How we didn’t starve in the First World War

In a striking parallel to Brexit, the outbreak of the First World War led to acute food shortages in the UK.

 

The country was caught off guard in August 1914 by a war that was not supposed to happen. The British Expeditionary Force was dispatched to France. By the autumn it was bogged down in the killing felds of the first Battle of Ypres.

 

It was now clear that millions of servicemen and civilians would have to be fed. Yet the country was ill-equipped to do so. The national diet was simpler then – its staples were meat, white bread, vegetables (especially potatoes), jam and tea. But the country relied heavily on tariff-free imports (80 per cent of wheat, 40 per cent of meat and almost sugar were imported).

 

Over the next two years, the lack of food security became increasingly acute. Imports were restricted and prices rose sharply. From March 2016, national conscription robbed agriculture of its most productive labour force. Munitions factories were also diverting labour and materials from agricultural machinery.

 

Although the Defence of the Realm Act in 1914 had anticipated the government requisitioning land and Royal Commissions on sugar and wheat had been set up, the state was slow to adopt wide-ranging national powers.

 

By 1917, the poor harvest of the previous autumn and the escalation of German u-boat attacks made emergency measures vital. In December, the new prime minister, David Lloyd George created a Ministry of Food Control. The first minster or ‘food controller’, a self-made grocery magnate, Lord Devenport, was ineffectual and ridiculed in the press. He was replaced in July by a newly-enobled Welsh colliery millionaire, Lord Rhondda. Lord Rhondda stepped up price controls for essential foodstuffs (a measure that had been resisted by his predecessor) through ‘food orders’ imposed by local committees, which also advised on food economies.

 

The food controller allocated grain to millers and corn merchants, through the wheat commission, set prices, reduced the wheat flour content of the national loaf and urged the country to ‘eat less bread’. Householders could receive badges and certificate proving their commitment to the cause. The food controller appointed a director of milk supplies, campaigner Wilfred Buckley, who set prices, ensuring that they were lower for mothers and children.

 

Voluntary rationing

 

Voluntary rationing was introduced in February 1917, setting guidelines for the consumption of bread, meat and sugar (the new diet was publicly adopted by King George and Queen Mary).

 

With wheat supplies down to a few weeks, working with the Board of Agriculture (later to become MAFF), Lord Rhondda ordered pastureland to be ploughed up for arable production and for munitions factories to turn out tractors.

 

The crisis was changing the cultural landscape. The feeding of stray dogs was forbidden, even the flower beds of Buckingham Palace were dug over for vegetables. Popular magazines like The Bystander and companies like Oxo published recipes for frugal but tasty meals.

 

At the vanguard of ‘doing its bit’ the newly-formed Women’s Institute found an important role teaching housewives how to substitute sugar in jam and wheat flour in bread for less scarce ingredients. And the Women’s Land Army (quarter of million strong by 1918) joined prisoners of war to weed, till, plough and reap the farms of Britain, wearing special armbands.

 

In May 1917, Queen Mary opened Britain’s first ‘national kitchen’ in Westminster Bridge Road. State-funded and staffed by female volunteers, the kitchens served meat-based meals for as little as 6d (£1 today). The food ministry said that they were not be regarded as, ‘soup kitchens’ but places where ‘ordinary people could sit down together at long canteen tables for a cheap meal.’ Some were so busy that there was actually nowhere to sit. By 1918, there were more than 600 national kitchens across the country.

 

By the final year of the war, thanks to blockades and submarine attacks, German people were dying of starvation. But, somehow, thanks to the stepping up of home production and unprecedented interventions in food quality, composition and price, Britain had stayed one step ahead of catastrophe.

 

Compulsory rationing was not implemented until 1918. It began, in January, with sugar (Britain had created a domestic sugar industry from scratch since 1914). By April, meat, bread, butter and margarine had been added to the scheme, which was to be repeated in World War Two. All households, including, in theory, the Royal Family, received ration books and had to register with a local butcher and grocer.

 

Ironically, rationing improved the nation’s health. Worn out by his arduous campaign, Lord Rhondda died prematurely, in July 1918, four months before the armistice. In the next war, his famous and equally successful successor as food minister, Lord Woolton, would give his name to the ‘Woolton pie’.