{"id":529,"date":"2014-08-07T10:37:14","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T09:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=529"},"modified":"2014-08-07T14:46:47","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T13:46:47","slug":"feeding-nation-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=529","title":{"rendered":"Feeding a nation at war"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The war placed unprecedented demands on the agricultural workers who fed island Britain. At the same time it transformed that workforce and, paradoxically, brought a big temporary boost to wages and working conditions.<\/p>\n

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Pre-war Liberal promises had not been fulfilled and wages, at a standstill, were as low as two thirds of the cost of living. \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Damp, tumbledown, insanitary and overcrowded cottages were everywhere,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 wrote Seebohm Rowntree in his survey How the Labourer Lives. A rising wave of strikes was halted by the outbreak of war.<\/p>\n

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By July 1915, nearly a quarter of a million farm workers had volunteered to fight. One Norfolk recruit in Kitchener\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s New Army said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0098For the first time in my life, there had been no strenuous work. We were all damned glad to have got off the farm.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Conscription brought the figure to 400,000 by 1918.<\/p>\n

\"Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/a>

Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s land army forage corps feed a hay baler
From IWM<\/p><\/div>\n

The exodus brought one of the first signs of major social change, as women stepped up to bring in the 1914 harvest. During the war some 17,000 women joined the Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s National Land Service Corps, swelling a female agricultural population that had long taken seasonal work in the fields.<\/p>\n

\"Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/a>

Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s land army working in a field
From IWM<\/p><\/div>\n

Children, prisoners and soldiers were also drafted in to help as war went on. In fact the picture at the top shows school girls with tools and vegetables grown at their school.
\nDemand for food put the cost of living up by a fifth in the first 12 months. Farmers profited but they did not share the benefit with those who worked their land.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet sporadic successful strikes fuelled union membership. The Agricultural Labourers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Union had 350 branches at the outset but 2,583 in 1919, when members topped 170,000. Relentless pressure helped to gradually lift overall earnings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A legal minimum wage was introduced for the first time with the Corn Production Act 1917 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a piece of crisis management which established county wage boards made up equally of farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and labourers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 representatives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was followed after Armistice by the Agriculture Act 1920 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but Lloyd George\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s government tore that up within eight months, and with it went wage boards and minimum wages. Depression followed, and it took the Labour government of 1924 to reinstate them.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>

From IWM<\/p><\/div>\n

John Garth is the author of \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Tolkien and the Great War\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our final feature tomorrow will be how the war affected society and political views and how the social changes that followed are still being felt today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The war placed unprecedented demands on the agricultural workers who fed island Britain. At the same time it transformed that workforce and, paradoxically, brought a big temporary boost to wages and working conditions.   Pre-war Liberal promises had not been fulfilled and wages, at a standstill, were as low as two thirds of the cost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[50],"wps_subtitle":"In this the centenary week of the First World War, historian John Garth looks at what happened to workers and their families\u00e2\u20ac\u201c and how the social changes that followed still affect us today. Today we look at how the nation was fed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the contribution of agricultural workers.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":534,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}