural Reconstruction Association

30 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/45/1974: M. Fordham to Pound, 24 December 1937. 31 Action, 29 May 1937, p. 12; 17 July 1937; 4 June 1938, p. 17; Greater Britain Publications, booklist No. 7, August 1938; ‘Select Bibliography’, BUQ, 4/1 (spring 1940), pp. 75–77. 32 Frank Matthews, ‘The Ladder of Becoming: A.R. Orage, A.J. Penty and the Origins of Guild Socialism in England’, pp. 147–166 in David E. Martin and David Rubenstein (eds.), Ideology and the Labour Movement: Essays Presented to John Saville (London: Croom Helm, 1979); Peter C. Grosvenor, ‘A Medieval Future: The Social, Economic and Aesthetic Thought of A.J. Penty’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis submitted to the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, 1996, pp. 255–257; Tristram Hart, ‘Montague Fordham’, RE, Vol. 15, No. 6 (June 1948), pp. 63–64. 33 Grosvenor, ‘A Medieval Future’, pp. 327–366; Action, 17 July 1937, p. 12; 9 December 1937, p. 18. 34 The full name of the ERC was the ‘Economic Reform Club and Institute’ but the short version was most commonly used. 35 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 14 March 1944. 36 Ibid. 37 Agricultural Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 1 (August 1945), pp. 1–2. 38 ‘Health and Agriculture’, Special Supplement to NEW, 14/22 (9 March 1939), p. 8. 39 MB, Vol. 5, No. 4 (August 1941), p. 1; MB, Vol. 9, No. 1 (May 1945), p. 1. 40 MB, Vol. 8, No. 12 (April, 1945), p. 1. 41 The ERC’s file (reference PF 56548) was by 1945 onto its third volume (TNA: PRO, KV2-874: Extract for File No. PF. FE 1153, Sempill, Lord, 18 April 1945). The ERC’s successor, the Economic Reform Council, is still in existence, so the file may still be open, certainly it is not available to historians. 42 Action, 4 June 1936, p. 2; 20 January 1938, p. 13; 11 February 1939, p. 8. 43 Holloway, Money Matters, p. 17; 94; ERC, MB, Vol. 5, No. 12 (April 1942), p. 3; TNA: PRO, KV2/1231: List of Correspondence despatched (undated, ca. April 1940); KV2/1232: P. Farmer to A. Flockhart, undated; Farmer to Flockhart, 2 February 1948. 44 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 14 March 1944. 45 Holloway, Money Matters, p. 29. 46 Action, 17 July 1937, p. 12; Montague Fordham, ‘The Revival of Agriculture’, BUQ, Vol. 1, No. 4 (December 1937), pp. 66–77. 47 MB, Vol. 5, No. 4, (August 1941), p. 5; Vol. 5, No. 5 (September 1941), p. 4. 48 ERC, ‘Statement of General Principles Adopted by the Club Committee at their meeting on Tuesday, 9th March, 1943’. 49 ‘Formation of Agricultural Section of the Economic Reform Club’, MB, Vol. 5, No. 8 (December 1941), p. 3. 50 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 14 March 1944. 51 ‘The World We Want’, NEW, 23/5 (20 May 1943), pp. 39–40. 52 FOM: BUF membership application form of Eric Harvey Whittleton (Duplicate), 1 September 1932; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 13 May 1943; Jenks to Stuckey, 12 March 1944. 53 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 12 March 1944. 54 MB, Vol. 6, No. 5 (September, 1942), p. 2. 55 MB, Vol. 6, No. 6 (December 1942), p. 2. 56 George Dawson, ‘Agriculture and the New Economy’, Agricultural Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 1 (July 1943), pp. 1–3; MB, Vol. 7, No. 2 (June 1943), p. 1. 57 ‘Farming and the Future of Britain’, Agricultural Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 1943), pp. 1–5. 19 Church and Countryside

Jenks’ first article for the ERC’s Agricultural Bulletin in August 1943 referred to a speech on ‘economic justice’ by the Church of England’s radical leader, Arch- bishop Dr William Temple.1 This was a token of another important sphere of activity which opened to him from early 1943.

The Christendom Group and the Kinship in Husbandry Back in November 1942, a conference on rural questions was organised by the Church Social Action Committee, a body associated with the ‘Christendom group’.2 This informal nexus of clergy and lay people was the leading force among Anglicans interested in social reform. In its theology it was Anglo-Catholic; politically its roots went back to the Christian socialism of the late nineteenth century and to guild socialism. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Christendom group overlapped with social credit and distributist circles, although some members remained close to the Labour party. The group contained many notable talents – T.S. Eliot among them – but its chief agent and the editor of its journal Christendom was Maurice Reckitt, who had inherited a fortune derived from the eponymous laundry bluing product. In 1941, the group initiated the important Malvern conference on social order and were also favoured by Archbishop Temple, the most influential English Christian social thinker of the century. After the November conference, it was decided to examine the rural question further, in collaboration with secular groups. A meeting hosted by Church Social Action was organised for the 28th January 1943, to which representatives from The Farmers’ Action Council, the Kinship in Husbandry and the RRA were invited. Although no minutes of the January meeting have survived, it is likely that 162 Church and Countryside

Jenks was present, for he was at the gathering which followed and was in London around that time.3 The invitation to the RRA reflected long-standing links between Fordham and the Christendom group. He had known Reckitt from the National Guilds League in the early 1920s, and counted Temple as an old friend.4 In 1938, the RRA had participated in the Christendom summer school, held on the theme of ‘The Church and the Rural Community’.5 The reading list for the school included Jenks’ Farming and Money and, correspondingly, in 1939, Jenks gave a friendly review in Action to The Church and the Rural Community, by the Rev Julian Langmead Casserley of Christendom.6 The ERC was also a common point of contact, being the institution where the circles of the other main groups mentioned in this book most obviously overlapped.7 Following the January meeting, the Revs Patrick McLaughlin and David Peck of Christendom organised a conference in March.8 It was presided over by Dr Richard Parsons, the Bishop of Hereford and four other bishops attended or sent a representative. Jenks was accompanied by Arthur Penty’s widow Violet, who – as we saw above – was also a former BUF member or sympathiser. She was a former official in the American Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, whom Penty met whilst visiting the USA.9 Her late husband’s relationship to the Christendom group was similar to Fordham’s.10 At the meeting there were others with whom Jenks was acquainted or shared similar opinions: from the Farmers’ Action Council was Lt Colonel Creagh Scott, a social crediter, introduced to him by Duncan, and Rex Tremlett, another former Blackshirt. Although Tremlett fell out with the BUF in 1934, he had remained active in other fascist groups and had recently taken up a farm in Kent.11 Later, in 1943, he became Assistant Editor of The Weekly Review.12 Although Jenks was never more than an associate of the Kinship in Husbandry, it would be important to his future career. At this time he knew little about them, for they were not unlike a secret society. The Kinship had been founded in April 1941 for the purpose of campaigning for a rural revival founded in traditional forms of farming practice, for, whilst agriculture had been revived in wartime, it was in the ‘industrial’ form. Membership of the group was by invitation and its intention was to create a network of well-placed people ‘versed in wisdom and knowledge of organic methods’ who would exert influence behind the scenes.13 Its circle was small but illustrious: its originators were Viscount Lymington – the Earl of Portsmouth after he succeeded to his father’s title in February 1943 – whose opinions Jenks knew well, and Rolf Gardiner. Gardiner was probably new to Jenks, but was a kindred spirit, being the owner of the organically managed Springhead estate in Dorset and an erstwhile member of Lymington’s English Array, who had close links to the ‘youth’ movement in Germany before the war. Lord Northbourne, who was also involved, was an organic pioneer and author of the classic text Look to the Land (1940) and may have also been a BUF member.14 Other members included Philip Mairet, whom Jenks knew as editor of The New English Weekly, and, Church and Countryside 163

H.J. Massingham, a prolific writer on nature and the countryside, who had shown himself to be anti-fascist in his writings, but nonetheless had much in common with the Kinship in his Tory values. The memorandum circulated by the Christendom group before the meeting suggested that there would be a high degree of agreement among the parties. Their proposals were put forward within the framework of the natural law theology characteristic of Catholic social thought. This posited that, as part of God’s creation, there existed an ‘“architecture of nature”’ which imposed ‘certain disciplines upon man who is a natural creature and who can disregard certain laws only at his peril’. Whilst living congruently with nature was not the whole extent of Christian duty, it was part of it; the redemption of humanity through God’s grace also required the restoration of the broken human relationship with Nature: ‘That which God created, which nature is, cannot be separated from that which he redeems. An understanding of, and reverence for, the natural pattern of human living ought to be an outcome of redeeming grace.’ Christendom did not ignore ‘industry and commerce’, but considered them to be secondary. Like Jenks, it saw in the ‘land the dominant illustration of its thesis that man must live in obedience to a certain law, pattern, rhythm, if he would live at all’ and agriculture as a ‘way of life’, centred on an ‘unremitting care of and love for the earth and its conservation’.15 There is no question that the Kinship, Jenks or any of the other secular parties went into this collaboration under false pretences, there being sincere agreement on all sides. As the Rev. McLaughlin wrote to Archbishop Temple concerning the Kinship and the Council for the Church and Countryside: ‘its genesis [was] in the coincidence of that school of thought with much of our own thinking in the Christendom group.’16

‘The Church, the Clergy and the Rural Community’ Conference At the conference, in his introduction, Reckitt spoke of how: ‘it had been decided that there was only one beginning, that is the land: not only the recovery of agriculture itself, but the restoration of vigorous rural communities.’17 The Christendom memorandum mentioned the danger of soil erosion, and Jenks picked up on this, reminding everyone that ‘the fate of any civilised nation depended ultimately upon its attitude towards the earth and its conservation of soil fertility’. He went on to connect the calamity of erosion in distant lands to events closer to home, warning that: ‘there was a danger that in this country agricultural expansion would be fostered by wrong methods and this lead to a similarly tragic consequence.’ The RRA had addressed this issue for ‘many years’, and Jenks ‘rejoiced to find churchmen taking up this matter and urging its development on a large scale’.18 The purpose of these talks was not only to discuss such issues but to enable ‘the Church to do its job both in and by the countryside’, by measures to train and 164 Church and Countryside enable rural clergy.19 The vehicle to do this was suggested by Gardiner, who mentioned the ‘Church and Countryside Association’ that the Bishop of Salisbury had formed and this became the model for a new national body.20 In the days afterwards it was agreed by Temple and Dr Cyril Garbett, Archbishop of York, that Church and Countryside could be created as an official organisation, under their authority. In coming to this decision the ‘strength’ of its secular supporters was influential, meaning the number of prominent and titled supporters of the enterprise. Besides those peers already mentioned, Lord Bledisloe, Sir Albert Howard, Sir George Stapledon and the historian Arthur Bryant were associated with the Council at its outset.21 Following the approval of the archbishops, an executive committee for the Council for the Church and Countryside was chosen, including Jenks.22

God/Nature The creation of the Council for the Church and Countryside illustrates well the role that religion or ‘spirituality’ has in this story. The organic movement, whilst dedicated to that most elementally material entity, the soil, has had a metaphysical dimension from its earliest roots upwards. Whereas, since the 1960s, this aspect has been dominated by so-called ‘new age’ beliefs, during this period Christianity was predominant. However, these two modes of belief have never been distinct. For example, from the 1930s onwards, the mystic Rudolf Steiner was a significant influence through his biodynamic organic system.23 Although not dabbling in mysticism, Jenks thought deeply about the metaphysical dimension of life. Although the bones of its skeleton are visible in his published writings, it was only in his unpublished work that he wrote specifically about his philosophy, most especially in a paper sent to Massingham in 1947. In ‘The Two Interpretations’, Jenks outlined the two main ‘interpretations of human society, its context and destiny’. These were the ‘Organic or Cultural’ which was ‘essentially Theistic’, and the ‘Mechanistic or Scientific’, which was ‘essentially Humanistic’ or ‘anthropocentric’. Jenks traced the path of the latter from the Reformation, through the Industrial revolution, to its current dominance. The theistic interpretation had an ancient history, once pagan, then Christian, but had lost its ‘initial impulse’, becoming conventional and sclerotic. However, Jenks saw its revival in the ‘Organic interpretation’, which he believed was a response to the ‘inherent sterility and capacity for destruction’ of the humanistic ideology.24 The ‘basic concept’ of the ‘Organic interpretation’, as Jenks saw it, was that it envisaged the ‘Universe […] as an organic whole, created and governed by Divine Authority for a Purpose which is all-comprehensive but is imperfectly compre- hended by the human mind’. Within the organic interpretation ‘Mind’ was subser- vient to ‘Heart’, reason serving to supplement and interpret feeling, and ‘mystery’ was never entirely absent. Its ‘main theme’ was the Church and Countryside 165

cultivation and ultimate fulfilment of life in harmony with this Purpose; cultivation by actual living, fulfilment by reintegration of the natural with the supernatural (heaven) and the spiritual union, after trial and suffering, of the human soul with its creator.25

Jenks recognised that both currents could flow within the same person, but that one or other usually dominated and, as we have seen, for him the head was often supplanted by the heart. The organic was ‘[q]ualitative rather than quantitative; sen- sual rather than intellectual’, and he listed among its ‘values’: ‘wisdom, beauty, grace, vitality, balance, harmony, style, flavour’. ‘Essentially creative’, its ‘root arts’ were those intimately associated with the reproduction of life: ‘husbandry (agri-culture) and housewifery (home-culture)’, it was also manifest in arts and crafts whereby ‘inanimate materials’ were transformed by the ‘genius (spirit) of the artist’.26 In Jenks’ thinking, the Creator was manifest in Nature – of which humanity was part, through its ‘vitality’, that is, the ‘intangible, imponderable, and infinitely variable’ element which was not quantifiable and so invisible to science. Under the dominance of the humanistic ideology, society was increasingly de-vitalised and the aim of the organic movement was to bring about those changes which would re-vitalise it.27 As Jenks admitted to Saunders a few years after the war, he was not ‘a devout Christian or a good Churchman’; he was only an occasional presence in the pews.28 Nonetheless, the Christian God was central to his view of the world. As he wrote in relation to the purpose of life integral to the ‘Organic interpretation’, it was ‘exemplified by Christ through His own life on earth, crucifixion and resurrection’. Likewise the ‘Christian emphasis on love’ was manifested in the ‘intense feeling for, and sense of community’ which connected human beings to God and their fellows, and was manifest in the affinity that the farmer felt for their soil and stock and the craftsman/artist for their work.29 In answering the ultimate question of the meaning or purpose of life, Jenks believed that human will and capacity could only go so far and that ‘[m]en in fact can achieve the highest things of which they are capable only when they acknowl- edge and serve something higher than themselves’ and that ‘a deep religious faith is as essential to healthy and vigorous civilization as is wise leadership or adequate material resources’. He continued:

just as physical life is maintained and enriched by vital relationships, each little association forming a fundamental part of a bigger me, so does our earthly life form part – again a fundamental part – of the same larger scheme of life whose purpose and dimensions we can but dimly grasp.

Earthly life was not an end in itself but ‘a prelude, a qualification, a training perhaps for this larger life’. He continued: ‘hope and faith – and indeed happiness – are to be 166 Church and Countryside found only by getting outside the confines of individual consciousness and project- ing oneself into the larger association of which me is a part.’ In these beliefs, as he admitted, Jenks had crossed over the ‘boundaries of rationalization into mysticism’.30 Whilst respecting the history, aesthetics and authority of the English Church, the core of Jenks’ belief was more universal and much older than any specific faith tradition. For him God was most significantly manifested in Nature, in the growth of the seed, the cycle of life, the eternal succession of the seasons. His identification of God with Nature was evident when he explained the mystery of the resurrection in Christianity:

we do know that in Nature (which is a manifestation of God), life does rise again from the dead in the sense that death and decay are all essential to the working of the life-cycle as are birth and growth.31

This belief was also prominent in the first lines of Spring Comes Again: ‘Empires, civilisations and philosophies’ rose and fell, Jenks wrote, but Nature’s ‘cycle of life’ carried on regardless, men were born to struggle, pushing forward the wheel of life, and to die without ever arriving. Inside this crushing infinitude, there was nonetheless the possibility of consolation: ‘As the Cross is his sure sign of redemption and final reward, so the eternal miracle of the seasons is his sure sign of life and hope ever renewed.’ 32 Jenks returned to these themes in a booklet he wrote for Church and Country- side, The Country Year (1946). The ‘Natural Order’ was ‘ordained by God’ and this was expressed in the seasons and the life cycle of animals and plants.33 The spirituality which Jenks attributed to the archetypal countryman was his own:

The countryman may know little of theology and less of ethics; but he needs neither as he wends his way to church between shooting hedges and greening meadows […] For the Real and the Ideal are inextricably blended in a natural catholicism of faith.34

The ‘work of the farm, the garden, the woodland, and with it the whole rural community’ conformed to the order ordained by God.35 Hence husbandry – and so Jenks’ own purpose – was imbued with divine significance:

Essentially it is a life of service […] But being the service of life, it is at all times pregnant with meaning and purpose, so that it becomes a ritual rather than drudgery. That is why the countryside is inherently religious.36

This view also consecrated his new ecological purpose: ‘if there is a mission for our civilization to undertake, it is to regenerate the natural environment of which it has made such an appalling mess and in so doing find its own soul again.’37 Church and Countryside 167

Jenks was intuitively in touch with what may be the source of whatever is authentic in any religion. God occupied the highest place in his thinking, but was a remote presence and although Nature was formally subordinate, in actuality it so dominated Jenks’ cosmology that his faith might easily be mistaken for panentheism or pantheism.

Peddie Redux Around the time that Church and Countryside was emerging, Jenks was also drawn back into collaboration with Jack Peddie, the two men being together at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute on the 29th March 1943, Jenks’ first recorded visit there since 1934.38 Nothing is known of what occurred, but the meeting was probably related to Peddie’s latest campaign, based around a body called ‘Economic Equity’.39 Given the type of man Peddie was, it is difficult to imagine that Orwin would have willingly got involved with him but nonetheless the gathering could only have occurred with at least acquiescence on Orwin’s part. About a month afterwards, Peddie wrote to Orwin concerning his ‘Charter of Economic Equity’, which he suggested might be the basis of ‘a new Central Progressive Party’.40 No reply from Orwin survives. Even given Jenks’ longstanding link to Orwin, it is puzzling to find him back at the Institute. There was little basis for political sympathy between them, Orwin leaning towards Labour.41 On agriculture, as we have seen, their paths had diverged radically. By 1945, Jenks had included Orwin among the ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ for ‘practically every agricultural organisation’; Orwin dismissed the Kinship as ‘roman- tics’ and took a similar attitude to the emerging organic movement generally.42 Whatever the specifics of this episode it led nowhere, the few references to Peddie’s Economic Equity making no mention of Jenks. This may have been due to wartime political sensitivities, but Peddie’s treatment of agriculture would have been anathema to Jenks, proposing the wholesale nationalisation of the land and planning of farming.43 The most probable explanation of Jenks’ involvement was that he was drawn in under false pretences or was unable to refuse the persistent Peddie – probably both. There is no evidence that Jenks had any further involvement with the Scot, who would die in 1947.

Notes 1 Jenks probably had in mind ‘The Christian View of the Right Relationship between Finance, Production and Consumption’, which was delivered to the Bank Officers’ Guild on 4 February 1943 (W. Temple, The Church Looks Forward (London: Macmillan, 1944), pp. 140–157). The speech was a matter of public controversy, and taken as evidence of Temple’s ‘socialism’. 2 LPL, W. Temple Papers 15, fol. 373: ‘The Church, The Clergy and the Rural Community, Report of Conference’, 4 March 1943. 168 Church and Countryside

3 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Agenda for meeting on 28 January 1943; StP: E. Whittleton to Stuckey, 8 February 1943. 4 John S. Peart-Binns, Maurice Reckitt: A Life (Basingstoke: The Bowerdean Press and Marshall Pickering, 1988), p. 63; Tristram Hart, ‘Montague Fordham’, RE, Vol. 15, No. 6 (June 1948), pp. 63–64; Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/45/1974: M. Fordham to Pound, 10 January 1938, 24 December 1937; M. Fordham, Christianity and the Countryside: A Lecture Delivered to the York Diocesan School of Social Studies. London: Industrial Christian Fellowship (undated, ca. 1938). 5 U. Sussex, SxMs44/27/14: Preliminary notice of the Fourteenth Church Union School of Sociology, 25–29 July 1938, Syllabus of the Fourteenth Church Union School of Sociology, undated (1938). 6 Action, 26 August 1939, p. 6; Julian V. Langmead Casserley, The Church and the Rural Community (London: Church Literature Association, 1939). 7 U. Sussex, SxMs44/11/12: H. Massingham to M. Reckitt, 13 October 1942, 27 March 1943; U. Sussex, SxMs44/11/15: W. Peck to Reckitt, 6 January 1944; Holloway, Money Matters, pp. 62–63; ERC, MB, Vol. 3, No. 2 (June 1939), p. 1; Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1941), p. 1; Vol. 5, No. 5 (September 1941), p. 4; Vol. 5, No. 7 (November 1941), p. 7. 8 LPL, W. Temple Papers 15, fol. 373: ‘The Church, The Clergy and the Rural Community, Report of Conference’, 4 March 1943; U. Sussex, SxMs44/11/12: H.J. Massingham to Reckitt, 10 December 1942; /10: P McLaughlin to M. Reckitt, 23 January 1943; Hants. RO, 15M84/F196/22: ‘The Church, The Clergy and the Rural Community. A Memorandum by the Church Social Action Committee of the Church Union’ (unsigned and undated, ca. 1943); CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Church Social Action, Agenda for the meeting of 28 January 1943. 9 Matthews, ‘The Ladder of Becoming’, p. 164. 10 Peart-Binns, Maurice B. Reckitt, pp. 19, 61, 66–68. 11 TNA: PRO, KV2/3328: T.M. Shelford to C. Gransby, 27 November 1942; Metropolitan Police Special Branch memorandum to MI5 on Rex Tremlett, 13 October 1941. 12 TNA: PRO, KV2/3328: Memorandum concerning Rex Tremlett, on the occasion of the re-imposition of a Home Office Warrant, 7 October 1943. 13 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, F2/1: Gardiner to potential supporters of the Kinship in Husbandry, 22 April 1941; on the Kinship see Richard Moore-Colyer and Philip Conford, ‘A ‘Secret Society’? The Internal and External Relations of the Kinship in Husbandry, 1951–52’, Rural History, 15 (2004), pp. 189–206. 14 Conford, ‘Finance versus Farming’, p. 236. 15 Hants. RO, 15M84/F196/22: ‘The Church, The Clergy and the Rural Community’. 16 Temple Papers 15, fol. 432: McLaughlin to Temple, 28 March 1944. 17 LPL, AA/AP/W. Temple, 54/373: ‘The Church, The Clergy and the Rural Community, Report of Conference’, held on Thursday, 4 March 1943. 18 Ibid. 19 Hants. RO, 15M84/F196/22: ‘The Church, The Clergy and the Rural Community’. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid.; LPL, AA/AP/W. Temple, 54/361: Hereford to W. Temple, 6 March 43; 54/367: Temple to Hereford, 20 March 1943; 54/370: McLaughlin to Temple, 25 March 1943; 54/394–395: Minutes of CCC, 20 May 1943; 54/387: Temple to C. Garbett, 15 April 1943; 54/388: Garbett to Temple, 19 April 1943; 54/389: Temple to McLaughlin, 4 May 1943; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: McLaughlin to Gardiner, 12 February 1943. 22 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: McLaughlin to Gardiner, 30 April 1943; LPL, AA/AP/W. Temple, 15/394–395: Minutes of the meeting, 20 May 1943. 23 Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement, pp. 71–80, 190–209. 24 U. Reading, RHC, D MASM-D3: ‘Two Interpretations’ (undated, ca. 1947). 25 Ibid. Church and Countryside 169

26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/5: Jenks to Saunders, 25 December 1948; Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 29 Jenks, ‘Two Interpretations’. 30 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/5: Jenks to Saunders, 25 December 1948. 31 Ibid. 32 Spring Comes Again, p. 6. 33 The Country Year, p. 1. 34 Ibid., p. 10. 35 Ibid., p. 1. 36 Ibid., p. 2. 37 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/5: Jenks to Saunders, 25 December 1948. 38 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE167: Visitors book of the Institute of Agricultural Economics, 1933–1970, entry for 29 March 1943. 39 Peace and Reconstruction Year Book, 1944 (London: National Peace Council, 1944), p. 19. 40 Bodl. Oxf., OUA, AE28/3: Peddie to C.S. Orwin, 5 May 1943. 41 C.S. Orwin ‘Land Tenure’ in Fabian Society, Syllabus of a Series of Lectures to be given at Essex Hall [etc.]. London: The Fabian Society (undated, ca. 1925 or 1926); Orwin on ‘Plan for the Land’, a lecture hosted by the Fabian society at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, on Saturday, 14 November 1942 (The Times, 14 November 1942, p. 5); foreword by C.S. Orwin in F.W. Bateson (ed.) Towards a Socialist Agriculture: Studies by a Group of Fabians (London: Gollancz, 1946). 42 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 22 November 1945; The Manchester Guardian, 30 December 1942, p. 3; 13 June 1946, p. 3. 43 The Architects’ Journal, Vol. 98 (1943); J.T. Peddie, Charter of Economic Equity. Fourteen Essential Monetary and Economic Reforms: The Cure for Unemployment, Slums, Poverty and Malnutrition, and the Correct Approach to World Peace (1943); The A.B.C. of Economic Equity (1944); A Criticism of the Bretton Woods Proposal (1944). 20 Untouchable

Whilst Jenks was involved with the RRA and Church and Countryside, he was also struggling to rebuild his career and make a living. His journalism was once again prolific, with articles in The New English Weekly and, from April 1943, Jenks renewed his relationship with The Weekly Review.1 Less positively, after a long wait, Faber and Faber rejected his book; although de la Mare was in favour of publication, his colleagues felt that it was too similar to Kenneth Barlow’s recent The Discipline of Peace.2 De la Mare hoped that it would be published elsewhere and Jenks accepted his offer of help with this.3

The Daily Worker Jenks attracted less welcome attention from The Daily Worker, the Communist Party of Great Britain’s paper. As part of its campaign against the ‘revival’ of fascism, his articles in Everybody’s, The Weekly Review and The Daily Sketch were presented as part of a ‘Mosleyite’ effort to take over the press.4 During the war years the Com- munist Party of Great Britain was at its zenith – primarily due to Britain’s wartime alliance with the Soviet Union – and it had more mainstream influence than at any other time. This campaign against released fascists found a receptive audience, becoming something of a witch-hunt, with ex-detainees being hounded from their jobs, to the accompaniment of strident demands for their re-imprisonment. Ironi- cally, the journalist primarily responsible for the campaign, Douglas Hyde, found much that he was sympathetic to in The Weekly Review and, in 1948, would convert to Roman Catholicism and leave the Party.5 In the early 1950s, he was a recipient of Jenks’ From the Ground Up.6 The Daily Worker’s exposé probably cost Jenks any further work at the Sketch, a publication owned by Lord Kemsley and Everybody’s would not publish him again Untouchable 171 until after the war.7 Although not noticed by the communists, Jenks wrote a few articles for Country Life but this work quickly dried up too, suggesting a discreet word to the editor from the security services.8 In every case – unless criticism of liberal economics and advocacy of good husbandry had become matters for censure – there was nothing in Jenks’ writing to concern the authorities; in fact, in one particular case he even backed the government’s campaign to encourage townspeople to give up their holidays to help on the farms.9

The Ministry of Labour Most of Jenks’ writing was a labour of love, so he needed a paying job too. During wartime he also had to satisfy the Ministry of Labour, charged with making every hand serve the war effort. In early 1943 he was expecting to be forced back into some kind of agricultural work but hoped that he could arrange to ‘get a little time off now and again for writing’.10 Although manual labour suited neither his health nor his hopes for rebuilding a career, wartime agriculture had spawned an extensive supervisory and regulatory superstructure, which should have offered many open- ings for a man with Jenks’ credentials. In April 1943, he was interviewed by the Oxfordshire County War Agricultural Executive Committee for a temporary lecturer’s post. The chairman of the committee was ‘more or less sympathetic’ and it was intimated that the job was his and he should find digs and a car.11 At the time of his interview Jenks undertook to eschew political activities, but this was apparently insufficient, and the decision was overruled. He was told unofficially that the reasons were ‘political’ and reflected:

One gets used to spite, but for sheer stupidity, this takes some beating. I only wish I could get a question asked in the House, but don’t think there is much chance. One has to face the fact that some of us are regarded as untouchables, even by potential friends.12

Not long afterwards there was an opening at the Devon WAEC, which in ordinary circumstances Jenks would have ‘walked into’, but thanks to 18B there was ‘not much hope’.13 Jenks asked Stuckey if he could work at his farm if the Ministry of Labour’s ‘har- rying’ of him got too threatening.14 This was not possible, although Stuckey helped when he could.15 Jenks’ friendship with Stuckey and his wife Sally had deepened over the previous year or so. Sally Stuckey (1915–2013) was a capable woman of strong character, who had worked as a vet before her marriage and ran the farm whilst her husband was interned; she had also been a BUF member.16 Jenks stayed a number of times at their Berkshire farm and the young couple even named their first child Richard Jorian.17 In October 1943, the Stuckeys left their farm in Jenks’ hands for ten days so they could take a holiday.18 172 Untouchable

Around the same time the Ministry of Labour were pressing him to take full- time farm-work and he was forced to employ a solicitor and obtain a medical certificate showing his unfitness for manual work.19 At the end of the year employment remained elusive, with an unsuccessful interview at the NFU headquarters in London, a fruitless application for a job at Horse and Hound and ‘another mysterious turndown’ from Somerset County Council, when Jenks once more sensed the hand of the ‘security merchants’.20

An interview at Nobel House Towards the close of 1943, Jenks tried for a job, which said more about the desperation of his situation than anything else. Having responded to an advertisement placed via an agency seeking agricultural journalists, he was called to an interview at Nobel House, the headquarters of Imperial Chemical Industries.21 Wartime agriculture had enormously boosted ICI’s business in artificial fertilisers and other agricultural chemicals, but many farmers remained sceptical of their value and there was some resistance from the so-called ‘humus school’ of farming. This was most associated with Sir Albert Howard, who had been arguing for years for the benefits of composting over chemical fertilizers. In 1942, Howard had written to The New English Weekly in praise of Jenks’ ‘J.J. Zeal’ article on soil erosion and, by April 1943, the two men were corresponding about the ‘Indore’ composting process, discussing how it might be adapted for large-scale farming in England.22 Jenks depicted ICI as being worried by the influence of Howard and others and so aiming to ‘place a halo of public service’ around its activities.23 ICI was, he admitted, not an institution that he had ‘a great deal of respect’ for, but he was still in two minds whether to accept, should the job be offered. The interview had been cordial and he was ‘co-operative’ in his manner and consequently suffered ‘some bad moments’ with his ‘conscience afterward’. After consult- ing various friends and acquaintances, including Sir Albert and Patrick McLaughlin, he decided he would take the job if offered, justifying his decision not only on the grounds of ‘personal necessity’ but also, for ‘Trojan Horse reasons’: because ‘a year or two inside the other camp would be useful experience and possibly even ICI is susceptible to education’, although he admitted that the last aim was overambitious. In the end, Jenks’ integrity was not to be tested as he received another rejection. At the end of a year full of similar experiences, he remarked to Derek Stuckey: ‘I continue to apply for jobs, if only for appearances sake.’24

The valley in the woods Denied suitable employment Jenks used the free time by revising his book; as he remarked to Gardiner, one of the few advantages of his current situation was that Untouchable 173 it gave him ‘a chance to study’.25 He also occupied himself with another book, this time a venture into children’s fiction, which he finished by the end of the year.26 This work, an adventure story of the sort that was so successful for Enid Blyton, told the story of how its young protagonists foiled a gang of thieves. Set in countryside much like that around Angmering, the book found the children spending the summer before the outbreak of war camping and helping out the nearby farm. Unlike his serious book, this one found a publisher, Dents, whose Managing Director, E.F. Bozman, was a member of the Council for the Church and Countryside. Ostensibly due to wartime shortages, it would not appear until after the war.27

Reunion At his ICI interview, Jenks had stated that £700 per year was the minimum he could live on, a figure adjusted to suit the deep pockets of that company. This aspi- ration was indicative of a wide gap between the real and the ideal when the typical wages for agricultural labouring – the only job he seemed able to get – was £3 a week.28 Jenks wrote cryptically that ‘the job would have solved a few personal problems, though it might admittedly have created others’, which was an allusion to his hope to make a home for his family again.29 Oliver, now ten, would also need to go to public school in a year or so and his father was looking for a suitable place.30 Although Jenks’ financial situation remained threadbare, he was reunited with Sophie before Christmas. They visited Mary Fullerton at Sandbank and spent Christmas as a family at Bishop’s Tawton.31 Without giving any further details, Jenks wrote to Stuckey: ‘Good Christmas reunion here, and no juvenile reactions so far’, brusque – and he admitted – hastily chosen words.32 There are indications that their relationship remained fragile. Although Sophie had moved to Tawton House and aimed to get a job in Barnstaple, it seems that she was not yet prepared to live as man and wife again. Instead of staying in the main house, a flat was fixed up for her over the garage, and when the electoral register was compiled she was registered on her own at the ‘Garden Flat, Tawton House’.33 A few months later, in spring 1944, Jenks remained dubious about the future: ‘How long it will last, I don’t know. I suppose almost anything can happen in the next few months.’ 34

Notes 1 TNA: PRO, KV2/3328: Memorandum concerning Rex Tremlett, on the occasion of the re-imposition of a Home Office Warrant, 7 October 1943. 2 FFA, E7/5: de la Mare to Jenks, 9 March 1943. 3 FFA, E7/5: Jenks to de la Mare 15 March 1943; Secretary to de la Mare to Jenks, 20 March 1943. 4 The Daily Worker, 21 August 1943, 28 August 1943. 5 Douglas Hyde, I Believed: The Autobiography of a Former British Communist (London: Heinemann, 1950), pp. 184–186, 260–285. 174 Untouchable

6 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 25 April 1952. 7 The Daily Sketch, 6 July 1943 p. 4; Everybody’s, 14 July 1945, p. 3. 8 ‘A Root Crop Revival’, Country Life, Vol. XCIII, 23 April 1943, p. 753; ‘Wages are the Key Problem’, Country Life, Vol. XCIV, 2 July 1943, pp. 18–20; ‘What Is Efficiency in Farming’, Country Life, Vol. XCIV, 27 August 1943, p. 390. 9 Everybody’s, 5 June 1943, p. 10. 10 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 24 February 1943. 11 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 7 April 1943. 12 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 24 April 1943. 13 Ibid. 14 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 24 April 1943. 15 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 13 May 1943, 14 September 1943, 24 September 1943. 16 Sally Stuckey’s given name was Gladys, but she chose a new one during her time at the Royal Veterinary College. 17 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 21 March 1943, 24 February 1943, 7 April 1943. 18 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 14 September 1943 and 24 September 1943. 19 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 14 September 1943. 20 StP: E. Whittleton to Stuckey, 14 December 1943; Jenks to Stuckey, 18 December 1943, 26 December 1943, 3 February 1944. 21 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 26 December 1943; Jenks to Stuckey, 3 February 1944; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 7 January 1944. 22 NEW, Vol. 21, No. 13, (16 July 1942), p. 115; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 24 April 1943. 23 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 7 January 1944; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 3 February 1944. 24 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 3 February 1944. 25 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 November 1943; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 13 May 1943. 26 StP: E. Whittleton to Stuckey, 14 December 1943. 27 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 1 July 1945. 28 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 14 September 1943; Jenks to Stuckey, 3 February 1944. 29 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 3 February 1944. 30 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 November 1943. 31 SLNSW, Miles Franklin Papers MS364: CY1123/373: Singleton to Franklin, 19 December 1943. 32 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 26 December 1943. 33 NLA, MS6608: S. Jenks to Fullerton, 28 May 1945; P. Wallis to Coupland, 30 May 2009. 34 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 12 March 1944. 21 Through the Tunnel

From New Year 1944 and until the end of the war, Jenks’ frustrations continued, with suitable employment forbidden him. However, at the same time, the sphere of his activities widened and, although his future direction was not yet apparent, he was opening a path to the future.

Monkton Wyld School In March 1944, another opportunity for work cropped up, when Alan Whitehead, an associate of Gardiner, recommended Jenks to Monkton Wyld School, which needed a science teacher. Jenks was once again unsuccessful and although he attributed this to his lack of relevant experience, Gardiner’s MI5 file shows that the security services had intervened again.1 Jenks’ disappointment was tempered by domestic considerations: Sophie had started a new job, at The North Devon Journal in Barnstaple, but ‘still needs some looking-after’, he wrote. His mother had also been seriously ill and there was a big garden to cultivate. In these circumstances Jenks anticipated that he would be unable to accept work even if offered: ‘for the next few weeks I shall be gardener-governess-nurse-handyman, and a literary gent in such moments as I have to spare.’2

Encounters As previous chapters have suggested, the Kinship in Husbandry was an important nexus of influence in the emerging organic movement, the primary focus of Jenks’ activism hereon. However, at this point, although inside the gate, he was still far from the centre. When, earlier in the war, the Kinship had collated a list of potential 176 Through the tunnel supporters of ‘A Post-War Rural Revival’, Jenks’ name was absent.3 His involvement with the RRA, ERC and Church and Countryside, together with his contributions to The New English Weekly would make him known to the Kinship as a man who shared their opinions and was an effective worker for the cause. A couple of months after his appointment to the executive of Church and Countryside, Jenks had attended the Christendom group’s summer school, held at St Hilda’s College Oxford, in July 1943, where he gave a paper.4 Otherwise, the business of the Council got off to a slow start: in November the same year, Jenks wrote to McLaughlin, suggesting that he, Reckitt and Peck provide ‘a theological starting-point’ for the secular partners to comment and build upon. Unfortunately, the clergyman was in poor health and ‘not quite his usual Jesuitical self’, Jenks believed.5 Despite these problems, in 1944 work began on a major public event suggested by Gardiner, to take the form of an ‘encounter’ between proponents of the husbandry/organic school of agriculture and those representing the ascendant industrial/agro-chemical-centred approach backed by the state. By July, Jenks was talking to the NFU about their participation and seeking contacts in the workers’ unions.6 Although preparations continued, with Jenks taking a special lead, McLaughlin continued to struggle, and in August 1944, Jenks and his colleagues were left waiting for the clergyman to ‘come to life again’.7 Jenks was not without apprehensions about the combative overtones of calling the event an ‘encounter’, and tried to temper Gardiner’s prejudices against the NFU.8 Gardiner had a somewhat narcissistic ego and was inclined to fall out with whatever body he was involved with; Jenks did what he could to keep his colleague involved. Although Gardiner’s sense of superiority would not have permitted a real friendship, they did become friendly and an invitation to visit Gardiner’s Spring- head estate was issued, which Jenks enthusiastically accepted, spending a week there in August 1944.9 There was a major development in relation to Church and Countryside the next month, for, with McLaughlin sidelined, it was suggested that Jenks take over as secretary.10 He looked positively on the idea, believing that he would find the work ‘immensely interesting’, but was concerned about the practical dimension. He had ‘no desire to make money out of the movement’, but to do the job properly, he would have to live nearer to London and consequently more expensively than at Bishop’s Tawton.11 Jenks was willing to accept £200 per annum in the interim until such time as a full-time position could be funded.12 The business was not quickly resolved, probably because of the Council’s Cinderella relationship with the Church when it came to money.

