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Rationing in the Second World War
Spuds, Spam and Eating for Victory
By Katherine Knight The History Press
Copyright © 2011 Katherine Knight
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7294-2
CHAPTER 1
Fairer Shares
One of the most fundamental human terrors is that of famine. Not enough to give your children. Not enough to eat yourself. Outright starvation is the worst. People with big heads and limbs like sticks, children too feeble to cry. The images are still shockingly familiar in the twenty-first century. The skeleton shook its angry bones in the cupboards of Whitehall in the 1930s when war seemed likely. It was clear that another conflict would be partly one of attrition, with vital supplies reduced as they had been in the Great War. Britain began re-arming, repairing its military machine, but it was also realised that 'Food is a Munition of War.' Britain was importing most of its food. If supplies were completely cut off the population would starve. How should the government react? What could be done to increase home-production, safeguard essential imports and make sure that everyone had a reasonable share? It was time to blow the dust off files which referred to similar problems in the previous struggle with Germany.
RATIONING: THE PRECEDENT OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Submarine attacks had led to food shortages by December 1916. The consequent rise in food prices, and long queues, had led to industrial unrest in 1917 and 1918. Fats, sugar, meat and bacon were rationed in 1918, at the flat rate per person per week of 4oz fats, 8oz sugar, 15oz beef, mutton or lamb and 5oz bacon. Rationing continued until 1920. To make it work, there had to be government control of both imports and home-grown produce, and a Ministry of Food was set up. (It was abandoned after restrictions were lifted in 1921.) It was decided to allow the same quantities to everybody in order to be fair. Bread was subsidised, and though there was a campaign in 1917 which urged people to eat 25 per cent less, it remained available. Of course different people needed different amounts of food – your bedridden granny was never going to eat as much as your brother the blacksmith.
Retailers and consumers had to be closely associated, as the shops got their supplies in proportion to the number of customers registered.
The system was accepted by the public as a success, generally speaking, though May Byron, a cookery writer of the time, had serious reservations:
Of course, the fundamental idea of rationing was standardisation, equalisation: i.e., that nobody shall have more than anybody else. Equally of course, like all theories of standardising and equalising, it won't work out in practice ... the households numbering from one to three person have a desperate struggle to make ends meet on meat-ends and scraps. Their perplexities are multiplied in inverse ratio to their tickets [coupons] ... This is a question only to be solved by good management.
However, good might come from facing the difficulties. She foreshadowed the propaganda of the Second World War when she said:
I conjecture that, sooner or later, we shall emerge from this dire emergency a great deal cleverer than we were before; having acquired all sorts of knowledge, and exploited all manner of possibilities, which we should have regarded with a stare of blank bewilderment in 1913.
This hope came to not much. Nutritional standards generally remained at half-mast for the next eighteen years.
FOOD BETWEEN THE WARS FOR RICH AND POOR
Before 1939 social inequalities were far more obvious than they are today. Many people were ill as a result of poverty or ignorance or both. We should not be complacent, with obesity becoming literally a widespread problem, and poverty contributing to faulty choices. But many on low wages in the years of the Depression suffered from outright deficiencies. Commenting on the findings of John Boyd Orr in 1936, John Burnett wrote:
But there was abundant evidence that it was particularly in the lower [income] groups that physical under-development, predisposition to rickets, dental caries, anaemia and infective diseases such as tuberculosis were most marked, and that their incidence was due – at least in part – to the inadequacy of protein and vitamin intake.
It might have been expected that country people were better fed than those in towns, but Burnett dispels this idea:
It was tempting to think in the 1930s that poor diet and malnutrition were essentially urban problems associated with unemployment, overcrowding, lack of fresh air and other difficulties of life in towns. A survey of nutrition in Cuckfield Rural District Council, a rural area with no unemployment problems, completely disproved this belief and showed that in 1936, as a century earlier, the agricultural labourer was the worst-fed of English workers. Ninety-nine children out of 304 examined were of sub-normal nutrition – a proportion of 33 per cent.
V.H. Mottram, a professor of physiology at King's College, London University, and his wife gave good advice in a book published in 1932, Sound Catering for Hard Times. It was based on necessary quantities of total calories, first-class protein (that is, protein of animal origin, such as meat or cheese), vitamins and minerals. It was intended, not for the very poor, but for the down-at-heel middle class. Several economies could be made by a man facing a reduced income or a tax rise: 'He cuts down his wife's dress allowance, he sends the boys to the local grammar school [instead of to a public school, though nothing is said about the daughters' education], he says he will mow the lawn himself and he waters the cat's milk ...'
