Spuds, Spam and Eating For Victory E-Book

Katherine Knight

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 398

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The battle to keep the nation fed during the Second World War was waged by an army of workers on the land and the resourcefulness of the housewives on the Kitchen Front. The rationing of food, clothing and other substances played a big part in making sure that everyone had a fair share of whatever was available. In this fascinating book, Katherine Knight looks at how experiences of rationing varied between rich and poor, town and country, and how ingenuous cooks often made a meal from poor ingredients. Charting the developments of the rationing programme throughout the war and afterwards, Spuds, Spam and Eating for Victory documents the use of substitutions for luxury ingredients not available, resulting in delicacies such as carrot jam and oatmeal sausages. The introduction of Spam in America in the forties led to this canned spiced pork and ham becoming an iconic symbol of the worse period of shortage in the twentieth century. Seventy years after the outbreak of the Second World War, this book listens to some of the people who were young during the conflict share their memories, both sad and funny, of what it was like to eat for Victory.

Leseprobe

In memory of my parents, Walter Fritz Alfred and Ruby Bell, and of my sister Jane

First published in 2007

This edition first published in 2011

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

© Katherine Knight, 2007, 2008, 2011

The right of Katherine Knight, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7294 2

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7293 5

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Acknowledgements

A Note about Weights and Money

Introduction

  1

Fairer Shares

  2

Food Values and Valuable Foods

  3

The Housewife, Her Kitchen and What She was Told

  4

Dig for Victory and Vegetables

  5

Country Life

  6

The Wild Harvest and Preserving

  7

Towns

  8

The Black Market and Grey Areas

  9

Let’s Have a Party

10

Austerity and Recovery

11

Representative Recipes

Appendix: Friends and Memories

Notes

Bibliography and Further Reading

Acknowledgements

For permission to reproduce copyright material the author and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following:

The account of his father’s bakery business in Awsworth, Notts. David Bexon.

The poem by Tom Earley, ‘For what we have received’ from All These Trees, Gwasg Gomer (Gomer Press, 1992).

Extract from the Foreword to They Can’t Ration These, by the Vicomte de Mauduit, reprinted 2004 by Persephone Books (www.persephonebooks.co.uk).

Extracts from When the Lights Go On Again, ed. by Pam Schweitzer, an Age Exchange Publication, 2000. Pam Schweitzer and The Age Exchange Theatre Trust.

Extracts from John Barnett’s Plenty and Want (Penguin, 1968) and Liquid Pleasures (Routledge, 1999). Taylor and Francis Group.

Text extract from Warne’s Everyday Cookery © Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd., 1926. Reproduced by permission of Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd.

An account of wartime substitutions in Jersey by Mrs Cecile Mallet. Nancy Yates.

Extracts from articles from The Times newspaper:

‘Aluminium for aircraft – an appeal to women.’ © The Times, London, 10/7/1940.

‘Underground food train – snacks for shelterers in the tubes.’ © The Times, London, 15/11/1940.

‘Helpers for the harvest – 500,000 volunteers wanted’, from the labour correspondent. © The Times, London, 18/2/1943.

‘Infection of milk – doctors appeal for pasteurization.’ © The Times, London, 19/2/43.

‘Labour for the harvest – minister’s call for 500,000 helpers.’ © The Times, London, 22/4/1943.

‘No increase in rations – more fish and eggs’, by the food correspondent. © The Times, London, 15/8/1945.

Quotations from papers and ephemera held by The National Archives and the Department of Printed Books, The Imperial War Museum, are Crown Copyright.

Excerpts from wartime broadcasts by Dr Charles Hill and Lord Woolton, from the BBC Written Archives, are published under PSI Licence.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but this has not always been possible. The publishers would be glad to put right any errors or omissions in future editions.

Acknowledgement and thanks to the Age Exchange Reminiscence Centre, Blackheath Village, for permission to photograph some of the articles in their display.

Many thanks for his help to my son, Robert Knight, who holds a BA (Hons) degree in History. He gave me valuable introductions and advice on resource materials.

