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Keeping the Wheels of the Farm in Motion: Labour Shortages in the Uplands during the Great War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2008
Abstract
Revision of the early estimates of the extent of labour shortages in agriculture during the Great War suggest that, for England and Wales, labour was more plentiful than contemporaries asserted. However national averages disguise important regional variations. Using newly discovered material from a District Committee of the Westmorland County Agricultural Executive, supplemented with contemporary commentary and reports, this article investigates farm labour shortages in the uplands. It considers labour supply and shows that assumptions about the level of recruitment of farmers and their families and about the availability of substitutes as used in revisionist estimates cannot be supported here. It then shows that the ‘plough up campaign’ imposed by Government increased labour demand in the uplands to a greater extent than in other regions. This combination of reduced supply and increased demand served to exacerbate existing labour shortages and resulted in labour shortages that were more severe than is suggested by the revisionist figures for England and Wales.
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References
Notes
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7. After 1917 agriculture was organised through a system of County War Agricultural Executive Committees which oversaw direction of farmers and farming through a system of District Committees staffed largely by local unpaid farmers and land agents. The committees were given wide ranging powers which included the direction of cultivation and production and in the last resort had the authority to evict farmers and take over cultivation of a holding.
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76. Westmorland and Cumberland Herald, 4th December 1915.
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