Saturday, October 27, 2018

British Agriculture WW2

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24-9-1 Wartime Survey of all British Land - Farming Explained > .
24-9-8 [Ray Walden] Victims of Modern Agriculture - FarmEx > .
24-8-25 British War Agriculture - Farming Explained > .
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British Council BC

Episode 30 - The War-Ags. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Agriculture Minister Reginald Dorman-Smith formed the County War Agricultural Executive Committees across England to oversee a plough-up campaign that would have to undo the 70 years of decline in Britain was to avoid being starved into submission. The War-Ags supported farmers with subsidies, machinery and scientific advice, but also enforced modern agricultural methods. Ploughing was non-negotiable, and those unwilling or incapable of rising to the task were evicted or dispossessed from their farms. George Stapledon's methods were imposed by the government, as Lord Lymington lamented the decline in the aristocracy's postion.
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Episode 31 - The 1941 National Farm Survey (pdf). To increase production the War Agricultural Executive Committees undertook a systematic survey of every land holding over 5 acres in England and Wales. With corresponding maps, the National Farm Survey provided the most comprehensive rendition of British land since the Domesday Book.

Scientists CS Orwin, Daniel Hall and George Stapledon (>) had been pushing for a comprehensive survey to plan agricultural reforms - proposals for land nationalisation, national parks and greenbelts were all informed by the information gathered by the War-Ags.
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Early ecofascism: The English Mistery ("Mistery" being an old word for a guild) was a political and esoteric group active in the United Kingdom of the 1930s. A "Conservative fringe group" in favour of bringing back the feudal system, its views have been characterised as "reactionary ultra-royalist, anti-democratic". The organisation was opposed to social welfare, the London School of Economics, and the United States.
 

The London barrister, William John Sanderson (1883–1941) was the son of W. J. Sanderson of Gosforth, educated at Marlborough College, and graduating LL.B. at Jesus College, Cambridge; he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1906. He was before World War I at the centre of a group of "Royalist and Loyalist" young men. Some of those were associated with the chambers of F. E. Smith; and very many of them died in the war in France. In 1917 he founded the Order of the Red Rose, an anti-Semitic group opposed to finance capitalism, with the zoologist George Percival Mudge, and the academic Arthur Gray.

Sanderson had notions that if the mystical "lost secrets" of the English could be discovered, then the sort of society he envisioned could be created or as he saw it recreated. The "lost secrets" of the English that Sanderson sought were the "Secret of Memory" as opposed to the "paraphernalia of learning"; the "Secret of Race" as only Englishmen with good genes would have sex with Englishwomen of equally good genes; the "Secret of Government"; the "Secret of Power" which had been destroyed by "industrial ideals"; the "Secret of Organisation"; the "Secret of Property" (i.e. feudalism as a social system); and the "Secret of Economics" which had lost due to "moneyed interests".

In his pamphlet An Introduction to the English Mistery, Sanderson wrote that there were two types of "aliens", namely "the Dutch, Danes and other peoples of north-west Europe" vs. "some races on the other hand differ very widely from us both in character and tradition". Sanderson was described by all who knew him as a deeply unpleasant man with repulsive views such as his statement that people who became seriously ill did not deserve sympathy and that God only cared about the lives of rich people. The fact that Sanderson was a very small man whose own illness left him confided to a wheelchair did not stop him from preaching the doctrine that only the lives of healthy, attractive, and well off people mattered as he had no compassion for the poor and/or the sick.

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Sir Alfred Daniel Hall, KCB FRS, sometimes known as Sir Daniel Hall (22 June 1864 - 5 July 1942) was a British agricultural educator and researcher who founded Wye College. The founding staff included Herbert Henry Cousins, chemist, John Percival, botanist, Frank Braybrooke Smith, agriculturist, and F.V. Theobald, entomologist. Hall handled the teaching of chemistry. The college was formally opened in 1894 and had fourteen students. In 1902 Hall was persuaded to leave Wye and help rejuvenate research at the Rothamsted Laboratory. In 1912 he left Rothamsted to work with the Development Commission. In 1919 he became a director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution and was also a part-time advisor for the Ministry of Agriculture. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1909 and made KCB in 1918.



When the County Executive Committees under the Food Production Department were abolished in 1919 they were replaced by the agricultural committees of the county councils. The Minister of Food could nominate up to one third of the membership of these committees. They had no powers of direction, but exercised all the limited agricultural powers of the county councils. They were abolished by the Agriculture Act 1947.

[WW2] During the war, contact between the ministry and the county committees was maintained through liaison officers, prominent local figures who represented groups of counties to the ministry. These appointments ended in 1945. Under regulation 49 of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939 the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries was vested with powers for the purpose of materially increasing home food production in England and Wales. Certain of these powers were delegated by the Cultivation of Lands Order 1939 (SR & O 1939, no. 1078) and subsequent orders to the County War Agricultural Executive Committees which were appointed by the minister under regulation 66 of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939. These powers were drawn in very wide and general terms which enabled the committees to take all necessary measures to ensure that the land in their area of responsibility was cultivated to the best advantage.

Under these powers the committees appointed many sub-committees, each of which was entrusted with a definite sphere of responsibility. This relieved the executive committees of the detailed work of carrying the programme into effect. Thus they were left free to consider overall policy matters while carrying out general supervision of the various sub-committees. The Cultivation of Lands Order did provide that proposals to take possession or to terminate the tenancy of any land other than by agreement required the minister's prior approval in writing.

In order that the work under the regulations and the minister's order could be carried out in the most efficient manner the counties were divided into convenient districts and district committees were established, without executive powers, to serve as the eyes and ears of the executive and sub-committees in regard to all matters of food production.

After the war, part V of the Agriculture Act 1947 provided for the establishment of County Agricultural Executive Committees for each administrative county, establishing the committees on a permanent basis, to concern themselves with the promotion of agricultural development and efficiency. As with the War Agricultural Executive Committees, the County Agricultural Executive Committees set up sub-committees to deal with different aspects of the work. District committees were also formed to give leadership in their areas on the general development of agriculture and horticulture. The act allowed the minister to delegate any of his functions relating to agriculture to the committees, and from 1947 the committees' staff became civil servants employed directly by the ministry. County Agricultural Executive Committees were abolished in 1971.

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sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...