The Diet of the Nation: The State, Family Budgets and the 1930s Nutritional Crisis in Britain

Ingrid Jeaclea

aThe University of Edinburgh Business School 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JS, Scotland, United Kingdom

E-mail address: ingrid.jeacle@ed.ac.ukTel.: + 44-131-6508339Fax: + 44-131-6508337

Abstract

In 1930s Britain a new attention to physical culture emerged in the shape of a National

Fitness Campaign. At the same time a fierce political debate took place over the state of

nutritional health of the nation. Left wing activists argued that the working classes were

significantly malnourished due to an insufficiency of income. The government responded by

arguing that it was the domestic ignorance of the working class housewife that was the

problem. This debate raged in public forums from parliament to popular press – the term

‘Hungry England’ becoming a common catchphrase. It enrolled a host of medical experts,

public bodies and voluntary organisations. Surveys of poor neighbourhoods were conducted

to determine nutritional health. Based on family household budgets, these surveys revealed

that working class incomes were insufficient to achieve optimum dietary needs and

inferences were drawn regarding the nutritional state of the nation. Ultimately, a host of

welfare policies to combat these nutritional deficiencies were initiated and we witness the rise

of the British Welfare State. This paper examines the polarised political debates of this period

from a governmentality perspective (Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose and Miller, 1992). The

framework facilitates an understanding of the way in which diverse actors became enrolled in

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the two nutritional discourses and the mediating role of experts in the process. It also reveals

the influential role of calculative technologies, particularly the budget, within the

programmatic of government. Finally, this theoretical approach highlights the governance of

the body inherent in these dietary and fitness interventions. The notion of the fit and healthy

disciplined body that emerged during this time period reflects the cultural trends to come in

terms of contemporary obsessions with diet and body image.

Keywords: Diet, calories, governmentality, household budget, nutrition, physical culture

1. Introduction

Obsession with diet and physical culture is omnipresent in contemporary society. The latest

sliming fad is a regular feature of women’s magazines while celebrity endorsement of fitness

programmes is pervasive. To understand this particular juncture in popular culture and the

position of the body within it, it is useful to reflect upon a period of history in which modern

concepts of diet and exercise were shaped. The free choice to engage with the discipline of

dieting or the pursuit of physical exercise presupposes certain conditions. To purposefully

reduce food intake assumes a surfeit of food in the first instance, an understanding of dietary

nutrition, and the means of measuring the calorific composition of food consumption.

Equally, an engagement with exercise assumes a degree of health and fitness and the leisure

time in which to pursue such physical activities. Both diet and exercise also presuppose the

cultural conditions under which it is not only socially acceptable to engage with these actions,

but that it is actually regarded as a form of good citizenship. From a Foucauldian perspective,

the lean, fit and healthy body is a public manifestation of self-discipline (Foucault, 1979).

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It is possible to trace the shaping of such contemporary perspectives to 1930s Britain, a

decade during which the diet and fitness of the population came under an unprecedented

degree of scrutiny. From the mid-nineteenth century, since the early advances in nutritional

research, there had been a growing awareness of the nation’s health and fitness (Zweiniger-

Bargielowska, 2010). By 1920, the formal offices of both state and profession associated with

health provision, such as the Ministry of Health and the British Medical Research Council,

were established (Webster, 1982, p.111). Consequently, the scene was set for a significant

surge of interest in all aspects of the citizen’s diet and physical culture during the 1930s. In

terms of exercise, the physical pursuits of the populace were promoted during this decade

through a host of newly formed clubs and voluntary organisations. Public spaces devoted to

sports and leisure activities opened up, while mass displays of gymnastics were a common

spectacle. The image of the fit and healthy citizen becomes a powerful propaganda symbol in

the government’s National Fitness Campaign. During the same period, a discourse on diet

becomes manifest in which the nutritional status of the poor becomes a subject of press and

political debate. Two polar camps, each supported by eminent experts, emerge to explain the

existence of malnutrition as either a problem of insufficient income or a problem of domestic

ignorance. Left wing activists call for significant welfare reforms while the government

pursue a low cost solution centred upon domestic education. Consequently, 1930s Britain

marks a fascinating period in which not only are the cultural conditions for contemporary

obsessions with food and exercise moulded, but also an era in which we witness the

emergence of the modern welfare state through government interventions into the diet and

fitness of the nation (Kamminga and Cunningham, 1995; Webster, 1982).

From an accounting perspective, this decade provides an opportunity to highlight the way in

which calculative technologies, in the form of the household budget, became entangled in

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political debate and controversy. The role of the household budget has previously been a

fruitful subject of inquiry within accounting scholarship (Walker and Carnegie, 2007;

Komori, 2012). In this particular case, drawing upon a mixture of contemporary literature and

1930s publications, the paper examines the use of the budget by left wing reformers in

confirming the problem of malnutrition amongst the working classes. Consequently the paper

seeks to illustrate the manner in which calculative practices became bound up with discourses

surrounding the diet of the nation.

