What a pleasure to talk with Bernard Rix on Policing TV about the release of policemen into agriculture in 1917, about the amazing journal The Police Review and Parade Gossip and about my latest project on police charitable work to clothe destitute children from 1892. See https://lnkd.in/diwxuaFJ
Enjoy!
This popular weekly journal aimed to give the policeman on the beat a voice at a time when he lacked one, published weekly it started in 1893. It's now to be made available on The British Newspaper Archive, starting with 1893-1917, it will be digitised and made available to subscribers, with the remainder, up to its demise in 2011, following in due course.
Because if its wide readership, this weekly journal is one of the most important for historical research on the work of Britain's police. It not only has editorials showing how the good policeman should act but also the moral values he should have. It also has letters pages with the names of the letter-writers, so is good for genealogy. The letters give insights into the struggles and issues of individual policemen and their families at the time. Another feature is the Wive's Column, showing the struggles of the police family who were incorporated into the police service, with poor pay being a common thread. The journal was well known for its campaigning, so that issues such as the implementation of 1 day off in 7, or lack of it in some forces, in the 1910s, the police bonus during the First World War at a time when each force had its own pay structure, and conscription were all hot topics of debate and dispute for which the journal provided evidence and direction. The journal gives real insight into the lives and work of policemen, and women when they were employed in the force, at the time.
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Digitisation is very much needed, as the number of complete sets is becoming a worry and the state of these is deteriorating. The number if sites with a complete set makes travel inevitable, so digitisation and uploading to a national resource is very much welcome.
Delighted to have been asked to share the findings of my latest book The British Police and Home Food Production in the Great War: Police as ploughmen, 1917-1918 on GB News on 11th May 2025 with Angela Rippon. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN9RRJVCszY&t=2283s&ab_channel=GBNews after 32 minutes.
The police benevolent scheme to
clothe poor and destitute children was taken up widely across
Birmingham, Bolton, Cardiff, Chester, Coventry, Dublin, Dundee, Glasgow, Halifax, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Northampton, Plymouth, Preston, Rochdale, Salford, South Shields, Smethwick, Stockport, Swansea, Wakefield, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton and Worcester.
As well as demonstrating the social conscience of the police, the schemes also increased police surveillance of the underclass by accessing schools to ensure only children from the deserving poor received tickets to go to the police station to collect clothing, in Edinburgh this was shoes and trousers.
Ensuring only the worthy received clothing involved surveillance spreading out into the community of schools and pawnbrokers, as in Edinburgh the police indelibly marked the clothes to ensure parents didn't pawn them in hard times. The schemes also drew in elites, who were frequent benefactors and often members of the management committee chaired by the Council.
These pictures from the West Midlands Police Museum, show how in 1923 the Birmingham police portrayed the scheme benefited poor children:
Book review on police history in Cultural and Social History http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2025.2448373
The Metropolitan Police and the British Film Industry, 1919–1956: Public Relations, Collaboration and Control, by Alexander Charles Rock, London, Bloomsbury/British Film Institute, 2023, 278 pp., £76.50 (hardback), ISBN 9781350295087; £26.09 (paperback), ISBN 9781350295124
This intriguing book details the involvement of the Metropolitan Police in a series of three feature films and two supporting features produced collaboratively with the film industry between 1945 and 1956. It shows the factors and the cumulative and growing influence of the Public Information Officer, Percy Fearnley, a seasoned Fleet Street journalist, in the production of The Blue Lamp (1950); Street Corner (1953), and The Long Arm (1956), with the power relationships involved in the films’ production. We see the Metropolitan Police Press Bureau, headed by Fearnley from 1945, attempting to manipulate the image of the police through the control of these cultural productions. The book starts by showing previous work on the general role of the film producer and how Fearnley developed this role to become the controller of written and visual media for the Metropolitan Police with the filmmakers. His influence ensured the films, made by different film studios and with different film directors, worked as public relations exercises for the Metropolitan Police by providing documentary realism. Although the Met established its Press Bureau in 1919, this book charts Fearnley’s image management from his appointment in November 1945 so that the public saw paternalistic benevolence in all ranks and activity within Scotland Yard, shaping the projects’ propaganda in conjunction with the film studios and to a lesser extent newspapers, to the Met’s advantage, until 1955 when the rise of television heralded a change in cinema.