H.J. Massingham Although little evidence of it has survived, at the same time, Jenks was also developing an important relationship with H.J. Massingham. Some years later he named Through the tunnel 177

Massingham as one of the three men who had done most to influence his outlook in the organic movement and described him as sharing his ‘deep love of rural England’ but with ‘ten times’ his ‘knowledge and insight’.13 Like Jenks, H. John Massingham (1888–1952) had a liberal background, his father Henry being a prominent newspaper editor. Massingham also went into journalism, and his work for The New Age introduced him to guild socialism and a host of vital spirits, including Orage and Penty.14 Initially, the sociological and economic insights Massingham gained remained isolated from his love of nature and the countryside, the subjects for his early books. During the 1920s, he increasingly came to recognise the centrality of agriculture within history and in social and economic order; he also came to reject liberal modernity and, like others in The New Age circle, his alternative was inspired by the society of medieval Christendom. Serious illness and debility following an accident in 1937 left Massingham unable to make the ‘travels and pilgrimages’ that had been his life. Instead, he began to write for the periodical press, including The New English Weekly.15 The next year, he came into contact with Lymington, when he wrote to praise Famine in England.16 Massingham hoped for ‘a fatherly general organisation’ to bring together those who thought like Lymington and himself, a function which the Kinship would fulfil from spring 1941.17 By at least August 1943, Jenks had caught Massingham’s eye with his reflections in The New English Weekly on the United Nations’ Conference on Food and Agri- culture, held that year at Hot Springs, Virginia. Jenks’ argument was that although the conference report referred to soil erosion, it failed to respect the basic truth that ‘all enduring civilisations’ were ‘built upwards from the soil, and not downwards from human desires’. It instead concluded that industrial expansion and revival of international trade must precede the rehabilitation of agriculture. This was a total inversion of the correct course: quoting Jacks and Whyte, Jenks noted that soil erosion was primarily a consequence of trade, following on from the cashing of the ‘soil capital’ of virgin land to repay the interest on international loans. Summarising his argument, Jenks wrote:

We have a cart loaded with hungry, or at any rate underfed, human beings, whom we desire to convey as rapidly as possible to the goal of Abundance, “freedom from fear and want,” etc. But the horse is emaciated and rapidly becoming exhausted.18

Massingham praised Jenks as the only one who had ‘grasped the true meaning of Hot Springs Conference’.19

Ill Fares the Land At Faber and Faber, 1944 started for Jenks with another rejection of his revised manuscript, de la Mare saying that in ‘normal times we should have been very glad 178 Through the tunnel to make you an offer’.20 Gardiner opined that it had a ‘didactic’ quality, which Jenks attributed to his ‘preaching-professorial ancestry’ and ‘the overwhelming need to get ordinary people to reconsider fundamentals in simple terms, and not just what the experts tell them’. Dents also turned him down, so he planned to make revisions and try elsewhere.21 Better news came in July, when T.S. Eliot asked him to abridge Ill Fares the Land, a book by the American lawyer Carey McWilliams, the factual counterpart to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939).22 As already mentioned, Eliot was a member of the Christendom group and on the editorial board of The New English Weekly; politically, he had been briefly warm to the BUF in the early 1930s but had pulled away, being more in sympathy with nostalgic High Anglican, ‘spire-and-squire’ Toryism.23 His position on the board of Faber and Faber was critical to the birth of the organic movement, given that the company published so many of its most important books. The idea of publishing Ill Fares the Land originated from Lord Portsmouth, the two men having been on friendly terms since before the war.24 Mairet was too busy to do the job and recommended Jenks.25 Portsmouth, who had agreed to write the preface, was agreeable, replying that Jenks should do the task

quite well for you. He knows his subject fairly well, is capable and has some literary discrimination. I shall be glad to hear from Jenks, whom I occasionally meet in that forlorn hope called the Council for Church and Countryside.26

Jenks was soon in touch with Portsmouth, outlining his ideas for cutting the book down.27 He brought his new zeal to the project, writing to Portsmouth:

I also feel strongly that the effects of depersonalisation and mechanisation of the soil should be emphasised far more that the author has attempted; erosion, for instance is treated more or less as a side-issue. But perhaps you will be able to draw attention to this aspect in your preface.28

Portsmouth’s preface did not neglect the question of soil erosion and Jenks ensured that as little as possible on that topic was lost in the abridgement.29

The Kinship In early October, Jenks mentioned to Gardiner that he was writing an article for Everybody’s on post-war land settlement. It was probably because of this, and his increasingly friendly relations with leading Kinship members, that an invitation came to attend the group’s conference on that subject, to be held at Oxford in November 1944.30 Through the tunnel 179

The conference was held in a room provided by Sir Richard Livingstone, President of Corpus Christi College.31 It drew eight members from the Kinship, including Massingham, Northbourne, Portsmouth and Gardiner; Jenks was introduced as a man whose ‘name as a farmer and agricultural journalist will be known to many’. Topics discussed included a survey of small farms and smallholdings, the demand for rural occupations among ex-servicemen and school-leavers, and suggestions for a creative policy. Breaking for lunch, the participants dined on ‘wholemeal bread, farmhouse butter, apples, a vast Savoy cabbage […] a bottle of Algerian wine, beer and coffee’. In the afternoon, the demand for rural occupations from ‘youth’ was chewed over.32 Jenks and Northbourne were charged with creating a report on the discussion and a pamphlet to be called ‘A Service Man’s Guide to the Land’. In the event, Northbourne seems to have taken the main role in producing this, although Jenks was mentioned as one of the contributors when it was eventually published as Country Living.33 The paperback was the first of a series edited by L.B. Powell and published by Land and Home Publications, a company set up with support from Gardiner and Portsmouth. Jenks returned from the conference feeling that the trip had been ‘worthwhile’, but knowing little more about the Kinship. It seemed ‘more of a cult than an organization, and though perhaps a little too hush-hush’ he believed that it was ‘doing some useful work’.34 Not long afterwards, Ill Fares the Land was sent to the press. Jenks had turned a somewhat cumbrous book into a powerful political tool, whose every page indicted big business for its rape of the soil and the human misery it brought to the American countryside. Given that McWilliams was strongly ‘anti-fascist’, it was not without irony that this work was done by Jenks.35 Eliot wrote to Portsmouth that he had ‘made a very good job of it’ and that Mairet had ‘passed it’.36 Jenks was not paid for his work until June 1945, which underlined the difficulty of earning a living through such work.37

1945 Toward the end of 1944, Jenks wrote of his circumstances to Saunders: due to financial and other considerations he had ‘given up any idea of active farming’, posts he had applied for had ‘gone elsewhere’, although he still retained hopes of an opening at the NFU, with whom he continued to meet regarding the ‘encounter’. Summing up his situation, Jenks wrote: ‘So writing, reading and gardening take up my time pretty fully.’38 He had been offered the possibility of a post in Worcestershire around this time through Gardiner, probably as a farm manager. Although Jenks had, a little earlier, described himself as ‘if not exactly in the pink, at any rate still green and growing’, he declined the job in terms that suggest his spirits were low:

The truth of the matter is that just at the moment I am very much feeling the need for familiar scenes and familiar friends, and though Worcestershire 180 Through the tunnel

is by no means the North Pole I am by no means sure that I am on the right form to do justice to the job. […] I don’t feel that I ought to take the thing on unless I can put my whole heart into it.39

‘Literary income’ remained ‘a bit fitful’, but perhaps had increased a little, he believed.40 After finishing Ill Fares the Land, Jenks had returned to his own book, sensing that it required much revision: ‘It seems rather turgid stuff now, but then one’s mind moves a considerable distance in two years, and I should like to rewrite the whole thing.’41 At the beginning of 1945, he was also deep into a second children’s book, writing to the Stuckeys for help on mechanical and veterinary matters. Having asked for suggestions about how a tractor might be sabotaged, Jenks joked about ‘how valuable our correspondence would have been to MI5 a few years ago’, not knowing that his post was still being intercepted.42 The finished script was submitted to Dents in February, but the publishers were lukewarm, giving him the option of taking it elsewhere.43 For whatever reason, it never appeared. The first book,The Valley in the Woods, published under the name of ‘Roger Noakes’, would finally be issued in autumn 1945.44 Jenks was also kept busy by the large garden at Tawton House. In autumn 1944, he began to experiment with growing maize. Before the war, it had been imported as a food for livestock, and its absence was one reason for the wartime scarcity of eggs, bacon and dairy products. Jenks also recruited Gardiner, Saunders, Stuckey and Duncan to the trial.45 From a present day perspective, it may seem surprising how little the titanic events of the war intruded into Jenks’ letters. This was perhaps typical, with the conflict entering its sixth year it had receded to become a grim backdrop for people preoccupied with the immediate problems of everyday life. In a rare and allusive comment to Saunders in December 1944, he wrote of the war: ‘The general situation is highly interesting as well as rather depressing: so much of what we predicted is coming true.’46 He was probably alluding to his predictions of 1939 about Soviet ambitions: at this point the Red Army occupied much of central Europe. Two months later the news was ‘pretty grim’ and Jenks hoped that there is ‘more going on behind the scenes than we are allowed to know’, another allusion to the prospect of a victory which left Soviet Russia in a position of massive strength.47 By April, with German defeat imminent, he believed that events were ‘enough to disturb anyone who isn’t an incurable optimist’; Jenks also detected – or imagined – ‘a general undercurrent of uneasiness as to the role Britain is playing’.48 Unlike most people, whose hopes for the future centred on a return to domestic normality, Jenks was among the minority trying to influence the future shape of his country. At the beginning of 1945, he remained active with Church and Countryside, although McLaughlin had hung on as Secretary. Preparation for the ‘encounter’ dragged on: discussing which dignitaries to invite, Jenks outlined what he saw as the nature of the wider struggle. It was not the average agriculturalist Through the tunnel 181 who was the enemy, the ‘real opposition’ would come from the ‘scientific mate- rialists […] the economists, agricultural chemists and doctrinal international- ists of all political colours’. In words that should be read in the context of the ending of the war, he continued: ‘They represent an ideology which has fought its way to relative power and is within sight of absolute power.’ Jenks hoped that the Council might help to ‘nurture the anti-materialist reaction (which may be the beginning of a spiritual revival)’, by linking ‘practising agriculturalists’ and the ‘growing section of the general public which is becoming soil-conscious and is looking for a new approach to religion’.49 Although Jenks had hoped for some sort of paying job at Church and Countryside, around the end of June 1945, he was forced to take over anyway, the ailing McLaughlin having had to resign. In other circumstances he would have turned it down but ‘it was a case of needs must’ and he hoped to fit it around his other activities. Despite its problems, he saw the body as ‘a growing organ- ism which ought to be of very distinct value as a connecting-link and cultural clearing-house’.50 All this was happening as the country prepared for a general election on the 5th July, the first in a decade. Most people expected that Churchill would be returned to power at the head of a Conservative government; Jenks felt himself to be external to the whole business. A few days before the election, he wrote to Gardiner:

All we can do at the moment, it seems, is to cultivate those little patches which seem likely to survive and perhaps form the nucleus of a better landscape in the future. I’m afraid I am a little abrupt with those people who ask me how I am going to vote.51

The reasoning behind his stance was shown in a letter to his local paper, in which he stated that: ‘party politics can produce only social frictions as long as international finance remains a law unto itself.’ Having outlined the minimum proposals for reform that voters should expect from any candidate, Jenks concluded: ‘What- ever the result of the forthcoming election, any attempts to reconstruct our national economy without first liberating our money system from alien and anti-social control will be like building upon sand.’52

‘A little daylight’ In March 1945, Gardiner again sent the offer of a little work in Jenks’ direction, as a temporary manager for Springhead. Unfortunately, he was unable to help as he was in the midst of another family emergency. Dorothy had been seriously ill and Sophie was talking about giving up her job ‘to be with the children’. Jenks felt that he needed to be ‘on the spot to keep everything going as smoothly as possible’, which points to his role in stabilising the delicate emotional economy within 182 Through the tunnel their triangle. Around the same time he found regular employment, as a temporary teacher at St Michael’s Preparatory School in Tawstock, where Oliver was a pupil. The headmaster knew of Jenks’ political past but this time MI5 did not intervene.53 It was a suitable stop-gap, as he could live at Bishop’s Tawton and, after a few months, he commented that: ‘The school-teaching has turned out fairly well; quite interesting and (up to a point) congenial; but it’s an awful tie, and I shouldn’t like to think it was to be my life-work.’54 Early in 1945, Jenks also alluded to things having become ‘more hopeful’ in his domestic affairs, although, he continued:

some aspects are completely baffling to the male mind. Basically, I suppose, personal problems tend to be microcosms of the problem of our civilisation – immense energetic forces thrashing about without purpose or direction.55

Even after 14 years of marriage there was a lot for him to learn, which says much about how men and women still lived in separate spheres, even within an intimate relationship. By that spring, Jenks’ hopes had developed into tentative optimism and he felt that he had undergone some sort of enlightenment: ‘I have learnt a great deal about feminine outlook, functions and requirements that I had but dimly realized before; men and women really live in different worlds and have quite different values.’56 However, Jenks’ great desire was for a home, which he hoped to resolve that the summer. Tawton House had been ‘invaluable […] during the years of stress’, but could not be continued indefinitely; apart from anything else, it was too much of a burden on Dorothy. If he could set up within reach of London he was confident of pulling together various part-time jobs into a living: ‘agricultural man’ for the Economic Reform Club, part-time secretary at the Rural Reconstruction Association to take over from Fordham, and Jenks had not given up hope of working for Church and Countryside ‘on something more than an occasional basis’. He concluded: ‘It’s all very tricky, especially when one has a family to consider, but I can begin to see a little daylight.’57

Notes 1 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 12 April 1944; TNA: PRO, KV2/2245: Extract from source report F3/1753 regarding Gardiner (undated, ca. 1945). 2 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 31 August 1945; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 12 April 1944. 3 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, F2/12. 4 ‘British Agriculture and International Trade’, Christendom, Vol. 13, No. 51 (September 1943), pp. 81–86; later published as a CCC pamphlet. 5 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 November 1943. 6 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 21 July 1944; Jenks to Gardiner, 25 July 1944. Through the tunnel 183

7 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 30 August 1944. 8 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 26 July 1944. 9 Hants. RO, 15M84/F165/70: Jenks to Portsmouth, 12 August 1944. 10 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 14 September 1944. 11 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 18 September 1944. 12 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 6 October 1944. 13 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p, 10. 14 H.J. Massingham, Remembrance: An Autobiography (London: Batsford, 1941), pp. 31–34. 15 Ibid., pp. 102, 130. 16 Hants. RO, 15M84/F170/37: H.J. Massingham to Lymington, 18 November 1939. 17 Hants. RO, 15M84/F148/42: Massingham to Lymington, 24 November 1939. 18 ‘The Cart and the Horse’, NEW, Vol. 23, Nos. 16–19 (26 August 1943), pp. 137–138. 19 H.J. Massingham, This Plot of Earth: A Gardener’s Chronicle (London: Collins, 1944), p. 269. 20 FFA, E7/6: de la Mare to Jenks, 24 March 1944; Jenks to de la Mare, 30 March 1944. 21 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 12 April 1944. 22 Ill Fares The Land: Migrants and Migratory Labor in the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1942). 23 P. Coupland, ‘Anglican Peace Aims and the Christendom Group, 1939–1945’, pp. 99–120 in Stephen Parker and Tom Lawson (eds.), God and War: The Church of England and Armed Conflict in the Twentieth Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 109–110. 24 Hants. RO, 15M84/F147/134: T.S. Eliot to Portsmouth, 7 June 1938. 25 Hants. RO, 15M84/F165/73-4: Eliot to Portsmouth, 28 July 1944. 26 Hants. RO, 15M84/F165/71: Portsmouth to Eliot, 29 July 1944. 27 Hants. RO, 15M84/F165/72: Jenks to Portsmouth, 8 August 1944; 15M84/F165/95: Portsmouth to Jenks, 10 August 1944. 28 Hants. RO, 15M84/F165/70: Jenks to Portsmouth, 12 August 1944. 29 Earl of Portsmouth, Preface to Carey McWilliams, Ill Fares the Land: Migrants and Migratory Labour in the United States (London: Faber and Faber, 1945), pp. 9–17. 30 CUL, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 17 October 1944; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 17 October 1944. 31 Hants. RO, 15M84/F197/161: Gardiner to KH, 24 September 1944. 32 Hants. RO, 15M84/F197/162: Gardiner to KH, 5 November 1944; CUL, F2/11: Gardiner to KH, 27 November 1944. 33 Hants. RO, 15M84/F197/184: ‘Opportunity on the Land’, ‘Notes to Contributors’ and essay on ‘Small Holdings’, all undated; 15M84/F197/171: Gardiner to KH, Memorandum regarding meeting proposed at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 26–27 January 1946, 20 November 1945; L.B. Powell (ed.), Country Living: A Practical Guide (East Grinstead: Land and Home Publications (undated, ca. 1946), pp. 7–29. 34 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 28 November 1944. 35 Daniel Geary, ‘Carey McWilliams and Antifascism, 1934–1943’, The Journal of American History, Vol. 90, No. 3 (December 2003), pp. 912–934. 36 Hants. RO, 15M84/F165/67: Eliot to Portsmouth, 8 December 1944. 37 FFA, RdlM 129: Jenks to de la Mare, 28 May 1945, 6 June 1945; de la Mare to Jenks, 31 May 1945, 8 June 1945. 38 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/228: Jenks to Saunders, 19 December 1944; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 25 January 1945. 39 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/228: Jenks to Saunders, 19 December 1944; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 30 December 1944, 25 January 1945. 40 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/228: Jenks to Saunders, 19 December 1944. 41 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 28 November 1944. 184 Through the tunnel

42 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 12 January 1945. 43 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 16 February 1945. 44 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 1 July 1945. 45 ‘A New Crop for North Devon’, The North Devon Journal, 26 October 1944, p. 7; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 12 April, 14 August 1945. 46 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/228: Jenks to Saunders, 19 December 1944. 47 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 6 February 1945. 48 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 23 April 1945. 49 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 6 February 1945. 50 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 1 July 1945. 51 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 1 July 1945. 52 The North Devon Journal, 31 May 1945, p. 4. 53 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 21 March 1945; O. Jenks to Coupland, 26 May 2009. 54 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 1 July 1945. 55 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 6 February 1945. 56 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 29 April 1945. 57 Ibid. 22 The Organic Movement

In the summer of 1945 Jenks would take his decisive step towards the heart of the organic movement, by being recruited to the Soil Association, then in formation.

‘This “organic” movement’ Whereas today the Soil Association represents a particular agricultural technology or an ‘alternative lifestyle’, for Jenks it was part of a movement to transform the social order. In his first known reference to ‘this “organic” movement’, from September 1944, he considered it to be ‘definitely N[ational] S[ocialist] in the broad cultural sense’, showing the continuity of his old and new positions. He continued: ‘It might play a very big part in the new grouping which is beginning to take shape. What we seem to need is a few broad principles common to us, monetary reformers, nation- alists, husbandmen and the Churches.’1 As has been shown, there was already a web of connections between the ERC, RRA, Church and Countryside, the Kinship and elements from the BUF, which he had done much to foster. Jenks’ use of the term ‘organic movement’ was itself unusual, as it was not commonly used in this sense until years afterwards.2 From around 1943 onwards he began to incorporate this discourse in his writing, although much of the substance had long been there as ‘sound’ husbandry. In an article of 1935, for example, entitled ‘Organic Fertilisation: The Backbone of Arable Farming’ and discussing the role of humus, was an implicit ecological understanding of farming.3 The next year he quoted Sir Albert Howard with approval.4 Now Jenks expanded from the ecological perspective he had drawn from The Rape of the Earth and began translating his ideas about sound husbandry into a comprehensive system of organic thought, ‘comprehensive’ because, just as good husbandry was indivisible from a sound society and economy, so the organic approach was more than an agricultural technology. 186 The organic movement

In February 1943, in ‘The Great Humus Controversy’, an article endorsed by Sir Albert himself, Jenks compared the Rothamsted model of farming as applied chemistry to that of ‘the organic school’.5 As he noted, the conservative countryside had been prejudiced against the former, but, he continued, the:

countryman’s instinct, in this as in many other matters is fundamentally sound. When he asserts that “muck is the mother of all things”, he is simply paraphrasing the biological truth that the return of organic wastes to the soil is an indispensable phase of the life-cycle – birth, life, death, decay, and life again.

Jenks located his discussion within the context of the worldwide decline in fertility, soil erosion and the threat of a post-war return of the free-trade system with all its concomitant dangers. In his paper to the 1943 Christendom summer school, Jenks gave a detailed ecological and moral critique of the orthodoxy that trade is ‘a “good” in itself’. Regarding the ecological consequences of liberal capitalism, Jenks noted how ‘the double pressure of low prices and usury has […] created millions of acres of new desert’. Contrary to the liberal claim that trade improved international relations, Jenks pointed to its essential immorality: ‘we imported far more real wealth than we exported; we were, therefore to some extent at least parasitical.’ Cheap imported food and raw materials cost their producers dear:

They were subsidised by the countries that shipped them at a substantial cost to their populations in taxes and higher prices, to say nothing of the intangible subsidy represented by the sweated producers and depleted soil-fertility. We were thus living at the expense of other nations.6

Jenks argued for self-sufficiency:

By reducing our claims upon the amount of soil-products available for export we shall be making more possible a better standard of living in countries where hunger and privation are everyday phenomena. We shall at the same time be making a contribution to the world problem of soil-erosion.7

A piece in Duncan’s journal from 1945 showed that Jenks’ organic perspective extended from technology to philosophy. Contrasting ‘scientific materialism’ with the ‘Organic School of thought’, he wrote of the latter:

By recognizing in Nature a vital entity which may be studied and cultivated but not (without grave risk) manipulated, it is showing itself to be not less but more scientific than those who have us envisage the universe as an automa- tism wholly comprehensive in mathematical terms. The organic movement 187

Jenks held that whereas ‘life is a whole’, science tended towards a fragmented and partial view of phenomena. Reminding us of the place of God in his worldview, he went on to explain that even the ‘Organic approach’, was not the complete answer. Jenks considered:

If Nature is superhuman, there must be a Supernatural. If Human knowledge is finite, there must be an Infinite. Thus the wheel approaches the completion of its revolution. The intellect returns toward the cloister whence it escaped […] in quest of the limitless realms of pure Reason. For behind the cloister is the Mystery, and the Mystery is the mother of the Myth even as the Myth is the very heart of civilization.8

Jenks’ interest in the relationship between farming, economics, food and health was also readily translatable into the discourse of the organic movement. For the latter, Sir Robert McCarrison, who had studied the Hunza people during his service as Direc- tor of Nutrition Research in India, was influential. In 1944, Jenks referred to him in the Free Church paper The British Weekly and was unsparing in his criticism of the diet proffered by liberal capitalism and its effects on bodily health and vitality. He endorsed a diet of unadulterated and unprocessed food, grown naturally in a healthy soil and eaten fresh. The keyword in the organic discourse here was ‘wholeness’: ‘We can often intensify Nature’s methods of sustaining life, but we cannot improve on them; organic wholeness cannot be achieved by the mechanical re-assembly of dead fragments’.9

The birth of the Soil Association In 1945, that which Jenks was already imagining as a ‘movement’, was about to coalesce. Since the 1930s, the chief intellectual leader of the organic approach was Sir Albert Howard. In organisational terms there were several significant groups: the relationship between agriculture, diet and health was prominent in the work of Drs Innes Pearse and G. Scott Williamson, who had opened the Pioneer Health Centre at Peckham in 1935, and Dr Lionel Picton, who was behind the ‘Medical Testament’ of the Cheshire Medical and Panel Committee in 1939 and, during the war, had started News Letter on Compost. As far as organic thinking in relation to farming and social order was concerned, the network which grew-up around Lymington, following the publication of Famine in England in 1938, was most important. The meetings hosted by him in 1938 and Lord Northbourne in 1939, brought together many of the leaders of the movement. After 1941, the Kinship extended this growing nexus. However, the primary agent of change came from the fringe of these developments, in the form of Lady Eve Balfour.10 Balfour, was the niece of a Conservative Prime Minister, Sir Arthur Balfour, and had worked in agriculture during the Great War, before setting up on her own Suffolk farm in 1919. In the 1930s, she had become an activist through the tithepayers movement. Balfour traced her organic conversion to reading Famine in Eng- land in 1938, after which she determined to use her farm, Haughley, to scientifically

Figure 22.1–3 The three men who Jenks credited in 1958 with doing most to shape his ‘present outlook’: Montague Fordham, H.J. Massingham and Laurence Easterbrook Source: Jeremy Fordham and Author The organic movement 189 test the claims of organic agriculture.11 Lymington wrote of what was by then known as the ‘Haughley experiment’, that it was the ‘indirect result’ of the meeting he hosted in 1938 to discuss the scientific evaluation of organic technique, although the route whereby Balfour, who was not there, was influenced, is unclear.12 Sir Albert Howard may have planted the idea, for he was present and Balfour met him around the same time she read Lymington’s book.13 In August 1943, she published The Living Soil with Faber and Faber, making the case for organic agriculture and outlining a ‘final and conclusive test’, preparations for which had begun at Haughley in 1939.14 Like Famine in England, Balfour’s book generated a great deal of interest and widened its author’s network, from which, together with the urging of Scott Williamson, came the idea of creating an organic association.15 From this point onwards, the organic movement would develop from a coterie, dominated by Tory ultras, fascists and fellow travellers, to something closer to the political mainstream, in which the Kinship and people like Jenks played a smaller part. This shift was apparent from the first meeting, chaired by Balfour on 12th June 1945, at the Alli- ance Hall in Westminster. A total of 110 invitations had resulted in 100 ‘active supporters’, of whom sixty attended the meeting to discuss a ‘proposed soil association’ or ‘Society of the Living Soil’. Among those listed were Portsmouth, Northbourne and several others of like mind and alliances, but they were now outnumbered.16 Jenks was probably either unknown to the organisers or not deemed worthy of an invitation. Despite this, developments following this meeting would transport him to the centre of the organic movement.

A pivot for the Soil Association Among the actions set in train was ‘an investigation into the immediate estab- lishment of a Journal’.17 A Journal sub-committee was appointed, including de la Mare, Beryl (‘Beb’) Hearnden – an old friend of Balfour, Laurence Easterbrook and Massingham. The importance given to this innovation was clear from the outset, the sub-committee pressing for a journal to serve as the ‘pivot around which the Soil Association turned’. The Founders’ Committee accepted this, asking that ‘a monthly journal of high quality be made the principal channel of propaganda for the Association’. To achieve this, they were prepared to pay for a ‘really good editor’, the selection of whom was left to the sub-committee.18 It was determined that an Editor and Assistant Editor be appointed, and, as a result, Jenks received ‘an urgent letter’ from Massingham who had been offered the editorship and wanted him to serve as his assistant, on a half-time basis.19 Although Massingham’s letter was sent around the end of August, Jenks may have already been informally approached on this matter not long after the Founders’ meeting in June, for, in July, he wrote cryptically to Stuckey of how ‘a lot depends upon developments which had better not be discussed yet, but which I think 190 The organic movement will interest you when the time comes’.20 At that time, he was in regular contact with de la Mare, who, together with Easterbrook, had ‘strongly recommended’ his appointment.21 Laurence F. Easterbrook (1893-1965) was – with Massingham and Fordham – the last of the three men whom Jenks credited with shaping his mature thinking.22 At this time, he was Agricultural Correspondent at the News Chronicle and had previously written for The Daily Telegraph and, during the war, been a Public Relations Officer for the Ministry of Agriculture. He was a spiritualist and a convert to the biodynamic ideas of Rudolf Steiner. Jenks would work closely with him hereon. Jenks travelled up with Sophie for the interview. He was recovering ‘after a long bout of asthma’ and ‘a sort of bronchial chill’. It had been ‘a struggle to get through’ and his words once again hint at depression, as he wrote of how ‘easily one’s mental balance is upset by physical exhaustion or derangement’. A few days later he wrote of how ‘[t]hese physical derangements […] leave one depressed and irritable – almost querulous in my case’.23 If Jorian considered himself to be recovering, Mabel Singleton found him still ‘very asthmatic’, and related how, the previous week, an attack had incapacitated him at work, and the headmaster had driven him and his bicycle back to Tawton House.24 Fortunately, this was no barrier and an offer was made, which Jenks grasped eagerly, writing that it offered a: ‘useful connection and good pay, though I fancy that enormous tact will be needed.’25 However, the terms of his engagement were quickly and significantly altered, as Massingham changed his mind and ‘declined very firmly as he would not think of working under the dictate of scientists’.26 It had been agreed that ‘any Editor would demand a free hand as to the contents and make up of the journal’, but this was not enough for Massingham.27 Jenks wrote at the end of September of how ‘H.J.M.’ had ‘already delivered an ultimatum, so I await events’.28 After lengthy discussion it was decided that the editor of the journal would be answerable to an Editorial Board, which would refer questions of policy to the proposed Council of the Association.29 Consequently, it was Jenks alone who was appointed, on a half-time basis and at £500 per annum, to work under the ‘general direction’ of the Secretary, Donald Wilson.30 Jenks elected to work part-time, so that he could continue his unpaid work for the RRA and Church and Countryside, as well as his writing.31 In the event, Wilson believed that the hours he gave to the Association were ‘practically full-time’.32

A meeting with Mosley As shown, Jenks viewed the Soil Association as part of a wider movement which included what remained of the BUF. In this new departure, he was continuing to pursue aims which, although they had evolved, could be traced back to the early 1930s or before. What changed most over time was the means to pursue The organic movement 191 those ends. In the early 1930s he had despaired of parliamentary politics; now, in the 1940s, pragmatism counselled a move away from open involvement with fascism. Throughout the war he had remained in contact with friends and acquaintances from the movement.33 He also did what he could to aid those who remained incarcerated under 18B: he visited Raven Thomson at Brixton, helped raise funds for detainees and, in March 1945, attended a fund-raising dinner organised by the 18B Detainees (British) Aid Fund.34 Neither did Jenks hide his loyalties: feeling that he had done nothing wrong, he was straightforward about his politics. At the end of 1945, David Peck wrote to Reckitt about his worries concerning the ‘revival of British fascism’; of Jenks, with whom he had worked closely for Church and Countryside, he commented: ‘he seems to me to be more of an unrepentant fascist than I once thought. I like him immensely and he is very right about many things, besides being an able person.’35 As the Rev Peck’s words suggest, although the BUF was no more, from around 1942 onwards, bodies composed of former Blackshirts had sprung up, including, after the war, a network of so-called ‘Mosley Book Clubs’. Although Mosley himself, following his release in November 1943, was not working to any definite plan to re-launch himself into party politics, there was a strong pull in that direction from his followers, to which he would eventually succumb. However, as part of the reconstruction of his political career, Jenks decided that, although his sympathies still lay with the fascist movement, he would no longer formally take part in it. In this he received Mosley’s blessing. Although Jenks had not been in direct contact with Mosley during the war, he had kept in touch with his progress via Major Harold de Laessoe who, together with his wife, had shared married quarters with the Mosleys at Holloway prison.36 Jenks knew the Major from the Agricultural Group at Huyton, visited him at Holloway and at his Norfolk smallholding.37 With the war in Europe over and most of the constraints on Mosley’s freedom lifted, Jenks was now able to see him in person. That the purpose of the visit included a discussion of future tactics is indicated by Jenks’ comments to Gardiner:

I shall be seeing OM shortly, I hope, and shall be interested to hear what he has to say. There is no point rushing things. We must get our goal clearly in view first, and it must be one which all honest men of spirit can accept.38

Besides any political plans, Mosley was setting up as a farmer; Jenks wrote of how he ‘seems to be in excellent form and very much the farmer: he has just reared 70 heifer-calves on the bucket with a dairy herd in view’. So, in August 1945, Jenks spent an ‘energetic day’ ‘inspecting’ Mosley’s new Wiltshire estate. Jenks’ impression was that his host intended to avoid public life for the time being, although he was thinking of writing a book.39 Concerning his own position vis-à-vis the fascist 192 The organic movement movement, he went away with Mosley’s approval. When, a few years later, his stance became a matter of contention, he commented:

My ‘deviation’ is of long standing, and although O.M. and I have not been in direct touch for some time, he has never given me reason to think that he objected to it, on the contrary when I had a talk with him soon after his release and told him of the line of country I was working, he seemed to approve.40

Notes 1 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 4 September 1944. 2 The first examples found yb Google Books date from the late 1940s and are from publications from the movement itself, the first examples of general use are from the 1970s (e.g. The Times, 28 March 1977, p. 14; The Guardian, 31 May 1978, p. 12). The coinage ‘organic agriculture’ or ‘organic farming’ has been credited to Lord Northbourne’s 1940 book Look to the Land, although it was used earlier in America (A.M. Scofield, ‘Organic Farming – The Origin of the Name’, Biological Agriculture & Horticulture, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1986, pp. 1–5; the periodical Organic Farming was launched in the United States in 1932. 3 YP, 14 December 1935, p. 17. 4 YP, 7 January 1936, p. 3. 5 ‘The Great Humus Controversy’, NEW, Vol. 22, No. 19 (25 February 1943), pp. 161–162; NEW, 11 March 1943, Vol. 22, No. 21, p. 183. 6 ‘British Agriculture and International Trade’, Christendom, Vol. 13, No. 51 (September 1943), pp. 81–86; later published as a CCC pamphlet. 7 Ibid. 8 ‘The Turning Wheel’, The Scythe, No. 23 (March 1945), pp. 17–19. 9 ‘Nutrition and Natural Principles’, The British Weekly, No. 3045, Vol. CXVII, 8 March 1945, p. 327. 10 Around 1941–1942, the Kinship created several lists of ‘Those Who Might Support A Post-War Rural Revival’, one of which allocated individuals to three categories for those deemed suitable for an ‘inner ring’, ‘second’ and ‘outer’; Balfour has relegated to the ‘outer’ (CUL, RG, F2/12; Portsmouth 15M84/F196). 11 Erin Gill, ‘Lady Eve Balfour and the British organic food and farming movement’, unpublished PhD thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2010, pp. 76–77, 80. 12 Portsmouth, A Knot of Roots, pp. 88–89; Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement, p. 88; Gill, ‘Lady Eve Balfour’, p. 80. 13 E. Balfour, ‘Why a Soil Association?’, pp. 90–95 in More Country Living. East Grinstead: Land and Home Publications (undated, ca. 1947), pp. 90–91. 14 E.B. Balfour, The Living Soil: evidence of the importance to human health of soil vitality, with special reference to post-war planning (no place: Soil Association, 2006; first published 1943), p. 159. 15 Michael Brander, Eve Balfour: The Founder of the Soil Association & Voice of the Organic Movement (Haddington: Gleneil Press, 2003), pp. 159–165; SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, ‘Report of the First Annual Meeting’, 31 October 1946. 16 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Founders’ Meeting, 12 June 1945. 17 Ibid. The organic movement 193

18 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the first meeting of the Founders’ Committee, 17 July 1945. 19 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 September 1945. 20 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 1 July 1945. 21 ‘In Appreciation’, p. 4. 22 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 10. 23 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 9 July 1945; 15 July 1945. 24 NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 31 August 1945. 25 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 September 1945. 26 SAA, ML/14: C.D. Wilson, ‘Difference of Opinion – Editorial Board and Council’, 6 July 1960. 27 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Second Meeting of the Founders’ Committee, 11 September 1945. 28 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 29 September 1945. 29 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Advisory Panel, 15 October 1945. 30 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Finance Sub-Committee, 16 November 1945. 31 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 10. 32 ‘In Appreciation’, p. 4. 33 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/228: Jenks to Saunders, 19 December 1944. 34 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 4 September 1944; E. Whittleton to Stuckey, Easter Monday (2 April 1945). 35 U. Sussex, 44/11/14: D. Peck to Reckitt, 8 December 1945. 36 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 18 December 1943; 21 January 1944; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, J1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 November 1943; 30 August 1944. 37 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C10/229: Jenks to Saunders, 23 December 1942; StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 3 February 1944. 38 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 15 July 1945. 39 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 14 August 1945; 1 September 1945. 40 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/18: Jenks to Saunders, 15 November 1949. 23 A Young Plant of Great Promise

When, a decade later, Jenks wrote about the origins of the organic movement, the Soil Association was a permanent presence, in which he had a pivotal position. However, his description of its beginnings as ‘a young plant of great promise set in the midst of a storm-ravaged landscape’ connoted a body which, although vigorous, was vulnerable, as it worked to build a viable organisation.1 Although the uncer- tainty about his position caused by Massingham’s stance on editorial independence had been resolved, in October 1945 Jenks was ‘yet only on the fringe’ of the movement.2 Nonetheless, with his other work for Church and Countryside, the ERC and the RRA, he was active over a broad front. He summed up his situation to Saunders:

I seem to have collected a lot of part-time jobs, none of them particularly lucrative, but all more or less interlocking. It sounds a lot, and certainly keeps me busy, but it will be some time yet before I can call myself “rehabilitated”.3

Thyme Dean Jenks’ hopes for a new family home had also been fulfilled and he had avoided the ‘town flat’ or ‘suburban villa’, the thought of which caused his ‘soul’ to ‘revolt’.4 Patrick McLaughlin had a large house named Thyme Dean, in Seaford, which had been commandeered during the war by the military and left ‘badly neglected’. Being responsible for a London parish, McLaughlin did not need the house, so offered it to Jenks. He and Sophie moved in at the end of September 1945 and Jenks wrote that it was ‘a charming spot’, with which they were ‘both delighted’. It was convenient for London, his destination for one or more days each week; he A young plant of great promise 195 having become what was once unthinkable: ‘one of the season-ticket gents’. The arrangement with McLaughlin was to get the house ‘back into shape’ as ‘improv- ing tenants’. There was plenty to do; by November Jenks was ‘attacking the garden every minute of daylight’. The only doubt was whether the clergyman might soon want his house back, however Jenks was doubtful that McLaughlin’s fragile health would hold up.5 Although his own health was not good at this time, it was no worse than expected, Jenks reporting his ‘usual autumn bronchial bout […] [which] thank heaven, is gradually removing itself’.6 The few hints that have survived suggest that his relationship with Sophie was still good, and that she was better in body and mind.7 In November, the couple visited Gardiner at Springhead, Sophie ‘was tired and rather anxious to get home’, so they left a little earlier than Jenks would have liked but he admitted that he was tired too, his workload having increased so much. On the way home, they ‘feasted on Springhead bread, eating more than half the loaf on the spot’.8

The Encounter Besides taming the garden of Thyme Dean, in November 1945, Jenks was in London for Church and Countryside’s ‘Encounter’. It was presided over by Lord Justice Sir Leslie Scott, who had chaired the wartime committee on rural land utilisation and was a discreet supporter of the organic movement. The meeting took the form of papers from leading protagonists of the ‘Husbandry’ school: Portsmouth, J.E. Hosking and Gardiner. Rejoinders came from the ‘official leaders of organized agriculture’, including senior NFU and trades union representatives. Fred Kitchen, a former farm labourer, known especially for his autobiography Brother to the Ox (1939), concluded proceedings, a happy choice, because after some combative exchanges, he restored ‘the atmosphere of good humour’.9 In retrospect, as Conford has suggested, it was a symbolic moment in the transformation of the countryside.10 At the time, Jenks felt that, overall, it was a success because it showed that the Council was a ‘live body’ and that the organic view ‘was not mere sentiment’.11 Time would show that the Encounter was Church and Countryside’s high point. Not long afterwards, Gardiner, whose idea it was, resigned from the executive committee, condemning the ‘whole tabernacle’ for ‘lacking in fundamental gravity, quality and realness’.12 Jenks tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to stay.13 Over the succeeding few years, the group was an occasional presence at agricultural shows and organised a few small conferences and public meetings, published pamphlets – including one on the Encounter edited by Jenks, and bul- letins and occasional papers.14 In June 1948, Jenks reported that Church and Countryside ‘keeps growing’, but admitted the inhibiting consequence of its poverty and his limited time and energy: ‘I have told them they must get a real secretary to undertake the organisation 196 A young plant of great promise work; it’s getting beyond me.’15 Around the same time he sought to hand on his office but, in the absence of any replacement, stayed some months more. As an expression of thanks from his colleagues for all he had done, Jenks was made one of Church and Countryside’s vice-presidents, an honour shared by Portsmouth, Howard, Massingham and Fordham.16 Jenks considered Church and Countryside to be ‘another case of a first-rate movement held back all along the line for lack of means’.17 Correspondence from the clergy involved to Geoffrey Fisher show the same picture, with the Archbishop offering little more than bland encouragement.18

The launch of Mother Earth and the Soil Association Back in November 1945, the Soil Association started coming to life.19 Jenks was initially contracted for a trial period of three months. He was charged with creating a 32-page booklet in the format of the proposed journal, to cost no more than £250 and be ready for the launch of the Association, planned for the early New Year.20 He felt that he was ‘on much more solid ground now with the Soil Asso- ciation’, although admitting that there had been some conflicts. Massingham told him that the Journal sub-committee had been ‘misled’ about their purpose; Jenks more calmly considered that his friend had assumed that they had a blank cheque to start a monthly journal and had then been disappointed to be ‘over-ruled’.21 The Advisory Board had rejected the desired ‘professionally produced monthly journal of high quality’, available for public sale, preferring, whilst the Association’s membership was growing, a journal of the ‘news letter type’.22 Summing up both the possibilities and the pitfalls of the future, Jenks wrote to Gardiner: ‘If the thing flops, there will be no great harm done; if it goes well, it looks like being a full-time job, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’23 He was now very busy: besides his Soil Association responsibilities and Church and Countryside work, he was writing regular articles for the Distributists’ Weekly Review, and editing and writing for the ERC’s Agricultural Bulletin. Jenks even had to turn down a request from Portsmouth to spend a few days ‘devilling up’ facts for a book Duncan was writing.24 By the next meeting of the Founders’ Committee, at the end of February 1946, Jenks had a draft journal ready, which was given ‘general approval’ but referred to a temporary editorial board. This comprised of Easterbrook and Dr G.E. Breen, along with Balfour and Scott Williamson. It was also resolved that Jenks’ appointment be continued, until the next meeting of the Founders’ Committee, or rather the Council of the Soil Association, as it would become.25 This further prolonged the provisional relationship that he was unhappy with.26 The journal was now called ‘Mother Earth’, a choice attributed to Scott Williamson.27 When the inaugural meeting was held at the end of May 1946, there were copies to take away and use in a campaign to recruit 500 members before A young plant of great promise 197 the annual general meeting in November. The minutes noted that ‘the meeting adjourned to a tea in which fresh-baked wholemeal bread figured prominently and then went home well laden with further samples of Mother Earth’.28 Given a brief to create a newsletter, Jenks stretched his resources and produced something of a high standard and which provided the pattern for Mother Earth from then on.29 With a cover in a rich earth brown, the new journal was sub-titled as an ‘introduction to the Soil Association’, and was indicative of Jenks’ skill in accommodating the different interests contained within the Association. Included were articles on the origins and purpose of the Association by Balfour, on ‘The Farmer and the Soil Association’ by Friend Sykes, writing on ‘Soil Deficiency and Disease’ from Dr Breen, and a summary of the seminal Cheshire doctors’ ‘Medical Testament’ of 1939, whilst Donald Wilson contributed ‘Parliamentary Notes’. Jenks contributed a piece called ‘The Prodigal’s Return’, about the global devastation of the soil wrought by liberal ideology and industrial technology.30 There was also content from New Zealand, Tasmania and the US, an intimation of the international direction that the Association’s campaigning would take. It was disclosed that the journal would absorb 50 per cent of each member’s subscription of thirty shillings per annum, the single largest claim on resources, which made clear the importance of Mother Earth and, therefore, its editor, to the ambitions of the Soil Association.31 Following on from the launch of the Soil Association, Jenks prepared a second introductory Mother Earth, which went to press around July 1946.32 At the same time, he was also working on a chapter for a book that Massingham was preparing for Collins, published the next year as The Small Farmer. Jenks’ chapter, ‘The Homestead Economy’, was a clear exposition of familiar themes, which he would expand on in his next book, From the Ground Up.33 Although Massingham may already have had Jenks in mind for the book, Portsmouth also suggested him, writing condescendingly that he could ‘do it very well, if not very excitingly’.34 The second edition of Mother Earth contained a report of the inaugural meeting, including reference to the resignation of Sir Albert Howard from the Association, who disagreed with scientists being made subordinate to the authority of Council. Balfour indicated that its founders wanted the Association to be ‘democratically- run’, governed by a council elected by the membership.35 The loss of the foremost pioneer of the organic method was a heavy blow. Jenks, although still only ‘temporary editor’, was already making a significant contribution to the message of the Association. In ‘Notes and News’ he powerfully connected the campaign of the organic movement to its larger political, economic and historical context. Although not on this occasion using the actual term, his preoccupation with ‘real’ economics over the abstractions of liberalism was prominent, as were the ideals of self-sufficiency and good husbandry. Bread rationing had recently been introduced in Britain for the first time, as a response to the critical shortages of food in Continental Europe. In Jenks’ eyes 198 A young plant of great promise politicians wanted to recreate the system of the past, when the conditions which had allowed it were gone:

The relationships between industry and agriculture, between power and fertility to which the Western world has been accustomed for over a century are in the process of being reversed. The issue now, to put it bluntly, is whether Technic Man will relearn the arts of husbandry, or elect to starve gradually amidst machinery of ever increasing ingenuity. For whatever else a machine can do, it cannot create food.36

His other connections were also in evidence, with a letter reprinted from The Sun- day Times from the Kinship, pressing for agricultural self-sufficiency, and a review by Stuckey of Friend Sykes’ Humus and the Farmer.37 Jenks also reviewed this book, in The New English Weekly, where he reported it to be evidence of ‘an ideological revolt that is now being conducted almost with the fervour of a religious revival’, and ‘a new phase in farming – and incidentally in human nutrition’.38 In September 1946, there was the first meeting of the provisional Council, to which Jenks was called. He attended almost all of its meetings from this moment on, in his capacity as an officer of the Association. It was reported that: ‘with very few exceptions both editions of Mother Earth had been well received by members and enquirers. Press reports were few, but some papers had given it short but valuable notices.’39

The first annual general meeting of the Soil Association At the first AGM, at the end of October 1946, it was announced that membership had reached 500, 300 of whom voted in the first election of the Council. From Jenks’ point of view, the ballot increased the number of those he was connected with at the head of the Association. The foundation Council had included de la Mare and Lord Sempill, who were returned to it; Jenks may not have known Sempill personally, but he was a leading light in the ERC and had been prominent in the Anglo–German Link before the war and sympathetic to the BUF.40 They were now joined by Portsmouth, Gardiner, Easterbrook and Massingham. This fulfilled Jenks’ hope that the Kinship and the Soil Association merge their efforts, and from this point onwards the former faded out.41 The future policy of the Associa- tion was also outlined at the meeting, in which Mother Earth was expected to play a major part, although a ‘permanent editorial staff’ was still an objective only to be achieved ‘in due course’.42 Eleven days later, at the first meeting of the Council, Balfour read out Jenks’ request that he reduce his work for the Association from three days a week to one, from November to January 1947. This was agreed, Wilson commenting that Jenks A young plant of great promise 199 already had ‘considerable’ material in proof for the third edition of Mother Earth and referring to the ‘valuable contacts […] both in agricultural and journalistic work’ that he had made.43 Jenks needed time to redraft his book. As has been mentioned, the first glimmerings of this project were in 1939, and during the war years it had been presented to a succession of publishers without success. Jenks would present a revised script, now entitled, ‘From the Ground Up’, in May 1947, as is discussed below.44

A question of titles When Council met in January 1947, Jenks was asked to leave the room whilst his position was discussed. The meeting agreed that he be offered a permanent position but that he would not be ‘Editor’, but ‘Assistant to the Editorial Board’. A pointedly subordinate title, decided on after ‘a long discussion’. The meeting also decided on the constitution of the Board, which was to include Drs Scott Williamson and Breen, Easterbrook, Massingham, de la Mare and Sir Peter Greenwell. The journal’s title was also confirmed, although it was admitted that ‘the title Mother Earth had been misinterpreted, but the weight of opinion was in favour of retaining the title’. Throughout its life there would be sparring over whether the name had romantic connotations, harmful to the scientific standing of the Association.45 When Balfour wrote to Jenks with details of his appointment he replied bluntly that the title ‘part-time assistant to the Editorial Board’ was ‘unsatisfactory, if not meaningless’. It did not specify the capacity in which he was to ‘assist’, and in any case the Editorial Board was not ‘a corporate body’. Jenks could appreciate the Council’s desire not to have an ‘Editor in the Fleet Street sense’, but, he argued:

I feel strongly that it would be far more consistent with my status, not only as a professional journalist, but as a representative of the Association in correspondence, interviews etc. if the term Editorial Secretary to the Association were to be substituted.