A Note about Weights and Money

During the Second World War, Britain was still using Imperial weights and measures and a system of pounds, shillings and pence, both of which made children dread arithmetic lessons.

However, they were a part of everyone’s lives at that time, so I have only converted weights and measures in my text to modern equivalents when describing food values and recipes which you may like to try out in the twenty-first-century kitchen.

The conversion of weights and measures is straightforward.

The pint is still familiar (beer and bottled milk still sold thus). It contains 20 liquid ounces. Its metric equivalent is 550ml, rather more than half a litre. There are 2 pints to a quart, 4 quarts or 8 pints to the gallon.

Household measures are described on page 63.

The main monetary unit was a pound, as it still is. It was divided into 20 shillings, and each shilling was made up of 12 pence. At the start of the war at least the penny could be further divided into 2 halfpence or ha’pennies, or 4 farthings. Farthings faded out with inflation.

£ s d were the written abbreviations. For example, four pounds, eight shillings and ninepence ha’penny became £4 8s 9½d. If no pounds were involved, a forward slash divided shillings from pence: six and eightpence was written 6/8d. Two shillings would be 2/- and a penny three farthings 1¾d.

Inflation has made conversion of money almost meaningless. To say that we had 5p worth of meat per week would imply starvation, which was not the case. It may be more helpful to compare prices with wages. Even so, wages increased in the course of the war by about 45 per cent for men, more for women who were catching up a little.

The weekly average figures in January 1944 were:

Adult men

£6 4

s

2

d

Women of 18+

£3 4

s

6

d

Male youths under 21

£2 6

s

11

d

Girls under 18

£1 14

s

3

d

The calculations were based on 6 million workers, including those in agriculture, where wages were notoriously low.1 Professional people would earn considerably more than the average, and a salary of £1,000 per year made you well off.

Introduction

The trouble with history is that we know what happened. It is like reading the last page of a detective story before the beginning. But for people living through and creating events in the Second World War there was no guarantee of a happy ending, with the villain arrested and the victim someone else. For children particularly, caught in conflict beyond comprehension, there was uncertainty and fear. There was also courage, humour, common sense, selfishness, bureaucracy – and Spam. We did not know how things would turn out but could only hope for the best.

Thus this book is written from two points of view. I researched the period as I would any other, but then applied a personal reality check of what I could remember from my own young experience. Of course this was limited, so I asked others for their recollections as well.

I was only six years old in 1939. I grew up in Cornwall, at Porthcurno, just round the corner from Land’s End. My father worked for Cable & Wireless Ltd, a company which owned the undersea telegraph cables forming a vital link with America and the rest of the world. He became the manager of the cable station there. The staff and their families made up a more or less self-contained community.

It was thought likely that the cable station would be a target, either of a commando raid or more likely bombing, and so a large artificial cavern was blasted into the steep side of the valley. As much essential equipment as possible was transferred there. Soldiers were also stationed to protect the area. I can remember that my father was issued with a wood-chopping axe with which to wreck the delicate machinery in case of imminent invasion.

The axe remained unused, gradually turning rusty in the damp of winter. The anticipated attack did not happen, and in the later years of the war the area was thought sufficiently safe to receive evacuees from London. I was lucky compared with many others, but of course shortages and rationing affected my family like everyone else’s. (The site is now a successful museum, the Cable & Wireless Porthcurno and Collections Trust, telling the story of its technology, the place and its people.)

So although this book, finished in 2007, must give an account of the past, I hope there is enough in my own and other people’s memories to bring to life a picture of the home front with particular emphasis on food. It describes the rations that were available, other things that could be grown and gathered for the kitchen, and how the housewife managed (for most of the time) to put reasonably palatable meals on the table. There are accounts of radio broadcasts and advertisements which helped to teach the art of making do and good nutrition.

But the most elusive thing to capture is the emotional truth of the past. I can tell you how many ounces of cheese we had per week, how we managed with few eggs and many potatoes, but how we felt about it all is more difficult to convey. I can only ask you, if you are under the age of sixty-five, to try to imagine how you would have responded to our challenges.

