In a speech to the National Farmers’ Union on 14th October 1940, Winston Churchill referred to the farms of Britain as being in ‘the front line of freedom’. In the post-war years, however, the role of the farmer in the Second World War went unrecognised or obscured under a welter of subsidies and media attention on the more unpleasant aspects of farming such as hedge grubbing or intensive production. This book aims to renegotiate the place of agriculture in Britain's war effort, and to separate the myth of life in the wartime countryside from the harsher reality. Unlike other studies of the Home Front in the Second World War, it is concerned with production rather than consumption and it pursues a critical examination of agricultural production as part of its myth dispelling aim.
The introductory chapter by the editors gives an overview of the first forty years of farming in the twentieth century, and shows how the First World War set a precedent for state intervention in agriculture. The chapter asks whether the period 1939 to 1945 was an ‘agricultural revolution’. It concludes that there was a ‘rapid revolution that converted British agriculture into an intensive industry’, but despite the plough-up campaign and other innovations there was only a slight increase in productivity. This conclusion must be correct since the statistics on output and productivity show it to be so, but statistics lose sight of the fact that the farmers fed a population, if not abundantly then sufficiently, for the duration of the war and the lean years that followed. Although the book's avowed aim is production, some mention of the numbers that British agriculture fed would have been useful.
The following chapters deal with innovations, and the effects of the war. This should have resulted in a balanced book but a chapter on organic farming inserted between chapters on rodent control and silage, unbalance it. While a chapter on Dudley Stamp between chapters on the National Farm Survey (NFS), might have been better placed elsewhere. The themes of productivity and innovation appear in the chapters by John Martin and Paul Brassley. Martin's paper shows that the 1930s were characterised by small mixed farms with low output. He suggests that innovations appeared in the 1930s which enabled the government to implement these during the war although, contrary to expectations, they did not result in a dramatic rise in production. Brassley argues that the real increase in production came after the war; although there is much anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise.
The inputs and innovations that went into wartime farming included a programme of systematic rodent control. A chapter by John Sheail shows that the management of pest control in town and countryside were integrated. This is an interesting point, and it illustrates the symbioses of town and country during the war, something easily forgotten in a book purely about agriculture. Another innovation was the introduction of silage, that is, green grass stored in airtight containers for winter fodder. A disadvantage of making silage was that it was heavy work. But, as Dewey shows in his chapter on ‘The Supply of Tractors’, machines took over much of the heavier work.
Labour is one of the inputs of productivity and Gill Clarke discusses the role of the Women's Land Army (WLA), using personal recollections and documentary evidence. Although she suggests that the WLA is a neglected labour force, this is not entirely true as there are many published accounts of life as a land-girl. Nevertheless, Clarke demonstrates the importance of the WLA in wartime.
A labour source that has been neglected is the role of POWs in food production. Richard Moore-Colyer's chapter breaks new ground on this subject. He discusses the difference in public perceptions between Germans and Italian POWs and makes a plea for more research at a local level on POWs in order further to sort out the myth from the reality. William Foot calculates the vast amount of land taken out of production for use by the military. This chapter shows that much of today's landscape was created during the war.
The work of the County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAECs) and the NFS are dealt with in detail. A case study on the CWAECs in Dorset by Janet Waymark suggests that the CWAECs helped to preserve landed estates that felt threatened by state intervention. Brian Short tackles an emotive subject, the dispossession of farmers by the CWAECs, a topic that has left a residue of bitterness in some communities. The shooting of George Walden when attempting to evict him from his Hampshire farm makes a poignant case study. Charles Rawding's chapter on the treatment of failing farmers in south-west Lancashire examines how district committees evaluated farms. The final two chapters on the NFS deal with it as a source showing how the maps it produced can be related to aerial photographs, and how by using the NFS as a base the post-war mobility of farmers can be traced.
In bringing these papers together, the editors have produced an important and thought-provoking book on the Second World War. However, I have an issue with the book's sub-title ‘British Farming in the Second World War’. There is no discussion of farming in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. This book is an account of English Farming in the Second World War, and to be honest the title should have reflected this.
