WarAg - Farming in Britain During WW2

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Farming in England During WW2 (1940) - Pathé > .

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WW2 Farming in Britain During the Second World War

WAEC - War Agricultural Executive Committees ..

The farming industry in Britain during the Second World War underwent a complete upheaval. It was necessary for the government to control what farmers grew or what livestock they kept to ensure maximum productivity from the land. ...

DORA - Defence of the Realm Act, 1914 .. 

Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939 ..

Under the Defence of The Realm Act (DORA, 1914) which was passed just before the outbreak of hostilities, the Ministry of Agriculture had the power to: Preserve and maintain agricultural land solely for the production of food, to control by order, the cultivation, management and use of land in order to secure maximum production of food from the farms; to terminate any tenancy of agricultural land where it is considered that the land is being neglected or badly cultivated; to introduce special measures for the determination of birds, rabbits, deer, vermin and pests

The Ministry now had much more power to meet the demands of a hungry populace that would soon have to rely on food that was largely home produced, as was forecast, quite accurately that importation of food would decline. Many of the farmers who had to produce this food had to change their methods of farming. They had to produce in greater quantities food that was rich in carbohydrates such as potatoes, or foodstuffs that were too bulky or fragile that would not take up valuable shipping space, so as not to rely too heavily on importation.

Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939 ..

With reference to the title of this Special Study, like the Great War the Second World War was a time of affluence for many farmers, particularly in the arable districts of England. For example, prices of wheat in 1939 per cwt for England and Wales were 5 shillings, by 1945 this had almost tripled to 14s 5d. Barley in the same period rose from 8s 10d to 24s 5d, and oats rose from 6s 11d to 16s 5d. farmers were heavily subsidised by the Ministry of Food, who bought goods from farmers at higher rates, whilst selling them to the public at lower rates, the shortfall being made up by the Treasury. Crops such as wheat however, were acquired by the government cheaper than in times of peace. This system was , on 26th November 1940 confirmed to stay in place whilst hostilities were taking place and for one year after they ended.

Government policy was critical in ensuring an increase in productivity. Like the First World War, War Agricultural Executive Committees There were eventually sixty-one committees established in England and Wales, which came to be known as ‘War Ags’. The members of the War Ags included local farmers, members of the Women’s Institute and had the power to take farms away from farmers who were considered to be farming inefficiently. They also had to ensure the government policy of ploughing up more land was implemented. The War Ags had the power to tell people which fields were cultivated and had a pool of labour and machinery to work the land themselves. They also encouraged more modernisation, which resulted in more efficiency and greater production.

Livestock

The importation of feedstuffs was reduced by problems in shipping. This did not prevent the encouragement of higher yields in dairy cows. More small scale farmers began to produce milk, premium payments were given to the first 1514 litres of milk produced per month. Other small scale production of livestock was encouraged with the introduction of Pig Clubs and Poultry Clubs. Domestic poultry keepers did not have restrictions placed upon them like large-scale producers, who faced rationing controls. The Small Pig Keepers Council, an organisation founded by the Ministry of Agriculture encouraged anyone with space to keep a pig and feed it on household waste. There is little evidence to suggest that these smallholders and people in towns were ever an economic threat to full-time farmers, but whilst the war was taking place, helped to supplement a diet that was rationed.

Hill farmers were dealt with separately for the first time. In 1940 subsidies were paid at the equivalent of 12.5p per head per hill ewe, by 1942 this had risen to 40p. A committee was formed in 1941-1942 for England and Wales to review the long term future of hill farming, a minimum of four hundred ewes was required for full-time status.


Farm Workers

The government had the foresight to ensure that farmworkers were not as scarce as they had been in the First World War. This was achieved by farming being declared a reserved occupation, if any male farm worker wanted to join the forces or have an alternative occupation, i.e. construction, a replacement had to be found before he was allowed to leave his job on the farm. This came under the Restrictions of Engagements order in June 1940. Martin claims that anyone who wanted to leave agriculture for the forces or another occupation would have done so, as the war was nine months old when this order became effective. Howkins states that an estimated fifty thousand farm workers were lost to the armed forces prior to the Restrictions of Engagements Order. The total number of farm workers in 1939 (seasonal, part and full-time) were six hundred and seven thousand (607,00) in England and Wales, for 1940 the number had risen to six hundred and eight thousand (608,000).By 1945 the number had increased to seven hundred and seventy thousand (770,000). This was due to the recruitment campaign by the government to organisations such as the Women’s Land Army. This had varied success, in England some encountered sexism, and many were appalled at the conditions they were expected to work and live in. Sackville West, cited in The People's War states that women nearly equalled the abilities of their male counterparts in tasks such as milking, turning hay and lifting peas, but other more demanding tasks it required three women to take the place of two men.