In making this argument, the paper draws upon the governmentality framework based on the

seminal works of scholars Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose (Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose and

Miller; 1992). Governmentality offers a useful theoretical lens from which to view the

nutritional debates of the 1930s; the polarised political approaches to the problem of

malnutrition can be seen to represent two programmes of government. It explains the

mediating role of an array of medical and dietary experts in the nutritional discourse, and it

facilitates an understanding of the role of calculative technologies within the programmatic of

government. The governmentality framework also provides the tools by which the macro

programmes of government can be linked to the actions of autonomous citizens, in this case

highlighting how the government’s National Fitness Campaign and dietary education

initiatives sought to promote the fit and healthy self-disciplining body.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section introduces the paper’s

theoretical framework and outlines the value of a governmentality lens in understanding the

means by which the self regulating citizen is cultivated in the modern state. Section 3

recounts a key political crisis that dominated 1930s Britain: the problem of a hungry nation.

Set against the background of an economic depression, this section outlines the political

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divide which emerged between the government and left wing activists over the nutritional

health of the poor and whether the problem was due to a deficit of income or ignorance.

Section 4 describes the government’s solution to the nation’s nutritional crisis in the shape of

a programme of domestic education and the launch of a National Fitness Campaign. Section

5 examines two significant surveys of family budgets which were conducted during this era

and assesses their role as technologies of government. In section 6 we see how the results of

these surveys were seen as objective evidence that malnutrition was an economic problem

rather than one which could simply be ascribed to the extravagance, ignorance and moral

failings of the working class housewife. Section 7 recounts the resulting programme of

welfare reform which led to the creation of the British Welfare State. Finally, section 8

discusses the insights of the paper for understanding contemporary obsessions with diet and

exercise and contains some concluding thoughts on the contribution of accounting

scholarship for cultural studies.

2. Governing the nation

The governmentality framework (Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose and Miller, 1992) offers an

explanation of how power operates in contemporary liberal democracies. In other words, it

provides an insight into the indirect mechanisms by which the actions of free thinking,

autonomous citizens are influenced. Drawing upon the work of Foucault (1991), the

framework recognises that political power in contemporary society is embedded in the

myriad of techniques for knowing and governing the populace. To understand power then,

one needs to move “beyond the state” (Rose and Miller, 1992, p.173) and examine how

authorities regulate the lives of individuals in an indirect manner.

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Such shaping commences with an initial intervention, with a specific purpose or problem to

cure (Rose and Miller, 1992, p.181). Through discourse, a domain and space is opened up for

this problem such that it becomes defined and knowable (Miller and Rose, 1990, p.5).

Discourse also provides the “moral justifications” for intervention (Rose and Miller, 1992,

p.175). In this manner, governmentality possesses a programmatic character as it constructs a

realm in need of governing. A programme of government possesses the promise to remedy

the problem, it presents an “idealized schemata for the ordering of social and economic life”

(Miller and Rose, 1990, p.14).

Programmes in turn become enabled through technologies of government. These represent

the “calculations, techniques, apparatuses, documents and procedures through which

authorities seek to embody and give effect to governmental ambitions” (Rose and Miller,

1992, 175). It is this exhaustive array of techniques of inscription, notation and calculation

that make programmes operable, and accounting and other calculative practices constitute

prime examples of such technologies (Miller, 2001).

For governance to be achieved in an indirect and self-regulating manner, Miller and Rose

draw upon Latour (1986, 1987) and Callon’s (1986) work on the theory of translation. The

process of translation explains how a network of interests becomes aligned “such that the

problems of one and those of another seem intrinsically linked in their basis and their

solution” (Rose and Miller, 1992, p.184). Through the enrolment and mobilisation of such

diverse actors, governance at a distance becomes possible (Miller and Rose, 1990, p.34).

Accounting and calculative practices more generally play an important role in this process as

they construct centres of calculation which render distant domains knowable and calculable

(Rose and Miller, 1992, p.185). In this manner governance from afar is enabled.

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The process of governing also depends heavily on the role of experts. These knowledgeable

characters construct enclosures around a body of knowledge and seek to claim it as their own

(Rose and Miller, 1992, p.188). Offering objective opinion, experts act as vital linking

mechanisms between the goals of government and the thoughts and deeds of the free thinking

individual. “By means of expertise, self regulatory techniques can be installed in citizens that

will align their personal choices with the ends of government” (Rose and Miller, 1992,

p.189). Experts therefore mediate between the realms of the individual and the state.

In summary, in providing a framework for understanding the exercise of power in the modern

state, and the manner in which links are created between macro programmes of government

and the micro actions of autonomous citizens, the governmentality thesis is a powerful tool

for the qualitative researcher. It explains the “self-government of individuals” (Miller and

Rose, 1990, p.28). Indeed, such is the contribution of the governmentality perspective that

Rose and Miller’s (1992) paper has been recognised by the British Journal of Sociology as

one of the most influential articles in the field of sociology in the last 60 years. As McKinlay

and Pezet (2010, p.494) similarly observe, the combined works of Miller and Rose, whom

they refer to as ‘the London governmentalists’, has led to “the development of a coherent,

sustained research programme that has generated new theoretical and empirical insights about

a wide range of topics – from marketing to social welfare – and spanning two centuries.”