There are perhaps other questions too: suppose such shortages arose again, maybe as a result of climate change, would the experience of the past help ordinary people to survive? Better still, could we adapt some war-time methods of saving and sharing food and fuel with a generous spirit of neighbourliness?

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 WAR1

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.2 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.3

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 1913.4

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.5

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.6

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 …’7

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 1¼d 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.8

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 received9

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.’10 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.’11 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.12

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 …’13 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 1930S14

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.15

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.16

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,17 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 1944.18 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 RATIONING19

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,20 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’,21 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.

The controls applying to institutions will be described in later chapters, but for the moment there is enough to say about the ordinary household rations.

In the autumn of 1939 the so-called ‘phoney war’ delayed the start of the scheme, as nothing very much seemed to be happening to Britain. But in January 1940 rationing kicked off with bacon and ham, butter and sugar (preserves came later, and included jam, marmalade, mincemeat, honey etc.). Meat, tea and cheese followed. Margarine and cooking fat were added to the butter to make a ‘fats’ ration. Fresh meat went on the ration in March 1940. Unlike the other basics sold by weight, it was restricted by price. At first you could buy 1/10d worth, but there was a low point of 1/- in March 1941, and again in 1948. The system itself was a good one, allowing people to choose between small amounts of prime cuts such as steak, or larger quantities of cheaper parts, mince for instance. It meant that none of the carcase was wasted because demand was spread. Meat at this time cost very roughly 1/- a pound on average. Cheese was rationed in the spring of 1941.

At the beginning these were the ordinary rations for an adult per week, with some later variations during the war years in brackets:

Bacon and ham

4oz

(max. 8oz)

Sugar

12oz

(varied between 8oz and 1lb)

Tea

2oz

(max. 4oz)

Meat worth

1/10

d

(max. 2/2

d

, min. 1/-)

Children had only half.

Cheese

1oz

(max. 8oz usually 2 or 3oz.)

Preserves (per four weeks)

8oz

(max. 2lb usually 1lb. Sometimes sugar could be taken instead.)

Butter

4oz

(min. 2oz)

Butter plus marg.

6oz

(mostly static, though proportions varied)

Cooking fat

2oz

(max. 3oz, min. 1oz)

22

The ‘points’ system was different. It was introduced in December 1941, covering canned fish, meat and beans, but later a whole range of foods such as dried pulses and dried fruit, biscuits and cereals were included. Each of these were given points values, and you could buy what you liked within the limit of your allocation of points coupons. ‘Personal points’ were for chocolate and sweets. There is more about this below.

Another method of sharing food in short supply was through distribution schemes. You had to register for some things, such as milk, others were supplied as available, with the purchase registered on the ration book. Foods so controlled included oranges, fresh and dried eggs as well as liquid, dried and condensed milk. (Condensed milk was later switched to the points system.) Unlike the basic rations, these foods were not guaranteed. You could not feel let down if there were no oranges, for instance, but were grateful when some did appear (briefly) at the greengrocer’s. There was a system of priorities applying to some groups of people, especially expectant mothers and children, for milk and eggs in particular, and they had to be supplied before the ordinary ration-book holder.

Rationing went on far past the end of the war, and some foods became even scarcer in the first years of peace than they had been at the height of the conflict. Bread, for instance was first rationed in July 1946, and stayed so for two years afterwards. Meat was the last food to be freed, in June 1954. Rationing of many foods was phased out over several years, with a marked decrease in 1950 when the points rationing scheme ended in May.

Organisation of the system was detailed and formidable. At the top of a bureaucratic mountain sat the Minister of Food, with his civil servants around him. Then came nineteen Divisional Food Offices – eleven in England, five in Scotland, two in Wales and one in Northern Ireland. (The number was later reduced.) They linked with, and supervised, the work of the Food Control Committees at the next level down. There was plenty to do, as there were 1,520 of these Food Control Committees at the beginning of the war.