Balfour judged Jenks’ request to be ‘reasonable’ and consistent with the existing organisation of the Association, which had four other secretaries.46 Although no explanation was given, the original title may have reflected a politically motivated intention to prevent him having substantive power in the organisation or even the appearance of such. There was further evidence of Jenks ever-deepening involvement when, a little while later, he joined the Association’s panel of lecturers.47 The question of whether Mother Earth should be sold to the public was also brought up – like its name, this would be a perennial issue. Opinion divided over the propaganda benefits of this, versus the danger that, if it was sold publicly, people would no longer join to get the journal.48 200 A young plant of great promise

Editorial notes At the same meeting, Balfour also reported ‘several very appreciative letters’ about the spring number of Mother Earth.49 Now subtitled The Journal of the Soil Associa- tion, this third edition introduced another characteristic feature of the publication, Jenks’ ‘Editorial Notes’, in which he wrote on the internal life of the Association, on current affairs, and recent scientific developments. On this occasion, among other things, he mentioned the increasing demand for ‘whole-meal flour, stone-ground from organically grown wheat’ and scientific work on the consequences for health of the use of nitrogen trichloride to bleach flour: a report in The British Medical Journal associated the process with ‘hysteria’ in dogs.50 Jenks had found this information in The Medical Press, which that July carried a significant article authored by him and Dr T.H. Sanderson-Wells. In making an argument for organically grown food, eaten fresh, reference was made to the Soil Association’s ‘farm-scale investigations’ at Haughley. Also woven in was Jenks’ long-standing concern for national self-sufficiency, using organic methods to maximise production per acre.51

A long delayed detonation Spring 1947 was also the likely date for the detonation of a charge laid years earlier. Details are few but, by that May, Sophie Jenks had left her husband and children and returned to Australia.

Figure 23.1 Jorian, Sophie and Patsy Jenks, ca.1940s Source: Oliver Jenks A young plant of great promise 201

Figure 23.2 Jorian, Oliver and Patsy Jenks, Woolacombe, summer 1946 Source: Oliver Jenks

The year before had begun sadly, with the death of Mary Fullerton in February 1946. With this death, Sophie lost the woman who had supported her since her arrival from Australia in 1930; she wrote to her aunt Emily that ‘[s]he leaves many who loved her a big blank’.52 Life was also disrupted when they had to vacate McLaughlin’s house and move to another rented property in Seaford, at 13 Heathfield Road.53 Balanced against this was a family holiday for two weeks at Woolacombe.54 It was remembered as a happy moment and a photograph from the time shows Jenks and his two children picnicking on the beach. At the end of the year, they had to move again, to Claremont Road, in Seaford.55 Sophie may have left England ostensibly or originally to see her family and that was how her return was initially understood among her relatives. She stayed on the Chesters’ farm, now occupied by her brother Stan and his family. However, there were signs that all was not well when Stan discouraged visits because of the state of his sister’s ‘nerves’. Gradually she got better but, as time passed, it was admitted that Sophie was not going back to England.56 As to the origins of her breakdown, it was understood among her Australian relatives that the war was responsible, although they attributed it to the bombing.57 When Mabel Singleton had no further contact from Sophie after Mary’s death, she attributed the silence to a return of mental illness.58 When Singleton learned what Sophie had done, she concluded that her breakdown was a consequence of the government’s treatment of her husband during the war, believing that ‘she has not been normal mentally since Jorian was interned[,] she had a rotten time’.59 202 A young plant of great promise

Of what caused the recurrence of Sophie’s illness, there is no hint. Something had perhaps been broken during the war, and it may be that afterwards there was insufficient goodness left in the marriage for her. With the children away at school the house was empty except for Jenks, who was preoccupied with his work. When Oliver and Patsy were there, they were significantly distanced from her after the years they spent in their grandmother’s care. Years later Sophie resumed contact with her children, and was visited by her daughter, but never saw her husband or son again. He would petition for divorce, on the grounds of desertion, in 1951.60 When he drew up a new will 10 years later, he remembered his ex-wife with a bequest, which suggests that, whatever his feelings about her, they were not bitter.61

Pangbourne via Haughley With his wife gone, Jenks left Seaford to live at Walnut Tree Manor, part of the Soil Association’s Haughley outpost, used as a hostel and guesthouse.62 In the autumn of 1947, it was proposed that he move to New Bells Farm house, to share with the new Haughley farm manager.63 New Bells was Balfour’s home, who continued to live in its other half.64 Jenks missed having his own home and patch to cultivate and, by December was beginning to look for a small place of his own, where he hoped to ‘combine home food production with writing and editing’. He admitted that this was ‘not exactly an easy place to find’, and so it turned out.65 In early 1948, he instead moved to West View, on Horseshoe Road in Pangbourne, where he lodged with two spinsters, the daughters of a clergyman, the Misses Browning: Catherine and her younger sister Esther. Their large Victorian house had a garden where he could do ‘gardening for the pot’, his only hobby, and his study looked out over allotments.66 Although Jenks’ desire for his own place remained strong, he would live with the Brownings until 1959.

Notes 1 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 121. 2 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 October 1945. 3 U. Sheffield LSC, MS1199/C10/225: Jenks to Saunders, 8 January 1946. 4 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 September 1945. 5 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 October 1945; 22 November 1945; U. Sheffield LSC, MS1199/C10/225: Jenks to Saunders, 8 January 1946. 6 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 8 November 1945. 7 SLNSW, MS354, CY1123/437c: Singleton to Franklin, 17 October 1945; NLA, MS6608: Fullerton to Family, 31 August 1945; Fullerton to ‘All’, 10 January 1946. 8 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 17 November 1945. 9 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 17 November 1945. A young plant of great promise 203

10 Conford, The Development of the Organic Network, pp. 28–31. 11 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 17 November 1945. 12 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Gardiner to D. Peck, 11 March 1946. 13 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 14 February 1946; 6 March 1946; 14 May 1946; 20 May 1946. 14 Encounter: Agri-culture or Agri-industry. London: SPCK (undated, ca. 1946); CCC occasional papers published by SPCK included Rogationtide, 1945; Harvest, 1945; and Plough Sunday. 15 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 30 June 1948. 16 Hants. RO, 15M84/F266/27: Minutes of the CCC, 17 June 1948; F266/31: Minutes of the CCC, 17 November 1948. 17 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 October 1949. 18 LPL, Fisher, 54/299: Fisher to Richard Hanson, 21 June 1949; 54/304: Secretary of the CCC [Rev. T.W. Griffiths] to the Bishop of Ripon, 9 September 1949; 55/240: Donald Harris to Fisher, 27 May 1949. CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 26 September 1946, 30 June 1948; G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 October 1949. 19 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 17 November 1945. 20 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Finance Sub-Committee of the Soil Association, 16 November 1945. 21 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 22 November 1945. 22 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Advisory Panel, 15 October 1945. 23 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 22 November 1945. 24 Hants. RO, 15M84/F167/1: Portsmouth to Jenks, 13 December 1945. 25 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Fourth Meeting of the Founders’ Committee, 28 February 1946. 26 U. Sheffield LSC, MS1199/C10/225: Jenks to Saunders, 8 January 1946. 27 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Fourth Meeting of the Founders’ Committee, 28 February 1946; Eve Balfour, ‘Message from Lady Eve Balfour’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 5 (January 1959), p. 367. 28 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, ‘Our Inaugural Meeting’ (undated, ca. May 1946). 29 Mother Earth: Introduction to the Soil Association, Vol. 1, No. 1 (undated, ca. 1946). The same format was adopted when Mother Earth was brought back as a bi-annual publication in 2009. 30 Ibid., p. 28. 31 ‘Our Association’, Ibid. pp. 5–7. 32 E. Balfour, ‘A Personal Letter to New Members from the President’, Mother Earth: Further Introduction to the Soil Association, Vol. 1, No. 2 (undated, ca. 1946), p. 1. 33 Hants. RO, 15M84/F170/111: Massingham to Portsmouth, 17 April 1946; ‘The Homestead Economy’, pp. 149–195 in H.J. Massingham (ed.), The Small Farmer: A Survey by Various Hands (London: Collins, 1947). 34 Hants. RO, 15M84/F170/112: Portsmouth to Massingham, 24 April 1946. 35 ‘Our Inaugural Meeting’, Mother Earth: Further Introduction to the Soil Association, Vol. 1, No. 2 (undated, ca. 1946), p. 6. 36 ‘Notes and News’, ibid., p. 7. 37 Lord Northbourne et al., ‘How Much Are We Prepared to Put In’, ibid., p. 41 (reprinted from The Sunday Times of 14 July 1946); ibid., pp. 48–49. 38 ‘A Pioneer’s Notebook’, NEW, Vol. 29, No. 9 (13 June 1946), p. 90. 39 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 18 September 1946. 40 Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right, pp. 137, 308; KV2/1335: Special Branch Report on G. Dorman, 8 November 1938. Sempill was suspected of having passed intelligence to the Japanese before the war; both American and British secret intelligence agencies held bulky files on him. 204 A young plant of great promise

41 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 October 1945. 42 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, ‘Report of the First Annual Meeting’, 31 October 1946. 43 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 11 December 1946. 44 FFA, E7/8: Jenks to de la Mare, 19 May 1947. 45 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 14 January 1947. 46 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Appeals Committee, 5 March 1947. 47 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Ad Hoc Committee, 1 May 1947. 48 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 14 June 1947. 49 Ibid. 50 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 1, No. 3 (spring 1947), pp. 2–4. 51 T.H. Sanderson-Wells and Jorian Jenks, ‘The Revival of England’, The Medical Press, No. 5647 (30 July 1947), pp. 103–108. 52 SLNSW, MS364, 121: S. Jenks to E. Fullerton, 25 February 1946. 53 TNA: PRO KV2/891: Extract from intercepted letter, Jenks to O. Mosley, 5 August 1946. 54 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 22 August 1946. 55 BL, and 63278, Society of Authors Archive, Vol. LXXIII, Fol. 104: Standing order form for subscription, 8 January 1947. 56 M. Wilson to Coupland, 6 July 2009. 57 Ibid. 58 SLNSW, MS354, CY1123/505C: Singleton to Franklin, 18 November 1946. 59 SLNSW, MS354, CY1123: Singleton to Franklin, 28 November 1948; Singleton to Franklin, 10 February 1949. 60 Certificate of making Decree Nisi Absolute (Divorce). 61 The Will of Jorian E.F. Jenks, 10 February 1961; interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 62 FFA, E7/8: Jenks to de la Mare, 19 May 1947. 63 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Maye E. Bruce and C. Donald Wilson, ‘Report on Accommodation at Haughley’, 28 September 1947. 64 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Finance and Co-Coordinating Committee, 5 March 1948. 65 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C11/156: Jenks to Saunders, New Year’s Eve (1947). 66 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire; ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 6 (April 1959), pp. 473–477. 24 Resurrection of the RRA

As has been mentioned, Jenks considered the Soil Association as part of a larger organic movement. His own activities would stretch across this wider sphere: during the decade after the war, he played central parts in the Rural Reconstruction Asso- ciation and Church and Countryside; published his major book From the Ground Up (1950); and, 5 years later, was the main draughtsman of the RRA’s report Feeding the Fifty Million (1955). Besides being the man behind the voice of the Soil Associa- tion, Mother Earth, he founded and edited Rural Economy, the monthly journal of the RRA and ERC. He also remained involved with fascism through the creation of the Union Movement’s agricultural policy, None Need Starve (1952). For the sake of clarity, the overlapping nature of Jenks’ activities requires that, in this and the next four chapters, chronological order is departed from to disentangle the skeins of these interwoven activities. This reflects Jenks’ life at the time, when he admitted that – presumably for reasons of political necessity – he kept his ‘activities moving on more or less parallel lines’.1

* * *

Before starting to untangle the first of these threads, it should be recognised that whilst Jenks pursued his familiar themes with the same conviction, the political context was greatly altered. From the war onwards, the farmer had a market for all he could grow and received state support and supervision towards that end. This continued into peacetime, when harsh winters and the disruption of continental European agriculture raised the spectre of famine. At the same time, America’s abrupt ending of the Lend Lease agreement and Britain’s burden of war debt severely curtailed the country’s 206 Resurrection of the RRA ability to import food. The situation was such that bread rationing was introduced, a measure avoided even in the darkest days of the war. Jenks remained alert to any sign that the advocates of liberal economics would turn the clock back or for any hint of a repeat of the ‘great betrayal’ following the Great War, but the Agriculture Act of 1947 formalised the wartime compact, as – at least during his lifetime – the seal on a permanent settlement.

The resurrection of the RRA Although Jenks had been campaigning under the banner of the RRA since 1942, it was in many ways a flag of convenience, the organisation being dormant; theKinship considered that it existed: ‘largely to represent the views of Montague Fordham […] but it is doubtful whether the association has much vitality.’2 Its executive committee did not meet during the war and Jenks described it as ‘morib und for years’.3 He recognised that the Association was at a key juncture: Fordham was retiring and passing the direction of the Association to a committee. As with the other bodies he was involved with, Jenks saw this as a moment of opportunity – ‘this seems to me to be seed time’, he wrote – whilst having misgivings about the capacity of a committee to replace the charismatic Fordham.4 Over the months that followed Jenks quietly played the central role in bringing the RRA back to life. There was no obvious takeover, the apparently collective character of decision-making remained and he attained no grand position in the organisation. Nonetheless, through a series of carefully judged interventions, he became its chief policymaker, the inspiration behind its research and its public voice. The Executive Committee of the Association awoke in October 1945, when it agreed to hold a general meeting to consider its future in May 1946.5 At that gathering, the membership determined to carry on following Fordham’s retirement, believing that, despite the improved situation of farming, there was still a job to do.6 Besides Fordham, other members of the old guard retired around this time, among them Major Michael Beaumont, a former Tory MP, member of the Eng- lish Mistery and the RRA Chairman since 1932. Simultaneously, ‘new blood was infused into the committee’ and, importantly for Jenks, this included Stuckey, and Edward Holloway and Pierse Loftus of the Economic Reform Club; all of whom would be major players in the work ahead.7 Loftus, who took over the chairmanship from Beaumont, was, until 1945, Tory MP for Lowestoft; Jenks would be on cordial terms with him, later keeping a copy of the latter’s book The Conserva- tive Party and the Future (1912) at his bedside.8 Jenks’ own role was as Propaganda Secretary, a title soon changed to Press Secretary.9 He declined the offer of a sub- committee to assist him, which gave him freedom to work independently.10 The second half of 1946 was spent in reorganising the RRA and making plans for the future. Although the Executive Committee usually met every other month, the formulation of policy and plans and the conduct of day-to-day business fell to Resurrection of the RRA 207 a sub-committee.11 It was Jenks who suggested this – presumably to counteract the deadening tendency of leadership by committee.12 The sub-committee was to have included Fordham, but he withdrew at the outset, leaving Jenks – aided by Stuckey – at the helm, with the RRA Treasurer, Tristram Hart and Dr Ashley Cooper as ballast.13 From that moment on Fordham took little part in the life of the RRA and was to die 2 years later, killed – either by accident or design – on a railway level crossing, as had his daughter, Theodora, in 1930.14 Whilst much of what the RRA had been campaigning for between the wars had been achieved, through the sub-committee Jenks sought to channel current tendencies with a new manifesto, the ‘Full Development of Agriculture’, which is discussed below. Also recommended was more propaganda aimed at the Trades Unions and Labour in parliament and a greater effort to advertise the RRA to interested parties, especially the NFU.15 The new relationship between the RRA and ERC was also thrashed out.16 At the end of September 1946, the Executive Committee agreed to the proposals.17 Although membership numbers had recovered to the pre-war level, the RRA had ambitions to grow: it was argued that a ‘small, though influential, membership’ was an insufficient ‘foundation to enable the Committee to sustain its work, let alone to increase it’.18 Time would show that membership was actually at its height in the 1946–1948 period. At the beginning of 1948, it had 173 individual members. However, although they were few, many of the names were notable. Among the group’s five MPs were ‘Bob’ Boothby and R.A. Butler. Butler would later be connected to the Fordham family through marriage and other family members belonged to the RRA, including one of Fordham’s sons, the psychoanalyst Dr Michael Fordham. Titled members included RRA president Lord O’Hagan and Sir George Stapledon, the last being among the most influential agricultural scientists of the day.19 As discussed earlier, despite his involvement with the Labour Party, Fordham had also been friendly to the BUF. In the post-war period this connection was strengthened by Jenks, who brought in Stuckey, Saunders and other former comrades.20 Jenks also persuaded Gardiner to join and from the Kinship also came Massingham, Northbourne and Portsmouth.21 Many of these men were also involved with the Soil Association, in which RRA members Drs Lionel Picton and Shewell-Cooper were also prominent figures.

Closer union with the ERC When closer collaboration with the ERC was approved at the RRA’s May 1946 meeting, a relationship that Fordham had been fostering since the 1930s was formalised.22 Jenks had been pursuing this since the middle of the war and it cemented an alliance vital for the survival of the RRA and provided him with a platform from which to publicise his opinions. 208 Resurrection of the RRA

As has been described, Jenks had been active in the Agricultural Section of the Club since its inception in 1942. A regular contributor of the Section’s Agricul- tural Bulletin, after spring 1945 he took over agricultural affairs in the Club. This was facilitated by an alliance with the new president of the ERC, the engineer and industrialist Sir Tracey Gavin Jones. Jenks thought highly of Jones, describing him as ‘a man of much larger vision than the average monetary crank’.23 He created a ‘comprehensive agricultural policy’ for Jones, who agreed that Jenks should take over the ‘agricultural section and make it one of their main planks’. However, although involved with editing the Agricultural Bulletin from April 1945, Sir Tracey did not immediately deliver him full control, apparently due to ‘difficulty in clearing away old wood’.24 It was not until October that George Dawson resigned, allowing Jenks to step into his place as editor and secretary of the Agricultural Section.25

Rural economy At this point, the Agricultural Bulletin consisted of a few mimeographed pages, but Jenks had big ambitions for it, writing to Stuckey of his plans ‘for a brightly written periodical that can effectively link up agriculture with national economy’.26 These plans were at the centre of the increasingly connected relationship between the ERC and the RRA. In August 1946, it was agreed that the journal would be called Rural Economy, a choice consonant with Jenks’ long-standing aim ‘to instil a little elementary economy into the ERC’, to balance its preoccupation with currency panaceas.27 The same meeting decided that the journal would be circulated to the RRA. A crucial difference here was that, unlike with Mother Earth, Jenks would have a free hand, the appointment of an editorial committee being rejected.28 In this way, Jenks secured two closely overlapping ends: a medium for the RRA and a vehicle for his own opinions.

The full development of agriculture Jenks also took over as the author of the RRA’s publications. Among several early productions was his pamphlet British Agriculture Between the Wars, a historical survey which made much of the Association’s own influence, especially on the Wheat Act (1932). Most importantly, the association required a replacement for its manifesto The Revival of Agriculture, dating from 1936. At the beginning of 1947, Jenks published The Case for the Full Development of Agriculture.29 The pamphlet was typical Jenks, concisely and lucidly deploying a rigorously constructed argument. Its account of the historical origins of British farming’s ills and vision for its future offered nothing ‘new’, since by this point Jenks had largely attained a mature view of the problem and its solution, instead being the condensa- tion of his writing since the 1930s. One area where he may have trimmed a little Resurrection of the RRA 209 was in his ecological stance, but even here nothing was incompatible with his work for the Soil Association. He was unequivocally in favour of mixed farming and against the industrial model, and made soil erosion a central factor in the pamphlet’s economic argument. However, circumstances had changed, the putative ‘age of plenty’ imagined between the wars had been exchanged for austerity at home and ‘famine or near-famine conditions’ abroad. This was the natural starting point for Jenks, who reminded his reader of ‘how slender is the margin of food security’. But, at the same time, he had to admit that the relationship between farming and the state had been transformed since 1939 and that this new compact was being sealed by the new Agriculture Act.30 Long-desired reforms were now substantially underway, leaving him warning against the hypothetical danger of another betrayal. Jenks also spent much ink on encouraging the government to further develop its existing initiatives. These were things worth saying, but unlikely to hook many new supporters. At the same time that Jenks sought the quotidian objects of reform, he did not abandon his ultimate objective of a new society. Although stated with restraint, behind every policy in the pamphlet was his vision of a society premised on a different philosophy and values:

the land can do much more than provide us with good food; it can provide creative occupations and positive health, real homes, satisfactions and culture; for to understand and be in harmony with natural processes is to study the meaning of life.31

Whilst this vision appealed to that fragment of opinion, which he had once addressed through Action, The Weekly Review and The New English Weekly, and to whom he would continue to speak, through Mother Earth and Rural Economy, it had less hold on those whose horizon was set lower. Although the Soil Association co- operated to produce a ‘steady flow of sales’ of the pamphlet, and a ‘congratulatory letter’ came from Lord Justice Scott, it was a failure. Generally ignored by the press, by July 1947, only 42 copies had been sold.32

The ‘Food Production Campaign’ Back in September 1945, Jenks’ view was that the ‘right function for the RRA is research’.33 His first steps in this direction were through the ERC, where he belonged to the Research Committee.34 In January 1947, it issued a ‘Memorandum on Food Production’, which was submitted to the Ministers of Agriculture and Food. Although Jenks was not named as the author, its content was similar to The Case for the Full Development of Agriculture; the same month the ERC recorded its ‘debt […] for his many valuable contributions’.35 210 Resurrection of the RRA

Among the ‘economic arguments’ for the policy, were those tailored to the prevailing circumstances and the imagined ideological inclinations of a Labour government. The nation’s financial circumstances could be improved by reducing expenditure of precious foreign currency on imported food and, by lessening the imperative to balance imports with exported manufactured goods, it would ‘ease the industrial situation’ and allow a greater satisfaction of demand at home. Fur- thermore, it would ‘facilitate economic planning’ and bring food ‘more completely under social control’.36 In this respect, the memorandum overestimated the socialist inclinations of the Attlee government. The memorandum was part of what became known as the ‘Food Production Campaign’, and was circulated to leading agriculturalists, parliamentarians and the press. In spring 1947, a meeting featuring Portsmouth and Boothby was held, but despite considerable publicity, attendance was only around 160.37 Unfortunately the meeting was held a week after a similar event organised by the Royal Agri- cultural Society of England.38 At the end of the ERC’s meeting, a resolution was unanimously passed, urging the government to pursue the ‘full development of agriculture as the main source of food for our people’.39 The resolution was then sent to MPs, peers and others, including 1,000 contacts of the Soil Association. A further meeting at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, featured Christopher Hollis MP, with Jenks also speaking.40 Inasmuch that it engaged constructively with the nation’s catastrophic economic problems, the memorandum was a well-timed intervention. However, as Jenks would have readily admitted, farming was a business that required long-term planning. The memorandum and The Case for the Full Development of Agriculture offered policies to change deeply rooted patterns, whereas the contemporary crisis required rapid measures to save the country from a financial collapse. The government’s management of the crisis included reductions in food imports, but because home farming inevitably could not instantly take up the slack, cuts in people’s food rations were unavoidable. At the same time, as a long-term solution, Jenks’ proposals were overshadowed by the government’s own Agriculture Act, regarded as a rare bright spot in the gloom of Labour’s ‘annus horrendous’.41 At the end of the summer of 1947, Jenks reviewed the campaign and the ERC’s long-standing opposition to the loan agreement with America and the Bretton Woods agreement. These last policies, he argued, had imposed ‘penal conditions’ on the country. The only ‘workable alternative’ was in The Case for the Full Develop- ment of Agriculture, the essence of which was that ‘those who cannot eat except on tick are well advised to cultivate their own garden’. Jenks’ view was that although the ERC/RRA campaign had failed, it had been vindicated. The dearly bought US loan had not bridged the gap during which Britain’s wartime economy was reconstructed for peacetime, instead 2 years had been lost during which the full potential of agriculture might have been developed. Only now, with the national diet reduced to meagre levels and the country on the brink of economic disaster, Resurrection of the RRA 211 had the government begun to work earnestly to expand agricultural production. For Jenks it was too little and he believed that once Britain’s farmers had helped the country out of this crisis they would be once more ‘betrayed’.42 This was not the end of Jenks’ interest in this topic, which would be pursued by a major project of the RRA Research Committee, discussed in a chapter below.

The 1947 Revolution Jenks initially regarded the Agriculture Bill with suspicion, but, by the time it became law in autumn 1947, he accepted that it was:

revolutionary. This is the first occasion in modern times (war emergencies excepted) in which British farmers have been officially urged to produce as much food as they can and have been given […] a definite financial incentive to do so.

This was, Jenks considered, the ‘moment at which to congratulate such bodies as the Rural Reconstruction Association and the Economic Reform Club’.43 There was a hollowness to Jenks’ words. With its work apparently done, the rural restoration movement lost much of its drive; what had always been a rocky road would also be steeply uphill from now on. Furthermore, in Mother Earth he identified the sinister threat within this ‘victory’:

There is a grave danger that, as the food situation becomes more acute, demands will go forth, not for the development of agriculture on natural lines by the rebuilding of soil fertility and rural population, but for the maximum quantitative output in the shortest possible time and at the lowest possible cost.

For this reason the work of the Soil Association was, he believed ‘only just beginning’.44 Jenks’ words were prophetic: the new settlement would save agriculture as an industry whilst largely destroying the art of husbandry and the rural society that he loved.

Notes 1 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/27: Jenks to Saunders, 20 April 1950. 2 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Minutes of a KH meeting held on 18 January 1942 at Merton College, Oxford. 3 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 September 1945. 4 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 23 April 1945; 1 July 1945. 5 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 September 1945; 14 May 1946. 6 Agricultural Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 11 (June 1946), p. 5. 7 StP: RRA, draft Annual Report for 1946, January 1947. 212 Resurrection of the RRA

8 Loftus Papers: Jenks to P. Loftus, 6 October 1955. 9 StP: H. Whitford-Hawkey, memorandum preparatory to Executive Committee meeting of 2 July 1946, 25 June 1946; Minutes of the Operating Sub-Committee, 9 August 1946. 10 StP: Report of the Operating Sub-Committee, 21 September 1946. 11 StP: RRA, draft Annual Report for 1946, January 1947. 12 StP: M. Fordham, ‘Notes on the Agenda for the next Executive Meeting’ (undated, ca. July 1946). 13 StP: Minutes of the General Executive Committee, 26 July 1946. 14 Jeremy Fordham, ‘Introduction’ to M. Fordham, ‘My Nine Lives’, unpublished memoir, p. 1. 15 StP: Minutes of the Operating Sub-Committee, 9 August 1946. 16 StP: Minutes of the Operating Sub-Committee, 23 August 1946; Report of the Operating Sub-Committee, 21 September 1946. 17 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 27 September 1946. 18 StP: RRA, draft Annual Report for 1946, January 1947. 19 StP: RRA, ‘List of Members, as at January 1st 1948’. 20 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 1 July 1945. 21 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner 31 January 1946. 22 StP: RRA, draft Annual Report for 1946, January 1947. 23 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 23 April 1945, 1 July 1945. 24 StP: E. Whittleton to Stuckey, Easter Monday (2 April 1945); CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 23 April 1945. 25 ‘Agricultural Section’, Agricultural Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 3 (October 1945), p. 4. 26 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 8 November 1945. 27 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 7 February 1946; StP: Minutes of the Operating Sub-Committee, 23 August 1946. 28 StP: Report of the Operating Sub-Committee, 21 September 1946. 29 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 September 1945; StP: RRA, draft Annual Report for 1946, January 1947. 30 The Case for the Full Development of Agriculture, pp. 5, 7–8. 31 Ibid., p. 38. 32 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 7 January 1947; Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 July 1947. 33 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 September 1945. 34 ‘Research Committee Notes’, MB, Vol. 11, No. 7 (November 1946), p. 11. 35 MB, Vol. 11, No. 10 (February 1947), pp. 1–2. 36 ‘Food Production’, MB, Vol. 11, No. 10 (February 1947), pp. 3–7. 37 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 7 May 1947; E.A. H[olloway], ‘Brief Report on Food Production Campaign’, MB, Vol. 12, No. 2 (May 1947). 38 The Times, 10 April 1947. 39 ‘Food Production Campaign’, MB, Vol. 12, No. 3 (June 1947), p. 3. 40 ‘Food Production Campaign’, MB, Vol. 12, No. 5 (September 1947), pp. 2–4. 41 K.O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 303–306, 330–358. 42 ‘Justification is Not Enough’, MB, Vol. 12, No. 5 (September 1947), pp. 2–4. 43 ‘Notes from the Land: The Big Bill’, WR, Vol. 44, No. 18 (23 January 1947), p. 231; ‘Whose Charter?’ RE, Vol. 14, No. 6 (January 1947), pp. 1–2; ‘Notes from the Land: Where Stands Agriculture’, WR, Vol. 45, No. 11 (12 June 1947) pp. 139–140; ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 1, No. 4, (autumn 1947), pp. 2–5. 44 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 1, No. 4, (autumn 1947), pp. 2–5. 25 The Soil Association

By the autumn of 1947, the Soil Association’s membership had reached 1096, which, although double the figure a year before, disappointed its founders. Always in the background was the question of money: there were permanent staff to pay for and the Haughley experiment was costly.1 The experiment was also contentious, with tensions between Friend Sykes, who argued that the ‘economic factor must necessarily dominate the whole experiment’, and those who argued for scientific investigation of the ‘biological and health aspect of compost farming’ regardless of cost.2 As far as Jenks’ work was concerned, by the AGM in October, Mother Earth for autumn 1947 had been published and the next number was in press.3 Due to paper shortages the journal had not appeared more frequently, henceforth it would be quarterly.4 In March 1948, Council discussed whether Lionel Picton’s News Letter on Compost should be taken over. Although Balfour was in favour, Jenks explained that the Editorial Board was concerned that it would compete with Mother Earth and the idea was dropped.5

The Peroni affair At the same meeting a more controversial matter was raised, with Wilson request- ing the expulsion of Douglas Peroni, a Soil Association member since April 1947, because of his involvement with the ‘British Union Movement’. Wilson had been informed of Peroni’s appointment as the leader of the newly founded Hampstead branch of Union Movement (UM), Mosley’s post-war organisation, launched in February 1948. Peroni’s Soil Association membership had been sponsored by Jenks, and his address was for the ‘Hampstead Literary Society’, one of the so-called ‘Mosley Book Clubs’, which preceded UM.6 214 The Soil Association

Peroni’s membership and the ‘difficulties of dismissing a member on political grounds’ from an explicitly ‘non-party organisation’ had been discussed before the meeting, when it was agreed that it ‘was very desirable to eliminate any persons taking an active part in undermining democracy’.7 When Council considered the matter, it decided that, as it was a ‘non-political organisation’, nothing should be done unless there was evidence that the ‘name of the Soil Association’ had been ‘misused’.8 Although Sempill may have opposed the resolution, it was rejected despite Portsmouth and Gardiner being absent. The next day, Jenks outlined the incident to Raven Thomson:

Most interesting incident at the Soil Association Council meeting yesterday. Move to chuck out Douglas Peroni on grounds that both Fascists and Com- munists were “seeking to destroy democracy”. Motion heavily defeated after much illuminating back-chat. No open support, but many people evidently waiting to see what happens; meanwhile Left getting increasingly rabid on the grounds that “We’ve just won a war to destroy Fascism”.9

Jenks was still active in the fascist movement around this time: in 1947 he gave talks to Peroni’s ‘Hampstead Literary Society’ and the similar ‘Epping and District Book Club’, and wrote for the Mosley News Letter.10 He had been in regular contact with Raven Thomson, who was central to the emergence of Union Movement and was close enough to Mosley to phone him at his flat, lend him books, and for the two men to discuss meeting up.11 However, although Wilson maintained a dim view of Jenks’ politics hereafter, which was apparent in the memorial paragraph he contributed to Mother Earth after his colleague’s death, the controversy over Peroni was to be an isolated incident. Exhaustive research has found no evidence that Jenks’ politics had any negative influence on the life and reputation of the Soil Association during his lifetime. Dr Norman Burman, a member of the Association since its beginning, who worked closely with Jenks, and was later Chairman of Council, was unaware of the political past of his friend and colleague.12 Although Jenks’ career in the Soil Association has been represented as proof of some special affinity between the organic movement and the misleadingly named ‘far right’, there is no evidence that the Association was either ‘percolated’ by fascists or that they joined it in significant numbers. The membership lists of the Association, besides indicating that Peroni soon left, show only a handful of former BUF or current UM adherents.13 Besides the Stuckeys, there were Robert Gordon-Canning, John Dowty, John Gent, Rex Tremlett and Wilfred ‘Bill’ Risdon, who represented the London Provincial Anti-Vivisection Society. Prince Henry of Pless, although not known to have been a BUF member, was a former 18B internee. Rafe Temple- Cotton joined later and Ronald Creasy is also believed to have been an ‘early member’.14 Of these ten sometime adherents, six had rejected Mosley’s fascism. The Soil Association 215

There could be an elegant fit between aspects of fascism and organic thought – Jenks’ life shows that – but similar affinities existed to the socialism within the Labour movement and to the Tory tradition within Conservatism. The Soil Association, as with the organic movement generally, has always attracted adherents from all parts of the political spectrum, in fact anyone concerned about the fate of their planet.

A voice for the Soil Association Despite it only being a few years after the end of the war, the Peroni incident passed with no apparent repercussions for Jenks. Instead he became ever more influential within, and vital to, the Soil Association. Although the heart of his work was the production of Mother Earth, he also wrote in other journals about the Association, gave lectures, and was heard on the BBC. In 1951, he was twice on the BBC General Overseas Service’s programme ‘Land and Livestock’.15 He was also commissioned to write several series of agricultural scripts for the General Overseas and Latin American services of the BBC.16 ‘Land and Livestock’ was presented by Jenks’ cousin, Richard S. Wessel, a connection that may have helped to open doors, although the Soil Association received good access to the airwaves in these years, with Balfour being featured frequently.17 As editor of Mother Earth, Jenks was in a pivotal position in the Soil Associa- tion. Internally, the journal connected together a membership which was not only scattered across Britain and the whole world but differed widely in its interests and concerns. Externally, it was the main public voice of the Association, the most important body in the organic movement. However, the outward facing, propagandist function of the journal was complicated by it not being on general sale, a sharply contested decision. Supporters of the policy were concerned that members would leave if they could get the journal for less than their annual subscription.18 There was also contention over commercial advertising in the journal. The Editorial Committee was in favour, but Council was divided and it was suggested that the question be raised at the AGM or that the membership be polled.19 This response was ‘deplored’ by Scott Williamson of the Editorial Board, as advertising revenues were essential to financing a monthly journal.20 In the ensuing discussion, the Finance and Co-ordinating Committee assented to monthly publication, but only if it could be done at no extra cost.21 It is not clear that Jenks favoured going monthly, which would have greatly increased his workload when he was also producing Rural Economy every month. It is possible that he did not, as internal minutes refer to ‘Mr Jenks’ alternative suggestion’. Although this was not detailed, it is probable that his position was closer to that adopted as a temporary expedient, pending a final decision on monthly publication and advertising, which was to increase the overall length and number of illustrated pages of the quarterly.22 It may be that Jenks’ preferred option included the latter innovations, 216 The Soil Association plus advertising, which was the eventual outcome.23 Given his considerable work to develop Rural Economy into a national publication it is likely that he would have wanted Mother Earth to be sold publicly. In this last respect Jenks would be disappointed, but advertising came to Mother Earth after 1951, which it was hoped would offset production costs and which, he explained, absorbed a ‘considerable portion of the Association’s income’.24 By that time, scruples about advertising had been rudely thrust aside by financial exigency. However, the primary source of the Soil Association’s problems was not Mother Earth, but the Haughley experiment. The previous September, options for survival were discussed, including major cuts to expenditure and the ending of the experiment.25 It was indicative of the severity of the crisis, that the Association President, Lord Teviot, resigned over the matter.26 A little later Jenks touched on the problem on the BBC: membership was ‘now approaching 3,000’, but finance, was, he admitted, a ‘problem’. Although the Soil Association had received official recognition as a scientific body, it remained dependent on the generosity of its members and friends.27 He alluded to these uncertain circumstances in a letter written to Gardiner on New Year’s Day, 1951: ‘we face, not only an uncertain but also a chilly, New Year. Yes, we shall survive; but in what form, remains to be seen.’28 Given his financial dependence on the Association, Jenks was remarkably sanguine, but then he was accustomed to working – and living – on the edge.

