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The Postwar Years

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Working the Land

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Abstract

One of the most notable changes in the agricultural industry after the Second World War was the decline in the full-time regular workforce. In the late 1940s English agriculture still employed around half a million men and women; by the 1980s it was a little over 100,000. This chapter shows that the comprehensive adoption of agricultural machinery increased labour productivity while reducing requirements for farmworkers. For those workers who remained, machinery and intensive farming methods changed the rhythm and character of work in the arable and livestock sectors. This chapter shows that a small number of farmworkers enjoyed job security, and for many more workers job satisfaction was high; however, for the majority, wages were kept low by the continual reduction in the workforce.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Irene Megginson, Mud on my doorstep: Reminiscences of a Yorkshire farmwife (Beverley, 1987), pp. 67–69.

  2. 2.

    House of Commons debate, 27 January 1947, Vol. 432, Col. 623.

  3. 3.

    Agriculture Act, 1947, 10 and 11 Geo 6, ch. 48, Part 1.

  4. 4.

    E. J. Mejer, Agricultural labour in England and Wales. Part II, farm workers earnings, 1917–1951 (Nottingham, 1951), pp. 101–102.

  5. 5.

    The Land Worker, March 1946, p. 2.

  6. 6.

    Alun Howkins, The death of rural England: A social history of the countryside since 1900 (London, 2003), pp. 150–151; Renee Danziger, Political powerlessness: Agricultural workers in post-war England (Manchester, 1988), p. 6.

  7. 7.

    Paul Brassley, ‘Output and technical change in twentieth-century British agriculture’, Agricultural History Review, 48, I (2000), pp. 60–84.

  8. 8.

    John Martin, The development of modern agriculture: British farming since 1931 (Basingstoke, 2000), p. 74.

  9. 9.

    House of Commons debate, 8 April 1946, Vol. 421, Col. 1701.

  10. 10.

    The Times, 6 December 1945, p. 2.

  11. 11.

    The Times, 28 January 1946, p. 6.

  12. 12.

    House of Commons debate, 8 April 1946, Vol. 421, Col. 1704.

  13. 13.

    Mejer, Agricultural labour in England and Wales. Part II, p. 94.

  14. 14.

    Mejer, Agricultural labour in England and Wales, Part II, p. 105.

  15. 15.

    Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, The changing structure of the agricultural labour force in England and Wales: Numbers of workers, hours and earnings 1945–1965 (London, 1967), p. 26.

  16. 16.

    MAFF, The changing structure of the agricultural labour force, pp. 22–23.

  17. 17.

    Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Agricultural Statistics, 1945–1949: England and Wales, Part 1 (HMSO, 1952), Table 160.

  18. 18.

    Mejer, Agricultural labour in England and Wales. Part II, pp. 86 and 95.

  19. 19.

    The Times, 27 May 1946, p. 6.

  20. 20.

    House of Commons debate, 20 February 1945 Vol 408, Col. 633.

  21. 21.

    IWM, Personal Papers, Mrs. M. C. Matthew, Docs 2365.

  22. 22.

    IWM, Mrs D. M. Wood, Docs 1232.

  23. 23.

    The Land Worker, March 1946, p. 5

  24. 24.

    Alan Malpass, ‘British attitudes towards German prisoners of war and their treatment, 1939–1948’, unpublished PhD thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2016, ch. 4.

  25. 25.

    The Times, 27 May 1946, p. 6.

  26. 26.

    The Women’s Timber Corps had been disbanded earlier, in August 1946.

  27. 27.

    MAF, Agricultural Statistics, 1945–1949; MAF, Agricultural Statistics, 1950–1951: England and Wales, Part 1 (HMSO, 1954).

  28. 28.

    R. J. Moore-Colyer, ‘The call to the land: British and European adult voluntary farm labour, 1939–49’, Rural History 17, 1 (2006), pp. 83–101 (p. 91).

  29. 29.

    R. J. Moore-Colyer, ‘Kids in the corn: School harvest camps and farm labour supply in England, 1940–1950’, Agricultural History Review 52, 2 (2004), pp. 183–206 (p. 202).

  30. 30.

    Linda McDowell, ‘Narratives of family, community and waged work: Latvian European worker women in post-war Britain’, Women’s History Review, 13, 1 (2004), pp. 23–55.

  31. 31.

    Moore-Colyer, ‘The call to the land’, pp. 97–98.

  32. 32.

    IWM, Miss D. Lewis, Docs 1911.

  33. 33.

    Cmd. 8893, 1952–1953, Ministry of Labour and National Service Report for the Year 1952, p. 33.

  34. 34.

    G. P. Hirsch, ‘Labour on the land in England and Wales’, Farm Economist VIII, 2 (1955), pp. 13–24 (p. 18).

  35. 35.

    HMSO, Census of England and Wales, 1951: General Report (London, 1958).

  36. 36.

    Ruth Gasson, Mobility of farm workers: A study of the effects of towns and industrial employment on the supply of farm labour (Cambridge, 1974), p. 22.

  37. 37.

    Shelia Stevens, ed., Lifting the latch: A life on the land (Oxford, 1987), p. 162.

  38. 38.

    W. M. Williams, The sociology of an English village: Gosforth (London, 1969), p. 31.

  39. 39.