The unemployed from the towns and cities were also put to work on farms, as were conscientious objectors. Prisoners-of-War also took part, by 1945 there were 57,763 working on farms in England and Wales, the obvious advantage being that they did not need paying, the incentive to them being a healthier and more stimulating environment than being stuck behind the barbed wire for the duration of the war.

Wages, always an issue with farmworkers, were increased as the value of farm work was recognised by the government as being essential to the war effort, a good wage being an incentive to stay on farms. Estimated wages in 1940/1941 for the basic wage of an adult male were 48sh 5d per week in England and Wales, by 1944/1945 this had increased to over 67 shillings. Due to the security felt by farmworkers because of the shortage of skilled manpower, union membership of the National Union of Farmworkers rose to 100,000, triple what it had been prior to the war.

Machinery

More tractors and modern implements were as essential to the increased productivity of the land as the farmworkers mentioned above. The horse began to fall out of favour as there was more land cultivation to be undertaken, but the decline was not rapid, there being over six hundred thousand (>600,000) in the whole of Great Britian in 1938. In 1946 this had fallen to just over five hundred thousand (>500,000). The tractor, faster than the horse and becoming more reliable was still outnumbered by the horse, there being around one hundred thousand in England and Wales in 1940 (100,000). This was a considerable increase considering there were only around fifty six thousand in Great Britain in 1939 (56,000). Many farmers were saved the cost of buying a tractor because of the help offered by the War Agricultural Executive Committees mentioned previously. Farmers had priority in the allocation of machinery, this would not have happened if it had not been for the war, the provision of machinery was a great help in modernising farming in England.
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To conclude, the Second World War was a turning point in English agriculture. Through government intervention of the way farmers cultivated their land and subsidised pricing, agriculture became more productive. The agricultural industry was also fortunate to receive a priority in machinery allocation, a godsend for farmers wishing to modernise. This was essential due to the threat to merchant shipping during the Battle of the Atlantic, shipping space also being in short supply. Farmworkers benefited enormously, their efforts being recognised as valuable to the well being of the country. Government policy worked with notable success, the Women’s Land Army making a significant contribution, as did Prisoners-of-War. Without the preparations for increased production, the country would have been, without doubt, short of food. Also like the First World War, farmers were able to make a comfortable living in most cases, and although rationing was in place for most of the war, farmers were able to access food much more easily than people living in urban England.

http://oldecuriosity.blogspot.ca/2015/02/ww2-farming-in-britain-during-second.html .

Compost, chickens, soil, vermiculture - tb >> .

Agriculture ..

British Agriculture WW2 ..

DfV - Dig for Victory ..

Food Shortages ..

MAF - Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries ..
MoF - Ministry of Food .. 

Spring Offensive ..

WAEC - War Agricultural Executive Committees ..

WarAg - Farming in Britain During WW2 ..

Wartime Farm ..
Wartime Farm '39 ..
Wartime Farm '40 ..
Wartime Farm '41 ..
Wartime Farm '42 ..
Wartime Farm '43 ..
Wartime Farm '44 ..
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1968 - Washington, D.C. Rebellion

.Washington, D.C. Rebellion of 1968 - ExHi > .

The Washington, D.C., riots of 1968 were a four-day period of violent civil unrest and rioting following the assassination of leading African American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968. Part of the broader King-assassination riots that affected at least 110 U.S. cities, those in Washington, D.C.—along with those in Chicago and Baltimore—were among those with the greatest numbers of participants.

The ready availability of jobs in the United States government attracted many people to Washington, D.C. in the late 19th century through the 1960s, including African American men, women, and children during the era of Great Migration. As a result, middle class African American neighborhoods prospered, but the lower class was plagued by poor living conditions and fell deeper into poverty.

Despite the end of legally-mandated racial segregation after the 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education, the neighborhoods of Shaw, the Atlas District Northeast corridor, and Columbia Heights remained the centers of African-American commercial life in the city.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal", and therefore violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, the decision's 14 pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II (349 U.S. 294 (1955)) only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed".