‘Editorial Notes’ As we have seen, the existence of the Editorial Board meant that Jenks was not a free agent in the production of Mother Earth, nonetheless he had significant scope for action. Except in cases of controversy, the Board restricted itself to policy and left editorial decisions to him. By the end of 1948, it had been agreed that, because it met too infrequently to manage the production of Mother Earth, only ‘material of doubtful merit’ would be routinely circulated in typescript. It was also agreed that Jenks could call on the expertise of Massingham for help with the arrangement of material, and de la Mare with format.29 When someone shows themselves to be capable, busy people will be content to let them get on with it. Whatever freedom these circumstances offered, Jenks used fully, but always with discretion. The journal and internal Soil Association documents show him as responsive to the will of Council and sensitive to the opinions of his readership. His impression was that ‘members are as a whole satisfied’ with the journal although it was criticised aggressively by Council member Colonel Robert Henriques, who suggested that its partisan stance was alienating to scientists.30 Jenks ruminated on the challenges of his job:

The longer I edit Mother Earth, the more aware am I made of the extraordinary diversity of interests within the Association. So far we have not come The Soil Association 217

under heavy fire (except from the Henriques) but the problem of catering for everyone, from the strictly scientific to the purely romantic, crops up at every occasion.31

Each quarter, Jenks contributed one or more book reviews, signed articles and summaries of the work of others, but it was his ‘Editorial Notes’ which were most important. There he discussed current public debates, government policy and agricultural practice and illuminated their consequences on nature and human health. There he preached ecology: having himself achieved a coherent understanding of how humanity as society and economy interconnected systemically with the foundation of its existence in nature. Jenks explained this for others. It was literally essential work, as these were the facts ultimately determining everything else. He not only returned human society to its true place in relationship to nature but also offered a deep explanation of why things were as they were. His grounding in rural economy and his long career as a social critic allowed him to connect human mal- treatment of the rest of nature to the systems of liberal economics and industrialism and to communicate these insights to his readers. He also wrote on the philosophy of the organic movement, connecting ecology to the fundamental aspects of human existence and to that point where philosophy met theology. Jenks was also a campaigner: whilst Mother Earth was apolitical, in the sense of the immediate struggle between the parties, when government or parliament touched on the concerns of the Soil Association, it did not stand aloof. For example, the disastrous Tanganyika ‘groundnuts scheme’ of the Attlee government was frequently cited to exemplify the consequences of ignoring ecology.32 Similarly, the contributions of sympathetic peers in the House of Lords were highlighted. Jenks’ work was also political inasmuch that his writing had a sense of urgency; the spectre of famine and social collapse continued to haunt his words. In the 1940s, times were lean at home and worse abroad, which provided a powerful backing for his arguments for national self-sufficiency and the spring 1949 number took the theme of ‘self-sufficiency’; as he explained to the Editorial Board, it ‘had become an issue of first rate national importance’.33 Although the situation eased in the 1950s, Jenks continued to remind his readers of the dangers faced by a world whose population was rapidly increasing whilst the area of land available for cultivation continually decreased in its area and fertility.

Meeting the farmer halfway Mixed in with the great truths in Jenks’ message, there was much on the practical questions of growing ecologically. Despite their immediate connection to the soil, farmers were – and have continued to be – a minority in the Association’s membership. Naturally Jenks took a special interest in moulding the Soil Association’s stance towards them, proposing its policy of ‘Meeting the Farmer Halfway’, which 218 The Soil Association tempered organic zeal according to the financial and practical conditions of the working farmer. Jenks asked Balfour for an article on converting a farm to all-organic methods, which appeared in spring 1949.34 In the autumn of 1950, believing that the Soil Association would increasingly come to the attention of farmers who were not yet organic and that it was necessary to ‘formulate a realistic attitude’ to their likely questions, he submitted a memorandum to a joint meeting of Council and the Advisory Panel. A policy would, he suggested, be useful to those who represented the Association publicly. Although he did not say so, it would also be a way of steering the Association towards a practical stance in a contentious area. As he wrote in summary:

Can we, in short, work out and agree upon a set of commonsense principles covering the transitional period from ‘muck-plus-fertilisers’ to ‘all-organic’, and so go halfway to meet the farmer who feels that we have got hold of the right ideas but can’t see how to apply them to his own farm?35

After ‘considerable discussion and formulation of suitable answers’ to Jenks’ questions by the Panel, it was agreed that they should be published in Mother Earth.36 It is difficult to evaluate the consequences of this on the Soil Association’s relationship with farmers, but its publication was undoubtedly an important step.37 That this matter was close to Jenks’ heart was apparent, when, in October 1953, he sought to remove misconceptions about the Association’s attitude. The first of these was that it was a ‘league of militant purists’ who insisted on 100 per cent organic farming as the minimum for membership. This was not so, as it was accepted that practical and financial limitations might make some use of chemicals expedient. The second was that, conversely, a ‘more or less’ approach to organic farming could be accept- able. ‘What matters’, Jenks wrote, ‘is not the quantity of artificials that a farmer is using at any given moment, but the direction in which he is travelling.’ Jenks wrote of the necessity for the Association ‘to concentrate on the positive aspects of the organic movement – not just “farming without chemicals”, but “farming with the full resources of nature”’.38

International links Given the ‘globalisation’ of today’s world, it is notable that the early Soil Association was much more international than it is now: in 1954, a quarter of its 4,000 members were overseas.39 Although this was centred on what had been the British Empire, it was not limited to it. America was also important and Balfour undertook lengthy tours there; visits were also made within Europe and links forged to organic groups in those countries. This internationalism was apparent in Mother Earth, which had a regular feature entitled ‘News from Overseas’. The Soil Association 219

The Association’s international network included links with Germany, which Gardiner took a leading role in fostering, being a German speaker with contacts in that country before the war. In 1948, at Gardiner’s behest, Jenks had sent Rural Economy to an unspecified ‘Göttingen group’ and by that time the Soil Association was also in friendly contact with Dr Wolfgang von Schuh of the Arbeitskreis für Landwirtschaft.40 By 1949, it was also linked to Gesellschaft Boden und Gesundheit, represented by founder Wolfgang von Haller in the membership of the Soil Association.41 During the war, von Haller had served in an official capacity in agriculture in German occupied territories and was sufficiently close and sympathetic to Dr Walther Darré, the former Reich Minister of Food and Agricul- ture and Reich Peasant Leader, for the two men to collaborate post-war.42 Darré had been found guilty at Nuremberg and was sentenced to imprisonment, being released in October 1950. Not long afterward, von Haller was in contact, discussing how they might work together; concerning the programme of Gesellschaft Boden und Gesundheit, he stated that it dealt ‘with the whole biological question in terms of “blood and soil”(‘Blut und Boden’) as far as practically possible’.43 In July 1951, Jenks passed the address of Dr Hermann Reischle to Gardiner, having heard from a ‘friend’ – probably Robert Row of UM – that the German wanted to contact him.44 Gardiner wrote to him and then to Darré, to whom he sent books including Jenks’ From The Ground Up, commending it as ‘a very clear overview of the organic Weltanschauung in England’.45 Reischle was Darré’s long- time aide in the Reichsnährstand.46 Both Germans were also members of the SS and, before the war, held senior positions in the SS Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt, which Darré headed. Gardiner had met him during a tour he conducted with Viscount Lymington in 1939.47 Despite all this, Gardiner was never straightforwardly a ‘Nazi’ himself, as a recent collection of essays has discussed at length.48 Jenks’ assessment reflected this: ‘He’s a tremendous chap […] partly of German (or rather Baltic) descent, and a bit too “romantic” for some people though he’s done a tremendous amount of good. Not a Nazi, but not entirely unsympathetic.’49 Although Gardiner was content to work with Jenks and met Mosley several times, he had deemed the BUF to be ‘very shallow’.50 Then, at the beginning of November 1951, Gardiner asked Jenks to send some back numbers of Mother Earth and Rural Economy to Reischle and Darré. Jenks also composed a note giving a brief account of the history and remit of the two publications and the aims of the Soil Association.51 Neither of the Germans replied, but some weeks later Gardiner indicated that the recipients approved of the journals; Jenks put them on the mailing list for Rural Economy.52 On the basis of Anna Bramwell’s account on this not especially significant episode, Graham Macklin has asserted that ‘during the early 1950s Jenks ideas were particularly influential upon the thought of […] Walther Darré’, who became ‘committed to establishing a German version of the Soil Association, based on his correspondence with Jenks’.53 This passage, with its suggestion of a mature 220 The Soil Association epistolary relationship, is presumably the inspiration for statements elsewhere that Jenks ‘met’ Darré, that he was his ‘acquaintance’, ‘colleague’, and even ‘friend’. Jenks’ opinion of the German and the extent of their relationship was stated plainly to Gardiner:

I am glad to hear that Darré is still alive and active, as I feared he had gone under in that orgy of self-righteous revenge just after the war. I never met him personally, though I heard a good deal of him indirectly.54

As to any supposed intellectual influence, it is unlikely that Jenks’ brief letter or even the contents of Rural Economy and From the Ground Up taught the German much. Darré had been planning to create a German equivalent of the Soil Association from at least a year beforehand and had favoured organic farming since 1934.55 Of all the Germans in contact with the Soil Association at this time, it was Elisabeth von Barsewisch, of Gesellschaft Boden und Gesundheit, with whom Jenks was most involved. She was the wife of a former general of the Luftwaffe, Karl Henning von Barsewisch. During the 1920s, she was a conservative, being a member of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP); in the Third Reich she had belonged to various official bodies and was an author of several articles related to race in Nazi publications.56 Having had an Australian governess as a child, she spoke English, and, after the war, translated several British organic classics into German.57 Jenks published her regularly in Mother Earth and she helped him with his last book.58 Von Barsewisch also acted as a guide and interpreter and, in the summer of 1953, she accompanied a British party on a ten-day visit to Germany and Holland, to which the Soil Association had been invited by the Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association. Jenks represented the Soil Association and provided a detailed account in Mother Earth.59 His visit was unlikely to have included meeting Darré, who was now mortally ill and, in any case, the 900-mile itinerary went nowhere near Bavaria; the German died in early September.60 Jenks was impressed by the organic farms he visited and German agriculture generally. His farmer’s eye noted how ‘[a]ll the crops looked well, with no thin places or wasted corners and very few weeds’, and he detected only a single rabbit during the trip. Besides the farms, the tourists stopped at Schloss Hamborn, a Rudolf Steiner school, and the Bio-Dynamic Research Institute at Griesheim.61 Jenks’ German hosts were from the Forschungsring für biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise. Under the Third Reich, biodynamic growers were not without their enemies in the Nazi hierarchy, but had powerful supporters, most especially Rudolf Hess and Darré. Following Hess’ flight to England in 1941, they were officially banned, but even afterwards the SS operated commercial biodynamic enterprises.62 Among Jenks’ German hosts was Immanuel Voegele, who had been on a wartime list of suspect anthroposophists prepared by the SS Sicherheitsdienst (SD).63 The Soil Association 221

J.I. Rodale Jenks praised the hospitality received throughout the trip as ‘cordial and unbounded’.64 A couple of months later, in September 1953, he hosted J.I. Rodale, founder of the US Soil Association, who had crossed the Atlantic to meet with Balfour. Jenks took him to Friend Sykes’ farm and they shared a lunch that he had brought: ‘whole wheat bread made of organically-grown wheat, some cheese and raw vegetables.’ Later at Pangbourne, they discussed composting arrangements and the garden, which, Rodale reported, was ‘practically all vegetables’.65 In view of Jenks’ political history, it should be noted that Rodale was a Jew, born Yakov Cohen, as was Dove-Myer Robinson, President of the Soil and Health Association of New Zealand, with whom Jenks was also in contact.66 Although it is not known whether Jenks knew these details, he was aware of this fact in regard to Edward Hyams. In 1952, Hyams – who was also a socialist – collaborated with Massingham on a book, and stayed at his home. This meant that Jenks, as he related:

heard a good deal about them. He is apparently more likeable than she, though both are Jews. He is described as being rather professor-like, but highly knowledgeable as well as cultured, and a keen vigneron; his vineyard is said to be the largest in England. […] Naturally the question of Trojan Horses came up, and will, I think, be kept in mind. But there has always been a little trickle of intelligent people from the Left over the agrarian issue.67

This guarded stance did not prevent Jenks being drawn into collaboration with Hyams. Massingham, who was mortally ill, died in August 1952, before the book was finished. He asked Jenks to read the manuscript of his four chapters and suggest amendments, and, just a few days before his end, they discussed the book. Jenks wrote afterwards: ‘when I saw him, [he was] still in good heart, though terribly emaciated. The end, though horribly painful, was also merciful in its swiftness.’68 When the Prophecy of Famine (1953) came out the next year, Hyams acknowledged Jenks’ contribution in the foreword.69 For his part, Jenks praised Hyams’ Soil and Civilisation, one of a number of positive endorsements.70

Into the tenth year In October 1954, Jenks was beginning his tenth year with the Soil Association. Its path remained rocky. Membership growth continued to disappoint, having only just passed 4,000, still too few to support the Association’s ambitions, especially whilst the Haughley experiment continued.71 The work of the Council was dominated by efforts to keep afloat. In 1951, when there was no option but to sell Haughley and end the experiment, the Earl of Strafford saved the day.72 It was then decided to create an independent body, the Ecological Research Foundation, to take the 222 The Soil Association project over.73 In autumn 1953, backers for the ERF had not been found and a resolution to end the experiment was to be tabled at the AGM. Although it was increasingly difficult to cover core costs, it was agreed that finance for Mother Earth would not be curtailed and that its value needed to be emphasised at the meeting.74 In the event, the resolution was dropped when an anonymous donor funded the next 3 years of the experiment.75 Although it could be viewed as a millstone around the Association’s neck, Haughley was so central to its mission that it is unlikely that it would have prospered without it. Jenks was always a loyal supporter of the project, but privately ambivalent, remarking to Rolf Gardiner:

My own feelings about Haughley are mixed. If it has to be given up completely, the loss will, I think be keenly felt by Lady Eve, who has put so much of herself into the place. Moreover, the idea of the farm-scale comparison seems basically sound; it is only since the project has become overloaded with costly details in an attempt to satisfy scientific criteria (which seems to me largely inapplicable) that the financial and administrative burden has become so overwhelming.76

Although time would show that a crisis had only been postponed, at the end of 1954 it was possible for Jenks to look forward with hope and, with Mother Earth concluding its eighth volume, he took the opportunity to write about the journal. As he saw it, its functions included to ‘reflect the outlook of the Association as a whole’ and to make the organic case to the unconverted, to record, review and inform, to ‘publish the views and experiences of members’, to ‘provide opportunities for frank discussion’, and to ‘give every member, […] as many items as possible that will directly interest and help them’. To do this for ‘a highly diver- sified membership’ was, he related, ‘a formidable yet fascinating task’ and naturally, not everyone was happy all the time. ‘[A]ssorted comments […] trickle in’, he recorded, ‘“too highbrow”, “too unscientific”, “not enough practical advice”, “too propagandist”, “too stodgy”, “too much to read”, “doesn’t appear often enough” and so on.’ Among the future challenges that Jenks anticipated, was to balance the interests of home readers with the ‘increasingly international character of the association’. Another important issue was the ‘publication of scientific data’, although, he stressed, Mother Earth had never aimed to be a scientific publication in the strict sense. He acknowledged occasional criticism from those who deemed its tone as ‘too “partisan”’ but was unrepentant. Jenks noted that, because he lacked the usual measures of ‘circulation figures and bookstall returns’ he had to rely on reader reactions, which he invited: ‘Brickbats or bouquets – both are welcome.’77 Jenks’ comments were the public face of a larger process of review, chaired by Gordon England. Suggestions that the format of the journal be changed were aired The Soil Association 223 but found no support. Mother Earth’s purpose was also chewed over, as to whether it catered for novices, whilst neglecting ‘practical men in need of practical guidance’. Its role in relation to farmers – Jenks’ especial concern – was also pointed out: ‘Were we clear what we stood for, 100% organic farming, or swaying many farmers on the road towards organic farming?’ It was agreed that the editorial notes could ‘from time to time be used for restating the case for beginners’, which supported Jenks’ general approach. Regarding its size and periodicity, the goal of a monthly publication had slipped out of sight. It was the perennial issue of its name which generated most heat, but even here the status quo prevailed:

In spite of a vocal minority which regards Mother Earth as sentimental or worse, the overwhelming majority wish to retain Mother Earth and feel it does represent what we stand for, as Dr Pearse said ‘our whole sustenance comes from the earth’.

The general response was an approving one: ‘When members were challenged as to whether they were satisfied with the quality of material presented hitherto, members stated that they were satisfied.’ England regretted that the meeting ‘had not provided more opposition, although discussion had been lively’.78 This positive assessment was replicated among the membership, for at the beginning of 1955, Jenks reported that none of the letters elicited by his last editorial expressed ‘any desire for a major change’.79

Notes 1 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 17 September 1947. 2 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Panel of Experts, 9 September 1947. 3 Mother Earth for winter 1947–48 was the first edition to be numbered, retrospectively making the four previous numbers, including the two introductory editions of 1946, volume one of the series. 4 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the Soil Association, 29 October 1947. 5 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 11 March 1948 and 9 October 1948. 6 The Soil Association Ltd, List of Members Arranged in Counties As at 1st May 1947 (Haughley, Suffolk: Soil Association, undated; 1947), p. 9. 7 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Finance and Co-Coordinating Committee, 5 March 1948. 8 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 11 March 1948. 9 TNA: PRO, KV2/906: Extract from intercepted letter, Jenks to Raven Thomson, 12 March 1948. 10 TNA: PRO, KV2/906: Intelligence report, 29 March 1947; ‘Jorian Jenks at Leytonstone’, Unity, July 1947; ‘The Great Food Gamble’, Mosley News Letter, No. 9 (August 1947), pp. 4–6. 11 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C15/368: Jenks to Saunders, 8 January 1946; U. Sheffield LSC, MS1199/C10/225: Jenks to Saunders, 8 January 1946; TNA: PRO, KV2/890: 224 The Soil Association

Extract from intercepted letter, Raven Thomson to Jenks, 10 March 1946; TNA: PRO, KV2/890: ‘Result of telephone check on Victoria 3800 Ext. 976 Sir Oswald Mosley’s Flat, entry for 1 April 1946; KV2/891: Extract from intercepted letter, Jenks to Mosley, 5 August 1946. 12 Interview with N. Burman, 6 April 2013. 13 The Soil Association Ltd, Supplementary List of Members Arranged in Counties From 1st May to 31st August 1947 (Haughley, Suffolk: Soil Association, undated); The Soil Association Ltd, List of Members Arranged in Counties As at 31st March, 1950 (Haughley, Suffolk: Soil Association, undated). 14 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Notes from Visits to Members on Eve Balfour’s Devon Tour of May 1956; A. Daniel to Coupland, 29 October 2010; R. Creasy to J. Warburton, 14 November 1990. 15 BBC Written Archives Centre: Land and Livestock’, Transmitted 1 and 4 February 1951; ‘Land and Livestock’, Transmitted 12 and 15 April 1951. 16 FFA, RdlM 306: Publicity Questionnaire. 17 Louise North to Coupland, 11 May 2010; Gill, Lady Eve Balfour, pp. 105–107, 120–123. 18 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Finance and Co-Coordinating Committee, 14 July 1948. 19 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 9 October 1948; The Minutes of the Editorial Board Meeting, 14 December 1948. 20 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, The Minutes of the Editorial Board Meeting, 14 December 1948. 21 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Finance and Co-ordinating Committee, 24 January 1949. 22 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Meeting of the Finance and Co-ordinating Committee, 26 August 1949. 23 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, Minutes of the Council, 15 October 1949. 24 ‘Between Ourselves’, ME, Vol. 5, No. 1 (winter 1950–1951), p. 2. 25 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Finance and Co-ordinating Committee, 12 September 1950; Minutes of the Council, 23 September 1950. 26 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 13 December 1950. 27 BBC Written Archives Centre: ‘Land and Livestock’, Transmitted 1 and 4 February 1951. 28 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 1 January 1951. 29 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, The Minutes of the Editorial Board Meeting, 14 December 1948. 30 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 9 July 1951; SAA ML14: Minutes of the Council, 11 April 1951. 31 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 1 February 1952. 32 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 2, No.2 (spring 1948), pp. 2–9. 33 SAA, ML/1: Founders’ Meetings, The Minutes of the Editorial Board Meeting, 14 December 1948. 34 Ibid. 35 SAA, ML/14: Jorian Jenks, ‘Questions for the Panel’ (undated, ca. September 1950). 36 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the joint Meeting of the Council and Panel, 24 September 1950; Minutes of the Panel, 21 February 1951. 37 ‘Meeting the Farmer Halfway: Some suggestions for the Transitional Period’, ME, Vol. 5, No. 2 (spring 1951), pp. 27–29. 38 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 7, No. 4 (October 1953), pp. 3–6. 39 Ibid. 40 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 30 June 1948; ‘Overseas News’, ME, Vol. 2, No. 3 (summer 1948), pp. 9–12. The Soil Association 225

41 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 29 September 1949; ‘Overseas News’, ME, Vol. 3, No. 4 (autumn 1949), pp. 8–14; The Soil Association, List of Members: Arranged in Counties As at 31st March, 1950, p. 60. 42 Brunhilde Bross-Burkhardt, ‘Wolfgang von Haller and “Gesellschaft Boden und Gesundheit e.V.”’, unpublished notes (2014); P. Staudenmaier to Coupland, 4 and 5 August 2014; Bundesarchiv N1094/I. 43 Bundesarchiv N1094/I: W. von Haller to W. Darré, 1 January 1951. 44 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 9 July 1951; U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/54: Jenks to Saunders, 2 November 1951. 45 Bundesarchiv, N1094/I: Gardiner to H. Reischle, 23 September 1951, 28 October 1951; Gardiner to Darré, 5 October 1951. 46 Anna Bramwell, Blood and Soil: Richard Walter Darré and Hitler’s ‘Green Party’ (Bourne End, Buckinghamshire: Kensal Press, 1985), p. 136. 47 Matthew Jefferies, ‘Rolf Gardiner and German Naturism’, pp. 47–64, in Matthew Jefferies and Mike Tyldesley (eds.) Rolf Gardiner: Folk, Nature and Culture in Interwar Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 62–63. 48 Jefferies and Tyldesley (eds.) Rolf Gardiner. 49 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/16: Jenks to Saunders, 21 October 1949. 50 Letter to Otto Bene of 1934, cited in undated (1940s) memorandum entitled ‘Rolf Gardiner’ (TNA: PRO KV2/2245). 51 Bundesarchiv, N1094/I: Jenks to Darré, 1 November 1951. 52 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 18 December 1951. 53 Anna Bramwell, ‘Ricardo Walther Darré – Was this Man “Father of the Greens”’, History Today, Vol. 34, No. 9 (September 1984), p. 7–13; Bramwell, Blood and Soil, p. 196; Graham Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism after 1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), p. 65. 54 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/: Jenks to Gardiner, 23 October 1951. 55 Bramwell, Blood and Soil, pp. 171, 195. 56 Anke Sawahn, Die Frauenlobby vom Land: Die Landfrauenbewegung in Deutschland und ihre Funktionärinnen, 1898 bis 1948 (Frankfurt am Main: DLG-Verlags-GmbH, 2009). 57 Bernhard von Barsewisch to Coupland, 5 April 2014. 58 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 11. 59 ‘Frau E. Von Barsewisch’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April 1962), p. 129; ‘Some Impressions of German and Dutch Farming’, ME, Vol. 7, No. 4 (October 1953), pp. 57–67. 60 Bramwell, Blood and Soil, p. 197. 61 ‘Some Impressions of German and Dutch Farming’, pp. 57–67. 62 W. Lockeretz, Organic Farming: An International History (Wallingford: CABI Publishing, 2007), pp. 22–24; Peter Staudenmaier, ‘Organic Farming in Nazi Germany: The Politics of Biodynamic Agriculture, 1933–1945’, Environmental History, Vol. 18 (April 2013), pp. 383–411. 63 P. Staudenmaier to Coupland, 4 and 5 August 2014. 64 ‘Some Impressions of German and Dutch Farming’, pp. 57–67. 65 Rodale, An Organic Trip to England, pp. 19–32. 66 Auckland City Libraries, Dove-Meyer Robinson Papers, MZMS 822/100.13 (B): Jenks to D.M. Robinson, 1 August 1948; Robinson to Jenks, 12 August 1948. 67 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 15 April 1952. 68 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/2: Jenks to Gardiner, 24 August 1952. 69 H.J. Massingham and Edward Hyams, Prophecy of Famine: A Warning and the Remedy (London: Thames and Hudson, 1953), p. 9. 70 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 1952), pp. 2–6; ‘Prophecy of Famine’, RE, Vol. 21, No. 3 (April 1953), p. 5; ‘Vineyards of England’, RE, Vol. 2, No. 10 (December, 1953), p. 15; The Stuff that Man’s Made Of, p. 230. 226 The Soil Association

71 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 13 October 1954. 72 ME, Vol. 5, No. 4 (October 1951), p. 5. 73 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 6, No. 3 (July 1952), pp. 3–7. 74 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 14 October 1953, Draft Budget, 1954. 75 The donor was Gladys Yule, the heir of Sir David Yule, who at the time of his death in 1928 was one of the richest men in the country; SAA, ML/1: Minutes of the Annual General Meeting, 2 December 1952; SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 14 October 1953; The Memorandum from the Grand Council of the ERF (undated, ca. January 1956); The Soil Association, List of Members, arranged in Counties, as at 31 March 1950, p. 16. 76 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 21 August 1951. 77 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 8, No. 4 (October 1954), pp. 3–6. 78 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 13 October 1954. 79 ME, Vol. 8, No. 4 (January 1955), p. 14. 26 From the Ground Up

It was in autumn 1948 when Jenks finally broke through with his most important book, From the Ground Up, when he signed to Hollis and Carter.1,2 The book then had the working title ‘Real Economy’, which would survive as the subtitle of the published book; ‘From the Ground Up’ had first appeared over a review of his in The New English Weekly in 1942 and encapsulated his entire outlook and philosophy.3 As has been mentioned, this project had been in Jenks’ mind since just before the war and, from 1942 onwards, he had endured the Sisyphean ordeal of writing and re-writing the book as it was rejected by a succession of publishers. In May 1947, having reworked it again, Jenks had tried Faber and Faber once more, this time with the support and encouragement of Balfour, who wrote to de la Mare:

I was very much impressed with it. I think it is a grand job of work; says something which has never been said quite in that way before and badly needs saying, and he has said it in a way which is both striking and easy reading. It is a book which most certainly ought to be published, and I feel that it is right up your street, at any rate, I have insisted that he gives you the opportunity to read it before going anywhere else.4

Despite this strong backing, Jenks received another courteous rejection from de la Mare, who reported that there had been ‘debate after debate’ about the book, but that ‘the “noes”’ had ‘won the day’. With continuing production problems, due to shortages, and a publisher’s list ‘already overburdened’, anything that the editorial committee were ‘not unanimous about’ was being declined.5 Jenks was soothed by de la Mare’s offer to help place the book elsewhere.6 Longmans was suggested 228 From the Ground Up as a possibility, but although no evidence survives, Jenks probably received a rejection there too.7 In November 1947, he submitted it to George Allen and Unwin, describing it as ‘a thesis, not in economics but in real economy, and more particularly social economy’ and giving as referees Massingham, Portsmouth, de la Mare and Balfour.8 The reader at the publishers delivered the thumbs down; although finding ‘much that is wise and well-expressed’, they criticised the structure of the work, and doubted that there was a market for another book from the ‘“back-to- manure-and-the-compost-heap” disciples’.9 In the year between this last refusal and the book’s acceptance in autumn 1948 it is probable that Jenks received further rejections. Hollis and Carter were supposed to put the book into ‘production almost at once’ and Jenks spent much time re-writing whole sections – a ‘job I undertook much too light-heartedly’, he confessed – but it would be another year before it appeared, at the beginning of 1950.10 The monetary benefits to him were modest, the publishers allowing ten per cent on sales and an advance of £75.11 Like most books from the organic movement, From the Ground Up was not a big seller and the original edition was not reprinted, although it did also appear in the World Affairs Book Club in the same year; in 1952, there would also be a paperback edition, published by the RRA. Neither was a book with Hollis and Carter quite the breakthrough into the mainstream that Jenks might have wished for. The publishers served as a vehicle for the Roman Catholic Conservative MP Christopher Hollis and others of like mind. Although not a BUF member, Hollis had been sympathetic and was a member of the ERC.12 In 1947, Jenks had shared a platform with him at an ERC meeting in Brighton.13

From the Ground Up Although circumstances conspired to prevent its appearance until 1950, From the Ground Up: An Outline of Real Economy should be seen as part of the wartime literature of reconstruction, one of many books which began with a critique of the Britain of the interwar period and imagined a new social order for peacetime. It was a profound work, the distillate of a lifetime of reflection and a mature expression of Jenks’ thought, containing a comprehensive view on economy, social order and culture, past, present and possible future. At The centre of the book’s argument was a contrast between the ‘organic’ and ‘inorganic’. The first two parts of From the Ground Up related the transition from an organic social order which was agrarian in its basis and relations of production, to that of the inorganic ‘Mechanical age’, formed by industrialism, finance capitalism and the ideology of liberalism. The heyday of the former had been during the medieval period, the latter from the 1860s to 1914. The quality of both personal and social life reflected these social orders. In the first, life was predominantly ‘real’ and organic because people consumed the products of their own labour and had From the Ground Up 229 social relations which were familial, personal and direct. In the second, the means of existence was obtained through the complex division of labour of industrial production and the mechanisms of commerce and finance capitalism; its social relations were with remote actors of the state and business, and were abstract and formal; its culture was dyed deeply with mechanistic assumptions, quantitative standards and acquisitive money values. The emblematic social actors of the organic society were the ‘husbandman’ and the ‘house-wife’, in the inorganic, each person was simultaneously reified as an ‘individual’ and submerged in mass society as a ‘worker’, ‘consumer’ and ‘voter’. Jenks’ important addition to this sound but otherwise unexceptional social history was to complete it by elucidating its ecological dimension – that nature, and so agriculture, was the foundation of the entire social edifice and that no element of human society was removed from ecological cause and effect. In the third part of the book, the author turned to liberal society in decline, from the time of the Great War onwards. The open frontiers and ever expanding markets which had allowed rapid global economic growth during the nineteenth century had by then reached their limits; no corner of the globe was left untouched, industrial production had spread worldwide, glutting its markets with goods. After 1914, economic competition between the major powers increasingly found expression in war. Jenks also drew significantly on James Burnham’s recent book The Managerial Revolution (1941), which argued that the key actors of the capitalist economy were no longer the proprietors and entrepreneurs of the bourgeoisie but the managers and technocrats who controlled massive enterprises whose ownership was increasingly social. As with many commentators of the time, Jenks drew from these observations the conclusion that the age of liberalism was over and that society was inevitably being drawn towards the planned mass society of ‘socialism’. In this way, the disorder, misery and crises of liberalism were being superseded – under both capitalist and socialist systems – by an increasingly collectivised social order where power was being concentrated and centralised in the hands of technocratic elites who were progressively extending their control over all aspects of human life. The implications of this for the quality of human life were obvious, but it was the social ecology which presented the most ineluctable argument for change. Not only had all significant virgin lands been brought into production but because agriculture was increasingly taking the form of exploitation rather than husbandry, using the inorganic methods of industrialism and finance capitalism, the earth’s store of fertility – society’s only real wealth or ‘capital’ – was declining rapidly, resulting in widespread soil erosion and the loss of the basis of human existence all over the globe. With human population set to grow rapidly, a Malthusian crisis was the likely end of this history. In the fourth and final section, Jenks set out the alternative. Rather than legis- late for the entire world, he prescribed for his own country alone, arguing that by its example, Britain – as a nation living self-sufficiently rather than parasitically – could give leadership internationally. The road away from crisis and collapse, whilst 230 From the Ground Up following a gradual route, led to a social revolution, a return to the organic, to the real. With the natural basis of all human life recognised and respected, husbandry would replace ‘agri-industry’, with a much greater proportion of the population engaged in cultivation. There would be a general shift, with the village undergo- ing a renaissance, not only by the return of population from the cities, but by the dispersal of manufacturing into rural areas. The centralising tendency of modernity would be reversed generally, with its abstract political, social and economic relationships to big business, state and mass parties increasingly replaced by the personal and direct connections of organic communities. As so often, Jenks’ meditation on the quality of life was a leitmotiv within From the Ground Up, and in this possible future the alienating consequence of liberal modernity would be transcended by men and women returned to creative, meaningful labour and authentic human relationships, and to abundant health – both mental and physical. In summary, no longer would the quality of organic human life or nature as a whole be sacrificed to serve the demands of inorganic industrial production and finance capitalism. As with all of his writing, Jenks did not merely state these things as desirable ideals, but provided close argument of their why and how.

Reception The book benefited from an introduction from H.J. Massingham. Besides their work together for the Soil Association, Jenks had become a regular visitor to the older man’s home.14 In his introduction, Massingham cast Jenks as a ‘yeoman’, a survivor of the old social order, finally ‘forced out of his vocation by the economic blizzard of the nineteen thirties’, a romanticised version of the facts that left Jenks uncomfortable, remarking to Saunders: ‘I do wish Massingham hadn’t described me as a ‘yeoman farmer’. I was never more than a tenant and not a very good one at that.’15 Massingham was generous in his praise, citing the author’s ‘lucid- ity’, his ‘cool mastery of treatment’, and doubting whether ‘there is another living man who could have probed to the heart of the heartless economic machine […] with such an extraordinary grasp of its labyrinthine windings’.16 His only point of censure was over his friend’s ‘sketchy’ treatment of the vital place that Christianity should play in an organic society. It was true that, despite his own convictions, Jenks touched only lightly on this point, but as we have seen, his discourse on nature was also his testament of faith. In The Observer, a reviewer identified only by the initials C.B. praised the book as ‘wise and stimulating’.17 But, although From the Ground Up received much more critical attention than Jenks’ previous works, it was still largely ignored by the mainstream media, only catching the attention of a few intelligent weekly journals and some specialised publications. Jenks may have been correct that some of the book’s impact was lost due to its appearance not long before the general election, held on 23rd February 1950. He added that ‘none of the old parties will be able to make From the Ground Up 231 much capital out of it’ and although written in obvious consciousness of both the significance of Labour’s new society at home and the dawning age of the super- powers internationally, it implicitly rejected both major parties and disdained the squabbles of the political mainstream.18 In Time and Tide, Maurice Reckitt wrote of how it had been ‘a rather depressing experience to study this book’s penetrating analyses, its clear discrimination of priorities and its bold adumbrations of a positive policy, during an election campaign so singularly barren of these things’.19 Reckitt’s sole criticism was stylistic, that: ‘Mr Jenks is not a vivid writer and it is a pity that he has not infused into his style rather more of that life for [t]he release of which in other directions he is always pleading.’20 Although this was itself a rather cumbrous sentence, other readers made similar comments, especially on account of the supposed complexity of the book. Privately, Massingham agreed with Reckitt, writing ‘you put your finger on its weakness’, but in his introduction he merely wrote that it was ‘a very difficult book to introduce because it covers so wide-spread a landscape of economic development, disintegration, and dissolution, staged against a background of permanent values and realities’.21 The gardening writer Anthony J. Huxley, in an otherwise warm and positive review in The Spectator, wrote similarly of it as an ‘unusually difficult book to treat briefly’, praising Jenks’ ‘masterly’ analysis, but wishing for a shorter book, written with a ‘more popular appeal’ to ensure that its message reached beyond the tiny circle of the converted.22 The reader at George Allen and Unwin in 1947, also found much that was ‘wise and well-expressed’ but criticised the integration of the different parts of the argument and felt that Jenks had tried to ‘cover too much in one book’, and that – once again – it was ‘difficult to briefly and adequately summarise such a book’.23 Given that Jenks was a writer notable for producing honest, clear and purposeful prose, the issue may better be understood here not as one of style but rather as a consequence of the large aim of From the Ground Up. As John Stewart Collis wrote in The English Review Magazine, Jenks had ‘attempted to outline a new approach to economics – nothing less’. In the same vein, he went on to contrast Jenks favour- ably to ‘Karl Marx sitting in the British Museum Reading Room remote from the actualities of life and conditions upon which our existence is based!’24 Few would criticise Capital for not being easy reading for a popular audience. In a letter to Saunders, Jenks described the book as ‘not political of course, though it does manage to administer a few hearty side-kicks at things we both cor- dially dislike’.25 Later he remarked that: ‘it will be interesting to note the reaction of the Left – if they condescend to notice it.’26 One unexpected response from this quarter was in the influential French radical review Critique by the writer, publisher and philosopher Jean Piel.27 Whilst deeming Jenks’ arguments eccentric, reactionary and insular, Piel found that he could not dismiss his analysis as irrelevant, or his warnings about exhausting soil resources and depleting soil fertility. Piel grasped the simple truth of the book, admitting that even self-sufficiency had something to be said for it, in that resource depletion trumped industrial production. 232 From the Ground Up

In International Affairs, Dr Werner Klatt detected Jenks’ political position from his reference to having ‘always been “conscious of the ties of blood and soil”’ and from his statement that ‘[j]ust as Norman feudalism and French liberalism were hammered to workable shape on the British anvil, so now it should be the turn of German socialism’. Although first coined by the Social Democrat August Winnig, ‘Blood and Soil’ (Blut und Boden) had been the motto of the Reichsnährstand, the Nazi food and farming agency, and before that figured in the title of Darré’s book Neuadel aus Blut und Boden (A New Nobility from Blood and Soil, 1930). Klatt – an agricultural economist – was a socialist exile from Nazi Germany, who had entered British government service and interviewed Darré at the end of the war.28 His review concluded with the comment that: ‘The Myth of the Twentieth Century does not seem to be dead yet’, a reference to the principle work of the Nazi intellectual Dr Alfred Rosenberg.29 However, ‘German socialism’ here was not a coded reference to national socialism but to socialism generally, associated with another German, Karl Marx. Furthermore, the overwhelming emphasis on ‘race’ central to Nazism was absent from the book as it was in Jenks’ thought generally. Jenks wrote to Saunders that it was ‘pretty much in line with what has gone before’, that ‘[t]here’s a good deal of BU origin in it, as well as a good deal that isn’t’.30 With respect to the latter, it was his ecology and embrace of organic husbandry that were the major developments of his earlier stance. In Mother Earth, Jenks’ colleague on the Editorial Board, Dr Breen, praised the work as ‘one of the most outstanding books on rural economy that has appeared for many years’, and picked up on the theme of particular interest to the Soil Association: ‘the results of that fell combination of machine and fertilizer on ecology form a recurrent leitmotiv throughout the whole work.’31 Concerning its relation to his earlier stance, Jenks also admitted that he had shifted away from favouring ‘further colonial expansion’, which highlighted a significant point of divergence from the strongly imperi- alistic form of British nationalism at the core of the BUF. In From the Ground Up he imagined a national future which was insular and self-sufficient. As Huxley noted, Britain might be reduced to a ‘minor State’.32 Even here a direct line can be drawn back to the 1930s, where self-sufficiency was already central to Jenks’ thinking and economic competition between home and Dominion producers was a constant tension. As shall be discussed below, it was around this time, that Jenks’ opposition to both economic imperialism and industrial agriculture became points of tension with Union Movement and may explain why his book was ignored by its weekly paper Union, although Jenks had sent copies to its editor, Raven Thomson and to Mosley himself.33

Notes 1 BL, Society of Authors Archive, Vol. LXXIII, Fol. 106: Jenks to the Secretary, 13 October 1948. 2 Random House Archive and Library: Memorandum of Agreement, 7 December 1948. From the Ground Up 233

3 ‘From the Ground Up’, NEW, Vol. 22, No. 11 (31 December 1942), pp. 92–93. 4 FFA, E7/8: E. Balfour to de la Mare, 16 May 1947; Jenks to de la Mare, 19 May 1947. 5 FFA, E7/8: de la Mare to Jenks, 25 September 1947. 6 FFA, E7/8: Jenks to de la Mare, 1 October 1947. 7 FFA, E7/8: de la Mare to Jenks, 3 October 1947. 8 University of Reading, Special Collections, AUC307/1: Jenks to Allen and Unwin Ltd, 12 November 1947. 9 Random House Archive and Library: Reader’s Report for ‘From the Ground Up’, 16 December 1947; University of Reading Special Collections, AUC 307/1: Governing Director, George Allen and Unwin Ltd to Jenks, 18 December 1947. 10 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D7/37: Jenks to Saunders, 10 December 1948. 11 Random House Archive and Library: Memorandum of Agreement, 7 December 1948. 12 Yale U., Beinecke L., MSS43/52/2340: Pound to Raven Thomson, 30 December 1937; MB, Vol. 9, No. 1 (May 1945), p. 1. 13 MB, Vol. 12, No. 1 (May 1947), p. 9. 14 U. Reading, RHC, D MASM-D3 – Jenks to H.J. Massingham, 30 December 1947. 15 From the Ground Up, p. v; U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/22: Jenks to Saunders, 7 March 1950. 16 From the Ground Up, p. viii. 17 ‘Shorter Notices’, The Observer, 21 May 1950, p. 7. 18 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/21: Jenks to Saunders, 11 January 1950. 19 M.B. Reckitt, ‘Make Time to Read It’, Time and Tide, Vol. XXXI, 11 March 1950, p. 235. 20 Ibid. 21 U. Sussex, SxMs44.12.1: H.J. Massingham to M. Reckitt, 19 March 1950; From the Ground Up, p. v. 22 A.J. Huxley, ‘Diminishing World Resources!’, The Spectator, 14 April 1950, pp. 508–509. 23 Random House Archive and Library: Reader’s Report for ‘From the Ground Up’, 16 December 1947. 24 J.S. Collis, ‘Our Basis’, The English Review Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 5 (May 1950), p. 357. 25 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D7/37: Jenks to Saunders, 10 December 1948. 26 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/21: Jenks to Saunders, 11 January 1950. 27 Jean Piel, ‘L’Economie de guerre at les Ressources du sol’, Critique, No. 45 (February, 1951), pp. 163–168. 28 Weiner Library to Coupland, 18 June 2013; Weiner Library: W. Klatt, ‘Summary and analysis of an interview with R. Walter Darré’, 1 May 1945, unpublished typescript. 29 International Affairs, Vol. XXVI, No. 4 (October 1950), p. 545. 30 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/21: Jenks to Saunders, 11 January 1950; U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D7/37: Jenks to Saunders, 10 December 1948. 31 G.E. Breen, ‘Civilization Grows Up From the Soil’, ME, Vol. 4, No. 3 (summer 1950), pp. 59–60. 32 Huxley, ‘Diminishing World Resources!’ pp. 508–509. 33 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/18: Jenks to Saunders, 15 November 1949; MS119/ D6/22: Jenks to Saunders, 7 March 1950. 27 Rural Economy Ltd

When Rural Economy was launched in autumn 1946, Jenks declared on its first page:

The national economy – indeed the economy of the whole world – is in a state of flux. The old order clearly cannot be restored. To many of us it seems so obvious as to be a truism that no new order can provide security and prosperity unless it is soundly based on a healthy and well-developed agriculture.