Early chapters argue that the development of films about the police was designed to meet the cultural needs and desires of the audience, while acting as propaganda for the police. By analysing files held at the National Archives in London, Rock shows that control of production is vital to an understanding of narratives of law and order at the time. He starts by considering the early role of the Met’s Press Bureau from its establishment in 1919 intended as a conduit between the Met and the press to improve transparency. However, it became a mechanism for control of the written and visual media until the appointment of Fearnley in 1945, which brought a more collaborative, open and successful approach for both the media and the Met. Beforehand, relationships had been fractious and mired in suspicion. The Press Bureau’s approach pre-1945 was largely censorial.
The development of a more collaborative approach with the media began with four key events starting in 1938 when the Met acknowledged the potential for cinema propaganda: 1. The Ministry of Information commissioned a short film War and Order: 2. The appointment of Percy Fearnley as the first public information officer; 3. The production in mid-1946 of a prestigious documentary This Modern Age: Scotland Yard; and 4. Making the first film collaboratively with an independent producer in mid-1947.
Further development of a collaborative approach to produce film projects also coincided with the appointment of Harold Scott as Commissioner of the Met in 1945. His appointment heralded increased openness towards written and visual media and signalled the appointment of Percy Fearnley as Public Information Officer, with the remit of putting police-press relationships on a satisfactory footing and to control the depiction of the police in popular culture, hidden under the guise of transparency and accountability. Despite Fearnley’s failed attempts to control press coverage of crime scenes, he was more successful in controlling films from as early as a month following his appointment. The important collaborative agreement with the film industry to shoot films within the surroundings of Scotland Yard allowed film makers to claim to show the real Scotland Yard at a time when the market was saturated with many B feature films of the police, with nothing new to offer.
We see the detail of the process of film production, from the initial outlines and treatments to shooting the script and developing the voiceover commentary. Fearnley developed and established his role as Public Information Officer both within the Met and also with the film industry through the film The Modern Age: Scotland Yard, where he became more confident and in control of this film about black market racketeering, following an initial contact from the filmmaker in December 1945. The year preceding the release of the film in September 1946 involved struggles and controversy by Fearnley to develop his role as gatekeeper of publicity and press relations. Harold Scott gave him almost complete freedom to coordinate this public relations exercise. The film The Girl from Scotland Yard followed speedily, not only by granting permission for access but also to provide cast and uniforms, involving the Superintendent of Women Police, Elizabeth Bather, who drastically rewrote much of the initial scrips. The film was to become a recruiting tool for women police, and The Girl from Scotland Yard was released in September 1948. It led to Fearnley and the Metropolitan Police Press Bureau being recognised as the producer of subsequent films, The Blue Lamp (1950); Street Corner (1953), and The Long Arm (1956).
This book is ideal for students and researchers into the history of film as propaganda.
I have been asked to provide a bibliography for my recent book on police history, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-58743-6 so I'm including it below:
Armstrong,
A. 1988. Farmworkers: A social and economic history 1770-1980. London:
B.T. Batsford.
Barnett, M. L. 1985. British Food Policy During the First World War Boston: George Allen and Unwin
Armstrong, C. (2015) Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the Great War. Barnsley: Pen and Sword.
Beveridge, W.H. 1928. British Food Control, London:
Oxford University Press.
Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (1919) Report of the Food Production Department for the year 1918. TNA MAF 42/8
Brown, N.F. (2015) 'Fall in the children': a regional study of the mobilisation of the children of the 42nd regimental area during the great war. PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Dundee.
Chance, W. 1917. Industrial Unrest:
The Reports of the Commissioners (July 1917) Collated and Epitomised. Published
for the British Constitutional Association, London https://archive.org/details/industrialunrest00chanrich (accessed 12/9/2024)
Conacher, H.M. 1926. Increased Food Production. Chapter IX. In Jones, et. al. Rural Scotland During the War. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press. pp. 122-86.
Crookes, W. (1917) The wheat problem. London: Longman
Cultivation of Lands Order, 1917. TNA MAF 48/221.
Davis, B.J. (2000) Home fires burning: food, politics, and everyday life in World War 1 Berlin. The University of North Carolina Press.
Dearle, N.B. (1929) Economic Chronicle of the Great War for Great Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press
Defence of the Realm Act https://archive.org/details/defenceofrealmma00grearich/page/54)
DeGroot, G.J. (1996) Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War. London: Longman.
Desborough, Lord. (1919) Report of the Committee on the Police Service in England, Wales and Scotland.
Devine, T.M. (ed.) (1984) Farm Servants and
Labour in Lowland Scotland 1770-1914. Edinburgh: John Donaldson
Dewey, P. E. 1975. Agricultural Labour Supply in England and Wales during the First World War. Economic History Review February 28(1) 100-12.