The Committees typically had ten to a dozen consumer members, five more representing local retailers and one to give the shop workers a voice. They covered the same area as a Local Authority, and brought some democracy into the system, though nominees had to be approved by the Minister before being appointed for a year at a time. They were responsible for enforcing the Government’s Rationing Orders, and dealt with the authorisations for retailers and various catering businesses, canteens, hospitals etc. so that they could obtain supplies.

Lower down again came the 1,220 Food Offices or Joint Food Offices, which became important to everyone because they administered local rationing arrangements under the direction of the Food Control Committee above them. For example, this was where you had to go to justify the issue of a new ration book if you had lost your first one, or to produce a Certificate of Pregnancy to get the documents for extra meat, priority milk and vitamins.

In 1943 the local Food Offices were combined with the parallel National Registration Offices, which issued identity cards, so that you could do business with both under one roof, cutting out a bit of bureaucracy, and proving ‘of great convenience to the public as well as administrative saving.’23 As there were 50,000 civil servants employed by the Ministry of Food by 1943,24 there must have been scope for considerable saving.

RATION BOOKS

The ration book was the passport to getting enough to eat. A National Registration Schedule had been compiled in October 1939, and everyone had been assigned a National Registration number, which actually contained both letters and numbers, such as WBTC 95:1. Your first ration book, complete with a serial number, was sent through the post. It had to show your name, address and National Registration number, and was valid for a year. You got the next year’s book by detaching and sending off a postcard, until year five. After that you had to collect a new one from the Food Office, showing your identity card and the relevant page of the old book. You were wise to grab your ration book (and of course your identity card and gas mask) to take with you when sheltering from an air raid.

The scheme was designed to share out food as fairly as possible, so everybody was entitled to the rations. Even royalty were issued with the document, with the implication that the privileged would get exactly the same treatment as everyone else. The Imperial War Museum has Queen Mary’s ration book on display for example. (Queen Mary was the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, who was a teenager during the war.)

There were several different types of book. The most common, for adult civilians, was the buff-coloured R.B.1 (Ration Book 1). R.B.2 was for babies and infants up to five years old. The holders of these green books had half an adult ration of meat, and no tea after mid-1942, but priority for milk, eggs, and some vitamin foods. R.B.2 was issued to expectant mothers too, for extra meat and priority for milk etc. but the number was later changed to R.B.7, a grey one. R.B.3 seems never to have been issued. R.B.4 (blue) was for children from five to eighteen, allowing the same quantities as adults but with priority for milk and for bananas when they started to be imported again after 1946. R.B.5, like 3, is not mentioned, but R.B.6 was a weekly seaman’s ration book, ‘for the special needs of merchant seamen in the home and coastwise trade and of certain classes of fishermen, when at sea.’25 They were entitled to a higher scale of rations. It was modified for other marine workers too.

There were further ration documents from time to time, including temporary ones for those who were without proper books for any reason, or who were away from home for short stays, or for Service personnel on leave. Special coupons were issued for extra soap for babies for instance. Extra rations and priorities were documented for vegetarians (extra cheese, no meat), for some invalids and for the dietary needs of some religious groups.

Once your ration book had arrived by January 1940, you had to go along to a shop – you could choose which one – to register for the various groups of foods. The retailer’s name and address had to be entered on each page of coupons. To save trouble you could deposit a whole page of coupons with the shopkeeper – with your name and address filled in, naturally … You were not obliged to register with the same shop for all the rations. If you wanted to, you could buy your bacon at one shop for instance, your sugar at another. In practice however most people stayed with one grocer, though getting their meat at a separate butcher.

The ration book contained coupons which could be ‘spent’ on the various foods. At first they were valid for only a week at a time, but this was impractical, and soon you could exchange most of them at any time during each four-week period, but not before or after. Bacon could be bought in the designated week or the week after, but the meat ration had to be bought in the current week only, or you missed your chance. Tea coupons were exchanged for a whole month’s ration at a time. As the ration started off at 2oz per adult per week it saved having to weigh out very small quantities.