The purpose of Rural Economy was to communicate this message.1 For the next sixteen months Jenks and Holloway worked to expand the paper’s readership, but subscribers remained few. Even the RRA yielded less than 20 new takers from its 150–160 members and it was decided to send the paper automati- cally to all those who subscribed at least ten shillings.2 The monthly continued to be mimeographed, resulting in an amateur quality incompatible with Jenks’ ambitions. For printing to be viable, the 400 copies sold would need to grow to 1000 but it was decided to begin a six-month trial anyway. Beginning in January 1948, the printing was financed by donations.3 W.H. Smith agreed to stock it but sales were poor and by June the bookseller withdrew; subscribers had stalled at 500 and advertisers were not interested. By May 1948, Holloway, who managed the business side of the enterprise, confessed that the ‘financial aspect […] had proved disastrous’.4

Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd Despite this, belief in the journal remained firm. A memorandum of proposals to improve its financial situation argued that it was ‘fulfilling a definite need’ and ‘in the National interest should be encouraged and made widely known’. It also spoke Rural Economy Ltd 235 of Jenks and Holloway’s ‘labour of love’ and pledged that failure or even reversion to the mimeographed form should not be accepted without ‘strenuous efforts’ having been made.5 It was agreed that a limited company be created to run the business and raise capital. It was intended that 750 £1 shares be issued, although investors were warned that they would not see any return for a considerable time, if ever.6 The new company protected the RRA and ERC from being brought down if the journal failed – the latter having recently been in financial crisis.7 Although Rural Economy was now formally detached from its parent bodies, time would show that it remained dependent on them. Over the coming years, Jenks and Holloway devoted immense energies to Rural Economy, without payment and often covering their own expenses. As a manager, Holloway was tenacious, continually trying to widen the readership and to increase advertising revenue. His efforts were not without success, from autumn 1948 onwards, the number of subscribers slowly but steadily increased. Most subscribers continued to be from the RRA or ERC – from spring 1950 it had replaced the latter’s Monthly Bulletin.8 Once again, W.H. Smith (and Wyman’s too) were persuaded to take the journal but soon withdrew.9 Collaborative arrangements were established with bodies, including the Soil Association, the Social Credit Association and the Bio-Dynamic Association.10 In June 1950, the Welsh Economic Develop- ment Association took the paper, together with a Welsh supplement, for its 500 members.11 This brought the total subscribers to 1,828, comprising 574 direct, 658 ERC, 96 RRA and 500 WEDA; three months later, in September 1950, subscriptions topped 2,000 and, although still concerned about advertising revenues, Holloway felt generally optimistic.12 Despite this progress, the paper survived only because of regular donations from its supporters. It also suffered from a lack of capital. The business plan of the new company was to raise sufficient funds to create an attractive and commercially viable product. Although the original issue of shares was eventually taken up, this occurred over an extended period of time and, instead of the new enterprise beginning on suitable foundations, money dribbled in and was absorbed in running costs. Critically, circulation remained too low to attract or retain commercial advertisers. It was telling that Rural Economy did not benefit more from the extinction of Christendom, The New English Weekly and The Weekly Review. Some of their authors appeared in Rural Economy and presumably some subscribers came across, but there was no obvious transfusion of new blood. Gardiner tried to engineer a merger of Rural Economy, The New English Weekly and Country Living Books, a proposal that neither the proprietor of the latter, Leslie Powell, nor Jenks embraced. By 1951, Country Living had folded too.13 Holloway held similar talks with Mairet, editor of The New English Weekly, as Jenks did with Jebb, editor of the short-lived Weekly Register (1948–1949) which replaced the Weekly Review.14 With further donations, Rural Economy limped into 1951, but circulation had stagnated, which Holloway attributed to his being diverted from his usual crusade 236 Rural Economy Ltd to cultivate and cajole.15 In May, the operation of the ERC was suspended as a consequence of its declining membership and severe financial difficulties. If a question mark hung over the ERC, then Rural Economy could not escape its shadow, as club members comprised the largest part of the readership. After the Welsh Economic Development Association terminated its collaboration, it was decided to suspend publication until October 1951.16 In autumn 1951, Jenks proposed that Rural Economy be resumed in a more modest form as a ‘monthly news-sheet of four pages’, a suggestion readily accepted.17 It was claimed that there had been a ‘widespread and insistent demand’ for the magazine’s return.18 Jenks confessed to Gardiner that he did not know how he would find the time for the work required, an indication of the strain that he was under, so it was a mixed blessing when a donation arrived to finance an eight-page magazine.19 In April 1952, that month’s edition broke even, for the first time, and Jenks and Stuckey spoke hopefully about the future, at least in public.20 Subscriptions had settled at around a 1,000, half RRA/ERC, half direct; W.H. Smith and Wyman’s were both selling 50–70 copies a month and advertising revenues were ranging between £10 and £20 per month.21 A useful connection was made with Kathleen Talbot’s Village Produce Association and Jenks was invited to address their annual conference.22

Saved by Grace? By this point, although subsidies from the RRA and ERC might yet permit Rural Economy to limp on, Jenks’ aim to make it a significant radical voice had been frustrated. Then, in July 1952, help came from an entirely unexpected quarter. Dr John J. Grace, British by birth but now an American citizen, was visiting from California when he read a letter in the Daily Telegraph from the Secretary of the RRA, Winifred Walshe, arguing for increased home food production as a solution to the country’s balance of payments problems. Grace, who had originally trained as a physician but was a businessman for most of his life, suggested that he help the Association to undertake wider propaganda. After meetings with Stuckey, Loftus and Jenks, Grace drained his sterling balance, handing over £2,150, to fund RRA propaganda and a major piece of research, discussed below.23 Grace’s parting exhortation was ‘to get these views known as widely as possible as soon as possible’ and arrangements were made to transform Rural Economy and to make From the Ground Up widely available, the latter being the benefactor’s ‘paramount interest’.24 Although the abridgement and serialisation of From the Ground Up in Rural Economy was discussed, reprinting the whole book in a paper bound edition was cheaper and avoided loading more work onto Jenks. Distributed by Rural Economy Publications Ltd, the book retailed at five shillings. The Association hoped that it would cover its costs by selling at least 600 copies; Jenks’ inclination was to give Rural Economy Ltd 237

‘the book freely to the association’, but was pressed to accept a royalty.25 The new edition occasioned a flurry of activity, with Loftus offering to circulate it among his Tory friends, whilst Edward Moeran, RRA member and former MP, offered to do the same among his Labour colleagues.26 The general response was ‘cordial’, with 30–40 copies being requested by members to place in local libraries and enthusiastic letters received, including one from Professor Arnold Toynbee.27 Grace’s money also financed the re-launch of Rural Economy in the form originally envisioned in 1948. From March 1953, it grew to sixteen pages with a glossy illustrated cover, an expensive feature which it was hoped would attract more readers and – most importantly – more advertisers.28 Once again Jenks and Holloway threw themselves into the task and steadily the circle of its subscribers increased again. However, despite much work and personal sacrifice, there was no breakthrough: the readership failed to grow sufficiently and so advertising revenues and sustainability remained elusive. Each edition lost money – £100 a month in its sleek new form – and the Grace fund was rapidly eaten up. By September, economies were again necessary.29 There were signs of strain in all directions. The fortunes of the ERC had continued to ebb, with its membership now only 330. At a meeting of the club committee there were protests at the amount of ERC money devoted to Rural Economy.30 Despite some illustrious supporters of rural reconstruction among its number, ERC membership had always been predominantly urban and, without Holloway’s involvement, it is doubtful that Rural Economy could have counted on the Club’s support. Even among the RRA there were doubts raised that the title of the paper was ‘not attractive to the public’.31 Although Holloway rebutted this, stating that it exactly represented its contents, the unpalatable fact remained that there was only a tiny national audience for a radical commentary on the agricultural economy, no matter how attractively packaged or how insightful its contents. Grace’s intervention may have also come too late, when the energies associated with a new initiative were already spent. Not long after the re-launch, Holloway was voicing concerns about the amount of ‘time and work’ involved; by September, Jenks expressed his feelings publicly for the first time, suggesting that at

some date a new Editor would be required as he himself was feeling the strain of the long campaign. When contributions failed to come in he had to write, possibly, the whole magazine himself, and often had to spend ten or twelve hours per day on its production.

Referring to the planned economy measures, Jenks commented that: ‘If the paper was reduced to eight pages it would help considerably’, but he could ‘not afford to tie himself to such an extent indefinitely’.32 After a year, although advertising revenues had improved along with the number of direct subscribers, no breakthrough had been achieved. In December 1953, it was 238 Rural Economy Ltd agreed to go to a 16-page bi-monthly edition which retained the glossy cover, an option which it was hoped would allow advertising revenue to continue.33 This also had the benefit of reducing Jenks’ workload.34 One bright spot was the success of promoting Rural Economy to schools and at one point as many as 160 were receiving it.35 After another year, in November 1954, it was tacitly agreed that the goal of creating Rural Economy as a popular medium be abandoned. Every possible measure to increase circulation and advertising had been tried, every economy made, leaving only the printing budget to be cut.36 After 2 years of the experiment permitted by the Grace money, Holloway proposed that the journal revert to a monthly newsletter, with him sharing the editorial duties with Jenks.37

‘Merger’ As the Rural Economy Newsletter, the journal struggled on, benefiting in 1955 from a commercial agreement with Gopsill Brown and Sons Ltd, whereby it carried ‘cheap farmer to farmer advertising’.38 Once again, the results were disappointing and the agreement came to an end after a few months.39 In autumn 1955, Hol- loway reported that Jenks had been ‘far from well for some time and was now in hospital’ and that in consequence he was having to cope with the editorial work of the publication.40 Despite this the supporters of Rural Economy rallied again and Jenks also returned to editorial duties at the end of 1955, which he claimed to anticipate ‘with no small pleasure’.41 In this way, the end was postponed until autumn the next year. Holloway agreed to a merger with The Economic Digest, whose backers included the Conservative backbencher John Biggs-Davison, an RRA member and political columnist in Rural Economy under the nom de plume ‘Hydaspeus’. The Digest offered to set aside a few pages for the RRA and appoint Jenks as its honorary ‘agricultural adviser’. To this he agreed, with ‘customary generosity’ as the minutes put it.42 Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd was finally dissolved in November 1958.43 Economic Digest was itself in serious trouble not long after the merger but managed to survive until the end of 1959. It retained a ‘Rural Economy’ section until the end, to which Jenks contributed occasionally. Grace’s significant benefaction did not save Rural Economy, but it is doubtful whether any amount of money could have made the journal both widely read and commercially viable. Whilst practical issues played their part, the heart of the problem was that it was catering to a small and diminishing constituency. Farmers are difficult to mobilise politically at any time and in days of relative prosperity converts were few. At the same time, the ranks of the old campaigners were thinning. There was a small but significant body of opinion critical of industrialised agriculture that Jenks spoke to through Mother Earth, but those who, like him, conjoined organic thinking with a comprehensive radical economic and political perspective, were much rarer. Rural Economy Ltd 239

Notes 1 RE, Vol. 14, No. 3 (October 1946), p. 1. This was the first edition of Rural Economy as such, which continued on from the ERC’s Agricultural Bulletin; it is not known why the volume number went from 4 to 14 at this point. 2 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 12 November 1946, 7 January 1947 and 11 March 1947. 3 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 July, 8 October and 9 December 1947. 4 StP: Agenda of the Executive Committee, 27 January, 23 March, 19 May and 21 July 1948. 5 StP: unsigned, titled and dated memorandum (ca. June 1948). 6 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 21 July and 24 September 1948; Stuckey to H. Grenville Hill, 31 August 1948. 7 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: Minutes for the First meeting of directors, 16 December 1948; ‘Club Dinner and Annual General Meeting’, MB, Vol. 13, No. 9–10 (January–February 1949), pp. 1–3. 8 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 17 March 1950. 9 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: minutes of the Directors, 24 June 1949. 10 StP: Minutes of the Directors of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd, 22 February 1951and 24 June 1949; Memorandum, ‘Position regarding advertisers’ (undated, ca. May 1949). 11 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: E Holloway, Memorandum to Directors, 14 June 1950. 12 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 22 September 1950. 13 CUL, G1/1: L. Powell to Gardiner, 23 September 1949, 2 October 1949, 30 January 1951; Jenks to Gardiner, 29 September 1949, 12 November 1949. 14 StP: Minutes of the ERC Committee, 28 September 1949 and 17 March 1950; Jenks to R. Jebb, 21 February 1950; Jenks, memorandum to Grenville Hill, Holloway and Stuckey, 21 February 1950; CUL, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 21 February 1950. 15 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 18 April 1951. 16 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: E. Holloway, Memorandum to the Directors, 1 May 1951; E. Holloway, Minutes of the Meeting of the Directors, 7 May 1951. 17 StP: Jenks, ‘Summary of Proposals for RRA and ERC, 27 September 1951; Minutes of the ERC committee, 29 October 1951. 18 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: Directors’ Report, 1 May 1952. 19 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 23 October 1951; StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: Directors’ Report, 1 May 1952. 20 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 25 April 1952. 21 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: Minutes of the AGM, 29 May 1952. 22 StP: RRA, ‘Annual Report of the General Executive Committee for 1952’, March 1953. 23 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 July 1952; 22 September 1952; 10 October 1952; ‘Annual Report of the General Executive Committee for 1952’, March 1953; Pierse Loftus papers: Press cutting ‘Food and Exports’ (undated, ca. July 1952); J. Grace to P. Loftus, 13 July 1952. 24 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 10 October 1952. 25 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 10 October and 24 November 1952; 19 January 1953. 26 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 22 September 1952. 240 Rural Economy Ltd

27 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 17 September 1953. 28 StP: Minutes of the ERC committee, 19 January and 2 February 1953. 29 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 17 September 1953. 30 StP: Minutes of the ERC committee, 4 May 1953. 31 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 17 September 1953. 32 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 12 May 1953 and 17 September 1953. 33 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: E. Holloway, Memorandum to Directors, 7 December 1953. 34 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: Annual Accounts for Year Ending 31 December 1953; E. Holloway, Directors Report, 24 June 1954 (annotated copy). 35 StP: ‘Report on the Conference and Annual General Meeting held at Guildry House, Marine Parade, Brighton, from 30 April to 2 May 1954; Minutes of the Executive Committee, 21 May 1954; Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: RRA, (Draft) Annual Report for the Years 1953–1954, for consideration at the Executive Committee meeting on Tuesday 15 February 1955. 36 StP: E. Holloway, Draft memorandum on Rural Economy, (undated, ca. November 1954). 37 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 November 1954. 38 StP: Notice to Rural Economy Subscribers, May 1955; Minutes of the ERC committee, 16 May and 13 June 1955; Application form for Rural Economy Newsletter, July (1955); Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: copy of a letter sent to R.C. Brown of Gopsill Brown and Sons Ltd, 13 May 1955. 39 StP: Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: Memorandum to Directors, 3 October 1955. 40 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 September 1955. 41 ‘A Personal Message’, Rural Economy News Letter, Vol. 23, No. 12 (December 1955), p. 7. 42 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 11 October 1956. 43 StP: E.A. Holloway, Notice of Meeting of the Board of Directors, 13 November 1958. 28 Feeding the Fifty Million

From the perspective of the twenty-first century it may seem surprising that Jenks could not only rebuild his career, but do so whilst remaining politically active into the 1950s. Despite seeking to keep his different activities separate, the Peroni episode showed how his politics could threaten his Soil Association work. Although nowadays the links between Jenks’ activities are easily made, even at the time little separated them. This was most obvious with his work through the Research Com- mittee of the RRA, which, beginning in 1947, published its report Feeding the Fifty Million in 1955, and his activities in the Union Movement Agriculture Group, which was founded in 1950 and issued None Need Starve in 1952.

The RRA Research Committee The RRA Research Committee was established in May 1947. Although Stuckey, as its secretary, was to play the central organising role in the new committee, the inspiration for it came from Jenks.1 National self-sufficiency in food had concerned him since BUF days, and he traced the project back to the discussions of the ‘“farmers’ group”’ he had organised with his Blackshirt colleagues during their wartime internment.2 The first meeting, in October 1947, elected Major Geoffrey Warren as Chair- man and the committee’s final report included an impressive list of twenty-three names but, in reality, its work was mainly completed by Jenks, Stuckey and Saunders. The research question for the first project, which Jenks drafted, was to investi- gate how national food production could be increased, to estimate the maximum productive capacity of agriculture and the consequences for the national diet if Britain was fed mainly from home produce. Two months later, when this proposal was submitted to the RRA Executive, it was amended with the addition of two 242 Feeding the Fifty Million riders: ‘with due regard to the maintenance of soil fertility’ and the effect on prices of ‘world soil erosion and deterioration’.3 Although un-attributed in the minutes, it is probable that Jenks added these.4 During the first year of its existence, the Committee met most months, but much work was by correspondence. Initially, a list of ten research subjects was drawn up, including papers on ‘Machinery, Fuel and Power’ from Saunders and ‘Electricity’ from Mrs Elizabeth Edwards, representative of the Electrical Associa- tion for Women. Jenks’ piece on ‘Soil Fertility’ was to cause the greatest controversy of the project.5

A memorandum on soil fertility A little while later, Jenks confessed to Gardiner that his memorandum was ‘almost pure Soil Association (which may have been a mistake)’.6 Unlike in Mother Earth, where his audience was of the converted, Jenks’ collaborators here were mostly experienced practical farmers. His critics generally accepted the importance of maintaining the humus content of the soil by returning organic matter to it, Saunders, his most dogged critic, even allowed for the theoretical possibility of a wholly organic agriculture and agreed with returning the maximum organic matter to the soil, but not to the exclusion of chemical inputs. Artificial fertilizers, he felt, were essential to the delivery of existing national needs and self-sufficiency would demand an even greater use of them. Jenks’ approach would see a ‘decrease in food production – at least for the first ten years’.7 A.E.G. Hawkins’ comment that ‘organic and inorganic fertilizers should be used in conjunction and that neither is a complete substitute for the other under modern conditions’ summed up his colleagues’ stance.8 As both a Soil Association member and secretary of the Research Committee, Stuckey sought a compromise and it was agreed that Jenks’ report would be ‘left open for observations’, whilst he prepared a revised memorandum.9 Jenks had this available by early August, answering his critics and elaborating on his original thesis.10 Whilst not retreating from his claims for the superiority of the organic method, he clarified his stance on the question of the use of artificial manures, allowing that as long as their use was reduced whenever possible and the harmful side-effects of their misuse minimised, that they should be permitted as a ‘temporary expedient’.11 As has been mentioned, around this time, Jenks was dealing with this issue for the Soil Association under the heading of ‘Meeting the Farmer Halfway’. Despite being busy with a wet and difficult harvest, Saunders composed a detailed reply.12 This showed that the two men were no closer to agreement, with the younger man reiterating that national self-sufficiency was only possible ‘through the greatly increased use of artificial fertilizers’.13 Despite this, Jenks’ revised report was approved at the October 1948 meeting, at which Saunders was present.14 Over the next few months the two men continued their dialectic. Whereas Jenks was representative of that face of the fascist Janus which looked backwards, Saunders Feeding the Fifty Million 243 was among its modernists, ‘biased towards the machine and science’, as he put it.15 Jenks sent him copies of Mother Earth and they continued their argument by letter. The primary sticking point was the relative efficiency of the two methods, with Saunders commenting that ‘[i]f Friend Sykes is able to show fellow farmers that his is the most practical way of producing food the artificial bag will soon disappear’.16 In their discussion Jenks ranged widely from the technical dimension, entering a philosophical discussion about the ultimate purpose of life. For example, in response to Saunders’ embrace of technology, as a means to ‘accelerate evolution’, Jenks called notice to the consequences of society’s obsession with the quantitative on the quality of life. Responding to Saunders’ statement that if food could be grown hydroponically, the fertility of the soil ‘wouldn’t matter’, Jenks replied:

It all depends what you mean by food. If we could live on pulverized rock particles (chemically-flavoured of course), farming wouldn’t matter. If human civilization were just mind (as some people seem to think) our bodies wouldn’t matter. Travel far enough down that road and you find life itself doesn’t matter. […] No, Bob, that cat won’t jump, if we want to live at all, we’ve got to study the terms on which it is enjoyed. […] all scientific calculations leave out the essential factor, because they can’t register it – vitality.17

As has been discussed above, a concept of ‘vitality’, as the animating force without which matter would be static and lifeless, was interwoven with Jenks’ Christian faith. Despite reaching towards heaven, he remained rooted in the real; returning to the point at issue, he commented: ‘why do expensively and imperfectly in a factory what Nature is able to do for us in the soil?’18 Despite Stuckey’s urging that they find common ground before the committee meeting in January 1949, and some movement on both sides, final agreement remained elusive.19 Besides the force of his conviction, Jenks’ role in the Soil Asso- ciation was significant here, as he alluded to Saunders: ‘My signature to such a recommendation would be, to some extent at least, morally dishonest and perhaps professionally embarrassing.’20 Whilst the Soil Association was prepared to ignore the political opinions of its members, advocacy of the use of chemicals was cause for expulsion.

‘Clarification of Aims’ By autumn 1949, after 2 years, the Research Committee was still far from publishing a report. Following discussion with Jenks, Stuckey successfully proposed to the RRA Executive that the objects of the project be more tightly defined. Jenks also suggested that, with the ‘national economic situation becoming more and more desperate’, with the possibility of ‘serious privation among our urban population’, the report should appear before the end of 1950. To assist this it was agreed that the work should 244 Feeding the Fifty Million henceforth be delegated to a sub-committee comprising himself, Stuckey, Saunders, Warren, H. Grenville Hill and Hawkins, with ‘formal procedure reduced to an absolute minimum’. This was expressive of Jenks’ impatience with committee work but also of his facility in achieving his objectives whilst still respecting its formalities. His letter also mentioned his difference with Saunders and a wish for both of them ‘to go into the matter really intensively with a view to reaching an agreement’.21

Organic in Practice Neither man had retreated from his desire to convert the other, most especially by demonstrating their model of farming in action; ‘a day in the field is probably worth more than many evenings of correspondence’, Jenks wrote.22 Despite struggling with ‘depressingly persistent asthma’, he got together with Saunders in October 1949 and they visited three organic farms, including Sykes’ Chantry.23 The hard- headed younger farmer enjoyed himself and had to modify his opinions: ‘Those three days we spent together certainly made me think. I still can’t agree with all the views you hold, but I am certainly much nearer believing that there may be something in what you say.’24 Following the weekend, Jenks produced a third draft of his memorandum on soil fertility, which Saunders accepted.25 Jenks reported that although his health had improved, he was ‘but not fully active again’, but was ‘greatly cheered’ by Saunders’ agreement.26 In effect, there was an agreement to differ, which was apparent in the final report, 6 years later.27 When Stuckey reported their progress to the RRA Execu- tive in December 1949 he hoped that the interim report would be ready by March 1950.28 This was to be a progress report, dealing with Britain’s annual food requirements and its agricultural resources to fulfil them.

Union Movement Agricultural Group In the midst of their discussions, Saunders mentioned to Jenks that an agricultural group for UM was being planned.29 The idea for the group had been thrashed out since the middle of 1949 between Saunders and Robert Row, who had been a Blackshirt before the war and had been employed as a farm worker since his release from internment.30 Saunders had also contacted Raven Thomson and Mosley, the latter giving his approval for the group to develop a detailed policy.31 As has been mentioned, Jenks had continued to support the fascist movement. However, he did not join UM when it was launched in 1948 and ceased to speak at fascist meetings. Aware of his friend’s position, Saunders commented:

I know that you cannot give a lot of time and that you cannot afford to come too far into the open, but I do hope you will be able to play an important part in this new Group. Feeding the Fifty Million 245

He added:

I do not know if you realize with what esteem you are regarded by members of the Movement, but it is very great. Your writings for BU made a very great impression and wherever I go I get asked about you.32

Although stressing his lack of time, Jenks suggested that he might act as ‘a kind of news-service-cum-commentator’ for the new group. He hoped to attend its first meeting, then planned for February 1950, when he would be in London for a Farmers’ Club gathering.33 The inaugural meeting was cancelled and rescheduled for May, as part of the UM conference and May Day celebrations.34 Jenks had been seriously ill, ’flu had developed into pneumonia, of such severity that he had to spend a week in hospital.35 Jenks expressed his ‘vague disquiet’ about the ‘degree of degenerative trouble’ afflicting men after the age of 50: a sign of not only the further weakening of his constitution but also the consequences of this on his spirits.36 He had pressed on with parts three and four of the RRA Research Committee full report.37 Stuckey was overseeing the publication of the interim report, which included parts one and two, but Jenks was concerned that the whole work might never be finished.38 In a comment which underlined the centrality of Jenks and his two former BUF colleagues to the project, he wrote to Saunders of his concern that: ‘unless you and I and Derek keep pressing on with it, there is a danger that a very valuable piece of work may be left uncompleted.’39 Despite his recent poor health, Jenks agreed to go to London for the UM meeting, although he reiterated his involvement could only be in an ‘advisory role’; and he alluded to the hard- won successes that he could not afford to lose: ‘Ever since Brixton days, I’ve had to struggle hard to establish myself as a journalist and writer, seizing almost any sort of opportunity that offered.’ After at least a decade of scrabbling for a toehold, he was beginning to feel ‘solid ground’.40 In their creation of the new group, Saunders and Row drew on a list of 52 ‘members and ex-members of the Movement in agriculture’. It contained some famous names, among them Henry Williamson, Captain George Pitt-Rivers and Ronald Duncan and included ‘Bobby’ Main, Jenks’ friend and cousin.41 The relationship of those on the list to UM was not entirely clear, as some were pre-war activists who had become disenchanted. Although a second list expanded the pool of potential recruits to around ninety, the response was quite weak, with the Agriculture Group eventually numbering around twenty members or associates.42 Neither Main nor Duncan responded and the Stuckeys also declined.43 Jenks’ first contribution to the Group was to comment on the ten-point agricultural programme that Saunders and Row had produced. He recommended that they make reference to the advance of Communism, with its imposition of collectivism in the countryside.44 In the so-called ‘cold’ war, the Soviet Union 246 Feeding the Fifty Million loomed menacingly and whilst the Agricultural Group deliberated, in June 1950, the Korean War began. He also commented on the section relating to Africa. UM’s policy reflected the major shift in Mosley’s thinking following the war: whereas previously fascist policy was based on the empire, it was now centred on a ‘Union of Europe’, combined with the development of Africa to provide food and other raw materials required by the ‘Home Continent’.45 Jenks doubted that Africa could do much more than sustain itself.46 This deviation left Jenks persona non grata with Raven Thomson, who formed the opinion that he was ‘a little Englander, who would happily see Britain become a Denmark’.47 Jenks replied that he had done all he could, within the limits of his position: ‘to maintain contact’ with UM. As to the specific accusation, he felt that it was a difference of ‘approach rather than of general objective’, with his priority being consolidation at home rather than imperial expansion. ‘That may be “Little Englandism”, but little England […] is still the only root from which a Greater Britain can grow’, he retorted.48 Despite Jenks’ protestations, there was some truth in Thomson’s words, as a society reconstructed around the basis of small-scale, family-based, ecological agriculture would tend towards stability rather than the dynamic expansive- ness integral to the liberal economy. This difference of opinion was nothing new: in 1938, Thomson added a note in Action distancing the movement from Jenks’ ‘belief that there is no potentially profitable land left unexplored in these Dominions’.49 In the 1950 document, Jenks decided to work with the policy towards Africa, which continued to be imagined as the ‘great estate of the white man’, although with safeguards including the ‘full-protection of the native against exploitation’, ‘respect for the soil and vegetation’, conservation of water, and ‘a great campaign to arrest soil erosion and to rebuild fertility’.50 He also successfully substituted the use of the word ‘negro’ for ‘African’, commenting that ‘[m]any African races are not Negroid and the word has a slightly disparaging tone’.51

None Need Starve Mosley deemed the draft policy ‘excellent’ and it was published in October 1950.52 Around the same time, the Council of the Agricultural Group agreed to develop a more detailed document ‘with some help from Mr Jorian Jenks’. It was also decided that this should be slanted towards ‘food’ rather than ‘farming’, to engage with popular feeling in the anticipated crisis:

When people are hungry the Movement must be able to show in detail how food can be provided for them. If we can do that we shall obtain much more support from consumers than we are likely to get from the relatively better situated producers.53 Feeding the Fifty Million 247

At the same meeting proposals were discussed for producer profit sharing, introduced by F.B. Price-Heywood, who had previously belonged to Common Wealth, and saw UM as ‘the Syndical-Socialist Movement’.54 Although Jenks was rather dubious about syndicalist ideas, Mosley was enthusiastic.55 During the 1950s, UM supported workers’ ownership and control of industry, although by the end of the decade Mosley turned to technocracy.56 Jenks allowed that the ‘cash-wage system’, which he saw as borrowed from industry, was not ‘well-suited’ to agriculture, but expected – or hoped – that the farm worker would ‘gradually disappear’, with the spread of ‘family farms after the Scandinavian pattern’. Jenks also mentioned that Paul Derrick, a Berkshire acquaintance, was prepared to advise the Agricultural Group in this area. Derrick was a Christian socialist, who had been a farm worker and Branch Secretary of the NUAW.57 He made a lifelong study of co-operation, workers’ ownership and control.58 Jenks’ collaboration with Saunders and Row in the creation of a detailed policy was the substance of his involvement with UM over the next year or so. They met together at Jenks’ digs in Pangbourne towards the end of January 1951, taking lunch with Catherine and Esther Browning. When they had arrived, Jenks drew his two colleagues to one side saying, ‘“For God’s sake, don’t mention the Movement”’. The Brownings were apparently aware of their lodger’s ‘wicked past’ but believed him to be ‘reformed’.59 Despite the element of farce, this indicated the delicacy of Jenks’ position. During the rest of the year, he was too busy to attend the meetings of the Agri- cultural Group, but managed to see Saunders again in spring 1951 to talk over the policy.60 Otherwise, the work was done by correspondence, with Jenks in August offering to re-write the whole thing, an offer that Saunders urged Row to take, hoping that it would also bind him to the movement:

Jorian’s lucid mind would certainly give us a draft worthy of consideration; and, even more importantly, it would give him an important part to play in the Movement and thus make even more certain his interest and support. He has so much to offer the Movement, both in his own abilities and through his contacts that I feel everything possible should be done to rope him in good and firm.61

In October 1951, Jenks’ draft was discussed in his absence at a meeting of the Agricultural Group. The only substantive point of difference was over farm size, where Jenks’ inclination towards peasant farming conflicted with the preference of Saunders and others for large-scale farming. After asking Jenks to revise a few pages, Saunders sent out the fifth draft for comment, explaining in the covering letter that much of it was the work of ‘Jorian Jenks, whose farming knowledge and literary ability has given the draft its final form’.62 This disturbed Raven Thompson, who was worried that their disagreement over fundamental ‘philosophic points’ would 248 Feeding the Fifty Million be revisited in the new policy.63 Saunders reassured Thomson that he and Row had avoided this, and reiterated the importance of giving Jenks ‘an interest in the Group and thus the Movement’. Saunders’ belief was that ‘we want to see as many Jorian Jenks as possible in UM. They have a part to play that no active street worker can ever do’.64 As to the policy, what Thompson saw as ‘pure Jenks’ was actually the opinion of the group as a whole.65

Concerning the dispute, Saunders reflected that Thomson seemed to be almost pathetically afraid of Jorian’s influence over me. I have never quite understood why Raven should display such a lack of confidence in his own views and should regard Jorian’s as being so powerfully attractive. Jorian, on the other hand, always seems quietly confident and not in the least worried by the views that Raven expresses.

Saunders concluded, with some insight:

Jorian will still hanker after an England that is a Denmark, and a pre-industrial Denmark at that. But no one need worry about that, as calendars cannot be turned back, even if clocks can be. Jorian will be with UM, not because it fully expresses his ideas, but because it goes nearer to doing so than any other political organisation.66

When told of the dispute Jenks responded with the anticipated sangfroid: ‘All right, it won’t be the first argument Raven and I have had.’ He continued, linking his ‘little Englanderism’ with his stance on Africa in an important way:

I think the line to take is that while no community can – or should – attempt to live in isolation, it must in the first place have firm roots in its own soil; otherwise its external contacts tend to be of a parasitic rather than constructive nature. In other words, the European development of Africa should not be dictated solely by European needs for food and raw materials: that way lies exploitation and racial friction. Both continents must be developed side by side, to their mutual benefit.67

It was partly on the issue of Africa that Jenks was keen to draw Gardiner – who had an estate in that continent – into collaboration with the Agricultural Group. Jenks was in regular contact with Gardiner at this time. The previous year, Oliver spent time at the latter’s Springhead estate, gaining practical experience of forestry, in anticipation of his degree at the University of Bangor.68 Jenks had hoped to interest Gardiner in the Agricultural Group since its inception but, although he was ‘greatly interested and quite impressed’ by the policy, nothing more followed.69 Feeding the Fifty Million 249

In November 1951, the Council of the Agricultural Group met with Raven Thomson, who was persuaded to accept it with only a few amendments. This was, Saunders wrote to Jenks ‘something of a triumph for your point of view’.70 Mosley deemed it ‘a most excellent document’, which he felt ‘proud to see published as the official policy of UM’.71 Saunders passed this on to Jenks, adding his suggestion as to where the credit should lie: ‘His thanks, and the Group’s, are, of course, mainly due to you. For without your help and ability we could not have produced anything one-tenth as good.’72 Jenks looked over what was now entitled None Need Starve a couple more times and donated towards the cost of its production, UM finances being threadbare.73 The pamphlet, which came out in August 1952, bore the clear imprint of his thinking, although his name was not mentioned. Much of what he had been pre- scribing since the 1930s, for British farming, rural society and relations between agriculture and the state, was present. The overwhelming emphasis of the policy was on home development, with the aim of making the country ‘substantially self-supporting in essentials’. Africa, although still described as ‘a great estate of the peoples of overcrowded Europe’, was demoted to a very secondary and supplementary role, with a heavy stress on careful development to the mutual benefit of Africans and ‘white settlers’. The policy also connected with Mosley’s European policy, but, there again, only in a token way. Although not exclusively organic, None Need Starve was sympathetic to the concerns of the Soil Association, although it was not mentioned by name.74

Feeding the Fifty Million Although Jenks had kept in the shadows, None Need Starve referred to the Research Committee of the RRA, in connection with the goal of self-sufficiency.75 Given the overlap between the two projects, it was not surprising that Jenks joked about their ‘family likeness’.76 However, whilst he had been involved with the UM group, the productivity of the RRA committee had declined steeply. As has been mentioned, the decision to publish an interim report was taken at the end of 1949. Stuckey supervised the publication of this, which would be much delayed.77 To avert the danger that the project would now stall, Jenks circulated around their little group drafts of the next parts of the project – three and four – which covered the development of land, capital and human resources, and farm management.78 The interim report finally came out around March 1951.79 Thousands of pro- motional circulars had been dispatched and orders were trickling in every day, with mentions in the press, including in The Manchester Guardian and The Daily Express.80 By June, 307 copies had been sold, which suggests a reasonable degree of interest for work by a relatively obscure body.81 When Jenks met Dr Gerald Wibberley, a Research Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture, that gentleman suggested that the 250 Feeding the Fifty Million

Ministry had studied the report and that he and Dr Dudley Stamp would be willing to meet the Research Committee. Although Jenks was sceptical, as the official line was still against further agricultural expansion, Stamp did mention the report in the Farmer and Stockbreeder and Stuckey met Wibberley, although little transpired.82 At Jenks’ prompting Lord O’Hagan, President of the RRA, mentioned the report in the House of Lords.83 Nature also gave it a good review, writing that it deserved ‘careful study’.84 However, 1951 was otherwise a fallow year for the Research Committee, as Stuckey remarked at an RRA Executive meeting, the ‘work might take years to complete […] by want of assistance and money. Given all he needed of both, it could be a matter of months’.85 Stuckey proposed that £100 be found to pay for a ‘statistical worker’ and for help with the typing. He made clear that he could not continue as Secretary after July 1953, and hoped that the report would be well on the way to completion by then.86 With None Need Starve soon to be sent to the printers, Jenks and Saunders had more time for their RRA work, and the latter urged that they meet soon ‘or we shall get nowhere’.87 Jenks was also concerned:

Am a bit worried about the RRA work, too. Derek keeps churning out his version; all useful stuff, but not quite what we want. We’re all too inclined to start and chase our own hares instead of working as a pack. Maybe it will come in the end to a symposium of four individual contributions. But I still think we ought to make a supreme effort to get round some farms. Other- wise we shall rely too much on second-hand ideas and personal opinions.88

Saved by Grace These somewhat dispiriting circumstances were transformed in July 1952 by Dr Grace’s gift to the RRA, mentioned above. In addition to financing a revamped Rural Economy and a reprint of From the Ground Up, his money transformed the work of the Research Committee. Dr (Mrs) I.M. Hyde was employed as a research assistant – she may have been linked to Oxford, as Jenks had offered to ask Professor Arthur W. Ashby, Orwin’s replacement as Director of the Institute of Research in Agricultural Economics, for a suitable candidate.89 By the beginning of 1953 rapid progress had been made and by March, Stuckey was expecting that a draft of the complete final report would be ready by July.90 Jenks had also been active, arranging farm visits through the Provincial Agri- cultural Economics Service, a body comprised of the agricultural economics departments and centres of universities in England and Wales.91 These visits were important to him because they put the project in contact with farmers, as he explained he was ‘anxious that the Report should not get bogged down in a mass of statistical calculations and second-hand information but represent the considered Feeding the Fifty Million 251 opinions of practical farmers’. Although Jenks never stated so directly, he was probably thinking of Stuckey’s influence. Whilst Stuckey was a mainstay of the project, his agricultural knowledge was primarily derived from reading and since the war he had been working as a barrister at Gray’s Inn. Whereas Jenks was temperamentally inclined to the empirical and practical, Stuckey was biased towards the abstract and intellectual. Saunders was Jenks’ natural ally in this regard, and Jenks arranged a talk with him over lunch before the March Research Committee meeting. Although generally positive about Dr Hyde’s work, Jenks’ assessment suggests that he felt her to be among those ‘who know very little about farming’.92 The project progressed in line with Stuckey’s timetable and by June, the Research Committee was having its ‘last’ conference.93 Jenks’ concerns do not seem to have entirely abated, and he urged Stuckey that the report should ‘present more than one opinion rather than attempt a cut-and-dried recommendation’ and was determined that Saunders’ ‘views as a practical farmer should be included’.94 By late summer, Hyde had produced a complete first draft which, because of its length and ‘rather rough form’ Jenks edited. He was happy with the work, which he agreed was ‘excellent’, but as a compilation of information from other sources it required editing.95 Through September and October, Jenks sent out sections as he completed them, in some places departing considerably from Dr Hyde’s script and adding new material.96 In his comments, Saunders picked up on Jenks’ love of horses and dislike of machines.97 Even after Jenks had offered concessions there was still a disjuncture between them, Saunders commenting: ‘in spite of these amendments, I strongly feel that the tone of this section is negative. Reading it I get the impression that the machine is an evil that is to be tolerated as being more or less necessary.’ Saunders belief was that agriculture needed to ‘become fully mechanized’, and commented to his friend: ‘Your preference for pitching wheat to loading sacks behind the combine is a good example of what I have in mind.’98 Although Jenks met with him, Row and Raven Thomson for lunch when Saunders was in London for the Smith- field Show, in the published work this section retained the quality of a discussion over the relative efficacy of machines with someone who was temperamentally resistant to the idea.99 The draft was completed by the end of 1953 and, once again, recourse was made to Hollis and Carter to publish it.100 Unfortunately, even in 1954, paper supplies were restricted and February 1955 was the earliest publication date. More positively, Jenks got his Soil Association colleague Easterbrook to write the foreword. Holloway thought of the title, a suggestion unanimously supported by Jenks and the others.101