Dewey, P.E. (1988) Nutrition and living standards in wartime Britain. In The upheaval of war: family, work and welfare in Europe, 1914-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dewey, P. 2000. Chapter 12 Farm labour. In E.J.T. Collins, ed. The Agrarian History of England and Wales. VII (Part 1) 1850-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Dewey, P. E. 2014. British Agriculture in the First World
War. London: Routledge. 2nd edition
Dunning, Lord (1916) HM Inspector of Constabulary Report for 1915. TNA HO 287
Dunning, Lord. (1918) HM Inspector of Constabulary Report for 1917. TNA HO 287
Emsley,
C. 1996. The English Police: A political and Social History 2nd
Edition, London: Longman
Emsley, C. (2009) The great British bobby: A history of British policing from the eighteenth century to the present. London: Quercus.
Ernle, Lord. n.d. The Land and its People; Chapters in
Rural Life and History. London: Hutchinson,
Fraser, M. (2019) Policing the Home Front, 1914-1918: The control of the British population at war. London: Routledge.
Fellowes, A. (1919) Wages and conditions in agriculture. Parliamentary papers Cmd. 24 Vol IX
Ferguson, M. (1920) The diets of labouring class families during the course of the war. Journal of Hygiene 18, 409-16.
Gregory, A. 2008. The Last Great War: British Society and the
First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grieves, K. 1988. The Politics of Manpower, 1914-18. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Holmes, H. (2016) A neglected innovation: the double-furrow plough in Scotland, its early adoption and use, 1867 to 1880. Agricultural History Review 64(1) 54-80
Jones, D. T. et al. 1926. Rural
Scotland during the war. London: Humphrey Milford.
Lloyd George, D. (1934) War memoirs of David Lloyd George 1916-1917. Boston: Little Brown.
Martin, J. (2019) Saving the nation from starvation: the heroic age of food control, June 1917 to July 1918. Rural History, 30, 181-196
Marwick, A. (2006) The Deluge: British Society and the First World War. 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
McDermott, J. 2011. British Military Tribunals, 1916-1918: A very much abused body of men. Manchester University Press, https://academic.oup.com/manchester-scholarship-online/book/13569 (accessed 12/9/2024)
Middleton, T. H. 1923. Food
Production in War. Oxford: The Clarendon Press
Milner, A. (1915) Department (Milner) Committee on Home Food Production. TNA MAF 42/9
Montgomery, J. K. 1922. The maintenance of the agricultural labour supply in England and Wales during the war. Rome: The International Institute of Agriculture
Oddy, D.J. (1970) Working-class diets in late nineteenth-century Britain. Economic History Review. 23, 314-23.
Oddy, D. and Miller, D. eds. 1976. The Making of the
Modern British Diet. London: Croom Helm
Offer, A. 1989. The First World War: An agrarian
interpretation. Clarendon Press
Prest, A.R. 1954. Consumers’
Expenditure in the United Kingdom, 1900-1919. Studies in the national
income and expenditure of the United Kingdom No. 3. Cambridge University Press.
Prothero, R.E. (1917) Home Grown food Supply. TNA MAF 53/6
Prothero, R. (1961) English Farming Past and Present. 6th edition. London: Heinemann
Rawlings, P. (2012) Policing: A short history. Taylor & Francis.
Rew, H. (1918) Agricultural statistics, 1918. Annual return in Acreage and Livestock Returns of England and Wales. Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. Volume LII, Part 1. London. 20th Century House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (Proquest)
Rew, R. Henry. January 1918. The prospects of the World’s Food Supplies after the War. Paper read to the Royal Statistical Society December 18, 1917, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 81(1) 41-74
Salter, J.A. (1921) Allied Shipping Control: An experiment in international administration. Economic and social history of the world war. Carnegie Endowment for international peace. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
Waites, B. (1987) A class society at war, 1914-1918. Berg
Whetham,
E. H. 1978. The Agrarian History of England and Wales Volume VIII
1914-39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Woolfe, H. (1923) Labour supply and regulations. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
Ziemann, B. 2014. Agrarian society. In Jay Winter ed. The Cambridge History of the First World War. Volume II The State. Cambridge University Press, Chapter 15, pp. 382-407.
Newspapers and journals
My latest book The British Police and Home Food Production in the Great War: Police as Ploughmen, 1917-1918 is published by Palgrave Macmillan at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-58743-6.
It contains chapters on:
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The locations where policemen (and they were only men) were released into agriculture in March/April 1917 are shown in the Table below, along with their approximate numbers. Most were released from their police duties full-time for around 6 weeks, but some were allowed to help farmers part-time in the threatened disaster of food shortages in Spring 1917. Food shortages lasted until the end of the war, although rationing in early 1918 helped to equalize the supply of different types of food across the nation.