    Economic Development Office, Agricultural manpower in England and Wales (London, 1972); MAFF, Changing structure of the agricultural labour force, p. 9; Gasson, Mobility of farm workers, p. 24.

  40. 40.

    Gasson, Mobility of farm workers, p. 45.

  41. 41.

    Howard Newby, The deferential worker: A study of farm workers in East Anglia (Harmondsworth, 1977), p. 163.

  42. 42.

    All figures taken from MAFF, A century of agricultural statistics: Great Britain, 1866–1966 (London, 1968), pp. 71 and 129.

  43. 43.

    Stevens, Lifting the latch, p. 165.

  44. 44.

    G. K. Nelson, To be a farmer’s boy (Stroud, 1991), pp. 5–6.

  45. 45.

    Stevens, Lifting the latch, p. 169.

  46. 46.

    Karen Sayer, ‘Animal machines: The public response to intensification in Great Britain, c.1960–1973’, Agricultural History, 84, 4 (2013), pp. 473–501 (p. 482).

  47. 47.

    Abigail Woods, ‘Rethinking the history of modern agriculture: British pig production, c.1910–65’, Twentieth Century British History, 23, 2 (2012), pp. 165–191.

  48. 48.

    Nelson, Farmers’ boy, p. 114.

  49. 49.

    Stevens, Lifting the latch, pp. 162–163.

  50. 50.

    Stevens, Lifting the latch, p. 162.

  51. 51.

    Susan Rowland, ed., Follow the plough: The story of Harold Cannings’ life as a farmworker from 1917 to 1970 (Lewes, 1992), pp. 50 and 57.

  52. 52.

    Harry Reffold, Pie for breakfast: Reminiscences of a farmhand (Beverly, 1984), p. 116.

  53. 53.

    Newby, Deferential worker, pp. 290–291.

  54. 54.

    Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English village (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 113.

  55. 55.

    Blythe, Akenfield, p. 101.

  56. 56.

    Steve Humphries and Beverley Hopwood, Green and pleasant land (London, 1999), pp. 144–145.

  57. 57.

    The Land Worker, December 1988, p. 7.

  58. 58.

    Gasson, Mobility of farm workers, p. 42.

  59. 59.

    W. A. Armstrong, Farmworkers: A social and economic history, 1770–1980 (London, 1988), p. 230; B. A. Holderness, British agriculture since 1945 (Manchester, 1985), p. 136.

  60. 60.

    Cmd. 3911, 1968–1969, National Board for Prices and Incomes. Report no. 101. Pay of workers in agriculture in England and Wales, pp. 5, 6 and 8.

  61. 61.

    A worker also could be granted a craft certificate if his employer vouched that his competence and experience were at the same level as those workers who had taken the proficiency tests.

  62. 62.

    Renee Danziger and Steve Winyard, Poor farm workers, rich farms (London, 1986), p. 4.

  63. 63.

    Danziger and Winyard, Poor farm workers, p. 3.

  64. 64.

    ‘Seminar: Future Prospects of Employed Labour in UK Agriculture’, Journal of the Farmers’ Club, 6 (November 1973), pp. 18–39 (p. 27).

  65. 65.

    The Times, 5 January 1967, p. 7.

  66. 66.

    The Times, 5 January 1967, p. 9.

  67. 67.

    Blythe, Akenfield, p. 102.

  68. 68.

    Newby, Deferential worker, pp. 232 and 161.

  69. 69.

    Blythe, Akenfield, p. 112.

  70. 70.

    Newby, Deferential worker, p. 161.

  71. 71.

    Marie Brown and Steve Winyard, Low pay on the Farm (London, 1975), p. 26. This survey was based on 110 farmworkers and their families.

  72. 72.

    Danziger, Political powerlessness, p. 154.

  73. 73.

    Brown and Winyard, Low pay on the farm, p. 26.

  74. 74.

    Armstrong, Farmworkers, p. 233.

  75. 75.

    Newby, Deferential worker, p. 161.

  76. 76.

    Brown and Winyard, Low pay on the farm, p. 37.

  77. 77.

    Steve Winyard, Cold comfort farm: A study of farm workers and low pay (London, 1982), p. 6.

  78. 78.

    MAFF, Changing structure, p. 16.

  79. 79.

    Brian P. Martin, Tales of the old countrywomen (Newton Abbot, 1997), p. 145.

  80. 80.

    Mary Chamberlain, Fenwomen: A portrait of women in an English village (London, 1975).

  81. 81.

    Gasson, Mobility of farm workers, p. 34.

  82. 82.

    Brown and Winyard, Low pay on the farm, p. 37.

  83. 83.

    The Land Worker, November 1980, p. 7.

  84. 84.

    Martin, Tales of old countrywomen, p. 110.

  85. 85.

    Howkins, Death of rural England, p. 155; Danziger, Political powerlessness, p. 40.

  86. 86.

    MAFF, Changing structure, p. 56; Gasson, Mobility of farm workers, p. 12.

  87. 87.

    Blythe, Akenfield, p. 268.

  88. 88.

    Blythe, Akenfield, p. 114.

  89. 89.

    The Land Worker, November 1980, p. 6 and March 1992, p. 4.

  90. 90.

    Howkins, Death of rural England, p. 209.

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  1. Modern British History, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Nicola Verdon

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Verdon, N. (2017). The Postwar Years. In: Working the Land. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-31674-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-31674-5_8

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