Feeding the People in Wartime Britain. By Bryce Evans

Abstract

Historians studying food in the two world wars in Britain have often focused on rationing as the most significant policy in securing the British people’s nutrition under wartime conditions of scarcity. In contrast, historians usually disregard the policy of communal feeding, encapsulated in the National Kitchens of the First World War and the British Restaurants of the Second, as inconsequential in securing adequate access to food. Bryce Evans’ Feeding the People challenges this view by investigating the development and the unique characteristics of emergency public feeding during the two world wars. Shedding new light on the rise and fall of these under-researched wartime schemes, this book’s strength is in illustrating the fragility of Welfare policies that are available for the population as a whole in the face of commercial interest groups. The book pinpoints the public nature of wartime communal feeding policies as the main aspect that differentiated wartime schemes from the Victorian soup kitchen that preceded them. Arguing against Margaret Barnett, Feeding the People emphasizes the novelty in making the First World War’s National Kitchens available and attractive for everyone in Britain, rather than targeting specific groups as peacetime policies and voluntary initiatives did (pp. 30, 101). The book argues that contrary to previous accounts of the First World War, before the introduction of food rationing, the National Kitchens scheme was a significant factor in improving public access to food (pp. 22–3). Evans further argues that the popularity of National Kitchens among a large cross-section of the British population has not been properly appreciated (p. 43). The rapid disappearance of National Kitchens during 1919 was thus not due to a lack of public interest, but to a combination of factors: the introduction of rationing, the influenza pandemic and crucially, mounting pressures from privately owned catering establishments (pp. 60–6).