At first the shopkeeper had to cut out the coupons from your book. I remember seeing them collected in a series of old tobacco tins ranged on the counter of the village shop. Then he had to count them and send them off to the Food Office to renew his entitlement to supplies. This was tedious and inefficient, so the system was changed to allow cancellation of coupons, left in the book, with a cross made in ink or indelible pencil. Tea coupons continued to be cut out in the shop, as you could buy tea anywhere you saw it and did not need to register. However, you were never allowed to cut out coupons yourself. To do so invalidated them.

Having counted his coupons and sent in the details of his registered customers to the Food Office, which kept registers of retailers and rationed goods, the shopkeeper received buying permits so that, in his turn, he could replenish the rations from his wholesalers. Later the coupons were disregarded for wholesale allocations, and the system worked on the number of registered customers kept on record.

There were some drawbacks to absolute precision. Because there were always some people with temporary ration documents that could not be registered, the shop had to have a slightly larger allocation than was justified by their regulars. Customers moved about a lot too, because they were evacuated, went into the Services, or were bombed out. (The shop might be bombed too.) Records therefore became inaccurate. Some retailers were said to be quick to register new customers, slow to record that some had left.26

It seems amazing now that all this worked as well as it did. It had to be administered by a proliferation of office workers, all in the absence of computers of course. As it was an offence either to buy or to sell more than the authorised amount of rations, the retailer had to be both efficient and honest.

WINNING ON POINTS

With the arrival of Lend Lease foods in 1941, the supply of scarce canned foods eased a little. But there were nowhere near enough to ration them in the same way as sugar or meat. It would have been difficult to allow a ration of one quarter of a pilchard per head every two months for instance. The points system was a brilliant idea, both because it spread and regulated the demand for sparse foods, and because it allowed the public some choice of what to eat.

Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food at the time, gave a special broadcast to explain what was going on. Just after lunch on Sunday, 2 November 1941 he spoke on the Home Service of the BBC.27 He started by acknowledging that both he and his listeners had been worried about unrationed foods.

Canned foods have been difficult to obtain. We hadn’t got them. Well, now we have some of them; canned meat, canned fish, canned beans, and we hope to bring in more. Our friends in the United States have been helping us very generously … Now we have to distribute that food fairly. And that’s what this Point Scheme is all about.

But there’s something new about this plan. It’s a rationing scheme. But up to now we’ve been accustomed to think of rationing as restricting consumption, so that people should have less than they’ve been used to. But this Scheme is just the opposite;because of the help our American friends have given us, we’re going to have more of these things than we’ve had for a long time, and they’ll be new things …

The Points Plan gives you freedom. You can buy these new goods where you please and when you please in the four-week period. You’re free to spend your Points on any foods that you choose on the list, and you can go to any shop you like to make your choice. Everyone doesn’t want the same thing every week. We want variety …

Lord Woolton made it sound as if these foods were going to be plentiful, but as it turned out you could only buy a very limited amount. If you splurged out on a can of the new Spam, for instance, that would take up your whole monthly allowance, which meant you had to forego many other foods. Thescheme, which started at the end of 1941, appliedat first, as Lord Woolton said, tocanned meat, fish and beans. More and more foods were added: rice, sago and tapioca, dried pulses, dried fruit including prunes, figs, dates and apple slices, more canned vegetables, canned fruit, condensed milk, breakfast cereals, and cereal products like oatcakes, exotic cheeses (after the war), biscuits of all kinds and syrup and treacle. These last were valuable if you had a sweet tooth and could not manage on the ordinary sugar ration.

At the beginning, each person had sixteen points a month, but the number went up to twenty-four, then varied with food stocks. There were highs of twenty-four points per month in the spring of 1942 and again in 1944 for instance. The points values of the different goods also changed according to availability and demand: ‘if the public rushed for one particular variety or size of container, its points value was raised; if it sold slowly, the value was lowered.’28 It created a flexible way for the Ministry of Food to control supplies.