But above all, savings could be made by switching from expensive foods to cheaper ones, without sacrificing food values. The Mottrams gave a collection of these economy recipes, with costs that show startling evidence of inflation over the last seventy years. Soups cost from 5½d per 1,000 calories or four portions (vegetable soup), to an extravagant 3s 1 ¼d for a tapioca cream soup attributed to Mrs Beeton. The meat stock in this cost 11d, and added very little to its food value. Two pounds of cod cost 2/-, whereas salmon was 5/- for 1¼lbs. A duck for roasting cost 4/6d, while the same weight of boiling fowl, that is 3lb, would set you back only 3/-. Boarding-school-type puddings, high in carbohydrates, were cheap anyway. For instance 1,000 calories of plain suet and treacle pudding (also from Mrs Beeton) cost 2½d. Leave out the treacle, and the cost could go down to 2¼d. It is noticeable that the food is priced down to the last farthing! A baked custard for one person was nourishing, but with a quarter of a pint of milk and one egg, it was probably too expensive at 3d.
The authors list the foods which provide the cheapest calories, for the 'really poor'. These include haricot beans and other pulses, white flour, white and brown bread, margarine and suet, pasta, rice, sago, tapioca, potatoes, dates, currants and figs, sugar and treacle, the cheapest cuts of mutton, cheese imported from New Zealand and bacon. They point out that this catalogue does not cover essential vitamins and minerals, and the book shows how these may be included, but the list is depressing to read, and the food would have been even more depressing to eat. But a lot of people regarded these things as staples, and they were certainly represented in the basic and points rationing which were to come.
Next is the group of foods which the 'merely poor' may add to the list, butter, cornflour, parsnips, raisins, imported mutton and lamb, and cheaper cuts of imported beef, milk, herrings, sweet biscuits and some pork. The book emphasises the savings to be made by switching from home-grown meat and butter to Empire produce, especially from New Zealand. There was naturally a demand for cheaper food, and this made imports rise between the two wars, a disaster for British agriculture.
Finally in the Mottrams' book only people beginning to escape poverty will be able to afford British meat and more vegetables, with fruit, fish and eggs the most luxurious of foods.
How was this actually experienced? Maybe academic generalities need to be related to real people. For instance, the poet Tom Earley described his childhood meals as part of a large family belonging to the mining community in Mountain Ash, South Wales.
For what we have received
We were not vegetarian from choice
but from necessity; meat cost too much
and allotment salad seemed free.
So there were fragile young
lettuces in season and small
shining globes of radishes,
spring onions which chilled
the throat (jibbons we called them)
and deep purple flesh of beetroot
fleetingly reminding us of meat.
In autumn we finished our meal
with blackberry pudding or wimberry pie,
whichever fruit our eager indigo fingers
had picked that golden day.
My mother had a hand for pastry,
especially for apple tart
made on a large flat dish
and served geometrically neat
with exactly equal slices
making fair shares for all.
In winter we had a thinner time
sometimes dinner was half a banana
with bread and margarine, though
there was always tea, hot, strong and sweet.
All week we waited for the Sunday joint.
The smell of mint or parsley
can still arouse in me
the excitement we felt
for the small sweet mountain mutton
when it arrived on our table.
Shoulder of lamb with its crisp
brown crust of fat across the top
or breast of lamb, fragrant
with green parsley stuffing
speckled with herbs and chopped
onion, was served with spring greens
and yellow waxy new potatoes
tiny from our own garden.
But the meat was the thing:
we were not vegetarian from choice.
Tom Earley
A middle-class diet was 'based upon bread, butter, milk, fish, meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, game and poultry.' This was high in protein and fats, adequate in vitamins and minerals and certainly sufficiently calorific.
Typical cookery books of the time confirm the impression of good living for the lucky and prosperous, though recipes had become somewhat simpler than Victorian ones. For instance an Everyday Cookery published in a revised edition in 1937, was written '... chiefly for people of moderate income, although a few of a more elaborate and expensive character have been included.' Indeed they were. Twelve specimen menus covered breakfasts, luncheons and dinners for each of the four seasons. A spring breakfast consisted of baked eggs, tomato sauce, potted meat and banana salad. A summer luncheon might be salmon mayonnaise, roast fowl, bread sauce, potato chips, asparagus with cream sauce, and cherry flan and cream for dessert. Dinner was a more elaborate meal than luncheon anyway, and in winter particularly one needed to be well fed, so one might have oysters au naturel, tomato soup, fried whiting, fillets of beef à la St Aubyn, roast partridge, salad, potato straws, bramble cream, with cheese and biscuits to fill any spare capacity.
The book as a whole is comprehensive and, perhaps, nostalgic for Edwardian days. Stocks and soups, sauces, gravies and batters are the preliminaries, and then the chapters follow the usual order of courses at dinner. Hors- d'oeuvres were needed to stimulate appetite, and then came two-dozen pages on fish, both freshwater and saltwater, and shellfish. Entrées and Made Dishes were important, but 'one entrée is usually considered sufficient nowadays, as dinners are much simpler than formerly. Sometimes the remove is dispensed with ...' If not dispensed with, the remove was a solid meat course, often a whole joint of beef, mutton, or pork, roast, braised or boiled, served with potatoes and other vegetables – the fundamental scheme of the 'meat-and-two-veg' meal which still persists. The remove might also be omitted if a Roast course was included, poultry or game with accompaniments of salad, gravy and such. There is a large section on vegetable dishes, including the timeless baked or jacket potatoes and peeled potatoes roasted with the meat. Cold service dishes such as mayonnaise of whole salmon often appeared on party occasions, in what we would call a buffet meal. Plainer cold entrées such as chicken cream could be served up for luncheon.