I'm delighted to let you know that I've been invited to give a seminar at the Institute for Historical Research on Police as Ploughmen, a subject I've been studying for the last 3 years.
The seminar is on 31st May this year and you can find the link here https://www.history.ac.uk/events/police-ploughmen-191718-how-britains-policemen-helped-local-populations-temporary-release
Attendance is either in person or online and is free. Those wishing to attend will need to register on this IHR webpage.
You can see the seminar presentation here: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/Mgw3jIJvGgQ8B3_dlqzuiH_sN3V0u-8aqt5emM7zUGH1TSHYddR3emtevbwdPH6A.pn7UcGgz5k_lSOCq Passcode: +x%kw2aU
It was a real pleasure to talk with the 50+ participants on the College of Policing, Strategic Demand Course at the Police College last Wednesday. It was the first time a section on police history had been included in this course. The course is for those working in the police service who have been identified as potential for promotion to senior roles, so a challenging group.
The picture shows (from left to right) Ruth Halkon from the Police Foundation, who Chaired our session; Paul Lawrence from the Open University; David Churchill from the University of Leeds; and me.
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Twitter: @drmaryfraser
Despite massive loss of manpower from agriculture in Britain from around 1850 with mass migration into the towns and cities during the industrial revolution, by 1914 agriculture was still the largest single employer. During the last 2 years of the First World War (1917-1918) this made farm workers a prime target to conscript into the army under the first Military Service Act, 1916 [5 & 6 GEO. 5. CH. 104] and subsequent Military Service Acts.
Agriculture became nationalised from the beginning of the Lloyd George Premiership (December 1916) and developed policies to replace fit men of military age (18-41 years of age until mid-1918) by men outside these ages and less physically fit, and women. But in industries with strong trade unions such as engineering and munitions which feared industrial conscription and strike breaking, they fiercely contested replacement, setting up barriers to the deployment of workers from outside the industry.
However, agriculture was largely non-unionized, so fell mainly outside these hostilities allowing government to impose massive supplies of manpower into agriculture, first from the Home Army, to increase home food production, seen by agricultural workers as government-assisted blacklegs. The lack of unionisation in agriculture weakened farm workers’ ability to bargain for wage rises in this traditionally low wage industry, until the establishment of the Agricultural Wages Board in 1918. Until after March 1918 unskilled farm workers mainly received lower wages than substitute soldiers, who had their rates of pay determined by the War Office. Additionally, at a time when very few men wanted to go to war, many replacements on farms were exempted from army service at the front, while agricultural workers were still being combed out into the army.
But farmers, who employed agricultural workers, received government-guaranteed prices for their produce to encourage increased production, so were the main financial beneficiaries of government controlled agriculture.
However, no reports of strike action by farm workers was found, so that government had little opposition to deploying replacements, many of whom provided an inferior service to farmers compared with their experienced workers.
But policemen, also released into agriculture from March 1917 were welcomed by farmers due to their dormant agricultural skills from previous employment and their knowledge of the local area. Their role as first responders in a national emergency continues today.
Further reading
Fraser, M. (2021) 'Police as Ploughmen': Temporary release to help farmers in the food crisis of First World War Britain. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2021.1958443
Dewey, P. E. (1979) Government provision of farm labour in England and Wales, 1914-1918. The Agricultural History Review. XXVIII 110-121.
Dewey, P.E. (1989) British Agriculture in the First World War. Routledge. Chapter Sixteen pp. 229-238.
Collins, E.J.T. (2000) Introduction and Part I. Agriculture in the industrial state. Chapters 1 and 2 pp. 1-223. In The Agrarian History of England and Wales Ed. Joan Thirsk. VII (Part 1) 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press.
The National Archives TNA CAB 23/3/32 184 p. 5. Minutes of the War Cabinet for 13th July 1917.
Condemned to Repeat it: Why policing should take its own history seriously.
Delighted that The Police Foundation are holding an event on 13th May 2022 from 10.00-12.00 BST to promote the development and use of police history in research, writing and practice.
You can see further details including the speakers and register to join the discussion at Condemned to repeat it: Why policing should take its own history seriously Registration, Fri 13 May 2022 at 10:00 | Eventbrite
Hope you can make it.
My article
has been accepted for publication in the journal Cultural and Social History published by Taylor and Francis.
As it's in open access format, you can read it at https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2021.1958443
Enjoy!