Perhaps one of the reasons for its significance is that governmentality is not confined to

government. While the institutions of education, health, and public planning form illustrative

instances of governance, it is important to note that the governmentality framework is not

restricted to understanding the influence of ‘the state’, but rather has a much broader reach in

explaining the many and varied modes for governing and regulating individual lives in

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contemporary society. Indeed, suggest Miller and Rose (2008, p.20) it is these non-state

modes of power that are “the defining features of our present”.

For the accounting researcher, the framework offers a valuable lens to view the role of

calculative technologies in the process of governing. Important contributions have already

been made in this regard by a number of scholars. Commencing with the seminal study of

Miller and O’Leary (1987), the possibilities of calculative practices for sociological research

have been theoretically debated by Vollmer (2003), while empirical insights into the self

regulating impact of accounting have been revealed in the works of Neu and Heincke 2004,

Graham (2010), and Spence and Rinaldi (2013). Such studies are important in order to

understand the far reaching influence of accounting within contemporary society. For

accounting is not confined to financial statements or factory processes, but is an active

participant in shaping the contours of an array of diverse domains. Governmentality

recognises this inherent role of calculative practices and hence embeds them within the

framework. In this manner, the governmentality framework facilitates an understanding of

the broader role of accounting within its social and organizational context (Hopwood, 1983).

The next sections deploy the governmentality framework in considering the exercise

initiatives and diet debates that dominated 1930s Britain.

3. Hungry Britain: a nation’s nutritional crisis

3.1 Setting the nutritional norm

The origins of modern nutrition date back to the work of the mid-nineteenth century German

chemist Justus von Liebig (Finlay, 1995, p.49) and in particular to his 1842 seminal study

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Animal Chemistry in which he illustrated chemistry’s significance for diet (Kamminga and

Cunningham, 1995 p.4). It was another German chemist, Karl Voit who established dietary

norms for the daily intake of protein, fat, and carbohydrate (Milles, 1995, p.78) while his

pupil Max Rubner subsequently determined the exact energy values of food in the form of

calories in the 1880s (Weatherall, 1995, p.190). Vitamin research was developed during the

period 1910-1920. A key pioneer in this field was US biochemist Elmer V. McCollum, who

in 1918 authored the popular text The Newer Knowledge of Nutrition (Aronson, 1986, p.638).

It was at this stage that the importance of a diet rich in vitamins in the prevention of disorders

such as rickets and scurvy was recognised. Consequently, by the 1920s, the dietary and

nutritional needs of the body had been calibrated and an early calculative technology of

calories and vitamins intake had been created.

Scientific research into this ‘newer knowledge of nutrition’ exploded during the 1920s and

1930s, with some 5,000 academic papers published in 1933 alone (Mayhew, 1988, p.446).

An increasing public awareness of the value of vitamins and good nutrition also becomes

evident. The ideas were popularised in the press, with some nutritional scientists, for

example, the Professor of Physiology at King’s College of Household and Social Science,

even contributing to features in magazines such as Homes & Gardens (Horrocks, 1995,

p.238). Food manufactures such as Cadburys and Heinz were also quick to flaunt the vitamin

content of their products in newspaper advertisements (Horrocks, 1995, p.245).

The British Medical Research Council (BMRC) recognising the importance of advancing

public awareness of the value of a nutritional diet, lobbied government throughout the 1920s

to promote the issue (Mayhew, 1988, p.447). The Ministry responded by creating an

Advisory Committee on Nutrition in 1931 comprising of leading experts in the field of

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nutrition and physiology (Petty, 1989, p.84). One of the Advisory Committee’s early reports,

The Criticism and Improvement of Diets (1932), set out a minimum diet of 3000 calories per

man per day (Petty, 1989, p.100). The Advisory Committee, however, under the specific

instructions of the Minister of Health, Sir Edward Hilton Young, did not translate these

minimum diets into cash terms, so the monetary cost of actually achieving this diet was

purposely left opaque (Mayhew, 1988, p.448).

At the same time as these early dietary standards began to emerge however, the country

entered a period of such deep depression and unemployment that the poor were soon

prevented from meeting even the most minimum of nutritional needs. The following sub-

section provides some context to the spectre of a hungry nation that was to subsequently

emerge.

3.2 Depression, poverty and hunger marches

The Wall Street crash of 1929 created significant ripples throughout global economies. While

Britain escaped its immediate effect, by 1931 it was feeling the repercussions fully (Flinn,

1963, p. 281). A report produced by the Committee on National Expenditure (the May

Committee) in July 1931 forecast a national budget deficit of £120 million, resulting in the

hasty acquisition of loans from Paris and New York (Graves and Hodge, 1950, p.255).

Foreign funds to the sum of £350 million had flown out of London by December 1931 (May,

1995, p.388). The crisis was so intense that it led to the collapse of the Labour government in

August 1931 (May, 1995, p.389) and a new National Government, comprising of a coalition

of Conservative, Liberal and Labour members, was quickly assembled (Graves and Hodge,

1950, p.255).