The case originated in 1951 when the public school district in Topeka, Kansas, refused to enroll the daughter of local black resident Oliver Brown at the school closest to their home, instead requiring her to ride a bus to a segregated black elementary school farther away. Unlike school districts of other states involved in the combined case, in Topeka the lower courts, while still requiring certain remedies, had found that the segregated schools were "substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers." Hence with the involvement of the Kansas case the Supreme Court's findings specifically hinged upon the matter of segregation.

The Browns and twelve other local black families in similar situations then filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. federal court against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging that its segregation policy was unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas rendered a verdict against the Browns, relying on the precedent of the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court had ruled that racial segregation was not in itself a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause if the facilities in question were otherwise equal, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Browns, then represented by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall, appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

The Court's decision in Brown partially overruled Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring that the "separate but equal" notion was unconstitutional for American public schools and educational facilities. It paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.

In the Southern United States, especially the "Deep South", where racial segregation was deeply entrenched, the reaction to Brown among most white people was "noisy and stubborn". Many Southern governmental and political leaders embraced a plan known as "Massive Resistance", created by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, in order to frustrate attempts to force them to de-segregate their school systems. Four years later, in the case of Cooper v. Aaron, the Court reaffirmed its ruling in Brown, and explicitly stated that state officials and legislators had no power to nullify its ruling.

Whitehall

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London, England: Whitehall Street and Churchill War Rooms - RiSt > .

Churchill's Secret Underground War Rooms in London - History Hit > . 

Life of Winston Churchill - Timeline > .
Whitehall, Buckingham Palace - ViDo >> .

The name "Whitehall" is now used as a metonym to refer to that part of the civil service which is involved in the government of the United Kingdom. The street's central portion is dominated by military buildings, including the Ministry of Defence, with the former headquarters of the British Army and Royal Navy, the Royal United Services Institute, the Horse Guards building and the Admiralty, on the opposite side. Government buildings on Whitehall, from north to south, include The Admiralty Buildings, the Department for International Development at No. 22, the Department of Energy and Climate Change at No. 55, the Old War Office, the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel at No. 36, the Horse Guards, the Ministry of Defence Main Building, Dover House (containing the Scotland Office), Gwydyr House (containing the Wales Office), the Cabinet Office at No. 70, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Government Offices Great George Street (HM Treasury, HM Revenue and Customs and parts of the Cabinet Office).

Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police Service, was originally located in Great Scotland Yard off the north-eastern end of Whitehall. The buildings had been lodgings for the Kings of Scotland, on part of the old Palace of Whitehall's grounds; by the 19th century, Little and Middle Scotland Yard had been merged into Whitehall Place, leaving only Great Scotland Yard. No. 4 Whitehall Place had become vacant by the 1820s, which allowed Sir Robert Peel to use it as the main headquarters when forming the police in 1829. It was formally named the Metropolitan Police Office, but became quickly known as Great Scotland Yard, and eventually Scotland Yard. The buildings were damaged in a series of bombings by Irish Nationalists in 1883, and an explosion from a Fenian terrorist attack on 30 May 1884 blew a hole in Scotland Yard's outer wall and destroyed the neighbouring Rising Sun pub. The headquarters was moved away from Whitehall in 1890.

Downing Street leads off the south-west end of Whitehall, just above Parliament Street. It was named after Sir George Downing, who built a row of houses along the street around 1680 leading west from Whitehall. Following a number of terrorist attacks, the road was closed to the public in 1990, when security gates were erected at both ends. On 7 February 1991, the Provisional IRA fired mortars from a van parked in Whitehall towards No. 10, one of which exploded in the gardens.

Additional security measures have been put in place along Whitehall to protect government buildings, following a £25 million streetscape project undertaken by Westminster City Council. The project has provided wider pavements and better lighting, along with installing hundreds of concrete and steel security barriers.

Richmond House, at No. 79, has held the Department of Health since 1987. The building is scheduled to be a temporary debating chamber from 2020, while the Houses of Parliament undergo a £7 billion refurbishment and modernisation programme.

The Whitehall Theatre (now Trafalgar Studios) opened in 1930 at the north west end of the street, on a site that had previously been Ye Old Ship Tavern in the 17th century. The revue Whitehall Follies opened in 1942, which drew controversy over its explicit content featuring the stripper and actress Phyllis Dixey. 