It might be difficult to keep up with the changes, what was in and what was not, and to judge your best buy. The Ministry did its best to keep people informed by publishing Food Facts advertisements at the beginning of each four-week rationing slot.

Larger families were able to manage their points allocation better than smaller households. If you had a lot of ration books, you could buy a variety of canned goods, biscuits, dried fruit and breakfast cereals for instance, but a smaller total of points had to be concentrated on fewer things. This month a meat loaf, next month cornflakes.

In theory you could go to any shop, though the retailer was allowed to keep back points goods for their registered basic rations customers. This of course led to preferential treatment when things were short, and allegations of ‘under the counter’ trading. If as a stranger you were told there were no chocolate biscuits available, for example, but saw the next customer walk outside with a packet tucked into her basket, it naturally led to resentment.

The points coupons were cut out and counted, and the shop could then get hold of goods to the same points value. Later there was a Points Banking System, which operated like a bank account. On paying in the points he had cut out of customers’ books the shopkeeper was credited. When he ordered goods from his wholesaler his points account was debited accordingly. Although there was the hassle of cutting out and counting coupons, it meant that the foods followed demand pretty closely.

‘Personal points’ were another name for coupons for sweets and chocolate, which were first rationed in the summer of 1942. The coupons varied from time to time in the quantities they would entitle you to buy, but you could spend them as you liked during the month in which they were valid. For example, you could buy a whole block of chocolate, 8oz size, which would take the whole of your sweet ration for a month at the outset. Or you could spread it out to buy 2oz of toffees or peppermints or anything else available, every week. The total quantity soon went up to 1lb a month, and varied throughout the rationing period mainly between 12oz and 1lb a month. There was a touch of humanity on the part of the authorities, as they generally allowed a few extra ounces at Christmas, and children were allocated an extra 8oz in December 1944 and 1947.29

You were allowed to detach these pages of coupons from the full ration book, and spend them where you liked, as you did not have to register with a retailer. Children often wanted to choose their own sweets, and could do so in this way – their mothers would probably not have let them go off to the shops with the whole of the precious ration book in case it got lost. It was useful, as well, to people living in residential accommodation where they had to hand over the main book to the management.

SOAP

It may strike the modern reader as strange that soap rationing was organised by the Ministry of Food. However, the raw materials, fats and oils, ‘are in some cases the same as those used in margarine, compound fats, etc.’30 The Minister of Food had a hard choice, in other words. He had to decide on behalf of the people if it would be better for them to be clean or well fed. (I can remember the taste of wartime margarine, and on second thoughts, wonder if there was all that much difference between margarine and soap.)

The soap ration was not particularly generous. There were four ration units of soap per person per month, sometimes only three after the war. For each ration unit you could buy either 4oz hard soap, for scrubbing floors, or 3oz toilet soap, or 6oz soft soap, or 6 to 12oz of soap powder, depending on its strength, for washing fabrics in general,or 3oz soap flakes,often preferred for washing woollens, or ½ to 1 pint of liquid soap, again depending on its strength. Detergents as we know them were not developed until after the war, but when they became available they were unrationed. Scouring powder of the Vim type was also free of coupons.

However difficult it was to wash with a limited supply of toilet soap, personal hygiene was not abandoned. Women’s magazines carried many advertisements to persuade women to prefer one brand over another, and the feminine need to be appealing was emphasised. Shampoo powders and toothpaste were unrationed, and men could still remove their whiskers, as shaving soap was coupon-free. (If you ran really short of toilet soap this was something worth knowing too.)

As there were no disposable nappies in wartime, babies needed additional soap. They had one coupon a week extra for their laundry. Chimney sweeps were also allowed an extra coupon a week after 1945. Coal was still used extensively for heating homes, and coal fires meant sooty chimneys. Coal workers, including miners, also had extra, with special arrangements for pithead baths where these existed. Employers of workers in other dirty jobs could get a special ration if they provided washing facilities for their employees, and there were allowances for laundries and washerwomen if these still existed at such a time of social change. Washing machines were not yet part of the normal kitchen.

PRICE CONTROLS AND SUBSIDIES