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The ensuing depression was particularly harsh during the years of 1932 and 1933 (Flinn,

1963, p. 281). In the latter year, for example, unemployment stood at just under three million,

with one worker in five unemployed (Stevenson, 1984, p.266). Traditional industries were

particularly affected by the depression. Demand for coal on the domestic front fell with the

availability of electricity, while foreign importers began to turn to oil based fuels (May, 1995,

p.366). As a consequence coal output fell by one fifth between 1929 and 1933 (Stevenson,

1984, p.108). The textile industry, a backbone of 19th century Britain, had been in decline for

some years due to the growth in Indian cotton markets, but the depression years brought

production down to half its 1910s level (May, 1995, p.367). Shipbuilding was severely hit

and “almost came to a complete standstill in 1932” (Stevenson, 1984, p.108). The impact of

the decline in shipbuilding is most keenly captured in the case of Jarrow, a town in County

Durham, where the closure of the shipyard in 1935 resulted in the unemployment of 73% of

the working male populace (Flinn, 1963, p. 286). This pattern was repeated across the

country in regions which were more reliant on these traditional industries (Stevenson, 1984,

p.270). For example, unemployment levels from 1929 to 1936 were double the national

average in North Britain and Wales (May, 1995, p.374).

Unemployment exacerbated the problems of the poor due to the lack of any comprehensive

and long term provision for unemployment benefit. It was the Liberal government of 1906-14

who first initiated a system of unemployment insurance (Stevenson, 1984, p. 277). Benefits

though were limited to fifteen weeks a year, rising to two sixteen weeks periods from 1921

(Flinn, 1963, p.268). Given the sheer scale of unemployment by the 1930s however, further

‘transitional’ benefits had to be introduced for those who required assistance for longer than

these statutory spells (Flinn, 1963, p.268). By 1931, the cost of unemployment payouts

exceeded contributions by some £80 million a year (May, 1995, p.381). Such financial

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pressure was one of the reasons leading to the collapse of the Labour government in August

1931 (Stevenson, 1984, p.298). Due to the country’s deepening financial crisis, the newly

formed National Government decided to subject any extra transitional payments to a means

test (Graves and Hodge, 1950, p.257). The implication of the means test was that the

applicant was turned over to their local Public Assistance Committee for consideration (May,

1995, p.388). The later body had the power to withdraw benefits from those who possessed

some savings or even relatives who could support them (Graves and Hodge, 1950, p.257). By

1932 the means test was being applied to almost one million unemployed workers

(Stevenson, 1984, p.277).

Not surprisingly, the dire unemployment levels and lack of insurance provision led to a wave

of protest ‘hunger marches’ throughout the early 1930s, many of them organised by the

National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM), an organization with Communist

associations (Graves and Hodge, 1950, p.332). One of the most high profile marches was

organised by the Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson in 1935 and became known as the Jarrow

March as it encompassed a 300 mile march to London by the unemployed workers of Jarrow

town (May, 1995, p.377). Given that the support base of the Labour Party came from the

country’s trade union movement, in particular the Trade Union Congress (TUC) (Flinn, 1963,

p.245), it was inevitable that Labour members would engage with this form of workers’

protest. The Labour Leader Clement Attlee even addressed the audience at one of the hunger

marches organised by the NUWM (Graves and Hodge, 1950, p.333). However, the power of

unionised labour during the 1930s was relatively weak due to the legacy of the 1926 General

Strike (Stevenson, 1984, p. 198), a strike of almost two and a half million workers which had

lasted for several months without any real success (May, 1995, p.388). Despite Attlee’s

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presence at an NUWM event, this did not lead to any affiliation between the Communists and

the Labour Party. Hence no power could be mobilised for the poor from such a united front.

3.3 The problem of the hungry nation

Events were to take a dramatic turn in the spring of 1933 when news of the death of a thirty-

seven-year-old London housewife reached the press: Mrs Annie Weaving had starved herself

in order to feed her seven children (Mayhew, 1988, p.449). The tragedy provided an

opportunity for left wing activists to attack the government’s welfare policies. For political

context, the National Government which had been formed in 1931 remained in power for the

rest of this decade. It comprised a coalition of Liberals, Conservatives and Labour, “a

concentration of all that was lovably stupid of all three parties” (Graves and Hodge, 1950,

p.331). It became increasingly Conservative dominated as the decade wore on; even a

trebling of Labour’s representation in the House of Commons following the 1935 General

Election failed to outweigh the Conservative majority (Hinton, 1983, p.155). Hence as Hinton

(1983, p.152) observes, the notion of the 1930s as a ‘red decade’ is somewhat of a myth. The

Labour Party during this period typically “lacked fire” (Graves and Hodge, 1950, p.332).

Critics of the government adopted the slogan of a ‘hungry’ nation in their public

pronouncements. For example, drawing on Fenner Brockway's publication Hungry England

(1932), prominent left wing commentators, such as Harry Pollitt, the General Secretary of the

Communist Party of Great Britain, declared: “The stark reality is that in 1933, for the mass

of the population, Britain is a hungry Britain, badly fed, clothed and housed” (Pollitt, 1933,

p.x-xi). In this manner then, the problem of malnutrition amongst the working classes became

firmly embedded in political discourse.

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Also under the banner of ‘Hungry England’, the Week-End Review publication launched its

own inquiry into the state of malnutrition amongst the poor (Mayhew, 1988, p.449). This

investigation caused some embarrassment for the Ministry of Health, not only because it was

conducted by Professor V. H. Mottram, a member of their own Advisory Committee on

Nutrition, but also that it translated the dietary standards of the Advisory Committee into cash

form: 5 shillings a week for a man (Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2010, p.285).

