Food Worth Fighting For by Sutton Josh;

Author:Sutton, Josh; [Josh Sutton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4780799
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Published: 2016-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

END NOTES

1. Quoted in BBC TV documentary, History of the Cod Wars. Screened on BBC4 9 May 2010.

2. Ibid.

CHAPTER SIX

NOT ENOUGH TO GO ROUND

RATIONING AS CROWD CONTROL IN A TIME OF WAR

The sight of large crowds gathering in the streets and demanding food was a familiar one towards the end of the First World War, and were known as food queues. Whilst these gatherings were perhaps of a much more orderly nature than the full-on food riots which had occurred in previous centuries, government concern for potential unrest in the streets at home in a time of national crisis ran deep, and a system of rationing was developed to prevent the growth of food queues. Food queues in some areas of the country were so bad that men engaged in the manufacture of munitions were leaving work to take the places of their wives in the line for food. Serious and growing discontent was reported from all industrial districts of the country.1

That the advent of large queues in British towns and cities prompted and illustrated the need for a system of rationing is born out by newspaper reports at the time. Newspapers had begun to report the growth of the ‘food queue’ and its flashpoint potential. In December 1917, The Times reported that food queues were a growing concern, citing queues of up to 1,000, and in another case 3,000 strong as people waited to buy tea and margarine. By January of 1918, shortages of meat were the concern of the public, as well as to butchers themselves. William H. Beveridge in his treatise on British Food Control (1928) cites queues of butchers at Smithfield market (wholesalers) running up to 500 long. The need for a national scheme of rationing was apparent and on Sunday 14 July 1918, Britain was subject to a rationing scheme, which was to last into the post war years.

Rationing is a military term and carries with it connotations of equality and discipline, as a limited supply of goods is divided among those who need them. Rationing in the United Kingdom began in 1917, in part, as a result of the threat to shipping, brought about by the success of German submarine warfare. This was seen to lead to a depletion of food supplies available to the public at home, as well as to serving soldiers abroad. Scenes of virtual panic set in as the government came to realize that stocks of certain foodstuffs had dwindled to just three or four weeks supply. Sugar was the first commodity to be rationed, as the main source of Britain’s sugar came through Austria-Hungary, and that supply chain had dried up more or less at the outbreak of the war. Sugar was rationed via a system which developed as the government at the time introduced the principle of the ‘datum period’, whereby wholesalers were limited to a percentage of the amount of sugar they sold in 1915 (a period before the threat to supply). Limiting supply to wholesalers, however,

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