Meatless dishes overlap the food of the poor, described by the Mottrams above. The book continues with pies, puddings, savouries, breakfast and supper dishes, cakes and beverages. And all this in the revised edition of a mainstream publisher just two years before the outbreak of war.
This poverty and plenty together made up the background against which government planners had to impose their scheme of food distribution and control when war came. Clearly the affluent classes felt the greatest culture shock, as meals were simplified, portions reduced, variety severely limited. But for those who had previously known real hunger, there was to be a guarantee of a minimum quantity of essential foods at reasonable prices.
RATIONING: PRELIMINARY PLANNING BY THE GOVERNMENT IN THE 1930S
With the experience of rationing in 1918 almost fresh in their minds, the planners set to work when war looked probable. Sir William Beveridge had been a permanent secretary at the first Ministry of Food, and in 1936 he became Chairman of the subcommittee on rationing.
Control schemes for cereals, meat, fats, tea and sugar were worked out. It was essential that everybody should be guaranteed a proper share, so it followed there had to be strict organisation of supply and distribution. A Ministry of Food would spring into being immediately on the outbreak of war. It would own bulk stocks of foods and imported food, and also whatever was produced on British farms. It would also be responsible for contracts with overseas suppliers. At the outbreak of war therefore the plans were already in place. Stocks had been built up to some extent, arrangements for transport and storage made, and – important in a democracy – legislation for government control of food was drafted. Fifty million ration books had been printed in readiness (for a total population of 48 million) by the summer of 1939.
Other ministries were also involved. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries extended its scope. The Board of Trade had responsibility for consumer goods apart from food, and the Ministry of Supply was in charge of salvage efforts, a campaign not unlike the recycling schemes in operation today. They were helped by the Women's Voluntary Service, which had been set up in 1938. Fuel rationing came under the direction of the Ministry of Fuel and Power.
IMPORTS AND LOSSES
Before the Second World War Britain was nowhere near being self- sufficient in food production:
Britain was dependent on imports for 92 per cent of her requirements of fat, for 51 per cent of her meat and bacon, 73 per cent of her sugar and 87 per cent of flour cereals, as well as for a large proportion of the cheese, eggs, vegetables and other everyday foods consumed at home.
Part of the reason for the high level of imports was the encouragement of Empire trade, and as already mentioned there was a demand for cheap food. The country was vulnerable to a naval blockade, and when war came the U-boats, as the submarines were called, were especially deadly.
They hunted like wolves in packs, fanning out to intercept merchant shipping. They were fast on the surface, low in the water and easily overlooked. They shadowed the convoys and attacked at night. There were not enough escort vessels, and the ships were most vulnerable in mid-Atlantic. After the fall of France more bases were available for the U-boats, with the worst losses for allied shipping happening in early 1941, when in February to April 1,600,000 tons went down, with a corresponding toll on seamen's lives.
Available British shipping was needed to carry troops too. It was obvious that imports would have to be cut back severely, which meant an enormous switch into production at home. Imported food was reduced by almost half from 22,026,000 tons to 11,032,000 tons by 1944. Bulky cargoes were eliminated or compressed, as with boneless meat. Shipping space was not the only consideration either – food from abroad had to be paid for, until Lend Lease agreements eased the country's considerable cash-flow problems in mid-1941.
ORGANISATION OF RATIONING
The challenge at the start of the war was to make sure that the whole population was kept in good health and, as in 1918, to distribute available goods fairly through the rationing and control systems. A fractious public was the last thing the government wanted, when the goodwill of the workers was essential to the coming war effort. (In fact, fair shares remained a part of Labour's social policy after the war.) It was thought that rationing would check inflation on food prices, enable the creation of reserves, and prevent queues. It was only partly successful in the last aim.
There was Cabinet debate about the best way to distribute supplies. Should there be extra meat, for instance, for workers doing heavy physical work? And what about the needs of growing boys? Oh, yes, and growing girls too. It was decided that it would be too complicated to differentiate between many kinds of groups, so it became the stated aim of the Ministry of Food 'to provide the maximum possible, ration for all consumers rather than to give more to some at the expense of the remainder', but in fact there were many commonsense adjustments. For example, extra milk and vitamin foods were allowed to children and pregnant women, and there was a larger ration of cheese for agricultural and other workers who couldn't take advantage of canteens. The armed services were fed under separate rules. Service people on leave were issued with temporary ration documents. In any case, bread and potatoes were unrationed during the war, and communal feeding arrangements, such as British Restaurants, were expected to supplement the rations.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rationing in the Second World War by Katherine Knight. Copyright © 2011 Katherine Knight. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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