Later in the year, the British Medical Association’s (BMA) drew on the expertise of its own

Nutrition Committee to pronounce minimum dietary needs of 3,400 calories per man per day.

In selecting a higher calorie consumption than that determined by the Ministry’s Advisory

Committee, the BMA were following the lead of the international body, the League of

Nations Health Organisation (LNHO). This move reflected a commitment to establish dietary

standards not just sufficient to survive but also for ensuring optimum health (Weindling,

1995, p.321). To this end, the BMA report established sample diets for families. These

nutritional norms were to subsequently form the basis of the popular cookery book Family

Meals and Catering (published in 1935), and menus from it were widely reproduced in

magazines and newspapers of the era (Horrocks, 1995, p.239). However, the most important

feature of the BMA report was that it placed a monetary value on its diets by calculating the

weekly expenditure required to meet these nutritional norms ((Zweiniger-Bargielowska,

2010, p.286). For example, the weekly cost of consuming 3,400 calories a day was set at 5

shillings 11 pence and the weekly cost for feeding a family of husband, wife and three

children amounted to 22 shillings and 6 and a half pence (M’Gonigle and Kirby, 1936,

p.173).

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In the context of the economic recession of the 1930s, the BMA’s report brought the issue of

family income, particularly working class income, to the centre of the nutritional debate. By

shedding light on the monetary cost of dietary needs, the BMA report was warmly welcomed

by welfare campaigners (Petty, 1989, p.100). It supported left wing advocacy of a programme

of welfare reform to solve the problem of poverty and malnutrition. However, it also opened

up a bitter divide between the two committees (BMA Nutrition Committee and Ministry of

Health Advisory Committee on Nutrition). The BMA report precipitated outrage at the

Ministry on a number of levels. The minimum standards advocated within the BMA report

were higher than the Ministry’s own recommendations, they had a cash equivalent, and they

were supported by two members of the Ministry’s own Advisory Committee - Dr Buchan and

Professor Mottram (Mayhew, 1988, p.450-1). The Ministry responded by labelling the BMA

report as ‘Labour party tract’ (Mayhew, 1988, p.451), and argued that the BMA’s daily

calorie standards were too generous (M’Gonigle and Kirby, 1936, p.166). Hence expert

knowledge came to be used and abused by both political camps.

Ultimately unfavourable press coverage prompted the Ministry to address the differences

between the two committees’ dietary recommendations in a more serious manner. Despite

advice from George Newman (the government’s Chief Medical Officer) against holding any

joint meeting between the two committees as it “will involve the Ministry in a far-reaching

economic issue, which is most important to avoid - an issue which might easily affect wages,

cost of food, doles etc.”, the Minister of Health, Hilton Young responded to public pressure

and agreed to a meeting between the two parties (cited in Mayhew, 1988, p.451). This joint

meeting occurred in February 1934 at which a compromised scale of minimum dietary needs

was agreed and published in the form of a Ministry of Health White Paper (Zweiniger-

Bargielowska (2010, p.287). However, dissatisfied with the workings of the Advisory

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Committee, its Chairman, Major Greenwood, resigned shortly afterwards (Mayhew, 1988,

p.452). The Committee itself subsequently collapsed (Webster, 1982, p.120).

4 Income or ignorance: the political and programmatic divide

The rift between the two nutrition committees reflected a more general division in opinion

between those who believed malnutrition was due to ignorance or moral failings and those

who argued that the poor simply had insufficient income to address dietary needs (Smith and

Nicolson, 1995, p.300). As Zweiniger-Bargielowska (2010, p.286) observes “nutrition

science – a rapidly evolving discipline – became politicized.” In governmentality terms, we

witness two parallel but opposing problems: a problem of domestic ignorance on the part of

the working class house wife versus a problem of poverty. This section examines the

government’s response to the nutritional crisis in the form of a programme of domestic

education and a national fitness campaign, both of which were designed to construct the fit

and healthy self-regulating citizen.

4.1 A programme of domestic education

The government’s official position throughout the 1930s was one of optimism regarding the

improving health of the nation. The annual reports of the Ministry of Health emphasised

declining mortality rates as an indicator of this trend (Webster, 1982, p.111). Equally, a

positive stance is particularly evident in the pronouncements of Sir George Newman, who

occupied the role of the government’s Chief Medical Officer from 1919 until 1935

(Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2010, p.287). For example, in a 1939 publication, he declares:

'English people, on the whole, are today better fed, better clothed, better housed and better

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educated than at any time of which we have record; and they enjoy a larger life and

opportunity than ever before.” (Newman, 1939, p.353).

The government were particularly keen to refute the idea that any malnutrition within the

population was due to a deficiency of income. For example, in Parliament, Hilton Young, the

Minister for Health, stated that there was “no available medical evidence of any general

increase in physical impairment, sickness or mortality as a result of the economic depression

or unemployment” (cited in Mayhew, 1988, p.452). To support such claims, he drew on the

results of a wide scale medical examination of school children, which by 1932 had indicated

such a decline in those numbers categorised as ‘bad’ so as to suggest that the problem of

malnutrition had virtually disappeared (Webster, 1982, p.112). However critics argued that

these statistics were meaningless due to the large variability of results across regions.

