The Land Settlement Association was a UK Government scheme set up in 1934, with help from the charities the Plunkett Foundation and the Carnegie Trust, to re-settle unemployed workers from depressed industrial areas, particularly from North-East England and Wales. Between 1934 and 1939 1,100 small-holdings were established within 26 settlements.
Settlements were set up in rural areas where each successful applicant’s family would be given a small-holding of approximately 5 acres (0.020 km2), livestock and a newly built cottage. Small-holdings were grouped in communities which were expected to run agricultural production as cooperative market gardens, with materials bought and produce sold exclusively through the Association. Applicants were vetted and given agricultural training before being assigned a property.
The allocation of settlements to the unemployed was suspended at the outbreak of the Second World War through the necessity of increasing food production; favour was given to those already with horticultural skills. After the war the Association was incorporated within a County Council scheme for statutory provision of smallholdings designed as a first step for those going into agricultural production. The scheme was wound-up and all the properties privatised in 1983, by which time it was producing roughly 40% of English home grown salad crops. The residual assets of the scheme were constituted as the LSA Charitable Trust, for the benefit of former tenants and to promote horticultural education.
The United States of America aims to remain neutral during World War Two. But they see it in their best interest to aid the British in their fight against Nazism. The Lend-Lease Act is designed to do exactly that.
Intro (0:56) A short political history of medieval Hungary (2:37) The Hungarian oligarchy (3:34) The Decline of Oligarchy (06:00) What is whig history (07:33) The rise and fall of Venice (11:38) Warnings of Oligarchy (16:11) The birth of American Oligarchy (18:05) The death of American Oligarchy (23:34) A warning from History? (25:33) Outro (27:16)
A recently reemerging idea in the English speaking political landscape is that history is the story of an almost natural progression of humanity into liberty culminating within English and American democracy. This is nonsense. And it also has a name: "whig history"
Whig history is "bunk". The economic liberties that are so often praised by advocates of whig history, can very often result in the creation of oligarchies that then proceed to undermine and destroy the very economic liberties that created the oligarchy in the first place.
A Northamptonshire hedger is ably assisted by a smiling land girl eager to learn the rural craft of hedge making and maintenance in this gentle instructional film, made by the Realist Film Unit for the Ministry of Agriculture.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s the Government introduce new measures to support domestic agriculture and farmers' income. Subsidies or price insurance schemes were created for sugar beet, wheat, cattle, dairy and sheep. The Agricultural Produce (Grading and Marketing) Act 1928 promoted the standardisation of grades and packaging and introduced the "National Mark", a trade mark denoting home-produced food of a defined quality for eggs, beef, apples and pears. The Agricultural Marketing Acts of 1931 and 1933 sought to organise farmers into co-operative marketing associations and created Marketing Boards for bacon, pigs, hops, milk and potatoes. The Import Duties Act 1932 introduced a tariff on most imports including fruit and vegetables and quotas on imports of bacon, ham and other meat products. In 1936 the tithe rent charge was abolished, compensation paid to the Church and the money recovered from farmers over a 60-year period. In 1937 a scheme was introduce to subsidise the spreading of lime on agricultural land to boost the fertility of the soil. The Minister of Agriculture was given powers to regulate the cultivation and management of land, end tenancies, even take possession of land, under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939. On 1 September 1939 many of these powers were delegated to County War Agricultural Executive Committees ("War Ags").
War was declared on 3 September 1939. The UK entered the war well prepared for the maintenance of supplies of food but with less than 40% of the country's needs produced at home. The Ministry of Food was formed on 8 September and William Morrison appointed Minister. The Ministry of Food became the sole buyer and importer of food and regulated prices, guaranteeing farmers prices and markets for their produce. The Marketing Boards, except for milk and hops, were suspended.
Although the upper levels of government would remain in London to act as a “nucleus” the plan was to evacuate the majority of civil servants, mainly to seaside resorts that would have empty hotel accommodation. In this way for example the Ministry of Food(created separately from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) established a major presence at Colwyn Bay(near Llandudno, North Wales). From their base on the Welsh Coast, the relocated civil servants (under Lord Woolton, Minister of Food from April '40 until '43) not only set about the enormous task of organising the distribution and rationing of food, they also initiated a massive propaganda effort directed at the people of Great Britain to educate them to feed themselves. It was from Colwyn Bay that initiatives such as “Dig for Victory” were set out.
Recruiting began for the Women's Land Army and in 1940, food rationing was introduced. Lord Woolton succeeded William Morrison as Minister for Food. In 1941, the US Lend-Lease act was passed under which food, agricultural machinery and equipment was sent from the US to the UK.
Dorman-Smith was referred to in the book "Guilty Men" by Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard (writing under the pseudonym 'Cato'), published in 1940 as an attack on public figures for their failure to re-arm and their appeasement of Nazi Germany.
Minister of Agriculture - 14 May 1940 to 26 July 1945
He served in several ministerial posts, becoming a Privy Counsellor in 1938. From 1937 to 1940, Hudson served in the Department of Overseas Trade. He had a particular interest in farming and was a member of the council of the Royal Agricultural Society. In 1940, Hudson was appointed the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, a post he would hold until the 1945 election. In the opinion of Edward Turnour, 6th Earl Winterton, Hudson "was by far the best of Ministers of Agriculture in either war...he was determined to see that farmers and landowners alike utilised every acre of soil to help keep the nation from starvation".
The Minister of Food Control (1916–1921) and the Minister of Food (1939–1958) were British government ministerial posts separated from that of the Minister of Agriculture. In the Great War the Ministry sponsored a network of canteens known as National Kitchens. In the Second World War a major task of the Ministry was to oversee rationing in the United Kingdom necessitated by WW2. The Minister was assisted by a Parliamentary Secretary.
