R. J. Hammond

“ This sort of approach to problems that, if looked at intently, are seen to have wide implications beyond their obvious range at first sight, may hinder freedom of action instead of helping it. To take but one single example among many afforded by the history of food control; it was agreed that the food plans should be such as to enable the Government of the day, should it so desire, to introduce complete import control for the principal foods at the very outbreak of war . It was an indispensable condition of such a control's effectiveness that control of shipping should also be complete. ”

“ Competitive private enterprise, in bulk foodstuff at any rate, must be superseded both nationally and internationally; the Inter-Allied Food Council of September 1918, with its provisions for coordinated buying and allocation of food and shipping, was essential to the success of control in the United Kingdom, and, moreover, to the carrying out of the plans for bringing over the American Army to finish off the war, had it continued into 1919. ”

“ Vaguer yet, but not altogether to be disregarded, was the widespread conviction among those not directly concerned with it that food control had been well done and could be safely revived if need arose. There was, too, within the Board of Trade, a tiny handful of survivors from the final liquidation of the Ministry who kept in being its last direct legacy, the Civil Emergency Food Organisation for use in the event of industrial disputes. Many of the traders who had helped with food control were comparatively young men, whose services might be called on again in time of emergency. ”

“ What they did make clear was that the very circumstance that made food control vital for the United Kingdom—dependence on imported supplies—not only made its effectiveness greater, since ships and ports provided a ready-made bottleneck at which the Government could lay hands on commodities, but also reduce it to a secondary role in winning the war. ”

“ He foresaw a general policy of subsidising food prices in order to prevent inflation. He drew attention to the usefulness of the recently established marketing boards and commodity commissions as a nucleus of food control, while emphasising that the very existence of these bodies made centralised food control the more necessary. The expected initial air attack on London, he said, would necessitate not merely the emergency feeding of refugees, but a comprehensive plan to ensure the internal distribution of food from ships diverted to unaccustomed ports. ”

“ They are the permanent concern of General Staffs, who, because wars are intermittent occurrences, are not continually in danger of distraction by day-to-day questions of administration. For civilian questions as a whole there is no comparable tradition, expertise or organisation. The art of administration in a modern state has its own skill and finesse ”

“ It was historically appropriate that the first suggestion that a department of food defence be set up in peacetime should arise from a desire to forestall inflation in wartime, for it was high prices and industrial unrest, rather than actual shortage of supplies, that had led to the appointment of the first Food Controller. ”

“ Even the particular contribution to planning that administrative experience can bring, its insistence on the uncertainty of human calculation and the need for flexibility and adaptability in advance arrangements, can readily become, through over-emphasis, a dangerous impatience with logic or even a sort of intellectual nihilism that denies the need to think in general terms at all. ”

“ To some of his readers, even so early as 1928, that dictum might have seemed strangely dated; it would indeed be odd (they might think) if the nineteenth-century free-enterprise solution to the problem of feeding Britain's millions should be the only possible one. To many contemporaries, however, including some of those responsible for bringing the first Ministry of Food into being, food control was a leap in the dark ”

“ By contrast, the highly successful scheme for the marketing of home-produced livestock, and the chequered career of potatoes under control, illustrated the difficulties that confront the most resourceful of officials when he comes to deal with the marketing of home produce. ”

“ This Note on the Wider Aspects of Food Control [13] stands out as a landmark among State papers on the subject. The whole subsequent history of food policy bears witness to its mastery of first principles and grasp of essential detail. Sir William Beveridge pointed out that unless a Food Controller with a policy thought out in advance was in the saddle from the outset of war, problems would be
‘dealt with piecemeal and the seeds of future trouble will be sown. ”

“ It might prevent profiteering, that it the exploitation of a seller's market in the face of unlimited demand, but could not prevent the more efficient trader from prospering exceedingly under a regime of standard prices that must allow the less efficient to survive. ”

“ It was suggested that the Government should set up a peacetime ‘nucleus organisation’ to maintain touch with the food trade and secure their cooperation, and to collect information about food supplies and prices. ”

“ In April 1936 a new Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence was appointed to go into the whole question of Food Supply in War; it included five Cabinet Ministers and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The new body at once initiated two specific inquiries of the first important; by Sir Ernest Gowers into the practical problems raised by a policy of Government storage; and by Sir William Beveridge and a group of assisting officials into the administrative arrangements for rationing. ”