Subjective concepts of normalcy, based for example on a child’s pallor or hair condition,

meant that local medical officers could report vastly varied returns (Zweiniger-Bargielowska,

2010, p.288). In addition, some of the returns by the more ‘loyal’ of local officers were

simply unbelievable in nature, reporting such positive results in depressed areas that they

ultimately became an embarrassment to the government and a source of further evidence for

their critics (Webster, 1982, p.114).

Nutritional inquiries and surveys by Ministry officials which revealed results not compatible

with the government position were quietly buried. For example, the Ministry were eager to

squash any reference to the positive impact on maternal mortality rates as a result of extra

food in a report produced by the Medical Officer for Health of South Wales (Mayhew, 1988,

p.455). Equally external parties which suggested a link between malnutrition and income,

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such as the Committee against Malnutrition, a grouping comprising doctors and the

Children's Minimum Council, “were frozen out from their inception” (Mayhew, 1988, p.455).

If pockets of malnutrition existed, argued the Ministry, it was due to the domestic ignorance

and wastefulness of the working class housewife. This position can be clearly seen in the

statements of key officials of the era. For example, Sir Arthur Robinson, permanent secretary

to the Minister of Health, claimed in 1933 that “malnutrition is ignorance quite as much as

insufficient income” (Petty, 1989, p.100), while E.P. Cathcart, a prominent member of the

Ministry’s Advisory Committee on Nutrition, argued that “bad cooking, bad marketing, bad

household economy, plays a bigger part than shortage of cash in the majority of cases of

malnutrition” (cited in Mayhew, 1988, p.450). From these statements it is evident that

charges of domestic ignorance are also tightly coupled with insinuations regarding moral

failure on the part of the working class housewife. As Kamminga and Cummingham (1995,

p.12) observe, a “moralizing, rhetorical dimension within nutritional discourse” becomes

evident.

Education was seen as the remedy to the problem, the means by which ignorance, the root of

diet related ill health could be weeded out. This stance was particularly advocated by the

government’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir George Newman, who used his annual reports as a

means by which he disseminated this message (Smith and Nicolson, 1995, p.297). In this

manner, the government’s response to the problem of malnutrition through ignorance was to

support a programme of domestic education. An example of this type of education was the

initiative of Elwin Nash (Medical Officer of Health for Heston and Isleworth) to provide a

series of cookery demonstrations to the poor. Funded by the Carnegie Trust, the

demonstrations were to be supervised by the Ministry of Health’s Advisory Committee on

Nutrition (Mayhew, 1988, p.450). For the government, intervention in the form of nutritional

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education initiatives offered a low cost alternative to expensive reforms in the shape of

increased welfare benefits (Petty, 1989, p.99). As Smith and Nicolson (1995, p.298) have

argued, state intervention could be easily avoided if “health problems were moral and

individualistic, rather than economic”. From a governmentality perspective, the government’s

programme of domestic education was designed to create the self disciplining housewife, the

good citizen who cooked responsibly for her family’s dietary needs without recourse to state

benefits.

4.2 A programme of fitness and physical culture

Alongside the government’s domestic education initiatives, a programme of national fitness

was launched. During the 1930s in Britain, more generally, a new attention to the fitness and

physical culture of the nation’s citizens emerges (Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2010). We

witness this is a variety of ways. For example, a host of clubs and voluntary organisations

devoted to sports and recreation spring up during this period while existing ones, such as the

Football Association, experience a huge surge in members (Holt, 1987). Expenditure on

public recreational spaces such parks and lidos rises to reflect the growth in outdoor leisure

pursuits (Worpole, 2000). Local authority initiatives were also supported by voluntary

organisations such as the National Playing Fields Association which raised funds for both

play grounds and playing fields (Jones, 1988). The formation of the Youth Hostel

Association in 1930 encouraged the pursuit of hiking and cycling activities (Walker, 2000),

while the passing of holidays with pay legislation facilitated such experiences in the first

instance (Bray and Raitz, 2001). Camping flourished under the leadership of the Boy Scouts

organisation (Proctor, 2002) while female activities took the form of mass displays of

gymnastics and dancing staged by the Girl Guides and the newly established Women’s

League of Health and Beauty (Matthews, 1990).

19

All this activity reached a peak in the form of the Physical Training and Recreation Act of

1937. The new act established a National Fitness Council which launched a National Fitness

Campaign (Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2010, p.280). This government campaign sought,

together with voluntary organisations, to fund and promote the health and fitness of the

nation (Jones, 1987). Initiated by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain through the Ministry

of Health and the Board of Education, the campaign was a response Britain’s poor

performance in the 1936 Olympics, but it also addressed a political concern regarding the

fitness of the population for war. Military defeats during the Boer War (Funnell, 2006) and

public outcry at the rejection rates for recruits for the First World War had made national

fitness a political issue (Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2010). Hence the new campaign was

supported by a significant publicity drive which even successfully enrolled King George VI,

a keen camper and supporter of physical activity (Grant, 1994). It encompassed not only

high-profile spectacles, such as the Festival of Youth held at Wembley Stadium in July 1937,

but also hundreds of local events (Evans, 1974). Consequently, fitness becomes official

government policy and part of the “patriotic duty” of the good citizen (Zweiniger-

Bargielowska, 2010, p.293). In governmentality terms, the National Fitness Campaign can be

viewed as a programme of government which enrolled a diverse array of actors, from royalty

to road sweeper, in the pursuit of physical activities. Mediated through the expertise of a host

of clubs and sporting organisations, the programmatic of fitness rippled through the populace

such that the individual citizen becomes willingly indoctrinated into the virtues of exercise. In

this manner, the 1930s National Fitness Campaign cultivates the cult of physical culture and

the notion of the fit and healthy self disciplining body.