Publication Feeding the Fifty Million appeared in February 1955, and in the RRA annual report Jenks was described as its ‘principal draughtsman’, which was fair although he felt that Stuckey’s contribution had been insufficiently recognised.102 As to the 252 Feeding the Fifty Million significance of the report, it was suggested that it demonstrated the ‘powerful influence which members of the Association can exert on national policy through the medium of constructive research’.103 Whether this was true and the immense sacrifice of time and energy of Jenks and his colleagues was appropriately rewarded is hard to say. In terms of sales, after a good start, interest quickly dried up; by September 606 copies had been sold by the publisher and 135 by the RRA.104 The book was not extensively reviewed, but neither was it ignored, receiving at least sixteen reviews across the whole spectrum of publications and a number of short notices.105 In general, the press was positive: the Agricultural Correspond- ent of The Times gave it a friendly treatment, as did, perhaps surprisingly, the liberal weekly, The New Statesman, which concluded: ‘If we got this much reform of agriculture it would be a good beginning.’ Open-handed treatments appeared in Agriculture, the official journal of the Ministry and the East Anglian Daily Times. In The Scotsman, an unnamed commentator described the committee’s linkage of agricultural policy changes to the national economy as a whole as an example of a ‘blinding grasp of the obvious’. A number of the writers commented on what was the most important political question underlying the whole thing. Farmer & Stock-Breeder, for example, commended the report’s proposals to Chancellor of the Exchequer R.A. Butler, as preparatory reading for the budget. Ironically, Butler was – or had been – a member of the RRA. Vegetarian News was delighted that Sir Albert Howard’s teachings were included, an element also noted by Municipal Engineering and The Tablet but otherwise absent from the reviews. Surprisingly, it was the Roman Catholic Tablet which produced the most unfriendly review of them all. Jenks had been an occasional contributor to the paper and ordinarily Catholic publications were supportive. The attack came from the Labour socialist and economist Colin Clark, who since 1953 had been Director of Jenks’ alma mater, the Institute for Research in Agricultural Economics. Clark attacked the report as an expression of ‘medieval’ economics, which seems to have been based more on his knowledge of the history of the RRA than the content of the book. As Jenks pointed out, the ‘medieval economy’ was a subject which the report’s compilers had never discussed. Clark had also angrily described the ‘“organic” versus “inorganic” controversy’ as a matter on which only chemists and biologists were entitled to speak and on which ‘a good deal of obvious rubbish has been written in certain quarters’.106 Of all the reviews, that in Farmer was exceptional, being enthusiastic about the content but damning of the style: ‘It is well worth reading and wading through, but what this subject wanted was not a Committee but a Cobbett.’ There was truth in this. Although the book’s style partly reflected the collective nature of the enterprise, it was primarily a consequence of the intention to produce something akin to an official report. As he had shown elsewhere, Jenks could wield a sharp polemical pen when required. Feeding the Fifty Million 253

Notes 1 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 7 May 1947 and 16 July 1947. 2 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 October 1949. 3 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 9 December 1947. 4 StP: Stuckey to Members of the Research Committee, 20 December 1947. 5 StP: ‘Arrangements for Research’, 28 February 1948; Stuckey to Members of the Research Committee, 28 April 1948. 6 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 28 October 1949. 7 StP: Saunders, ‘Observations on Mr Jorian Jenks’ Preliminary Notes on Soil Fertility’ (undated, ca. 1948); Saunders, ‘Rider to Memorandum of Soil Fertility’ (undated, ca. 1948). 8 StP: A.E.G. Hawkins, ‘Observations on Memorandum on Soil Fertility’ (undated, ca. 1948). 9 StP: Stuckey, ‘Observations on Report 2’ (undated, ca. 1948); Stuckey to Members of the Research Committee, 22 May 1948. 10 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D7/28 (i): Jenks to Saunders, 8 August 1948. 11 StP: ‘Revised Memorandum on Soil Fertility’ (undated, ca. August 1948). 12 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D7/31: Saunders to Jenks, 8 September 1948. 13 StP: Saunders, ‘Observations on Mr Jorian Jenks’ Revised Memorandum on Soil Fertility’ (undated, ca. September 1948). 14 StP: Stuckey to Members of the Research Committee, 7 October 1948. 15 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/4: Saunders to Jenks, 20 December 1948. 16 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D7/32: Saunders to Jenks, 17 November 1948. 17 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D7/37: Jenks to Saunders, 10 December 1948. 18 Ibid. 19 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/6: Saunders to Jenks, 4 January 1949. 20 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D7/53: Jenks to Saunders, 15 January 1949. 21 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 17 September 1949. 22 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/8: Saunders to Jenks, 23 May 1949; MS119/D6/12: Jenks to Saunders, 17 September 1949. 23 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/15: Saunders to Jenks, 19 October 1949; MS119/ D6/12: Jenks to Saunders, 17 September 1949; MS119/D6/13: Saunders to Jenks, 21 September 1949; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 23 September 1949. 24 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/15: Saunders to Jenks, 19 October 1949. 25 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/12: Jenks to Saunders, 11 November 1949; MS119/ D7/67: ‘Draft Memo – Soil Fertility’; MS119/D6/7: Saunders to Jenks, 13 November 1949. 26 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/18: Jenks to Saunders, 15 November 1949. 27 Feeding the Fifty Million, pp. 55–59. 28 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 9 December 1949. 29 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/7: Saunders to Jenks, 13 November 1949; MS119/D/20: Saunders to Jenks, 8 January 1950. 30 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C16/48: Saunders to Row, 24 July 1949; Saunders to Row, 14 November 1949. 31 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C13/222: Mosley to Saunders, 2 December 1950. 32 Ibid. 33 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/21: Jenks to Saunders, 11 January 1950; 119/C13/109: Jenks to Saunders. 34 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/5: Saunders to Prospective Members of the Agricultural Group, 17 April 1950. 254 Feeding the Fifty Million

35 FFA, E7/11: Jenks to de la Mare, 18 April 1950. 36 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/27: Jenks to Saunders, 20 April 1950. 37 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/26: Jenks to Saunders, 7 April 1950. 38 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 26 May 1950. 39 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/27: Jenks to Saunders, 20 April 1950. 40 Ibid. 41 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C13/381: Row to Saunders, 12 March 1950; MS119/D4/2: ‘Agriculture’ (undated list, ca. March 1950). 42 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/1: ‘List of Agricultural Contacts’ (undated, ca. June 1950); MS119/D4/3: ‘Agricultural Group Membership’, May 1951. 43 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/7: Jenks to Saunders (undated note, ca. June 1950). 44 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/7: Jenks to Row, 18 June 1950. 45 O. Mosley, The Alternative (Ramsbury: Mosley Publications, 1947), p. 144. 46 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/119/D6/9: Jenks to Saunders, 25 May 1949; MS119/ C14/125: Jenks to Raven Thomson, 5 January 1952. 47 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/8: Saunders to Jenks, 23 May 1949; MS119/C16/479: Saunders to Row, 14 November 1949. 48 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/18: Jenks to Saunders, 15 November 1949. 49 Action, 13 January 1938, p. 4. 50 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C13/362: Row to Saunders, 3 July 1950; Union Movement, Food and Farming Policy (London: Published by Robert Row, October 1950). 51 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/28: Jenks to Saunders, 5 July 1950. 52 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C16/465: Saunders to Row, 2 August 1950; MS119/D4/11: Mosley to Saunders, 3 August 1950; MS119/D4/16: Jenks to Saunders, 10 September 1950; UM, Food and Farming Policy. 53 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/32: Jenks to Saunders, 21 October 1950; MS119/ D4/18: Saunders to Price-Heywood, 3 November 1950; MS119/D4/19: Price- Heywood to Saunders, 10 November 1950. 54 Ibid. 55 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/28: Jenks to Saunders, 5 July 1950; MS119/D4/11: Mosley to Saunders, 3 August 1950. 56 Union Movement, A Workers’ Policy through Syndicalism (London: Union Movement, 1953); O. Mosley, Europe: Faith and Plan (no place: Euphorian Books, 1958), pp. 124–126. 57 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 October 1945; StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 12 November 1946. 58 Chris Bryant, Possible Dream: A Personal History of British Christian Socialists (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996) pp. 261, 271; Matthew Hoehn (ed.), Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches (Newark: St Mary’s Abbey, 1948); U. Sussex, SxMs44/12/3: P. Derrick to M. Reckitt, 6 March 1946. 59 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C16/448: Saunders to Row, 5 January 1951; R. Row to P. Wallis, 27 April 1988. 60 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C14/130: Jenks to Saunders, 3 May 1951; C16/444: Saunders to Row, 13 May 1951. 61 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/44: Saunders to Row, 19 August 1951. 62 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/45: Saunders to Jenks, 8 October 1961; MS119/ C16/194: Saunders to Jenks, 21 October 1951; MS119/D4/46: Group Organiser UMAG to All Members, 21 October 1951. 63 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/46: Group Organiser UMAG to All Members, 21 October 1951. 64 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/52: Saunders to Raven Thomson, 28 October 1951. 65 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/59: Raven Thomson to Saunders, 5 November 1951. 66 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/63: Saunders to Row, 13 November 1951. Feeding the Fifty Million 255

67 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/56: Saunders to Jenks, 4 November 1951; 58: Jenks to Saunders, 5 November 1951. 68 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 21 February 1950; 24 April 1950; 5 June 1950; 9 July 1951; 23 October 1951; Jenks to Gardiner, 5 November 1951. 69 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/16: Jenks to Saunders, 21 October 1949; D6/21: Jenks to Saunders, 11 January 1950; C14/129: Jenks to Saunders, 14 August 1951; D4/51: Jenks to Saunders, 23 October 1951; D4/54: Jenks to Saunders, 2 November 1951; C14/127: Jenks to Saunders, 30 November 1951; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 23 October 1951. 70 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C16/193: Saunders to Jenks, 27 November 1951; C14/127: Jenks to Saunders, 30 November 1951. 71 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C14/261: Mosley to Saunders, 18 December 1951. 72 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C16/192: Saunders to Jenks, 26 December 1951. 73 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C16/437: Saunders to Row, 14 February 1952; C16/190: Saunders to Jenks, 18 May 1952; C14/118: Jenks to Saunders, 20 May 1952; C16/189: Saunders to Jenks, 26 May 1952; C14/119: Jenks to Saunders, 28 May 1952; C14/115: Jenks to Saunders, 5 July 1952. 74 Union Movement Agricultural Council, None Need Starve: Union Movement’s Food and Agriculture Policy (London: R. Row, August 1952). 75 Ibid., p. 10. 76 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C14/115: Jenks to Saunders, 5 July 1952. 77 StP: Stuckey to Members of the Research Committee, 13 July 1950; Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 November 1950. 78 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/27: Jenks to Saunders, 20 April 1950. 79 StP: Stuckey to Members of the Research Committee, 13 July 1950; Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 November 1950. 80 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 18 April 1951. 81 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 20 June 1951. 82 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/54: Jenks to Saunders, 2 November 1951; StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 July 1952 and 24 November 1952. 83 HL Deb, 28 November 1951, Vol. 174, cc. 561–607 (available at http://hansard. millbanksystems.com/lords/1951/nov/28/spring-traps-bill#S5LV0174P0_19511128_ HOL_49, on 13 December 2011). 84 ‘News and Views’, Nature, No. 4266, 4 August 1951, p. 187. 85 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 December 1951. 86 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 25 April 1952. 87 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C16/190: Saunders to Jenks, 18 May 1952. 88 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C14/122: Jenks to Saunders, 19 May 1952. 89 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 July 1952; U. Sheffield LSC, MC119/ C14/371: Stuckey to members of the Research Committee, 2 October 1952. 90 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 19 January 1953 and 16 March 1953. 91 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C14/369: Jenks to Saunders, 20 January 1953; C14/348: Jenks to Saunders, 27 January 1953. 92 MS118/D8/12: Jenks to Saunders, 20 March 1953. 93 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 June 1953. 94 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/37: Jenks to Saunders, 20 August 1953. 95 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D8/46: Jenks to Saunders, 14 September 1953. 96 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D8/47: Jenks to Saunders, 18 September 1953; D8/49: Jenks to Saunders, 25 September 1953; D8/50: Jenks to Saunders, 9 October 1953; D8/51: Jenks to Saunders, 13 October 1953. 97 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D8/53: Saunders to Jenks, 25 October 1953. 98 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D8/56: Jenks to Saunders, 31 October 1953. 256 Feeding the Fifty Million

99 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D2/118: Raven Thomson to Saunders, 7 December 1953; Feeding the Fifty Million, pp. 97–102. 100 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/43: Jenks to Saunders, 1 January 1954. 101 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 February 1954, 21 May 1954, 20 July 1954 and 19 October 1954. 102 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 February 1955. 103 StP, Minute Book of Rural Economy (Publications) Ltd: Draft Annual Report for 1953–1954 (ca. February 1955). 104 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 June 1955 and 15 September 1955. 105 Unless otherwise mentioned, reviews are from the cuttings in the StP, ‘FFM Reviews’. 106 Colin Clark, ‘Medieval Economics’, The Tablet, 9 April 1955, pp. 10–11. 29 The Whole Works

With the publication of Feeding the Fifty Million in February 1955, Jenks concluded a project that he had been pursuing since his wartime internment. The RRA Research Committee was disbanded ‘for the present’ but would never be reformed.1 The sun was also setting on Rural Economy and with the two main reasons for its existence now gone, the RRA would survive until the end of the decade but stay largely dormant. The Council for the Church and Countryside had been dissolved in 1952 and Jenks’ long involvement with the fascist movement was also ending.2 Since finishing None Need Starve in 1952, Jenks had kept in touch with fellow fascists, occasionally lunching with Saunders, Raven Thomson and others.3 Although he may have maintained some link to UM even afterwards, after 1955 he would never again be involved actively. At the beginning of that year, his last article for the movement appeared in The European, discussing proposals for a common European market.4 In February, he attended his last UM meeting, a local conference, organised by Row, to discuss revising None Need Starve.5 By this point Jenks’ personal links to fascism had withered. Many of those with whom he had campaigned had died, emigrated or turned their back on the movement. Even Saunders, who remained a Mosley man until his death, had withdrawn to devote himself to his work in local government and for the National Farmers Union.6 His scrupulously kept files include no contacts with Jenks after 1955. Then, in October 1955, Raven Thomson died. For all their disagreements, he had been Jenks’ closest collaborator at the head of the fascist movement since the 1930s. Even if these relationships had endured, there was little in UM to hold Jenks: it was a weak growth, whose preoccupations were almost entirely urban. 258 The Whole Works

‘Revolution in Our Midst’ It was not Jenks who was wavering but, rather, the causes to which he had dedicated himself were fading away. However, much of this was only visible in retrospect and, in early 1955, he was drawn into another major project, the book which would eventually be published, in 1959, as The Stuff Man’s Made Of. In February 1955, Richard de la Mare proposed that Jenks write a book aimed at ‘the man in the street’, to explain the ‘controversy about soil fertility and nutrition’. Balfour had given her approval and offered her help.7 Although Jenks was interested, he was concerned that he lacked the time and the expertise to sift the scientific evidence, being ‘more used to talking to farmers and gardeners in earthy terms and trying to appeal to common sense’.8 Nonetheless, he took the project on and, despite his poor health, by the end of August 1955, had completed a synopsis with the working title ‘Revolution in Our Midst’.9 De la Mare was happy with this and his colleagues were also positive: Geoffrey Faber believed that it would be ‘a readable and persuasive sort of book’.10 Jenks accepted an advance of £100, plus royalties.11 A little while later, he admitted to having some second thoughts, feeling that such a book needed ‘to be crisply written’, whereas he was feeling ‘too jaded mentally to do such a job’.12 Actually, Jenks’ condition had deteriorated so much that he was hospitalised in September 1955.13 The next month, he claimed to be feeling much better, ‘looking forward to a constructive bit of writing’, and expected to have a first draft by Christmas or soon after.14

MS Venus Jenks was over-sanguine and instead, in early January 1956, took a month’s leave to convalesce from a ‘serious illness’.15 He reassured his Soil Association colleagues that, despite this, January’s Mother Earth was almost finished and that he would tackle April’s on his return.16 Accompanied by Dorothy Jenks, Jenks sailed from Plymouth on the MS Venus, for a month’s cruise, to Madeira and Tenerife. Although this was his first real holiday abroad, he did not leave his life’s work behind. In Madeira – where his grandfather had died in 1928 – he saw as much of its agriculture as he could. Whilst recognising the Spartan lives of the inhabitants, Jenks found much to admire in their ‘thrifty husbandry’. Tenerife was less to his lik- ing. Unlike the peasant smallholdings of Madeira, it was dominated by large estates, producing cash crops for export. The only composting he found was at the Orotava Botanical Gardens and Jenks prophesied future soil deterioration.17 After his return in February 1956, Jenks resumed work on the new book, which he now hoped to deliver by the end of April.18 This again proved optimistic, due to ‘massive redrafting’ and writing new chapters, including the history of the organic movement. He felt this a ‘great improvement’ and also hoped that a new title would ‘manifest itself’, to replace ‘Revolution in Our Midst’. By May, it seemed that another 3–4 weeks would get the job done.19 The Whole Works 259

The Royal Commission on Common Land It was around the same time – in April 1956 – that the Rural Reconstruction Association was briefly drawn again towards the circles of power. In the previous autumn, a list of questions drafted by Stuckey and based on Feeding the Fifty Million had been circulated to sympathetic MPs.20 Sir Archer Baldwin, Conservative member for Leominster, who was a spokesman for agriculture, agreed to co-operate, as did John Biggs-Davison MP, who had joined the RRA in 1955.21 One of the questions was about increasing the use of waste land for agriculture, about which Biggs-Davison wrote to the Minister of Agriculture, Derick Heathcoat-Amory, receiving a friendly reply.22 Jenks knew Biggs-Davison sufficiently to have encouraged Faber and Faber to consider a book by him.23 In November 1955, Stuckey drafted a memorandum aimed at the Royal Commis- sion on Common Land, which was to begin its deliberations the following month, under the chairmanship of Sir Ivor Jennings. Lord Tweedsmuir, who had replaced Lord O’Hagan as the President of the Association, forwarded the document to the Commission.24 This backing helped the RRA’s case and Jenks, Stuckey and Hol- loway were called to give evidence before the Commission in April 1956. Jenks was introduced by Holloway as the writer of Feeding the Fifty Million, the basis of the submitted memorandum. However, it was Stuckey who spoke for the Association on this occasion and he believed that the delegation gave a good account of themselves.25

The Soil Association’s Tenth Birthday These other activities were, of course, subsidiary to Jenks’ work for the Soil Asso- ciation. In May, he attended the party to celebrate its tenth birthday.26 There was a ‘birthday cake, complete with candles and a compost box modelled in sugar’, and Donald Wilson gave a brief history of the Association, observing that ‘the chief problem throughout had been that of finance’, and that, concerning its growth, it had ‘exhausted the supply of idealists’.27 These reminders of the Association’s deep problems could have done little to enliven the party. When Jenks attended the next Council meeting in July, its time was largely spent in discussing the Association’s precarious finances and the future of the Haughley experiment.28

The Whole Works By August 1956, as far as Jenks was concerned, the book for Faber and Faber was finished. He had prepared a publisher’s ‘blurb’ to promote it and had a new title to replace ‘Revolution in Our Midst’, which he had never been happy with. The suggested replacement was ‘The Whole Works’, suggesting both the ideal of ‘wholeness’ central to organic philosophy and the comprehensive coverage of the book.29 Jenks’ enthusiasm was not returned by the publishers, de la Mare apologetically explaining that some disliked the humorous element of the double meaning and 260 The Whole Works that a few sensibilities even quailed at seeing ‘the word “WHOLE” so prominently displayed’.30 The author ruefully accepted the decision and, with no fresh ideas himself, turned to de la Mare for suggestions. In the same letter, Jenks expressed doubts about whether he had created the introductory book that had been commissioned: ‘I have rather had to use my own imagination on this latter point, but have tried throughout to write for the general, more or less educated, public rather than the converted.’31 De la Mare was generally positive, explaining to another reader:

it isn’t as if the book needs re-writing – it may need a little rearrangement and perhaps some additional paragraphs here and there. It seems to me not at all bad on the whole, but I think he could still improve it and I am sure he realises that himself.32

The draft was sent to Lawrence Hills, a journalist and writer, and founder of the Henry Doubleday Research Institute, who also found much to like, seeing it as a book which was ‘wanted’ and that was ‘original’ in its scope; as an introduction of ‘the idea of ecology’, it was ‘an important contribution to the fundamental philosophy of the Organic Movement’.33 Hills’ main recommendation was to cut a section referred to as ‘the “Hungry Sheep” digression’. Although the manuscript is now lost, this related to the section in the synopsis that was divided into two chapters called ‘Progress’ and ‘Or Paradox’, which dealt with the assumption that ‘Progress’, driven by scientific discovery and technological innovation was an inevitable and desirable social good. Jenks argued that it was paradoxical that ‘Progress’ brought degeneration in the quality of food and dangers to health, and the supreme hazard of population growth outstrip- ping food supply.34 This attempt to portray the organic movement in its historical context, caused Hills to comment that Jenks had got ‘Sprengler’s [sic] “Decline of the West” […] built into his mind where other people have Spain, the League of Nations or Jews’. This was, Hills suggested, a deviation brought about by his political history: ‘Mr Jenks is a former Fascist, Mackenzie (and Hyams) former Communists, and in all cases this influences thought though is otherwise irrelevant to books.’35 However, the major sticking point concerned the overall purpose of the book, with Hills doubting its commercial viability:

Mr Jenks has his originality in the philosophy – it could come out more, but it is running dead against the stream of thought and it wants more factual evidence that it is so. Because it is difficult as a subject is why I have my sales doubts.36

This was also the burden of the Faber and Faber Reader’s Report, where there was a consensus around Peter Du Sautoy’s comment that: ‘[…] if Hills is right and this book is for the converted, has it not failed?’37 The Whole Works 261

De la Mare took great care to protect Jenks’ feelings regarding Hills’ report – which had been retyped without the reference to fascism – and he urged: ‘please don’t be put off by it’, hoping that Jenks wouldn’t be ‘overburdened’ with criticism, stressing: ‘I shouldn’t take so much trouble if I didn’t think the book is a good one and one that it is worth taking a good deal of trouble about.’38 In this spirit, de la Mare then wrote that the book would be published in the autumn of 1957 but his communication crossed with Jenks’ reply, which was unmistakably from a man in crisis.39 He wrote of the reader’s reports that they: ‘confirm a feeling which I have had for some time. The book is a dud, and will do no good to anyone if published.’ He continued: ‘There is, I think, some good stuff in it. But it fails badly in shape, style and purpose, probably because it never came to life. As Hills says, it lacks “fire, force and fury”. No wonder we couldn’t find a title for it!’ He attributed his failure to two reasons, the ‘first and more obvious one’ was:

that for the past two years I have been below par, physically and to some extent mentally. Most of my energies have gone into the production of Mother Earth. The book, in consequence, has been written in bits and pieces; only occasionally did it show any signs of ‘running’, and I never have been able to generate much enthusiasm for it. Moreover, I have been losing personal contact with the land, so perhaps was unwise to try to write about it.

Even now, he kept his emotions reined in, but this was indicative of something approaching a crisis. The second reason that he gave for the failure of the book was that he was simply not equipped to introduce the organic movement to the uninitiated:

I just don’t know what the uninitiated don’t know, or how they think and feel. Possibility I am too unorthodox to make myself intelligible to the or thodox – at any rate the urban and suburban orthodox whom I think you will have chiefly in mind. […] I have never lived or worked in a town; I seldom read a popular newspaper or such periodicals as The New Statesman […]. I am not much interested in ‘what people are thinking’ and my first reaction to a crowd is a desire to detach myself as rapidly as possible.

Jenks continued:

I hope this doesn’t sound snobbish; it is largely a question of temperament and experience. I can get along with most people as individuals regardless of background. What I cannot do is tune in to what is usually called popular opinion; and in trying to write down to it (or what I conceive it to be), I become prosy, dull and schoolmasterish. 262 The Whole Works

As to the criticism of ‘the chapter on “Progress and Paradox” as a ‘“digression”’, Hills had missed the point. Rather than a digression, this was ‘the crux of the whole matter’, Jenks continued:

Either the Organic Movement is revolutionary, or it is a passing phase, a mere wrangle over technicalities, as it is so often alleged. Possibly it won’t prove after all to be a rejuvenating influence within our aging civilization; but the possibility of it being one should at least be discussed.

Jenks was inclined to ‘burn the MS and forget about it’.40 Despite a subsequent meeting with de la Mare, he remained firm in his decision to abandon the project as originally conceived, only allowing that he might in the future produce an ‘essentially […] personal exposition’. He continued:

My book would have to be frankly ideological, putting the Why before the How […] It could, I think show that the Organic Movement is definitively revolutionary, a re-assertion of philosophical as against mechanical concepts. […] This approach might not appeal to those who are simply looking for tastier food, or some short-cut to health, or a technique of gardening without sweat.41

Whilst regretting Jenks decision, de la Mare asked to see any future draft.42

Slaters The strength of Jenks’ reaction can only be partly explained in relation to the book project, the major cause being his physical and mental health, which he alluded to. His energies were inevitably declining with advancing age and his asthma was an increasingly heavy burden, with its crises becoming more debilitating and even life-threatening. Physical malady reduced his capacity to work effectively and also lowered his spirits, demoralisation further eroding capability in a mutually reinforc- ing depressive cycle. Beyond his general malaise, there were also several specific reasons for Jenks’ depressed and disturbed mind. As he had mentioned to de la Mare, the bulk of his energies had been spent on the Soil Association, but his investment brought a poor return. The Haughley experiment continued to threaten the ruin of the Association, and the wrangling over its future poisoned relationships; at one meeting in October 1956, the recently appointed General Secretary, Ronald King, actually died. Jenks stayed aloof from these disputes, but inevitably the core reason for his existence was in peril. Also, at the same October meeting, there was strong criticism from Dr Innes Pearse of an ‘Agricultural Testament’ he had been asked to write, causing it to be dropped.43 Throughout 1956, the name of the journal continued to divide the Council and Figure 29.1 Jenks and Sally Stuckey, ca.1950s Source: Clare Downey

Figure 29.2 Esther Browning, with Patsy and Oliver on the back seat, ca.1950s Source: Oliver Jenks 264 The Whole Works the Editorial Board and it was also decided that the question would be put to the membership as a whole via Mother Earth.44 In December, Jenks commented that the: ‘question of the Journal’s title is getting more and more controversial […]. The next move is to get members’ views, though possibly they will only enlarge the scope of the controversy.’45 Jenks’ problems with the book also coincided with a disorder in his intimate relations. By this point he had been lodging with the Browning sisters since 1948 and had developed a significant relationship with Esther, the younger of the two. The nature of their connection is unclear: Oliver Jenks suggests that his father saw Esther primarily as a friend, and sometimes became very frustrated with her, finding her somewhat ‘scatterbrained’.46 Row, who saw them together in 1951, had the impression that there was romance in the air, recalling how Esther ‘looked on JJ with adoring eyes, though in a most proper manner’.47 The two of them went away together, in 1950 and 1951, Jenks using Esther’s holiday photographs as illustrations for Rural Economy. To further complicate matters, Jenks also carried a candle for Sally Stuckey; she was certainly aware of his feelings for her, although it is not clear whether she reciprocated them. Married to one of Jenks’ few friends and with a family, it is hard to see how such a relationship could have prospered. It may have been a mismatch between their hopes or expectations which precip- itated a crisis between Jorian and Esther in the autumn of 1956. Around November he left the Brownings’, moving to a guest house called Slaters, located at Peppard Common, near Henley-on-Thames, a development which Oliver Jenks connected to his father’s frustration with Esther.48 This move cannot have been lightly undertaken because it caused Jenks’ link to the soil – already meagre and unsatisfactory – to be completely severed. Alluding to his circumstances, he wrote: ‘I haven’t even a garden just now, and have no use for writers who aren’t themselves practitioners in their subject.’49 Whatever the specific cause of the move to Slaters, it may have done Jenks good as his spirits rallied. In a letter to de la Mare, in early February 1957, he was calmer and expressed some of the enthusiasm which had hitherto been absent, saying that he would ‘have a shot at reshaping the book’, and continuing: ‘what I have in mind is rather more than a revision – and have already been giving the matter some thought.’50

Dr Latto In the spring of 1957, Jenks was once again ‘laid low’ by asthma and it was around that time that he embarked on a course of treatment under Dr Douglas Latto.51 Latto, who was in general practice in Caversham, was a campaigner against vivisection, prominent in the London Vegetarian Society and, from 1957, on the Soil Asso- ciation Council.52 Jenks spent weeks at a private clinic living on a strict vegetarian diet and abstaining from alcohol, tobacco and even tea.53 His therapy may have also involved the ‘wet pack’ treatment described by another patient, whose eczema – an The Whole Works 265 affliction shared by Jenks – was treated by such a diet and nights spent wrapped in a damp sheet and swaddled with eiderdowns and hot water bottles.54 Writing in May 1957, immediately after the treatment, Jenks was cautiously hopeful that it was beneficial; Oliver Jenks was shocked by his father’s emaciated body and gaunt face.55 Although it became obvious that he was by no means ‘cured’, Jenks remained positive. Concerning his ‘annual bout’, he wrote to de la Mare – a fellow sufferer:

My own trouble started early and is, I sincerely trust, finishing early – at any rate there is a gradual improvement which I like to think is due to the treatment. But we may not be clear of the woods yet. If the improvement is maintained, I ought to be able to get down to some writing later in the summer.56

He had by this time returned to live with the Brownings at Pangbourne, so whatever had disturbed things there, had also been repaired.

The Soil Association in rough waters By the second half of 1957 the equilibrium in Jenks’ personal and literary life had apparently been restored, but the Soil Association continued to flounder. In July 1957, he was at an intense Council meeting dominated by the question of the Haughley project. A faction lead by Lance Coates contended that Haughley was threatening to sink the Association itself. Sir Albert Howard’s original objection to the experiment, that it would ‘drain the organic movement without convincing the orthodox’ was quoted. A long discussion of alternative financing arrangements ensued and the question of the name of the journal was held over.57 Circulated before the next meeting, in October, was a frank – and so confidential – report on Haughley by Sam Mayall and Easterbrook, which expressed continued belief in the value of the project, whilst admitting the consequences of meagre and precarious finances and poor staff appointments.58 On the key issue of the budget, a report by the Treasurer, W. Laffan, on why the development plan of 5 years earlier had failed, was discussed. Laffan’s conclusion was that the Association faced serious financial problems whether the Haughley experiment continued or not. Member- ship numbers were static and, due to the high average age of members, was likely to decline significantly; costs were rising but income was drying up. However, despite proposing often drastic cuts in all areas, Laffan considered:

Mother Earth has probably earned its central position and any abandonment or serious curtailment of it would be such a direct loss to members and to our prestige that it might prove fatal. It is the only ‘money’s worth’ that most members get. Mr Jenks’ work is widely appreciated and his services should be retained unless circumstances make it impossible.59 266 The Whole Works

The journal’s name was also raised yet again, but despite the longstanding rancour over the issue, quickly dismissed, with a resolution passed by eleven votes to three that no change be made until a ‘clear mandate’ was received from the membership.60 In the next edition of Mother Earth, Jenks explained that of the several hundred letters elicited, roughly half were in favour of keeping the title unchanged. As 3,500 members did not respond, and were presumed to have ‘no strong feelings on the subject’ there was no ‘definite mandate’ from members for change.61 Circumstances were such that a special meeting of the Council was held a month later, in November 1957, to again discuss the financial circumstances of the Association and the Haughley experiment. Despite Laffan’s contention that the membership’s generosity was nearing exhaustion, the Haughley experiment was obviously a special case, for, once again, an appeal for £10,000 had received sufficient support that the experiment could continue. The draft budget, with its major cuts in expenditure, was also accepted; even Mother Earth had to cut its number of pages and illustrations.62

The Stuff Man’s Made Of Whilst this was going on, Jenks finished a draft of his reformulated book, signing the preface on New Year’s Day, 1958, in which he confessed that it was the product of several years’ work and ‘considerable mental stress’.63 He explained elsewhere that, apart from some material from the original project, it had been ‘entirely re-cast and rewritten’. Jenks’ attitude to the book was now much warmer, as he explained:

At any rate I derived a pleasure from writing it which was largely absent from the earlier attempts, possibly because I have adopted a different approach. Instead of concentrating on controversial issues and presenting them in a form of polemical encounter, I have this time written quite frankly as an organic enthusiast, though giving due weight, I hope, to the opposition case.64

The book was now entitled ‘The Stuff We’re Made Of’, a title that Jenks had discussed with his Soil Association colleagues and quite liked, but which his publishers were not keen on.65 Otherwise, de la Mare was enthusiastic, writing that he was reading it with ‘a great deal of pleasure’ and finding it ‘now an immensely better book than it was in its first version’.66 The editorial board suggested the title ‘The Stuff Man is Made of’, which de la Mare considered to be an improvement, but Jenks felt was ‘altogether too stilted’, writing: ‘It doesn’t run smoothly and lacks the intimacy and informality of the first choice.’ After further discussion the final form of ‘The Stuff Man’s Made Of’ and the subtitle ‘The Positive Approach to Health through Nutrition’ was settled on.67 Although Jenks stressed that the book did not represent the official voice of the organic movement, Donald Wilson and Dr Reginald Milton had vetted it for The Whole Works 267 the Soil Association and the draft was also read by Margaret Brady, Lady Howard, Dr Latto, Helen Murray and Dr Innes Pearse, all prominent figures in its leadership.68 So, whilst dealing even-handedly with counter-arguments, Jenks strongly pressed the organic case.69 Despite everything, the book still fulfilled the publishers’ original brief, including a short but useful history of the movement, delivering an argument for an ecological approach to agriculture, and introducing the main techniques of organic growing, such as composting. He wrote for both the gardener and farmer, to the latter extending the flexible approach to the transition to organic agriculture. Reflecting a core motivation of the movement since its beginning, and the most obvious meaning of the book’s title, Jenks outlined in detail the relationship between diet and health and disease, charting it ‘From Soil to Cell’. In accordance with his ecological philosophy, he sketched a culture which had come to imagine humanity as ‘outside and above Nature’ and pointed to the consequences on nature of modern techniques, including the widespread use of poisons such as DDT, that would gain great prominence a little later in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962).70 As a whole, the work demonstrated not only his wide knowledge but gave the view of someone who had seen the transformation of farming since his youth before the Great War to its modern agri-industrial model. In comparison to From the Ground Up, the new book dealt with the ‘organic’ primarily in connection with agriculture, food and health rather than in the wider social and historical sense of the earlier work. Reference to the power of ‘a resistance movement among consumers’ – quite in tune with today’s Soil Association – was a long way from fascist revolution.71 However, Jenks did show his reader how, not only physiologically, but in a deeper cultural, sociological and historical sense, ‘We are what we eat’, showing the immense significance of ecology as a philosophy and that the implications of the organic movement went far beyond composting and healthier and tastier food. Referring to Spengler, he continued to link his thesis to the impending dissolution of western civilization.72 The Stuff Man’s Made Of also expressed his attitude to science, approving of its ambition but questioning the capacity of even the most sophisticated experiment to discern the whole truth. In his penultimate chapter, Jenks looked at the wider political context of the question. Although referring to Cold War alignments, he made plain that the fundamental issues for the human future related to the inequality between the West and Asia in their amount of cultivable land per head of population. It was not an optimistic book but did offer the possibility of hope. In his concluding epilogue, Jenks contrasted modern society – crassly egotistical, arrogant, materialistic, ever-expanding in its reach and its technological powers but, like every other past civilization, ultimately doomed – with its origins in the earlier society of villages, fields and churches, that had long inspired his vision of a good society. Summing up its core, he wrote of how: ‘Cultivation and culture have a common origin in a Latin verb with a dual meaning; colere means both to till and to worship.’73 268 The Whole Works

Reception Due to delays, publication was not until early 1959.74 Reviews were few, with the book being entirely ignored by major mainstream publications. Helen King in Time and Tide considered it to be a ‘persuasive argument for the organic method of agriculture’.75 ‘BB’ in Biology and Human Affairs, the journal of the British Social Biology Council, was less enthusiastic, detecting ‘a strong nostalgia for the “good old days”’, and considering its thesis to be ‘supported by much argument, but a negligible amount of genuine research’, a statement ignoring the extraordinary efforts of the organic movement at Haughley.76 Given its subject, it may seem surprising that it was so warmly welcomed in Agriculture, the official Ministry journal, which might have been expected to express scepticism. Instead, the book was praised as ‘a carefully reasoned unemotional statement of the philosophy of the “organic” school of thought’ and Jenks’ writing as ‘painstaking and eloquent’. Although these things were true, the reviewer, identified only by his initials ‘LE’, was probably Jenks’ colleague Easterbrook and so not entirely disinterested.77 As is so often the case, sales of The Stuff Man’s Made Of in no way matched its literary value or repaid the time, energy and emotion spent in writing it. The publishers Devin Adair, Faber and Faber’s representative in the USA, ordered 1500 copies, the maximum that they were permitted to import.78 At home, sales struggled up to 865 copies by August 1959.79 There were to be no reprints or book club edition. In his review for Mother Earth, Roy Bridger had written of how the organic movement was ‘well out of the Angry Young Man stage’, ‘a force to be reckoned with’ and ‘ready to enter the field of practical politics’, but the fate of Jenks’ book told a different story.80

Notes 1 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 November 1954. 2 LPL, Fisher, 97/30: G. Fisher to the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich [Richard Brook], 29 January 1952. 3 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C14/369: Jenks to Saunders, 20 January 1953; D6/41: Saunders to Jenks, 21 November 1953; D2/147: Row to Saunders, 24 March 1954; D6/46(ii): Jenks to Raven Thomson, 20 June 1954. 4 ‘Are British Farmers Isolationist?’, The European, No. 23 (January 1955), pp. 16–22. 5 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D2/153: Row to Saunders, undated (ca. October 1954); D6/54: Jenks to Saunders, 19 January 1955. 6 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D4/66: Row to Saunders, 22 October 1952; C16/429: Row to Saunders, 25 January 1953. 7 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 25 February 1955. 8 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 1 March 1955. 9 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 30 August 1955; de la Mare to Jenks, 1 September 1955. 10 FFA, RdlM 306: Book Report, 22 September 1955. 11 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 20 October 1955. 12 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 25 October 1955. 13 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 September 1955. The Whole Works 269

14 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 25 October 1955. 15 Passenger lists for MV Venus, departing Plymouth, 6 January 1956 and arriving Plymouth, 2 February 1956 (viewed at www.findmypast.com on 27 May 2009); O. Jenks to Coupland, 9 June 2009; SAA, ML/14: Finance and General Purposes Committee, Report to Council, 15 January 1956. 16 SAA, ML/14: Finance and General Purposes Committee, Report to Council, 15 January 1956. 17 ‘Madeira and Tenerife’, ME, Vol. 9, No. 7 (July 1956), pp. 589–598. 18 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 15 February 1956. 19 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 30 April 1956; de la Mare to Jenks, 2 May 1956. 20 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 15 September 1955. 21 Parl. Arch, BD/1/109: W. Walshe to J. Biggs-Davison, 18 June 1955; StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 12 October 1955. 22 Parl. Arch, BD/1/109: D. Heathcoat-Amory to Biggs-Davison, 23 December 1955. 23 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 20 October 1955; Jenks to de la Mare, 25 October 1955. 24 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 16 November 1955; Parl. Arch, BD/1/109: Walshe to Biggs-Davison, 14 January 1956. 25 Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on Common Land at 26, Sussex Place, London, NW1, Thursday, 19 April 1956; StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 7 June 1956. 26 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 30 April 1956; de la Mare to Jenks, 2 May 1956. 27 ‘Tenth Birthday Party’, ME, Vol. 9, No. 7 (July 1956), pp. 575–576. 28 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council Meeting, 11 July 1956. 29 FFA, RdlM 306: Faber and Faber to Jenks, 8 August 1956; Jenks to V. Glen, 15 August 1956; Jenks to V. Glen, 19 August 1956. 30 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 31 August 1956. 31 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 4 September 1956. 32 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to L. Hills, 8 November 1956. 33 FFA, RdlM 306: Hills to de la Mare, 16 November 1956; ‘Report on The Whole Works by Jorian Jenks’, November 1956. 34 FFA, RdlM 306: Synopsis ‘Revolution in Our Midst’, undated (ca. September 1955). 35 FFA, RdlM 306: Hills to de la Mare, 16 November 1956; ‘Report on THE WHOLE WORKS by Jorian Jenks’, November 1956. 36 Ibid. 37 FFA, RdlM 306: Editors comments on Reader’s Report from L. Hills, 19 November 1956. 38 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 14 December 1956. 39 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 21 December 1956. 40 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 21 December 1956. 41 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 16 January 1957, 3 February 1957. 42 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 30 January 1957. 43 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council Meeting, 25–26 October 1956; ‘Ronald S. King’, ME, Vol. 9, No. 8 (October 1956), p. 654. 44 SAA, ML/14: ‘Suggestion Arising from the Council Conference and Open Conference at Attingham Park, 24 April 1956’, 4 July 1956; Minutes of the Council Meeting, 11 July 1956; Minutes of the Council Meeting, 25–26 October 1956. 45 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 18 December 1956. 46 O. Jenks to Coupland, 20 July 2009. 47 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/C16/448: Saunders to Row, 5 January 1951; R. Row to P. Wa llis, 27 April 1988. 48 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 7 November 1956; O. Jenks to Coupland, 20 July 2009. 270 The Whole Works

