Sir William Beveridge, The British Government and Plans for Food Control in Time of War, c. 1916–1941

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the ideas and work of Sir William Beveridge on developing a food policy for the British government in the build-up to the Second World War. Beveridge chaired a committee to enquire into the administrative arrangements for rationing set up by the Committee for Imperial Defence in 1936 and subsequent histories that cover government preparations for the wartime food defence policy assume that his report, which placed great emphasis on advance preparation, was implemented in full. This article will show that it was not. This article outlines the ideas that underpinned Beveridge's report and shows how these related to his experience in the ministry of food in the First World War. It also explains why Beveridge was not appointed to head the Food (Defence Plans) Department of the board of trade that was set up by the government in 1936. In so doing it comments on the government's rearmament policy and the nature of the civil service in order to discuss the counter-factual question of whether it would have made any difference to subsequent events if Beveridge had been appointed. The article concludes with an examination of the work of both the F(DP)D and the ministry of food in the early years of the war and shows how this bore very little relationship to Beveridge's ideas.