20

5 Family budgets as technologies of government

Left wing campaigners were vehemently opposed to the government’s domestic education

policies as they argued that income and not ignorance was the central issue in solving the

problem of malnutrition. Equally, the irony of a government campaign to promote the

physical culture of the nation when significant sections of the population were insufficiently

fed to pursue such activities was not lost on the government’s critics. By contrast, left wing

campaigners sought a more direct and costly form of intervention to solve the problem of

malnutrition, they advocated a programme of welfare reform. Indeed, this tension between

individual responsibility and state duty was a defining feature of the political discourse of the

decade (Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2010, p.268).

Increasingly the problem of malnutrition became a problem of measurement. The statistics

used to support the official government line began to be questioned by a host of welfare

bodies and independent experts (Webster, 1982, p.118). As noted above, the findings of

surveys of school children were viewed with suspicion due to their high degree of variability

and subjectivity. Equally, the Ministry’s much lauded decline in average mortality rates,

critics argued, failed to capture the great diversity between regional, occupational and class

groupings (Webster, 1982, p.116). What was needed was a reliable and seemingly objective

measure of malnutrition.

The measurement of poverty of course had its early roots in the work of social researchers

Seebohm Rowntree and Charles Booth before him. Booth’s investigation of conditions in

London’s East End in the late nineteenth century was one of the first to recognise the

existence of serious poverty (Flinn, 1963). Rowntree’s later study (1901) of 11,560 families

in York supported Booth’s findings (Ward, 2000, p.207). Specifically he concluded that thirty

21

per cent of the population was existing at a level unable to maintain ‘physical efficiency’

(Harris, 2000, p.61). Both studies were influential in that they attempted to establish that

poverty was an economic problem, rather than one of moral failing (Bowpitt, 2000, p.25).

Rowntree’s work was particularly important as it established poverty “as a scientifically

measurable phenomenon” (Bowpitt, 2000, p.23).

Over thirty years on, the family budget emerged once again as a measure of malnutrition, a

technology of government in a programmatic of welfare reform. Specifically, analysis of the

family household budget would reveal whether the poor had sufficient financial resources to

feed themselves in accordance with minimum dietary standards. In this manner, “the

nutritional state of the nation could be determined quite straightforwardly” (Webster, 1982,

p.121). In governmentality terms, it made the nation’s diet measurable and knowable.

5.1 The John Boyd Orr study

One of the first, and most prominent, surveys of family budgets during this era was

undertaken by John Boyd Orr. His book Food, Health and Income, which was first published

in 1936, was an attempt “to estimate the diets of different classes, including the whole

population, according to family income” (Orr, 1937, p.5). Orr first determined individual

dietary requirements by adopting those standards established by the US government’s Bureau

of Home Economics (ibid., p.18). This choice reflected Orr’s wish to use standards which

went beyond minimum requirements for existence to those which ensured an optimum state

of health and well being (ibid., p.7). In this regard, his standards were not generous in terms

of calories, requiring a calorie intake of only 2,810, but were comprehensive in terms of their

mineral and vitamin composition (ibid., p.18).

22

Orr then divided the population into six groups according to family income. Surveys were

conducted during the years 1932 to 1935 and 1,152 family budgets collected (Orr, 1937,

p.59). Then using the data from these budgets an estimate was made of the weekly food

expenditure by each income group of the population- see Table 1.

Insert Table 1

An analysis of the weekly expenditure on food contained within the 1,152 budgets allowed an

estimate to be made of the quantity of an array of foodstuffs consumed per week across

income groups – see Table 2. This information was insightful in that it revealed that while the

consumption of bread and potatoes was reasonably consistent across groups, there was a wide

variation in the consumption of foods such as meat, cheese, fish, eggs, fresh fruit and

vegetables with greater levels of consumption occurring at the higher income bands.

Insert Table 2

Orr then calculated the calorific quantities associated with these foodstuffs and compared

them with his optimum dietary standards – see Table 3. This comparison revealed

inadequacies in diet across the first three income groups of the population: the first two

groups consumed below the optimum level of calories (2,810), while the third group was

inadequate with regard to vitamins and mineral intake.

Insert Table 3

23

Hence Orr’s analysis of family budgets led to conclusions that were both stark and

depressing, finding “that a diet completely adequate for health, according to modern

standards, is reached at an income level above that of 50 per cent of the population” (ibid.,

p.11).