49 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 21 December 1956, 3 February 1957. 50 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 11 February 1957. 51 FFA, E7/18: de la Mare to Jenks, 1 May 1957; Jenks to de la Mare, 3 May 1957. 52 Conford, Network, p. 191. 53 O. Jenks to Coupland, 23 and 24 July 2010. 54 Robert Hounsome, The Very Nearly Man: An Autobiography (Leicester: Matador, 2007), pp. 189–199. 55 FFA, E7/18: Jenks to de la Mare, 3 May 1957 and 23 May 1957; Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 56 FFA, E7/18: Jenks to de la Mare, 1 July 1957. 57 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council Meeting, 17 July 1957. 58 SAA, ML/14: Sam Mayall and Laurence Easterbrook, ‘Report on the Ecological Research Farm at Haughley’, 3 October 1957. 59 SAA, ML/14: Laffan, ‘Some Problems Facing the Soil Association’, undated (1957). 60 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council Meeting, 15 October 1957. 61 SAA, ML/14: Supplementary Secretary’s Report, 9 May 1957; ‘Title of the Journal’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 1 (January 1958), p. 15. 62 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Special Council Meeting, 19 November 1957; ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 1 (January 1958), pp. 9–15. 63 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 11. 64 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 26 January 1958. 65 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 3 April 1958; Jenks to de la Mare, 12 April 1958. 66 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks, 16 February 1958. 67 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 9 July 1958, 12 July 1958; de la Mare to Jenks, 4 July 1958, 10 July 1958. 68 FFA, RdlM 306: Jenks to de la Mare, 29 March 1958; The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 11. 69 The Stuff Man’s Made Of, p. 9. 70 Ibid., p. 164 (emphases in original); pp. 38, 82–84, 194–196. 71 Ibid., pp. 202–203. 72 Ibid., p. 33. 73 Ibid., p. 228. 74 FFA, RdlM 306: de la Mare to Jenks: 4 July 1958; 17 July 1958. 75 Helen King, ‘Health and Sickness’, Time and Tide, Vol. 40 (16 May 1959), p. 573. 76 Biology and Human Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 3 (June 1959), p. 45. 77 ‘Book Reviews’, Agriculture, Vol. 66, No. 3 (June 1959), p. 156. 78 FFA, RdlM 306: Garrity to de Sautoy, 30 November 1958. 79 FFA, RdlM 306: Note of sales of The Stuff Man’s Man Of, up to 21 August 1959. 80 Roy Bridger, ‘Master of Facts’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 6 (April 1959), pp. 556–557. 30 Return

When, in January 1959, Mother Earth was published as a special ‘Jubilee’ number, to mark its fiftieth edition since 1946, Jenks stepped aside to allow Easterbrook to write the introduction. He wrote of how Mother Earth had ‘stood like a rock in the ebb and flow of the Association’s fortunes’. For those in doubt it was balm: ‘what a fortifying of faith it has been when the next Mother Earth has come along and its calm, clear tones, appealing so much to common sense, have given reassurance that truth, in the end, must prevail.’ It had maintained continuity but grown with the movement, it was the ‘cement’ which held together the Associa- tion’s international network. ‘The Journal’, Easterbrook wrote, ‘is irreplaceable in the work of our movement and without it we could not have achieved what we have done.’ Easterbrook’s assessment was that Jenks excelled as an editor, as ‘the husbandman, the steward of the harvest, who endows living truth with material expression’. Of Jenks’ ‘great gift’, he wrote: ‘He can appeal to our emotions by pure reason and by doing a job in a straightforward, efficient way.’ He continued: ‘Not for the first time we see a destiny that has never lain along easy paths inspiring a man to soar above circumstances and gain wisdom as a reward.’1 Praise also came from Balfour and, at the next meeting of the Soil Association Council, its President, the Earl of Bradford, paid tribute too.2

DDT The ‘Jubilee’ edition also reported on the conference of the Internationale Gesells- chaft für Nahrungs- und Vitalstoff-Forschung (IVG), held in Essen, where Balfour and Dr Milton had participated.3 Dr Hans Schweigart, an NSDAP member from before the Nazi seizure of power, headed the IVG and worked as a nutritionist throughout 272 Return

Figure 30.1 Jorian Jenks, 1957 Source: Oliver Jenks the Third Reich.4 After ‘very cordial and interesting talks’, he joined the Soil Asso- ciation and several Association figures became members of the IVG, to cement a significant collaborative relationship. The next summer Schweigart addressed the Soil Association’s annual conference.5 This collaboration with IVG was indicative of both the Soil Association’s central role in an international movement and the importance of Germany in the campaign over food and health. In the same month as the Essen conference, legislation curtailing the use of chemical additives in foodstuffs became law there. Jenks’ main German contact, Elisabeth von Barsewisch, had been involved in the campaign for these changes.6 During the Nazi years, the Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft, to which von Barsewisch had belonged, was involved in the struggle against dangerous additives, a precursor of the post-war legislation.7 As we have seen, Jenks had been concerned with the relationship of diet to health since the days of Action, and it was a major theme of the organic movement since its beginning. An increasingly salient aspect of this was the consequences of the ever-widening range of chemicals used in farming. As Jenks wrote in Mother Earth for April 1959, there was a ‘widespread mistrust of modern foods’, the main cause of which was ‘the ever-increasing use of chemicals as fertilizers, sprays and additives’. Whereas laboratory tests might deem spray residues and food additives ‘“harmless”’, their long-term effects were unknown. He pondered whether their consequences might include some of the afflictions which ‘baffled’ doctors, among which he listed the allergies that he suffered from himself.8 Return 273

In one way or another, examining the chemical approach to agriculture formed a major part in Jenks’ work throughout 1959. In his editorial for July, he surveyed the question from many angles, disclosing the radical asymmetry between the resources of the state and the chemical industry and the organic movement. Many people outside the organic movement, Jenks believed, were apprehensive of the chemicals being ‘poured […] directly or indirectly – into their stomachs’, and were ‘beginning to react’, but were yet in a ‘negative, protestant stage’, awaiting leadership.9 October 1959’s Mother Earth was a ‘special pest control number’, and Jenks denounced governments that abused their power by organising or permitting the extensive spraying of toxic chemicals.10

Boynes Wood Farm In the same Mother Earth it was announced that the editor had a new address: Boynes Wood Farm, Four Marks, Alton, in Hampshire. For Jenks the soil was simultaneously the foundation of civilization and of his own life; the land was, as he had written, ‘something firm under your feet, something that goes on living and growing whatever else happens’.11 This vital element had been missing since he left Ecclesden Farm in 1938, with, at best, the scope to grow a few vegetables in the gardens where he was renting or lodging. He was left with a hunger that nagged for 20 years. In 1950, he expressed his hopes to Saunders:

Now I am […] starting to make plans for the next step – to buy a small place of my own in the country with a little land on which I can work for part of my time (possibly with the aid of a pupil) growing my own food and experimenting with small-scale intensive cultivation of staple products. For I believe the country needs an educated peasantry, and that is going to be one of the means of survival for our oppressed middle classes.12

Despite Jenks’ increasing years and ill health, this remained a constant until, in the summer of 1959, he found Boynes Wood Farm. Despite its name, it was a smallholding, with a large garden and a field behind. It was still more than he could manage, so he cultivated the garden and used part of the field to grow comfrey to compost; the remainder he let for pasture, enjoying seeing the cattle grazing there. Dorothy Jenks moved to live with her son; it is probable that the sale of Tawton House made the new purchase possible. Although in her 86th year, Dorothy was still capable of keeping house for her son. Patsy, now in her early twenties, completed the household. She had qualified as a physiotherapist; a few years later she would become an Anglican parish worker, the beginning of a vocation that would see her become one of the first women ordained as a priest.13 Oliver, who had left forestry and gone into teaching, was independent, having married in 1956. 274 Return

Elizabeth Howard It is possible that Jenks’ decision to purchase Boynes Wood Farm was connected with a major development in his personal life, for, not long after moving, he became engaged to marry Elizabeth Howard. Jenks met Elizabeth, known to him for reasons unknown as ‘Jo’, through one of several introduction agencies he tried.14 Ten years his younger, she was also a divor- cee, her marriage to her stockbroker husband Harold having come to an acrimoni- ous end in 1945.15 After the divorce, Elizabeth learned secretarial skills to support herself and her son, Andrew. She loved the social whirl, especially bridge parties; her more reserved suitor preferred patience. Despite the great difference in their interests and temperaments, Jenks courted Elizabeth with determination. On his visits to her comfortable bungalow in Guildford, he overrode his natural reserve to ‘sell’ himself. Acutely conscious about social class, and keen for her son to meet the ‘best’ sort of people, Eliza- beth may have considered Jenks, with his upper-middle-class background, a good prospect. He was also prepared to accept her son, who needed a place to live and was searching for a new direction in life. In his early twenties, Andrew had been an engineer in the RAF, but had left the services to join his father’s family business but this had not worked out. Jenks may not have known it, but Elizabeth had to overcome the dilemma of choosing between him and another, which left a residue of doubt.

Figure 30.2 Elizabeth Howard, ca.1950s Source: Andrew Howard Return 275

In contrast to Elizabeth’s ambivalence, Jenks anticipated the union with pleasure, writing to Gardiner: ‘Re-marriage, I feel sure, is going to make a tremendous difference to me in more ways than one, and I am looking forward to it with great happiness.’16 The ceremony was on 9th May 1960, at the City of Westminster reg- istry office. Jenks described it as a ‘very small and informal affair’; it was followed by a week’s honeymoon in Cornwall.17 Among the wedding presents was £50 from the Soil Association, a token of ‘the very high esteem in which Mr Jenks was held by all members’.18 After the marriage Dorothy and Patsy moved to ‘Halcyon’, a bungalow just up the road.19

End of the RRA A week or so before the wedding, the RRA formally agreed to ‘merge’ into the ERC. Its membership was only 80 by this time and it had been inactive for the past few years.20 When a merger was discussed, three options were offered: to link up with the Institute of Rural Life, to amalgamate with the ERC or to ‘join up with the Soil Association’.21 Jenks was involved in these talks and was the probable source of the last proposal.22 Instead, in view of the long association between the RRA and the ERC, it was decided to join that body. The President of the RRA, Lord Tweedsmuir, was invited to become a vice-president of the ERC and it was also agreed that the Club would constitute an agricultural sub-committee.23 Jenks published an article entitled ‘Does Britain Still need an RRA?’, which made it clear that his answer was in the affirmative, for whilst the countryside was ‘no longer neglected and impoverished’, farmers were increasingly ‘economic opportunists rather than husbandmen’. His last words had a bitter taste:

It is only when one looks around the countryside today – well on its way to becoming a series of dormitory-cum-food-factory suburbs – that one takes leave to doubt whether it is being reconstructed along the lines which Montague Fordham so patiently thought out and which may still on examination, prove to have some enduring validity.24

Lady Eve’s articles Around the time of Jenks’ marriage, another dispute over the journal flared-up, concerning Balfour’s accounts of her overseas visits. She had spent much of 1959 visiting Australia and New Zealand and her reports were by far the longest articles in Mother Earth, causing the Editorial Board to protest. At its April 1960 meeting, Council – seemingly without considering the points raised – dismissed this criticism.25 This left the Editorial Board feeling that it had been dealt with in ‘a very cavalier manner’. The possibility of resignation was ventilated, but Dr Norman 276 Return

Burman was concerned that it would ‘leave the position open to less critical followers of Lady Eve’. Whilst Jenks undoubtedly had his own opinion in this matter, he was a paid servant of the Association, and sought to remain neutral, maintaining that the journal should ‘endeavour to give members what they wanted, rightly or wrongly’. The matter was discussed further during 1960 and the flames of the row damped down, but, like the controversy over the journal’s title, this was an issue that remained smouldering in the background.26

Tough Goose For Christmas 1960, Jorian and Elizabeth shared a dinner of ‘very tough’ goose.27 Although it had seemed to him that his marriage had started in a ‘promising’ way, by this point Jenks was surely aware that dark clouds were gathering over Boynes Wood.28 Despite this, he gave no sign of disquiet in a letter to Gardiner and, shortly afterwards, made a new will, which included a legacy to his stepson.29 At the January 1961 meeting of the Soil Association Council, the Treasurer called attention to the generally poor situation: membership numbers were almost static and the financial circumstances dangerous due to the absence of reserves. Income from Haughley continued to slip, and payments due to the Association from this quarter were not expected to be fulfilled.30 In the next meeting there was a reminder of both the importance of Jenks’ work and that he, as with all of the surviving founders, was not getting any younger. Eve Balfour remarked on the need for younger replacements to be brought in to ‘understudy’ her work and that of Wilson and Jenks. She continued: ‘We are all in our sixties, and the Association would be in a mess if one of us dropped out, and there was no one to fall back on.’31 It was also decided that, with external funding for Haughley being unlikely, another plea to the membership would be necessary.32 Jenks made an appeal in April 1961’s Mother Earth, endorsing both the quantitative results of the experiment, which claimed increased milk production from the organic part of the farm, and superior health and condition among the animals.33 In the following year, Dr Milton’s research on milk yields would be called into question by Lance Coates, a long-time critic of the Haughley experiment. Coates wrote to Jenks on the matter and it subsequently developed into a controversy behind the scenes, involving Council.34 Back in 1961, once again, the membership responded generously and Jenks praised the ‘magnificent’ response to the appeal, which, it was hoped, would make the Haughley experiment safe for another 3 years.35 Around the same time, Professor Alwin Seifert gave a lecture at the German Cultural Institute in London, which would be published in the next Mother Earth.36 Gardiner had earlier endorsed Seifert to Council, describing him as ‘the greatest landscape architect in Europe’, praising the reforms he had achieved ‘[i]n spite of political difficulties […] during the Nazi period’.37 Seifert, at this time was a professor at the Technical University of Munich and Head of Nature Conserv ation Return 277 in Bavaria. He was a major figure in the environmental politics of the Nazi regime, which he had served as Reich Advocate for the Landscape. An advocate of biodynamic methods, he had close connections with Nazi leaders, most especially Dr Fritz Todt and the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess. He also had close contacts with SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, whose own estate was farmed biodynamically.38 Pohl oversaw the SS’s commercial enterprises, including its herb gardens at Dachau Concentration Camp and elsewhere. It is not known whether Jenks went to London to hear Seifert on the 12th of October; he probably did not as, around this time, his personal life again reached crisis point. He certainly sent his apologies to the Soil Association Council on the 18th.39

Desertion #2 Unbeknown to Jenks, the tensions in his marriage had reached their climax. Elizabeth had concluded that the marriage was a terrible mistake and Andrew’s relationship with his stepfather was poor too. As already mentioned, Jenks had once hoped to have a ‘pupil’ to pass his knowledge onto and tried to interest the younger man but gardening was the ‘last thing’ Andrew wanted; his interests then being the young man’s passions of girls and fast cars. Their essential incompatibility, together with the mounting tensions in the house between his mother and Jenks, meant that a cool wariness separated the two men. If they had shared more in common things might have been different, but Elizabeth was solidly suburban. The transition from her immaculate modern bungalow to the farmhouse, with its shabby interior and worn furniture, primitive kitchen and lack of central heating in the winter, must also have been painful. They hosted a small house-warming party in August 1960, but there was no other evidence of the social life that she relished. In his autopsy of his dead marriage immediately afterwards, Jenks recognised that they had ‘almost nothing’ in common. Jenks’ single- minded approach to all he did and the extent of his commitments left little time for his wife. At the same time, he assumed that Elizabeth would manage the household, providing for all his domestic needs whilst he got on with his writing and gardening. He admitted that if Elizabeth had felt neglected, then it was ‘partially true’.40 Jenks also believed that Elizabeth thought he ‘despised her (which wasn’t true at all)’.41 Sadly, his self-absorption and emotional containment may have made this easy to believe. It is also likely that communication between them was impaired by Elizabeth’s near deafness, a consequence of childhood measles. Whatever the precise causes, Eliza- beth progressively withdrew herself from Jenks, until he felt that ‘it was like living with a stranger in his own house’. He perceived that she had ‘set herself to despise me in retaliation and ended, I imagine, by deciding she was thrown away on me’.42 In this increasingly poisoned atmosphere tempers became frayed. Perhaps because of his natural reserve, the occasions when Jenks lost his temper were all the more shocking to Elizabeth, who began to fear the violence of his reactions. 278 Return

This was certainly the case on the occasion when she spoke openly of leaving him. Trapped in a marriage that she now firmly believed was a mistake, she secretly laid plans to leave. Knowing that her husband would be away with his mother in Windermere in early October 1961, visiting a relative, Elizabeth booked a removal van. Her ‘very businesslike’ letter, sent to the Lake District, told Jenks that the marriage was over and that ‘in effect, she couldn’t stand me any longer’. Jenks confided to Sally Stuckey that he was ‘very grieved that things should have turned out as they did’.43 He had no hope that the marriage could be resurrected and quickly had his wife and stepson deleted as beneficiaries in his will.44 His long-established dislike of living alone caused him to move to Dorothy and Patsy’s bungalow, where the two of them provided ‘another home’, with him returning to the farm only to work.45

The Soil Association becalmed Whatever the repercussions of this rupture in Jenks’ private life, it had no obvious consequences on his work. At the February 1962 meeting of the Editorial Board, he raised the question of press publicity. Under pressure to raise the profile of Mother Earth and the Associa- tion, he had circularised the press but the response was negligible, resulting in a single mention, in the Yorkshire Post, where the editor at Jenks’ one-time employer was himself a supporter. Jenks asked Easterbrook for advice on how to improve things. The veteran journalist made various suggestions, but doubted whether the Soil Association was ready for greater publicity. If publicity was a ‘mirror’, then it needed first to ‘break down the idea that we are an amiable set of cranks who may have a germ of truth behind it all, but are not of any real consequence’.46 When the matter was tabled at April’s meeting of the Council there was no obvious will to push the matter forward.47 The impression that the Association was in the doldrums was reinforced by notes circulated before the meeting of the Council in October 1962.48 Member- ship had been falling since 1958. If – it was argued – this was a consequence of the Association’s age profile – the age at which most members joined being between 50 and 70, then a considerable loss over the next 15 years was likely. Wilson, the report’s author, added: ‘Two very active and intelligent members recently expressed the view that, whereas the Soil Association was founded in a great burst of activity, it has been doing very little for a long time.’49 On a positive note, Wilson also noted the growing interest from the press on chemicals in food and two important articles at the beginning of September in the Observer and Evening Standard, reporting on reactions in America to Rachel Carson’s new book, Silent Spring.50 Carson was an American marine biolo- gist and best-selling author of The Sea Around Us (1951), who had turned her attention to conservation, especially problems linked to the widespread use of pesticides. Return 279

Silent Spring Silent Spring, with its exposure of the devastation being wrought on nature by pesticides, most especially DDT, and the injurious effect their residues in food had on human health, had been serialised in The New Yorker from June 1962 and would be published in the USA at the end of September 1962; it would be available in Britain early in 1963. For many outside the organic movement, it was Carson who made them aware of the fragility of ‘the environment’ for the first time, and retrospectively, there has been a tendency to think that the green movement actually began at this point. Although this was untrue, Silent Spring certainly arrived at the right time to capitalise on all that Jenks and his colleagues had done over the previous decades and to help to move their discourse into the mainstream of public life for the first time. Since at least 1959, the Soil Association had been campaigning at a high level on this issue.51 Jenks had been writing about these dangers in Mother Earth since its inception. In 1950, for example, he had written of the unforeseen consequences of poisons, including DDT.52 More recently, in the summer of 1961, following the publication of a report from a House of Commons Select Committee, on the use of toxic chemicals in agriculture, Jenks asked:

Will a monument one day be erected in memory of the many thousands of wild birds – and not a few foxes – whose death by poisoning has done so much to draw public attention in Britain to the hazards inherent in the ever- increasing use of Chemicals on the land?53

The Committee called for a public enquiry, which the Soil Association lobbied for energetically. Jenks returned to the subject in his editorial notes for April 1962, which referred to recent New Zealand government action against DDT and other poisons.54 Despite Mother Earth being a quarterly publication, with lengthy deadlines, Jenks successfully kept pace with the Carson phenomenon. In October 1962, he commended Silent Spring as a ‘powerful indictment of the present reckless use of pesticides’, and promised a review in January.55 Milton’s piece on the book thus appeared well in advance of the launch of the British edition.56 In Jenks’ editorial that month, in response to the falling-off of the membership numbers, he gave a list of good reasons to join, the first of them mentioning ‘The Hazard of Food Contamination from Sprays, etc.’ and linking this to Rachel Carson’s book.57 Not long before January’s Mother Earth went to press, reports were released of the November 1962 UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s conference in Rome on agricultural pesticides. Seizing the moment, Jenks quickly prepared a summary of its deliberations. It was, he believed, the first time such an international gathering had seriously considered the hazards associated with the use of these poisons. At the conclusion of the piece, he allowed himself a few forthright 280 Return comments from the ecological perspective, among them that ‘[w]ild life’ was ‘not just an “aesthetic” luxury’, but played ‘a vital part in food production’. Whereas achieving mass agricultural production according to organic principles might be challenging, ‘could it prove any more difficult’, Jenks contended, than the circumstances into which an ‘ever-greater reliance on chemical pesticides’ was leading the world?58 The Soil Association sought to ride the wave of publicity created by Silent Spring, negotiating with the British publisher Hamish Hamilton over the reciprocal advertisement of the Association and the book.59 The publisher planned to bring Carson to London and it was hoped that she would address a public meeting organised by the Association.60 However, as Carson’s friend Beatrice Trum Hunter explained in a confidential letter, the US Food and Drugs Administration had instigated a ‘reign of terror […] comparable to McCarthyism’ against doctors and other actual or imagined critics of US policy.61 Presumably as a consequence of this, Carson withdrew her co-operation.62 However, Jenks continued to make Silent Spring, the issues it raised and its political repercussions a central feature in Mother Earth. In July 1963, he surveyed the ‘impact’ on both sides of the Atlantic of Carson’s ‘disturbing but beau- tifully written book’, which he summed up as one of ‘impasse’. On one hand, there was an ever-widening consensus that some agricultural practices were dangerous to the ‘health of present and future citizens and cumulatively derang- ing the natural environment’, whilst, on the other hand, political and other elites continued to maintain that pesticides were so essential to production that ‘widespread poverty and hunger’ would result from their withdrawal. Jenks went on to provide a way through this seeming deadlock: ‘the organic alternative’, which was much more than ‘farming without chemicals’, but farming as a system of ‘applied ecology’.63 After Mother Earth for July 1963 went to press, Jenks received a letter from Kathleen Parnell, of the Organic Soil Association of Southern Africa, which brought the issues raised by Silent Spring to the heart of the Soil Association itself. The burden of the letter concerned Dr Wilfred Shewell-Cooper’s advocacy of the use by gardeners of poisons, including DDT. Shewell-Cooper was a celebrity writer on gardening and a founder member of the Association, who had repeat- edly been voted onto its Council. Jenks, with Balfour and Wilson, brought the matter to the attention of the Council. In their letter of the 10th July, they pressed that Shewell-Cooper should either give an undertaking to cease his advocacy of pesticides or leave the Soil Association; if there was no ‘clear decision either way’, his membership should be cancelled. The outcome of the controversy would be Shewell-Cooper’s resignation. Follow- ing an exchange of letters and a special meeting between both sides, he was presented with a list of conditions he must accept or have his membership cancelled and, in the end, he opted to resign.64 This was a denouement that Jenks would not see. Return 281

Return The deadline for submissions for October 1963’s Mother Earth was the beginning of August. By that time, Jenks had written what would be its first article, entitled ‘New Developments in Agricultural Chemicals’. He commented at the outset:

Rachel Carson, with her Silent Spring has done more than anyone else to focus public attention throughout the English-speaking world on the chemicali- zation of agriculture – a development hitherto regarded (except by ‘cranks’ such as ourselves) as inevitable and beneficial.65

These would be among the last words he published. By this point, it was clear that Dr Latto’s treatment had failed to improve Jenks’ health. Concerning his ‘chronic allergic condition’, Dr Milton recalled how:

[f]ew people realize for how long and to what degree Jorian has been handi- capped by this disability. If his asthmatic condition was less acute than usual, then the allergy manifested itself as a dermatitic condition of the hands which interfered with his writing.66

Similarly, Wilson had insight on both the chronic nature of his colleague’s illness and how it had latterly worsened:

He hardly knew a ‘good night’s rest’, but accepted this without grumbling or complaint. To those of us who are not so hampered it seemed almost miracu- lous that he did his best work when least able to do it, whereas we should have folded up. In his later years he seemed to snatch bits of sleep in meetings, sometimes even in a small group when we were talking to him but none of this impaired his editing of the Journal.67

Andrew Howard – who was briefly Jenks’ stepson – and his wife Ewa, who both knew him around 1960–1961, recalled him as a ‘pathetic’ figure, his back bent, shoulders and head drooping, tending to shuffle as he moved. It was a vision seen through the unforgiving eye of youth, but suggested a man worn down from carrying a heavy burden of ill health.68 On Tuesday, 20th August 1963, Jorian Jenks was at home, when, during a severe asthma attack, he died from heart failure.69 Asthma had been part of his life since childhood, so his death was sudden and shocking to those around him; his son had no intimation of it.70 Jenks’ death coincided with a surge in mortality in Britain during the first half of the 1960s, which has been attributed to the availability of aerosol inhalers, dispensing high-doses of bronchodilators such as isoprenaline or orcipenaline.71 Whether he was using these devices is unknown, but he had been 282 Return using adrenaline or its derivatives for decades to relieve his condition, all of which can be toxic to the heart. However, despite the increasing burden of ill health and the disappointments of recent years, Jenks was not obviously unhappy at this time. He remained physically active and mentally committed, as Wilson wrote, ‘He died in full harness, as he would have wished, with a vegetable garden in beautiful shape, and an issue of the Journal almost complete.’72 In other areas, he had continued to seek out new projects, the previous year making a foray into literary criticism with an article on Kipling.73 Not long after his father’s death, Oliver wrote: ‘I think that he found much happiness here with his own home and small piece of land – a thing he had always wanted again. Perhaps when he died, he was more content than he had been for many years.’74 Jenks had not been afraid of death, serene in his conjoined faith in God and Nature, he contemplated it with equanimity, as the precursor of rebirth in the unending cycle at the heart of nature and of the authentic life of the English countryside. A true ecologist, the cycle of life was at the core of his philosophy and he was only half-joking when he told his son that he would like his dead body to be laid in the compost heap. In The Country Year, where he portrayed the intercon- necting cycles of nature, faith and human community which he saw in the English countryside, Jenks wrote of how:

countryfolk accept death as philosophically as they accept autumn and winter, as natural and inevitable. Sympathy and help for the bereaved, yes; mourning for the still body returned to the earth whence it came, no; only decent respect. All creatures must run their course. The Lord giveth, the Lord receiveth again.75

This was the background of the instructions that he gave in his will:

I expressly desire not to be cremated but to be buried according to the rites of the Church of England in a country churchyard preferably near my mother or wife should either predecease me without coffin and as shallowly as the authorities will permit so that my body may return to the soil whence it came. The funeral arrangements to be as simple as possible with such flow- ers as may be given but no mourning.76

His funeral took place at the Medieval church of St Andrew’s, Medstead, on 24th August, at 2.30pm.77 Family and representatives of the Soil Association, including past and present Council members, attended.78

Notes 1 Laurence Easterbrook, ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 5 (January 1959), pp. 361–365. 2 Eve Balfour, ‘Message from Lady Eve Balfour’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 5 (January 1959), p. 367; SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 13 February 1959. Return 283

3 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 15 October 1958. 4 Jörg Melzer, Vollwerternährung: Diätetik, Naturheilkunde, Nationalsozialismus, sozialer Anspruch (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003), p. 408. 5 SAA, ML/14: ‘Appendix 2: Letter to Dr Schweigart’ (ca. 17 October 1958); Helen Murray, ‘International Conference on Nutrition, Essen, 1958’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 5 (January 1959), pp. 373–374; H.A. Schweigart, ‘Classical Theory of Nutrition – Dynamic Theory of Vital Substances’, ME, Vol. 11, No. 3 (July 1960), pp. 299–306. 6 ‘Frau E. Von Barsewisch’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April 1962), p. 129. 7 Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 165–170; Elisabeth von Barsewisch, ‘Effects of New German Food Laws’, ME, Vol. 11, No. 7 (July 1961), pp. 765–766. 8 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 6 (April 1959), pp. 473–477. 9 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 7 (July 1959), pp. 569–575. 10 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 10, No. 8 (October 1959), pp. 655–662. 11 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G5/1: Jenks to Gardiner, 15 July 1945. 12 U. Sheffield LSC, MS119/D6/27: Jenks to Saunders, 20 April 1950. 13 O. Jenks to Coupland, 22 September 2014. 14 Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009. 15 Unless otherwise stated the account of Jenks’ second marriage is based on the author’s conversations and correspondence with Andrew and Ewa Howard (2009–2010). 16 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/2: Jenks to Gardiner, May Day 1960. 17 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 7 May 1960. 18 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 13 April 1960. 19 StP: Jenks to Stuckey, 7 May 1960. 20 StP: Minutes of the Executive Committee, 29 April 1960. 21 StP: Holloway to Members of the RRA, draft letter, February 1960. 22 StP: Holloway to Stuckey, 15 January 1960; Holloway to Stuckey, undated (ca. February 1960). 23 StP: Holloway to Membership of the RRA, February 1960 and 12 April 1960. 24 Jorian Jenkins [sic], ‘Does Britain Still need an RRA’, Commonwealth Digest and World Economic Review, Vol. 1, No. 4 (May 1960), pp. 131–134. 25 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 13 April 1960. 26 SAA, ML/14: C.D. Wilson, ‘Difference of Opinion – Editorial Board and Council’, 6 July 1960; Minutes of the Council, 13 July 1960; Minutes of the Council, 19 October 1960; ‘Budget Problem – How long should the journal be?’, 14 October 1960. 27 Howard Family Papers: Elizabeth Howard’s household book, page headed ‘Christmas Cards 1960’. 28 StP: Jenks to S. Stuckey, 17 December 1961. 29 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, G1/2: Jenks to Gardiner, 2 January 1961; The Will of Jorian E.F. Jenks, 10 February 1961. 30 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 25 January 1961. 31 SAA, ML/14: ‘Memorandum from Lady Eve Balfour’, 1961. 32 SAA, ML/14: Finance Committee, ‘Report to the Council’, 19 April 1961. 33 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 11, No. 6 (April 1961), pp. 577–582. 34 SAA, ML/14: ‘Correspondence between Mr Lance Coates and Mr J.E.F. Jenks’, (20–29 November 1962), 11 January 1963. 35 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 12 July 1961; ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 11, No. 7 (July 1961), pp. 683–687; ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 11, No. 8 (October 1961), pp. 787–793. 36 Alwin Seifert, ‘The Balanced Landscape’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 1 (January 1962), pp. 577–582. 37 SAA, ML/14: ‘Extract of letter from Rolf Gardiner [etc.] (Easter 1961)’, 14 April 1961. 38 Peter Staudenmaier, Between Occultism and Nazism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race in the Fascist Era (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 133–134, 138; Thomas Zeller, ‘Moulding the 284 Return

landscape of Nazi environmentalism: Alwin Seifert and the Third Reich’, pp. 147–170, in Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller (eds.), How Green were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2005). 39 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 18 October 1961. 40 StP: Jenks to S. Stuckey, 17 December 1961. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 First codicil to the Will of Jorian E.F. Jenks (10 February 1961), 4 November 1961. 45 StP: Jenks to S. Stuckey, 17 December 1961. 46 Jenks to L. Easterbrook, 2 February 1962; Easterbrook to Jenks, 6 February 1962 copies in SAA, ML/14: ‘Press Publicity’, 1 March 1962. 47 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 11 April 1962. 48 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of the Council, 13 October 1962. 49 SAA, ML/14: ‘Secretary’s Confidential Notes to Council’, 19 October 1962. 50 Ibid. 51 SAA, ML/14: ‘Secretary’s Confidential Notes to the Council’, 9 July 1962; C.D. Wilson, ‘Food Additives and Residues – “Chemical Hazards to Food”’, 26 October 1962. 52 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 4, No. 4 (autumn 1950), pp. 1–7. 53 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 11, No. 8 (October 1961), pp. 787–793. 54 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April 1962), pp. 123–129. 55 ‘World Survey’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 4 (October 1962), pp. 341–346. 56 R.F. Milton, ‘“Silent Spring”’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 5 (January 1963), pp. 463–465. 57 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 5 (January 1963), pp. 443–447. 58 ‘The Pesticide Dilemma’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 5 (January 1963), pp. 467–470. 59 SAA, ML/14: ‘Secretary’s Confidential Notes to Council’, 2 January 1963. 60 SAA, ML/14: ‘Special Notice: Further Confidential Notes to Council Members’, 17 January 1963. 61 SAA, ML/14: B. Trum Hunter to unknown, 7 January 1963, cited in ‘Special Notice: Further Confidential Notes to Council Members’, 17 January 1963. 62 SAA, ML/14: ‘Secretary’s Further Confidential Notes to Council Members’, 7 February 1963. 63 ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 7 (July 1963), pp. 627–634. 64 SAA, ML/14: ‘Report to November 11th Council Meeting [etc.]’; ‘Concerning points raised in Dr Shewell-Cooper’s letters’, 5 November 1963; ‘Concerning Dr W.E. Shewell-Cooper’, 25 October 1963; Minutes of the Council, 11 November 1963; ‘Concerning Dr W.E. Shewell-Cooper – further correspondence’, 20 November 1963; Minutes of the Council, 22 January 1964. 65 ‘New Developments in Agricultural Chemicals’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 8 (October 1963), pp. 724–733. 66 ‘In Appreciation’, p. 3. 67 Ibid. p. 4. 68 Interview with A. and E. Howard, 19 June 2010. 69 The Alton Mail, 23 August 1963, p. 8. 70 Balliol Oxf.: D. Jenks to Balliol 700th Anniversary Fund Appeal, 12 October 1963; ‘Jorian Jenks’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 8 (October 1963), p. 723; Interview with O. Jenks, 25 May 2009; CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, F2/3: O. Jenks to Gardiner, 29 August 1963. 71 Jackson, Asthma, pp. 158–164. 72 ‘In Appreciation’, p. 4. 73 Jenks, ‘A Scarcity of Women’. Return 285

74 CUL, GBR/0012/MS Gardiner, F2/3: O. Jenks to Gardiner, 29 August 1963. 75 The Country Year, p. 24; see also ‘Downland Diary: The Bell Tolls’, Rural Economy News Letter, Vol. 24, No. 3 (March 1956), p. 7. 76 The Will of Jorian E.F. Jenks, 10 February 1961. 77 The Alton Mail, 23 August 1963, p. 8. 78 ‘Jorian Jenks’, ME, Vol. 12, No. 8 (October 1963), p. 723. Epilogue Jorian Jenks’ legacy: Green and Black

John Strachey (1901–1963) was Jorian Jenks’ near contemporary and died a few weeks before him. Strachey, whose family background was similarly liberal and privileged, was also tempted by fascism. Mosley’s closest collaborator in the Labour Party, he followed him into the New Party, falling away only on the brink of the plunge into fascism. ‘The path which leads to Fascist terror has a most attractive entrance’, he warned.1 Jenks probably did not see fascism as the ‘easy solution’ that Strachey also wrote of, but reasoned that it was the only solution that met the facts of the time. Despite serving the no less illiberal and bloody system of Soviet Communism throughout the 1930s, Strachey’s political comeback was so successful that he served as Minister of Food in the Attlee government, presiding over the notorious Tanganyika ‘groundnuts scheme’. Jenks also managed to rebuild his career through the organic movement, such that he could point out in Mother Earth that the groundnuts fiasco was not merely a political embarrassment but an ecological catastrophe. From the perspective of strict political pragmatism, Jenks’ Blackshirt allegiance was a mistake, which personally cost him dear and did little to advance the cause of rural reconstruction. Hindsight suggests that he would have done better to have followed the example of his mentor, the canny Montague Fordham, who was continuing the struggle for reform from within the machine. However, whilst the old parties did deliver rural reconstruction in the post-war period, it was in a form remote from Jenks’ ideal, whilst his vision of a society reconstructed ‘from the ground up’ remained – and remains – unrealised. Jenks went from fascism to the organic movement, but there were many other routes. Eve Balfour, for example, contemplated and rejected Mosley’s BUF:

There is so much of what Mosley advocates and says that is such good sense, and when people are desperate they are apt to forget that a policy which Epilogue 287

fits their needs, if introduced by fascist methods, will lose this country that freedom of speech, thought and action for which we have fought throughout the centuries.2

Jenks’ answer was that ‘fascist methods’ were unavoidable because ‘freedom of […] action’ was blocked by the power of money. Also, in his own story, the argument for both fascism and ecology drew from the same critical knowledge of the liberal economy and polity. It was presumably because he remained convinced in both cases, that, despite all the troubles and odium heaped on him as a consequence of his political heresy, he never recanted it.

Green The death of Jorian Jenks left the Soil Association in what Donald Wilson described as a ‘depression’, which only started to lift with the creation of a memorial fund to send out Jenks’ last Mother Earth to schools and the appointment of his successor.3 Jenks’ replacement was Robert Waller, who had been producing agricultural programmes for the BBC radio’s Western Region and was the biographer of Sir George Stapledon. Gardiner, who proposed his appointment, compared him to his predecessor as ‘less of a lone bird perhaps, less ponderous in temperament’.4 Waller asked for, and received, a salary of £2,000, around double what Jenks was paid. Although he was officially part time, it was admitted that Jenks had actually ‘worked very nearly a full-time week. He could hardly keep up with all the journals and extra jobs and reading for which we asked him.’5 With the dire financial circumstances of the Association, it was recognised that employing Waller tightened the screw further.6 That an editorial assistant, Michael Allaby, was also recruited underlines how much of himself Jenks had given for the Association. Even before his formal appointment, Waller laid out his vision for Mother Earth, allowing that whilst it would continue to report on research, its major thrust would be philosophical, to present an ecological alternative to the new world being created by the ‘third industrial revolution’ of ‘automation’. Waller declared:

The only successful approach for planning this new age will be through ecology – balance and wholeness. We must show what the electronic brain really implies about the nature of man, that it puts the stress back on his instinctive, spiritual and artistic sides.7

Waller – who was not previously a member of the Soil Association – was perhaps unacquainted with his predecessor’s writings, and imagined that he was innovating whilst actually continuing themes integral to the journal since Jenks created it.8 Conford discusses whether the Waller–Allaby era marked the start of a ‘left- ward shift’ for the Soil Association. Certainly it began with the first ever public 288 Epilogue controversy over the ‘conservative’ politics of Mother Earth – ironically the offend- ing article was created not by Jenks but by Professor Lindsay Robb, who covered the hiatus before the new brooms swept in. Waller was a liberal, Allaby a CND supporter, who also joined the Labour Party, but although this distanced them politically from Jenks, this is not a matter amenable to easy conclusions. Conford writes of this period:

As the new environmental movement began to appear in the 1960s, it became clear that a new approach to politics was required: one which would reject materialism exemplified in both capitalism and socialism. A ‘third way’, perhaps – steering a course distinct from American free enterprise and the State Socialism of the Iron Curtain countries.9

This neatly describes Jenks’ mission over the previous 30 years. Looking back on Jenks’ career and evaluating his historical contribution to the progress of ecology as a movement, he was vital to the creation and survival of the Soil Association as its core constituent. In concert with other key colleagues, he kept the movement alive during its barren years on the periphery of public life, until finally, in the early 1960s, the door began to inch open. Through Mother Earth, he created an eloquent public voice for the organic movement, something of real substance that might still serve as an inspiration today. Whatever the Soil Association of today may think of Jenks – if it thinks of him at all – to a significant degree it owes its existence to his insight, dedication and self-sacrifice. This was a contribution which was acknowledged by the Soil Association during his lifetime and after his death. In contrast, his intellectual contribution has never been properly appreciated. In 2011, Ulrich Loening, formerly Director of the Centre for Human Ecology at the University of Edinburgh, recommended From the Ground Up to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Select Committee but this was exceptional.10 Perhaps because of the unpretentious quality of Jenks’ prose, perhaps because he was writing in a culture that discounted abstraction and systematic thought, the value of his ideas, which reached their mature form in From the Ground Up, has scarcely been recognised. Whilst not being himself an innovator, Jenks was among the first to synthesise an economic and social critique of liberal modernity that incorporated the ecological dimension as fundamental and central. In this respect, his work still has the power to enlighten.