Map of Whitehall Place, London □ 

• Curtis Green Building .
• Whitehall Study .

Worst Prime Minister?

Winston Churchill's War - BBC doc > .

"Everyone has their view on who the worst prime minister is, but ... the first would be Ramsay MacDonald. After heading two minority Labour governments in 1924 and 1929-31, he then became prime minister in the national government from 1931 to 1935. But as his health declined, effective power gradually flowed to his Conservative colleague and, subsequently his successor, Stanley Baldwin. It was 1945 before Labour was in office again.

For Labour supporters, MacDonald was synonymous with the word “betrayal”. They felt he had sold out to financial interests, and the blandishments of King George V, and introduced a programme of austerity that deepened the recession of the 1930s. He seemed unable to grapple with the scope and depth of the problems he faced.

Neville Chamberlain (1937-40) has his defenders. Like many men of his generation, he was understandably scarred by the experience of World War I and genuinely wanted peace. His advocates argue that by giving in to Hitler’s demands and postponing war as long as possible, he gave the country more time to prepare and rearm.

The counter argument is that each capitulation simply encouraged Hitler to ask for more. It was remarked that Chamberlain had never met anyone like Hitler in Birmingham, where he came from. His experience was in municipal and domestic politics and his grasp of the imperatives of foreign policy in the late 1930s was limited, although that didn’t stop him intervening. When he came back from the Munich talks with Hitler, he was a national hero, in tune with the pacifist mood of the country. However, opinion quickly changed and he was castigated as one of the “guilty men” of appeasement."

Neville Chamberlain: A Failed Leader in a Time of Crisis: 

Three months after Hitler came to power in Germany, the British ambassador in Berlin dispatched a prescient 5,000-word report to London. Having just read “Mein Kampf,” Sir Horace Rumbold correctly saw the book as Hitler’s master plan for the conquest of Europe. To his superiors, Rumbold outlined how the German leader planned to pick off countries one by one, all the while promising that his latest victim would be his last.

In “Appeasement,” Tim Bouverie notes that Rumbold’s April 1933 dispatch caused a momentary stir in the Foreign Office. But the ambassador’s warning, like later admonitions from Winston Churchill and others, made no dent in the British government’s unflagging commitment to come to terms with Hitler, no matter the consequences.

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Throughout his minutely detailed survey, Bouverie rightly rejects the arguments of revisionist historians who claim that Britain’s lack of military preparedness, as well as the strength of pacifist public opinion, justified its determination to offer repeated concessions to Hitler. In fact, from the early 1930s, British leaders, fearful of further damaging their Depression-afflicted economy, fought to keep military spending to a minimum. They then used the country’s military deficiencies as an excuse to turn a blind eye to Germany’s increasing aggression and explosive rearmament, a flagrant violation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty. 
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In April 1940, however, Germany invaded Norway and Denmark, and Chamberlain’s campaign of secrecy and misinformation finally rebounded on him. Caught off guard by the surprise attacks, the British government scrambled to dispatch troops to aid the Norwegians. Barely two weeks later, Chamberlain made a stunning admission to Parliament and the nation: The badly armed and equipped British forces had been routed by the enemy and were being evacuated from Norway.

For more than a year, the British public had shown increasing signs of hostility toward Germany and disaffection with the prime minister’s inertia. When news broke of Britain’s humiliating defeat in Norway, that simmering discontent boiled over into fear and fury.

Capitalizing on the public mood, the Tory anti-appeasement rebels began an all-out effort to get rid of Chamberlain. On May 7 and 8, 1940, the House of Commons, in perhaps the most consequential debate in parliamentary history, engaged in a passionate examination of the prime minister’s conduct of the war. Before the debate, almost no one believed that Chamberlain could be ousted. Yet in the vote of confidence that followed, more than 80 M.P.s deserted him. Even though Chamberlain actually won the vote, such a large Tory defection was widely considered a resounding defeat.

On May 10, Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became prime minister. That same day, Hitler launched his blitzkrieg of Western Europe. In the nick of time, the House of Commons had reasserted itself as a guardian of democracy and taken the first critical step toward victory in the war.

With their action, the M.P.s underscored the truth of a comment made earlier by one of them: “No government can change men’s souls. The souls of men change governments.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/books/review/tim-bouverie-appeasement.html .

Appeasement .. 
"Guilty Men" ..

WWII?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRz4B7HleWE&list=PL6EAD1A2ABDE96E23&index=9