The police and food control 1917 - 1918



@drmaryfraser
Lord Rhondda’s appointment as Food Controller from June 1917 saw a more equal supply and distribution of food across Britain, so that social class and income did not determine what food people could buy and eat. The huge government programme to control what everyone bought and ate involved the police in enforcing measures to control the food supply. National food control involved huge numbers of staff mainly employed locally to identify households, individuals and retailers of items in short supply, such as sugar, tea, butter, margarine and meat. Individuals had to register with one retailer for each of these items and produce a token to buy them. This regulated these scarce items. There were many infringements of the regulations by individuals and retailers and the police acted to prosecute the culprits, usually by fines but occasionally by imprisonment. Their crimes were made public through the press.
The turning point for food policy was not reached until mid-1917; before this, people were asked to restrict the amount they ate, as the poster below shows.
Voluntary restriction was well publicised in churches, cinemas, in the press and in leaflets which were widely distributed, followed by well-publicised convictions for wasting bread.
The Defence of the Realm Act, Regulation 2F passed in early 1917 gave the Food Controller wide ranging powers to regulate “the production, manufacture, treatment, use, consumption, transport, storage, distribution, sale or purchase of, or other dealing … for the purpose of encouraging or maintaining the food supply of the country”. The police were told through their journal The Police Review and Parade Gossip that contravention was a summary offence, but it advised its readers that policemen did not have the power of entry to premises for inspection without special authority from the Food Controller. However, although they should not enter premises, reports in the press showed that prosecutions had been brought where bread was thrown away which was found in dustbins, relying on surveillance by neighbours on each other so that they could tip off the police to inquire further into the matter. More general waste of food could also result in a conviction; W.H. Beveridge (1928) gives an example:
“A Lincolnshire farmer finding himself able to buy seven stone of rock cakes cheaply from an Army canteen used them to feed pigs; as the food executive officer and a police sergeant were able to pick some of the cakes out of a swill-tub and taste them without bad consequences, the farmer was fined £10 for wasting human food.”
The police were advised that they could only take action in “such cases as come to their notice while in the exercise of their regular duties”.
But these measures failed to gain public support, particularly in less affluent areas and led to labour agitation and threats of unrest. When industrial unrest was investigated, it was found that food supply was at the heart of the discontent. The government was pressed by many individuals and organisations, including trade unions, to control the food supply, so that everyone had access to an equal share. In August 1917 the Food Controller set up a regional administrative structure by dividing Britain into seventeen units: eleven in England; three in Scotland; two in Wales and one in Ireland - each with its own Divisional Food Commissioner, administrative and legal staff. To help the Divisional Commissioners to administer and enforce the hundreds of food orders were approximately 1,900 local food control committees each with 12 members who represented the local community; they should include at least one labour representative and one woman. Later, particularly in large cities, the numbers of trade union and women members increased. One of the local committees’ main functions was to license all retailers, who sold rationed items, with the local authority and all wholesalers with the central office. Each local scheme must be registered centrally with the Food Controller who also controlled the maximum amount of each scarce item that could be sold. This allowed the Food Controller to compare local schemes across Britain.
Every customer should be registered with one retailer who should divide his supplies equally between his customers while not registering more customers than he could serve. Penalties of fines, removal of a trader’s license and/or in a few cases imprisonment could follow if the orders were not observed. By mid-1918 this vast bureaucratic structure of central government, regional and local food control involved enforcement, inspection and prosecution at each level, which Lord Rhondda recognised was costly, but essential if food control was to be effective. Each level monitored the performance of the level(s) below and could enforce the regulations if they failed to do so. This brought a further role for the police.
Fixing food prices by central government control began in September 1917, with many items controlled at wholesale and retail levels. But there were many contraventions followed by convictions, seen in the ten most active months of February to November 1918, on average 100 people were prosecuted with 92% successful convictions, this dropped to an average of 70 per day following the end of the war. The National Food Journal summarised the number of prosecutions and successful convictions under the Food Control Orders for 1918:
England      24,296 prosecutions    22,380 convicted         92.1%
Scotland        1,909 prosecutions      1,830 convicted        95.8%
Wale              2,452 prosecutions      2,153 convicted        87.8%
Ireland         13,870 prosecutions    12,379 convicted        89.2%
Total GB     28,657 prosecutions  26,363 convicted       92.0% 
Fines were often imposed; the average was £4 7s. 2d. which was not trivial, they were often said to be for selling above the fixed maximum price. Imprisonment without a fine was also an option, although not commonly used, but the publicity given by this and the fines was said to provide a deterrent.
As a result of price fixing, by October 1917 policemen sent a flurry of letters to their journal on the number of Food Control Orders, in excess of 100 with further supplements and amendments said to be constantly issued. Writers to the journal said that local food committees were issuing so many and such complex orders, that policemen who claimed no special expertise could not understand them and so could not enforce them. This allowed the Chief Constable of Exeter to say that he had set up a new branch to specialise in the orders so that traders could approach them for advice, also a complaint by the public would be referred to the branch, to be investigated by them and action taken. This is how Exeter’s scheme was portrayed in The Police Review and Parade Gossip on 19th October 1917:
“The members of the department will be required to make themselves thoroughly conversant with the many and complex orders issued by the Food Controller and the regulations made by the local Food Committee. But a feature of the arrangement is that the new branch is intended not so much to obtain convictions as to prevent contraventions of the orders, and by explaining both to the public and the dealers the terms and meanings of the orders to ensure the smooth and effective working of food control.”
This showed the police as having a social conscience to help, rather than only to convict, with the hope that this would bring them closer to retailers and the public to improve surveillance. The new branch also furthered links between the police and local authorities in the new area of food regulation. The Chief Constable said he hoped the mere existence of this new branch would make for more careful study and observance of the regulations. Other writers to the journal said that special officers had also been appointed for this purpose in a great many police forces around Britain. This shows policemen as central to encouraging adherence, particularly by retailers and the public, to food policies.
Food control saw the government managing the distribution and supply of scarce foodstuffs which was said, from 1917 onwards, to be central to winning the war. But at a cost - by the war’s end 8,800 staff were employed by the Ministry of Food in headquarters and in the local offices. Food control was another new role for the police on the Home Front.
References
Beveridge W. H. (1928) British Food Control London: Humphrey Milford; Oxford University Press.
Fraser, M. (2019) Policing the Home Front 1914-1918: The control of the British population at war. Routledge, Research Monograph.
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