Black Although Jenks may be persona non grata in Soil Association circles today, full tribute was paid to him by his colleagues at his death. In contrast, the fascist movement’s debt to him was scarcely redeemed by a short and impersonal obituary in Action, Epilogue 289 although this did reflect the profound disconnection between Union Movement and the things that mattered to him.11 When Jenks died, the ‘environment’ as problem and ecology as solution was still only on the margins of politics; among his fellow fascists his ecological perspective was almost unique and certainly unrepre- sentative of the concerns of Mosley’s post-war party. Even before Jenks’ ecological conversion, when he was the Blackshirts’ voice for rural reconstruction, he represented a relatively insignificant part of the BUF membership, which was overwhelmingly urban in character. In this the BUF mir- rored Britain generally, where the social scale and political weight of agriculture was much diminished. Whereas, on the continent, Mussolini and Hitler both exploited the grievances of large rural communities to obtain their first successes, crucial to the ascent of fascism to power in those countries, this was never likely in Britain. That said, had the ruling system reached crisis in Britain too and political space been opened for fascism, then Jenks would have been well positioned to foster the rural part of a British mass movement. If, in the 1930s, the countryside was already a much weakened factor in British politics, the votes of farmers weigh little in the electoral scales today. At the same time – and despite an electoral system providing an almost insurmountable rampart protecting the status quo – the green movement has been a rising force in British politics over recent decades. To date, this rising green tide has hardly touched the contemporary fascist movement in Britain and, when it has, Jenks has rarely been a source of inspiration. The main exception to this comes from the inheritors of the Mosley political tradition, which have cast him as, for example, ‘the first green’ and published some of his writings again – in particular, Spring Comes Again is available for the first time since the 1930s, in print or as an ebook.12 But it would be a mistake to exaggerate the significance of the activities of a few ‘Mosleyites’ who have little influence; certainly sales of Spring Comes Again have remained modest.13 The Mosley political tradition is only one branch of British fascism, whose influence has been diminishing ever since Mosley’s retirement from politics at the end of the 1960s. Since the 1970s, the major fascist parties in this country have been the National Front (NF) and, more recently, the British National Party (BNP), both of which have a political ancestry going back instead to the Jewish conspiracy theories and biological racism of Arnold Leese. Inevitably there has been some degree of cross-over between these forces and Mosley fascism, but they have remained generally distinct. Jenks has not entered their pantheon and, in any case, the NF and BNP have only engaged with environmental issues superficially, in a politics dominated by the single issue of opposition to non-European immigration to the United Kingdom. The only significant faction within this political subculture with any affinity to the things that mattered to Jenks was the so-called ‘Third Position’, one of the factions that emerged out of the disintegration of the NF in the 1980s. The Third 290 Epilogue

Position, so called for its claims to transcend both socialism and capitalism, drew on Distributist economic ideas and employed romantic rural imagery in its discourse. However, its intellectual heroes were not Jenks, but Chesterton and Belloc.14 In any case, adherents of the Third Position were few and, no matter that they were among the more ideologically eclectic fascists, their ideas had no wider political resonance. Despite Nick Griffin, one of the Third Position’s leading figures, going on to lead the BNP during the most successful period of its life, environmental issues were little more salient than before. It was emblematic that the party’s stance on climate change, whilst not formally embracing denial, amounts to much the same thing.15 Since 2010, the BNP has lost its political space to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a conservative populist rather than fascist party. The former’s dismal performance in the 2015 general election shows British fascism apparently on the brink of extinction.

* * *

However, although British fascism in its recent iterations may be dying out, the severe threats which now threaten the world, particularly climate change and its concomitant political and socio-economic consequences of competition for scarce food and water resources, will have great potential to break up existing structures and create space for new radical forces. The emergence of a ‘green fascism’ in the future will not depend on the salience of ecology in the political debates of tomorrow, for that will be inescapable. Instead the emergence of such a movement – whatever name it may be given – will depend on whether the binding and motivating idea of the nation survives meaningfully in an evermore integrated global society. This is a complex topic outside the remit of this work but, suffice it to say, the omens are mixed. Technologically and so economically, socially, culturally and politically the world is increasingly one supra- national entity, or at least ruled by supra-national forces and the ecological changes consequent on climate change will add to this, further accelerating the movement of peoples. At the same time, both in the British Isles and more widely, resurgent nationalist movements have enjoyed an unanticipated success. What is certain is that the Britain once imagined by Jenks and his colleagues to be eternal has disappeared over the course of a single lifetime. Although Jenks wrote for a community that today can only be conjured up in imagination as nostalgia, the heart of his work, its ecology and its meditation on the qualities of a good life are evergreen. However, to progress beyond today’s anti- natural system and create a sustainable and wholesome way of living, would require not only a verdant wisdom but also present an unprecedented challenge to human will and imagination, to steer between the Scylla of ecological catastrophe and the Charybdis of political authoritarianism. Epilogue 291

Notes 1 J. Strachey, The Menace of Fascism (London: Gollancz, 1934), p. 165. 2 Balfour to Brayshaw, 25 November 1933, cited in Gill, ‘Lady Eve Balfour’, pp. 67–68. 3 SAA, ML/14: Secretary’s Confidential Notes to Council, 11 December 1963. 4 CUL, G5/10: Gardiner to the Earl of Bradford, 9 October 1963. 5 SAA, ML/14: Minutes of Council, 11 November 1963. 6 SAA, ML/14: Secretary’s Confidential Notes to Council, 11 December 1963. 7 SAA, ML/14: R. Waller to D. Wilson, 27 November 1963. 8 R. Waller, ‘Editorial Notes’, ME, Vol. 13, No. 2 (April 1964), pp. 75–81. 9 Conford, The Development of the Organic Network, pp. 336–337. 10 Written evidence submitted by Dr Ulrich Loening, 30 March 2011, in ‘Sustainable food – evidence to House of Commons’, viewed at www.publications.parliament.uk, on 4 December 2011. 11 Cutting from Action, 13 September 1963. 12 Gordon Beckwell, ‘Jorian Jenks, Blackshirt, Farmer and the First Green’, Comrade, No. 20 (August–September 1989), p. 3. 13 J. Wallder to Coupland, 9 July 2015. 14 A Third Positionist Reader: Selected Political Writings for ITP Members and Supporters (London: International Third Position, undated, ca. 1990s). 15 See, for example: ‘Global Warming: Hostages to a Hoax’, Identity, No. 81 (August 2007), pp. 8–9. This page intentionally left blank Further reading

Anna Bramwell, Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darré and Hitler’s ‘Green Party’ (Bourne End, Buckinghamshire: Kensal Press, 1985). Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the Twentieth Century: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Paul Brassley, Jeremy Burchardt and Lynne Thompson (eds.), The English Countryside Between the Wars: Regeneration or Decline? (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006). Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller (eds.), How Green were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2005). Philip Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2001). Philip Conford, The Development of the Organic Network: Linking People and Themes, 1945–95 (Edinburgh: Floris, 2011). Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–39 (London: Constable, 1980). Alun Howkins, The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside Since 1900 (London: Routledge, 2003). Matthew Jefferies and Mike Tyldesley (eds.)Rolf Gardiner: Folk, Nature and Culture in Interwar Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). William Lockeretz (ed.), Organic Farming: An International History (Wallingford: CABI Publishing, 2007). Tony Nightingale, White Collars and Gumboots: A History of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1892–1992 (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1992). Robert O. Paxton, French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgères’s Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Martin Pugh, Hurrah for the Blackshirts: Fascists and Fascism in Britain between the Wars (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005). Brian Short, Charles Watkins, and John Martin (eds.), The Front Line of Freedom: British Farming in the Second World War (Exeter: British Agricultural History Society, 2006). 294 Further reading

A.W. Brian Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention Without Trial in Wartime Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Peter Staudenmaier, Between Occultism and Nazism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race in the Fascist Era (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918–1985 (London: Basil Blackwell, 1987). Carol Twinch, Tithe War: 1918–1939: The Countryside in Revolt (Norwich: Media Associates, 2001). Index

18B Detainees (British) Aid Fund 191 Beaumont, Major Michael 206 Belloc, Hilaire 80, 113, 290 Acland, Sir Francis 61 Benvenisti, J.L. 113 Action 90, 97, 116, 122, 131, 134, 135 Bernal, J.D. 91 Agricultural Economics Research Institute Betjeman, John 2 (AERI; latterly Institute for Research Beveridge, Sir William 6, 37, 50–1, 52, 83 in Agricultural Economics) 2, 52, 53–5, Bevin, Ernest 157 251, 252 Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association 220 Agriculture Act (1920) 24, 25 Bio-Dynamic Association 235 Agriculture Act (1947) see Labour biodynamics, see Steiner, Rudolf Governments 1945–51 Biology and Human Affairs 268 Allaby, Michael 287–8 Birkett, Norman 140 Amory, Derick Heathcoat- 259 Bishop’s Tawton 52, 61, 89, 141, 145, 154, Anglo–German Link 198 173, 176, 180, 182, 273 antisemitism 100–5, 106 n. 45, 221 Blackshirts see British Union of Fascists Arbeitskreis für Landwirtschaft 219 Bledisloe, Lord 155, 157, 164 Architectural Association School of Blood and Soil (Blut und Boden) 219, 232 Planning 90–1 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries see Ashby, Arthur W. 251 Ministry of Agriculture Australia 6, 39–40, 47, 62, 63, 103, 275 Boothby, ‘Bob’ 207, 210 Boscawen, Sir Arthur Griffith- 25 Baldwin, Sir Archer 259 Bozman, E.F. 173 Balfour, Lady Eve 187–9, 196, 197, 199, Bradford, Earl of 271 213, 215, 218, 221, 227, 228, 258, Brady, Margaret 267 271, 276, 280, 286–7; The Living Soil, Breen, Dr G.E. 196, 197, 199, 232 publication of 189 Bridger, Roy 268 Ball, Major Joseph 80 British Medical Association 99 Balliol College 1, 6, 9, 52–53 British National Party (BNP) 289–90 Barlow, Kenneth 170 British Peoples Party 157 Barsewisch, Elisabeth von 220, 272 British Social Biology Council 268 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) British Union of Fascists (BUF) 86–7, 112–113, 215, 216, 287 94–5, 123–5, 131, 134–5, 219, 232, 289; 296 Index

agricultural policies and campaigns of Communism 94, 97, 101, 102–3, 118, 119, 88–9, 96–9, 111–2, 156; antisemitism 150, 245, 260, 286; see also Communist of 100–1, 104, 106 n. 45; British Union Party of Great Britain (CPGB) Agricultural Group 141, 143, 191, 241; Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) Fascism and Agriculture 89, 97, 100 see also 80, 91, 103, 116, 170 Action and The British Union Quarterly Conservative Party 87, 112, 132, The British Union Quarterly 116, 122, 157 155, 206, 215, 237, 228, 238, 259; The British Weekly 187 Conservative Finance and Industry Brooks, Collin 76 Committee (Macmillan Committee) Browning, Misses Catherine and Esther 81; Conservative Research Department 202, 247, 263, 264 (CRD) 80 Browning, Oscar 6 Cooper, Dr Ashley 207 Bryant, Arthur 164 Cooper, Dr Wilfred Shewell- 207, 280 Budd, Charles Bentinck- 95 Corn Production Act (1917) 24–5 Burman, Dr Norman 214, 276–7 Cotton, Rafe Temple- 214 Butler, R.A. (‘Rab’) 155, 207, 252 Council for the Church and Countryside (CCC) 2, 164, 166, 176, 180–1, 185, Canada 15, 28, 29–30, 34, 50, 57, 79 195–6, 257; Encounter 176, 179, Canning, Robert Gordon- 214 180, 195 Carson, Rachel 267, 278–81 Country Life 171 Casserley, Rev. Julian Langmead 162 Country Living see Land and Home The Catholic Herald 113 Publications Catholicism 80, 113, 161, 163, 170, County War Agriculture Executive 228, 252 Committees 133, 154, 171 Central Chamber of Agriculture 81, 156, Crawley, Anthony 52, 64 159 n. 24 Creasy, Ronald 214 Chamberlain, Neville 132; ‘Kettering’ Criterion 122 speech 133 Critique 231 Charnley, John 95, 138 Crowther, Dr Charles 37 Chester family 39, 63 see also Jenks, Sophie Chester, Sophie see Jenks, Sophie Dachau Concentration Camp 277 Chesterton, G.K. 80, 113, 290 The Daily Express 249 Christendom group 161–3, 176 The Daily Mail 76, 89 Christian socialism 75, 113, 161, 247 Darré, Dr Walther 219–20, 232 Christian State Movement 84 The Daily Worker 170; see also Communist Church of England 88, 161, 164, 176 Party of Great Britain see also Council for Church and Davison, John Biggs- 238, 259 Countryside Dawson, George 208 Church Social Action Committee 161; DDT see pesticides The Church, the Clergy and the Rural Denmark 134, 246, 248 Community Conference 163–2 Dent, J.M. and Sons (‘Dents’) 173, 178, 180 Church, A.G. 101 Department of Agriculture (New Zealand) Churchill, Winston 103, 132, 134, 181 32–4, 44; Albany experimental area Clark, Colin 156, 252 of 33; see also Deteriorated Lands Act Coates, Joseph 44 (1926) and The New Zealand Journal Coates, Lance 265, 276 of Agriculture Cobbett, William 80, 88, 102, 119 Department of Agriculture for Scotland 51 Cockayne, Alfred H. 33 Derrick, Paul 247 Collis, John Stewart 231 Deteriorated Lands Act, The (1926) 43–5 Colonial Office 37, 55 Dimbleby, Jonathan 2 Committee on Land Utilisation in Rural Distributism 75, 80, 81, 113, 161, 196, 290 Areas (Scott Committee) 152 Distributist League see Distributism Common Wealth party 247 Dorgères, Henry 96 Index 297

Douglas, Major C.H. 79, see also Fordham, Montague 2, 97, 154–6, 157, Social Credit 162, 190, 196, 206, 207, 286 Dowty, John 214 Forschungsring für biologisch-dynamische Du Sautoy, Peter 260 Wirtschaftsweise 220 Duncan, Ronald 150, 162, 180, 196, 245 Forwood, Sir William Bower 6, 25, 51 Foulkes, Hedworth 16, 23, 24 Easterbrook, Laurence 2, 189, 190, 196, 198, Franklin, Miles 63 199, 251, 265, 268, 271, 278 Fullerton, Mary 39, 62, 63, 67, 69, 94, 110, Ecclesden Farm 63, 68–73, 104–5, 130, 138, 146, 173, 201 108–9, 173 Ecological Research Foundation see Soil Garbett, Dr Cyril 164 Association Gardiner, Rolf 162, 164, 175, 176, 178, 179, The Economic Digest 238 180, 181, 195, 198, 207, 214, 219–20, Economic Reform Club (ERC) 156–8, 235, 248, 276, 287 160 n. 41, 162, 185, 198, 206, 207–8, Garland, George 72 209–11, 228, 235, 236, 237, 275; Gent, John 214 Agricultural Section of 157–8, 208; George Allen and Unwin 228, 231 Agricultural Bulletin, publication of Germany 99, 101, 103, 104, 112, 124, 125, 161, 196, 208; ‘The World We Want’ 126, 127, 134, 135–6, 162, 219, 220, 272 Conference, organiser of 158 Gesell, Silvio 79 Edwards, Elizabeth 242 Gesellschaft Boden und Gesundheit elections, parliamentary 124; 1935 94; 1945 219, 220 181; 1950 230, 231; 2015 290 Gooch, Edwin 98 Electrical Association for Women 242 Grace, Dr John J. 236, 250 Eliot, T.S. 122, 161, 178, 179 The Greater Britain 88, 100 Emergency Powers (Defence) Act Greenwell, Sir Peter 199 (1939; 1940) 131, 134, 135, 164, 191; Greig, Sir Robert 51 see also internment under Defence Griffin, Nick 290 Regulation 18B Guild socialism 75, 80, 113, 156, 161, 177 Empire Marketing Board 40, 55 The Empire Review 55 Haileybury College 1, 11, 13–14, 15, 16, 23 England, Gordon 222 Hall, Sir Daniel 24, 54, 90 English Mistery 76, 132, 162, 206 Haller, Wolfgang von 219 The English Review 38 Hamish Hamilton 280 The English Review Magazine 231 Harper Adams Agricultural College 14, 15, eugenics 101 22–24, 37, 51, 73 Everybody’s 152, 170, 178 Hart, Tristram 207 Hartley, General Sir Harold 52, 53 Faber and Faber 151, 170, 177–8, 189, Haughley experiment see Soil Association 227, 258, 259–62, 266–8 Hawkins, A.E.G. 242, 244 Faber, Geoffrey 258 Hearnden, Beryl (‘Beb’) 189 Farmer 252 Henriques, Colonel Robert 216–17 Farmer and Stockbreeder 135, 250 Hess, Rudolf 220, 277 Farmers’ Action Council 161, 162 Heywood, F.B. Price- 247 Farmers’ Club 91, 98, 112, 113, 156 Hill, H. Grenville 244 fertilizers, artificial 2, 14, 32, 34, 42, Hills, Lawrence 260 43–6, 73, 149, 172, 232, 242, 272 Hollis and Carter 227, 228, 251 The Field 38, 51, 75 Hollis, Christopher 210, 228 First World War 14, 15–19, 124; Food Holloway, Edward 157, 206, 234–8, Campaign (1917) 18 251, 259 Fisher, Archbishop Geoffrey 196 Horse and Hound 172 Floud, Sir Francis 50 Hosking, J.E. 195 Fordham, Dr Michael 207 Howard, Andrew 274, 276, 277, 281 298 Index

Howard, Elizabeth 274–5, 276, 277–8 bronchodilators, use of 281–2; Howard, Lady 267 convalescence on cruise to Madeira Howard, Sir Albert 99, 158, 164, 172, 185, and Tenerife 258; Dr Latto, treatment 187, 189, 197 by 264–5 Hudson, Robert 132, 135 birth 5 Hunter, Beatrice Trum 280 books, written by 180; The Country Year Hurd, Anthony 112 2, 166; Farming and Money 80, 81–4, Hurd, Sir Percy 112 87–8, 97, 162; From the Ground Up Huxley, Anthony J. 231, 232 151, 170, 172, 180, 197, 199, 227–33, Huxley, Dr Julian 157 236–7, 267, 288; Spring Comes Again Hyams, Edward 221, 260 101–2, 116–22, 123, 125, 289; The Hyde, Douglas 170 Stuff Man’s Made Of 258, 259–62, 264, Hyde, Dr (Mrs) I.M. 250, 251 266–8; The Valley in the Woods 17, 108, 173, 180 Ill Fares the Land 178, 179 British Union of Fascists (BUF), Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) 172 membership of 2–3, 86–8, 289; Industrial Christian Fellowship (ICF) 158 Agricultural Adviser, appointment as Inns of Court Officers Training Corps 14, 16 97, 111; agricultural journalism for International Affairs 232 90, 96–7, 111, 116, 134–5; agricultural Internationale Gesellschaft für Nahrungs- policy (The Land and the People), und Vitalstoff-Forschung (IVG) 271 revises for 97–100; campaigning and internment under Defence Regulation 18B public speaking for 95; May Day 131, 134–5, 138–44, 148 march 1939, participation in 125; Italy 99, 112, 122, 123, 127, 130 ‘Peace campaign’, contribution to 124–7; prospective parliamentary Jebb, Reginald (Rex) 113, 235 candidate for 94–5, 124 Jenks, Alan 6, 11, 14, 16 character and personality 2, 28, 38, Jenks, Annie 6 53, 287 Jenks, Barbara 8, 64, 109, 144 childhood 9–10; see also Jenks, Jorian: Jenks, Dorothy (nee Forwood) 5, 6–8, education 17–18, 19, 38, 47, 50, 51–2, 64–5, 130, children 69, 108, 154, 173, 201, 202 145, 182, 258, 273, 275, 278 corporatism and corporate state, ideas Jenks, Edward 5–6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17–18, about 83, 97–8, 100, 112, 121, 19, 25, 37, 40, 47, 51, 52, 55, 94, 109, 123, 158 118, 131 Council for the Church and Jenks, Jorian: Countryside, membership of 2, Agricultural Correspondent, 163, 166, 176, 182, 191, 195–6, 257; appointment as see Jenks, Jorian: Encounter, organiser of 176, 180–1, journalism 195; executive committee, appointed agricultural research 33, 42–3, 45 to 164; Secretary, appointment as 176, agriculture, traditional and modern 180, 181 models, opinions about 2–3, 57, 61–2, death 281 72–5, 81, 82, 99–100, 167, 198, 209, diet and health, ideas about 98–9, 187, 211, 230, 246, 251, 275 267, 272 animals, ideas about, work with (etc.) ecology, ideas about see Jenks, Jorian: 279; horses, love of 9–10, 11, 19, organic philosophy and ideas 38, 47, 62, 73–4, 109, 251; pigs Economic Reform Club (ERC), 71, 110–11, 140; rabbits and other membership of 156, 275; Agricultural agricultural vermin 103–4, 150, 220 Section, involvement and take over appearance 1, 53, 95, 265, 281 of 157–8, 207; ‘Food Production asthma and related health problems Campaign’, involvement in 210–11; 8, 9, 10, 11, 16–17, 52, 108, 131, Research Committee, membership 140, 190, 195, 244, 245, 258, 262; of 209 Index 299 economics, growing interest in 53–4; Germany: invasion of Denmark by, ideas about 55, 56, 82–3, 99–100, 110, comments on 134; Nazi regime, 112, 118–19, 120, 121, 197, 210–11, comments on 135; post-war contacts 217, 228–9, 288 with 219–20, 271; travel in 220 editorial work: 2, 208, 271; Ill Fares the imperialism and colonisation, ideas about Land, abridgment of 178, 179 see also 83, 232, 246, 248, 249 Jenks, Jorian: Rural Economy and Jenks, internment under Defence Regulation Jorian: Mother Earth 18B 138–44; consequences for his education: Agricultural Economics family 144–5; suspension of detention Research Institute 53–7; Balliol order against 148 College 52–3; Haileybury College 11, Jews, ideas and opinions about 101–5, 13–14; Harper Adams Agricultural 221 College 15, 22–24; Northdown Hill journalism 37–8, 47, 172, 215, 110, 150, Preparatory School 10–11 151, 172, 199, 245; The British Weekly emigration 28; Britain, return to, in 1925 187; Country Life 171; Everybody’s 34; return to, in 1928 50–2; Canada, 152, 170–1; The Empire Review 55; plans to emigrate to 15, 29, 34; New The English Review 38; The Field 38, Zealand, emigration to 29–30; life in 51; The New English Weekly 113, 148, 30–32, 47; return to (1926) 39–40 150, 176; Sketch 170; The Scythe 150; see also Jenks, Jorian: New Zealand The Weekly Review 113, 132, 170, 196, Department of Agriculture, Fields 235; The Yorkshire Post, Agricultural Division, service as Instructor in Correspondent for 75–6, 90, 111–12, employment: alternative employment 127, 131–2, 133, 135; see also Jenks, (1920s), unsuccessful search for 37, Jorian: Rural Economy, founder District Lecturer in Agriculture for and editor of; Jenks, Jorian: British East Devon 60–2, 67; Second World Union of Fascists (BUF), agricultural War, search for work during 171–2, journalism for; Jenks, Jorian: Soil 173, 175; St Michael’s Preparatory Association, career with; and Jenks, School, temporary teacher at 182; Sir Jorian: Mother Earth, creator and William Beveridge, assistance of 50–1; editor of Yattendon Court estate, farm bailiff Kinship in Husbandry, contacts with for 24–25; see also Jenks, Jorian: New 162–3, 175–6, 178–9, 198 Zealand Department of Agriculture lecturing and public speaking 33, 95–6, and Jenks, Jorian: Soil Association 61, 90–1, 141, 199, 214 farming 1; Boynes Wood Farm 273; early manual work, opinion of 10, 61, 73–5; love of 10; Ecclesden Farm, tenant of ploughing and sowing, pleasure in 38, 63, 67–72, 103, 108–110; frustrated 44, 74; contemplation, providing an desire to farm 28, 29, 34, 37, 39, 51, opportunity for 117 56; South Park Farm 110–1 marriages: first, to Sophie Chester father, relationship with 8, 14, 15, 28, 40. 62–5, 69, 110, 146, 148, 154, 173, 47, 50, 94, 118 175, 181–2, 195, 200–2; second, to fertilizers, artificial, advocacy of 2, Elizabeth Howard 274, 276, 277–8 34, 42–3, 44–5, 47, 57, 61; organic see also Jenks, Jorian: women, intimate alternatives to, advocacy of 71, relationships with 72–3, 242 mechanisation, attitude to 57, 61. 72, financial circumstances 22, 30, 34, 42, 73–5, 81, 82, 98, 228, 251 see also 47, 51, 61, 91, 109, 111, 131, 144, 173, Jenks, Jorian: manual work, 176, 179, 180, 190, 228, 258, 287 opinion of First World War, life during 14, 17–18; mentors: Fordham, Montague 97, 22; officer training for 15–16; Royal 154–5, 156, 207; Easterbrook, Field Artillery, service in 18–19 Laurence 2, 190, 251, 271, 278; gardening 175, 179, 180, 195, 202, 221, Massingham, John 1, 176–7,189–90, 264, 273, 282 197, 216, 221, 228, 230 300 Index

monetary reform, advocacy of, and 208–11, 249; government wartime activism for 79–80, 82–3, 105, 118–9, agricultural policy, criticism of 131–3 121, 123, 158, 181; criticism of 88, Rural Reconstruction Association 158, 208 (RRA), membership of 2, 154, 156, Mother Earth, creator and editor of 196– 158, 163, 182, 190, 206–7, 259, 275, 8, 199–200, 213, 215–7, 222–3, 263–4, The Full Development of Agriculture, 266, 265, 271, 275, 278, 279, 287–8 author of 207, 208–9, 210; see also see also Jenks, Jorian: Soil Association, Jenks, Jorian: Rural Reconstruction career with Association (RRA) Research mother, relationship with 6, 8, 34, 38, 47, Committee, membership of; Jenks, 52, 65, 182, 273, 258, 282 Jorian: Rural Economy, founder and name 5 editor of and Jenks, Jorian: Mentors: national self-sufficiency, advocacy of 83, Fordham, Montague 143, 148, 158, 186, 197, 200, 217, 232, Rural Reconstruction Association 249, 241 see also Jenks, Jorian: Rural (RRA) Research Committee, Reconstruction Association (RRA), membership of 209, 241–4, 249–50, Research Committee 251–2, 257; Feeding the Fifty Million, nature, attitude to 9, 120–1, 149–50, 165–7, draughtsman of 2, 251–2 186–7, 229–30, 282; see also Jenks, Security Service (MI5), surveillance by Jorian: organic philosophy and ideas 154, 159 n. 4 New Zealand Department of Soil Association, career with 2, 194,198, Agriculture, Fields Division, service as 209, 215, 220, 235, 243, 262, 276, Instructor in 32–4, 39, 42–7, 51 287–8; Editorial Secretary, appointment organic philosophy and ideas 2, 46, 121, as 189–90, 199; Haughley experiment, 186–7, 217, 228–30, 231–2, 243, opinion of 222, 276; Mother Earth, 259, 262, 267; organic agriculture, creator and editor of 196–8, 199–200, advocacy of 73, 185, 217–8, 242, 213, 215–7, 222–3, 263–4, 266, 265, 280; organic conversion of 99, 271, 275, 278, 279, 287–8; Peroni 148–50; organic movement, use of affair, involvement with 213–5 terminology 185 see also Jenks, Jorian: soil erosion, ideas about 149, 151, 163, religious beliefs and nature, attitude to 177, 178, 186, 209, 229, 242, 246 pesticides, attitude to 267, 273, 279; tithe, opinion on 89 Silent Spring, reaction to 279–80; Union Movement, contacts with 214, Shewell-Cooper scandal, involvement 232, 257, 288–9; None Need Starve, with 280 contribution to 246–9, 257; Union poetry 8, 18, 19, 38, 90, 131 Movement Agricultural Group, radio broadcasts 112–113, 215, 216 involvement with 244–6 religious beliefs and ideas 2, 164–7, 120, women, intimate relationships with 181, 187, 230, 243, 282 38; Browning, Esther 264; Chester, reputation of 2–3, 113, 122, 116, 179, Sophie 39–40, 47, 51, 62, 65; Howard, 265, 271, 275, 288 Elizabeth 274; Stuckey, Sally 264 see residences: Angmering 63, 68–9; Alton also Jenks, Jorian: marriages 273, 277, 278; Bishop’s Tawton 154, Jenks, Oliver 69, 130, 144, 145, 173, 182, 173, 176, 182; Farningham 9–10; 248, 265, 273, 282 Forest Row 110, 130, 148; Haughley Jenks, Patsy (Patricia Anne) 108, 130, 202; Oxford 8–9; Pangbourne 202, 144, 145, 154, 200, 201, 202, 263, 273, 221, 265; Seaford 194–5, 201; see also 275, 278 Jenks, Jorian: emigration Jenks, Rev. David 64 Rural Economy, founder and editor of Jenks, Sophie Isabel (nee Chester) 39–40, 208, 234–6, 237–8 47, 51, 62, 63–5, 69, 94, 110, 130, 139, rural reconstruction and agricultural 144–6, 148, 154, 173, 175, 181, 194, policy, ideas about 81–3, 97–100, 195, 200–2 Index 301

Jennings, Sir Ivor 259 McLaughlin, Rev Patrick 162, 163, 172, Jews see antisemitism 176, 180, 181, 194–5 Jones, Sir Tracey Gavin 208 McLeod, A.D. 44 ‘just price’ 81, 100, 120, 155–6 McWilliams, Carey see Ill Fares the Land Madeira 51, 258 Kemsley, Lord 170 Main, Miles ‘Bobby’ 68, 110, 144, 245 Keynes, John Maynard 81, 83 Mairet, Philip 151, 162, 178, 179, 235 King Country Chronicle 31, 45, 47, 54 Malvern conference 161 The King Country 30–1, 42–7 The Managerial Revolution 229 King, Helen 268 The Manchester Guardian 75, 83, 249 King, Ronald 262 Mare, Richard de la 151, 170, 177–8, Kinship in Husbandry 161, 162–3, 167, 189, 190, 198, 199, 216, 227, 228, 258, 175–6, 177, 178–9, 185, 187, 189, 192 259–62, 265, 266 n. 10, 198, 207; conference on land Margate 11 settlement, organiser of 178–9 Marx, Karl 105, 113, 118, 231, 232 Kipling, Rudyard 10–11, 283 Marxism–Leninism 113, 118, 119, 126, 127 Kitchen, Fred 195 Massingham, H.J. 1, 163, 164, 176–7, Kitson, Arthur 157 189–190, 196, 197, 198, 199, 207, 206, Klatt, Dr Werner 232 221, 228, 230–1 Knowles, L.C.A.74–5 Master Cotton Spinners’ Association 81 Mayall, Sam 265 Labour Governments 1945–51: agricultural M’Fadyean, Sir John 23 policies of 155, 209, 210–1; groundnuts The Medical Press 200 scheme of 217 Medical Testament (Local Medical and Panel Labour Party and movement 86, 101, 102, Committees of the County Palatine of 112, 119, 123, 134, 155, 161, 167, 207, Chester) 99, 187, 197 210, 237, 286, 288; National Conference MI5 see Security Service of Labour Women 101 Milton, Dr Reginald 266, 271, 276, 281 Laessoe, Major Harold de 191 Ministry of Agriculture 22, 37, 50–1, 55, Laffan, W. 265 133, 190, 249–50, 252, 268; Agriculture Land and Home Publications 179, 235 252, 268 Land Club Union 155 Ministry of Labour 171–2 Latto, Dr Douglas 264, 267, 281 Moeran, Edward 237 Law Society 9, 17, 37 Morris, William 121 League of Nations Union 124 Mosley Book Clubs 191, 213–14 Leese, Arnold 289 Mosley News Letter 214 Levy, Dr E. Bruce 44, 105 Mosley, Sir Oswald 69, 88, 89, 94, 95, 101, Lindsay, A.D. 52 113, 124, 125, 131, 134. 190–2, 214, 219, Livingstone, Sir Richard 179 232, 244, 246, 247, 249, 289 Lloyd, Lord 126 Mother Earth 196–200, 206, 213, 215–18, Loening. Ulrich 288 222–3, 263–4, 265–6, 271, 275–6, 278, Loftus, Pierse 206, 236, 237 287–8; see also Soil Association London Provincial Anti-Vivisection Murray, Helen 267 Society 214 London School of Economics (LSE) 37 National Farmers Union (NFU) 89, 98, London Vegetarian Society 264 112, 132, 172, 176, 195, 207, 257 Longmans 227–8 National Front (NF) 289 Lowke, Wenman Bassett- 157 National Government 1931–40: agricultural Lymington, Viscount: see Portsmouth, Lord policies of 83, 87, 90, 98, 112, 132, 133; foreign policies of 126, 127 McCarrison, Robert 99, 187 National Tithepayers Association McDonald, Ramsey119 (NTA) 89 302 Index

National Union of Agricultural Workers Pioneer Health Centre 187 (NUAW) 98, 141, 247 Pless, Prince Henry of 214 Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft 272 Pohl, Oswald 277 Nature 250 Porter, Walter 141 The New Age 177 Portsmouth, Lord (formerly Viscount The New English Weekly 113, 148, 150, 151, Lymington) 14, 113, 150, 156, 157, 152, 172, 177, 178, 198, 227, 235 158, 162, 177, 178, 179, 187, 189, New Party 86, 286 195, 196, 197, 198, 207, 210, 219, The New Statesman 252 228; Famine in England, publishes New Zealand 1, 29–34, 42–7, 53–4, 79, 113, 150, 177, 187; The New Pioneer, 103, 279 publishes 113 The New Zealand Journal of Agriculture 33, 37 Pound, Ezra 122–3, 150 Northbourne, Lord 162, 179, 187, 189, 207 Powell, Leslie B. 179, 235 Provincial Agricultural Economics The Observer 230 Service 251 Officer Cadet Battalion 16 Public Order Act (1936) 95 O’Hagan, Lord 155, 207, 250, 259 Orage, A.R. 148, 177 The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey of Soil organic movement 1, 2, 3, 99, 85–9, 113, Erosion 149, 177, 185 164–5, 167, 178, 192 n. 2, 194, 214–5, Reckitt, Maurice 161, 162, 176, 191, 231 218–221, 258, 262, 265, 267, 268, 272, Reichsnährstand 219, 232 279, 288 see also Soil Association Reischle, Dr Hermann 219 Organic Soil Association of Southern Risdon, Wilfred (‘Bill’) 214 Africa 280 Rivers, Captain George Pitt- 245 Orr, John Boyd 98, 157, 158 Robb, Professor Lindsay 288 Orwin, Charles S. 52, 54–7, 60, 75, 80, Robinson, Dove-Myer 221 81–2, 83, 91, 167; The Future of Farming, Rodale, J.I. 1, 221 publishes 56–7 Roe, Sir Alliott Verdon- 157 Oxford University Fascist Association see Rolleston, John C. 42, 47 Oxford University National Socialist Ropner, Leonard 104 Club Rothamsted Experimental Station Oxford University National Socialist Club 14, 186 96, 142 Rothermere, Lord 76, 89 Row, Robert 219, 244, 245, 247, 248, Parliament 101, 104, 132, 133, 134, 217, 251, 257, 264 250, 279, 288 Rowse, E.A.A. 91 Parnell, Kathleen 280 Royal Artillery 18–19 Parsons, Dr Richard, the Bishop of Royal Commission on Common Land 259 Hereford 162 Royal Empire Society 55 Patterson, Thomas H. 33, 44 Rural Economy 205, 208, 216, 234–9, 257 Peace Pledge Union 124 Rural Reconstruction Association (RRA) Pearse, Dr Innes 187, 223, 262, 267 2, 91, 97, 112, 154, 155–6, 157, 158, 161, Peck, David Rev 162, 176, 191 162, 185, 206–211, 228, 234, 235–7, Peddie, John Taylor 79, 80–1, 83–4, 87, 167 241–4, 250, 252, 257, 259, 275; The Case Penty, Arthur 75, 80, 156, 162, 177 for the Full Development of Agriculture, Penty, Michael 156 publisher of 207, 208–11; see also Penty, Violet 156, 162 Rural Economy Pepler, Hilary 152 Rural Reconstruction Association Research Peroni, Douglas 213–14 Committee 211, 241–4, 245, 249, 250–2, pesticides 267, 272–3, 278–81 257; Feeding the Fifty Million, publisher of Picton, Lionel 99, 187, 207; News Letter 2, 205, 241–4, 249–52, 257, 259 on Compost 187, 213 Ruskin, John 121 Piel, Jean 231 Russian Revolution 29, 102–3 Index 303

Sanderson-Wells, Dr T.H. 200 Stuckey, Sally 171, 174 n. 16, 263, Saunders, Robert 1, 141–2, 143, 180, 207, 264, 278 241–3, 244–9, 251, 257 superphosphate: see fertilizers Schuh, Dr Wolfgang von 219 Sykes, Friend 197, 198, 213, 221, 243, 244 SS (Schutzstaffel) 219, 220, 277 Schweigart, Dr Hans 271–2 The Tablet 252 Scott, Lord Justice Leslie 152, 195, 209 Talbot, Kathleen 236 Scott, Lt. Colonel Creagh 156 Tallents, Stephen 50 Security Service (MI5) 134, 154, 157, 159 Tanganyika groundnuts scheme 217, 286 n. 4, 175, 180, 182; Latchmere House Tavistock, Marquess of 157 interrogation centre 139–40 Te Kuiti 30–1, 43–4, 46 Seifert, Professor Alwin 276–7 Temple, Archbishop William 2, 161, 162, Sempill, Lord 198, 203 n 40, 214 164, 167 n. 1 Shove, Commander Herbert 80 Teviot, Lord 216 Silent Spring see Carson, Rachel Third Position 289–90 Singleton, Mabel 63, 130, 139, 144–5, Thomson, Alexander Raven 97, 100, 116, 190, 201 122, 142, 150, 156, 191, 214, 232, 244, Smallfield, P. W. 33 246, 248, 249, 251, 257 Smith, Sir Reginald Dorman- 132 Time and Tide 231, 268 Smith, Maurice V. Reeve- 31–2, 42 The Times 3, 57, 73, 87, 103, 112, 123, 127, Social credit 79–80, 102, 122, 161, 162, 235 150, 191 n. 2, 252 Social Credit Association 235 Tithe Act (1936) 89 Soddy, Frederick 79 Tithe War 88–9 Soil and Health Association of New Toc H 53, 120 Zealand 221 Todt, Dr Fritz 277 Soil Association 2, 3, 99, 113, 185–90, top-dressing; see fertilizers 194, 196–200, 207, 209, 210, 211, Toynbee, Professor Arnold 237 213–23, 235, 242, 243, 249, 258, 259, Tremlett, Rex 162, 214 262–264, 265–7, 271–5, 275–6, 278–80, Turnor, Christopher 54, 91, 112 282, 287–8; Ecological Research Tweedsmuir, Lord 259, 275 Foundation, creation of 221–2; fascist members of 214–15; Haughley UK Independence Party (UKIP) 290 experiment, conduct of 187–9, 200, Union Movement (UM) 3, 213–4, 213, 216, 221–2, 259, 262, 265, 266, 219, 232, 244, 257, 289; None Need 276; international links to 218–221; Starve, publication of 205, 246–9, 257; Meeting the Farmer Halfway, policy Union Movement Agricultural Group 217–18, 242; see also Mother Earth (UMAG) 244–9 soil erosion 149, 151, 163, 177, 178, 186, United Nations’ Conference on 209, 229, 242, 246 Food and Agriculture (1943; ‘Hot Somerset family of Castle Goring 69, Springs’) 177 103, 109 University College, Liverpool 6 Spengler, Oswald 116, 260, 267 University of Oxford 6, 54, see also Balliol The Spectator 231 College and Agricultural Economics Stamp, Dr Dudley 250 Research Institute Stapledon, R. George Sir. 82, 158, 164, US Soil Association 221 207, 287 Steed, Henry Wickham 103 Vegetarian News 252 Steiner, Rudolf 164, 190, 220 Village Produce Association 236 Strachey, John 286 Voegele, Immanuel 220 Strafford, Earl of 221 Volkhovsky, Vera 155 Stuckey, Derek 141, 142, 143, 171, 180, 198, 206, 207, 236, 241–4, 245, W.H. Smith 234, 235, 236 249–51, 259 Waller, Robert 287–8 304 Index

Walshe, Winifred 252 Williamson, Dr G. Scott 187, 189, 196, Warren, Major Geoffrey 199, 215 241, 244 Williamson, Henry 151, 245 Waterhouse family 24–5 Williamson, Hugh Ross 76 Watson, Professor J.A.S. 55 Wilson, Donald 2, 190, 197, 198–9, Watts, Charlie 144, 146 n. 4 213, 214, 259, 266, 276, 278, 280 The Weekly Review 80, 113, 132, 162, Wilson, Robert McNair 122 170, 209, 235 Women’s Land Army 132–3, 144–5 Welsh Economic Development Wright, Bill 140 Association 235, 236 Wyman’s 235, 236 Wessel, Richard S. 215 Wheat Act (1932) 81, 156, 208 Yattendon Court estate 24–5 Whittleton, Eric 158 The Yorkshire Post 1, 75–76, 90, 111–12, Wibberley, Dr Gerald 249–50 135, 278