Not surprisingly, Orr’s publication attracted a significant amount of press attention (Petty,

1989, p.106). Indeed, even before its publication, Orr’s work had generated a great deal of

controversy. For example, in order to ensure publicity for his findings, Orr presented his

results at a British Medical Association lecture in Norwich in 1935 to which the press had

been invited. He also, proceeded with a public broadcast on the issue despite threats that he

would be brought before the Medical Council where his ability to practice medicine would be

revoked (Mayhew, 1988, p.458).

Conscious of the political nature of his findings, Orr also opted to publish his book

independently of the government with Macmillan publishers. His instincts in this regard

proved right as the Ministry’s Advisory Committee on Nutrition quickly appointed a

Statistical Sub-Committee to review Orr’s findings. These statisticians queried the reliability

of Orr’s results on the basis of only 1,152 family budgets (Orr, 1937, p.5). Orr’s use of

optimum dietary standards was also a subject of criticism, particularly his inclusion of

vitamin and mineral requirements. As Zweiniger-Bargielowska (2010, p.289) observes,

“vitamins acquired a political identity in the 1930s”. Orr countered such criticism by arguing

that his dietary requirements were in line with those international standards that had been

established by the League of Nations subsequent to his own publication (Orr, 1937, p.7).

24

Regardless of such criticism, Orr’s profound findings regarding the diet deficits of the poor

quickly became a political issue as evidenced by a seven-and-a-half hour Commons debate

on the theme of malnutrition in the summer of 1936 (Mayhew, 1988, p.458). Labour used

Orr’s findings to criticise the government’s level of welfare provision. Sir Kingsley Wood,

the Minister of Health, responded by drawing upon the work of Edward Cathcart, Professor

of Chemical Physiology at Glasgow University, who claimed that the health of the working

class was dependent on the character and education of the housewife as opposed to the level

of income (Smith and Nicolson, 1995, p.300-301). As a consequence, the publication did not

have any immediate impact on government policy. In the absence of widespread medical

evidence of malnutrition, the government maintained its stance that the issue of family

income was irrelevant to discussions regarding the health of the nation (Petty, 1989, p.106).

5.2 The M’Gonigle and Kirby study

A further seminal investigation into the population’s diet, which similarly drew on household

budgets, was conducted by M’Gonigle and Kirby. Their 1936 book, Poverty and Public

Health, examined the diet of the population of Stockton-on-Tees, an area of particular

poverty and high death rates, and the region for which M’Gonigle was the Medical Officer of

Health. Like Orr, M’Gonigle had been subject to the threat of removal from the Medical

Register if he participated in a public broadcast on the problem of malnutrition (Webster,

1982, p.112). As a practising medic, he had to succumb to that threat, but found an alternative

vehicle for his findings in the form of Poverty and Public Health, a book which received a

strong endorsement, in the form of its foreword from the Nobel Prize winning biochemist

Frederick Hopkins.

25

In their book, M’Gonigle and Kirby analysed the household budgets of 141 families in

Stockton-on-Tees (M’Gonigle and Kirby, 1936, p.194). The Budget Inquiry Schedule Form,

which they used to gather the data during the summer of 1935, sought a wealth of detail from

participants. For example, in addition to information on income, trade union subscriptions

and travelling expenses, the form asked for specifics regarding fourteen items of non-food

related household expenditure, from rent and fuel costs to clothing and cleaning products.

Deducting all expenditure from income, revealed the available monies for food purchases –

this generally equated with 45% of family income (M’Gonigle and Kirby, 1936, p.238). The

authors were careful to note that none of the non-food related expenditure was extravagant in

nature (ibid.). They then compared these funds with the income required to purchase the

minimum food rations as established by the British Medical Association’s Nutrition

Committee in 1933. This comparison revealed that only those families with the highest

household income (of between 70 and 80 shillings per week) had the available funds to meet

the BMA standards (M’Gonigle and Kirby, 1936, p.246). This led the authors to declare:

“It must be obvious, if a family is unable to allocate a weekly sum of money sufficient to

purchase the minimum diet considered necessary by the British Medical Association

Nutrition Committee to maintain health and working capacity, that there must be deficiencies

in the diet consumed” (M’Gonigle and Kirby, 1936, p.252).

Assuming that the conditions found in Stockton-on-Tees were replicated across the country,

M’Gonigle and Kirby (1936, p.263) consequently proposed that “nearly one half of the

population of England and Wales subsists, to a greater or lesser extent, below the safety line

of nutrition”. This depressing declaration stood in sharp contrast to the buoyant postulations

of the government of the day.

26

5.3 The housewife as a focus of expert study

M’Gonigle and Kirby (1936) also drew on their budget surveys to strongly counter the

government’s position that poor diet was due to the ignorance of the working class housewife

by arguing that “careful analysis of family budgets shows that such statements are, to a very

large extent, wide of the mark” (M’Gonigle and Kirby (1936, p.193).

This stance was reiterated a year later, when Wal Hannington, Secretary of the Unemployed

Workers Movement, published his book The Problem of the Distressed Areas. In this work,

Hannington (1937, p.60) fiercely criticised the “insidious propaganda” of the Ministry of

Health in diverting attention away from the issue of income to that of the ignorant working

class housewife. Similarly, the 1938 publication National Fitness by Le Gros Clark dismissed

the notion that it was the housewife’s ignorance or laziness that caused malnutrition, but

rather a lack of economic purchasing power.

As noted throughout this paper, the housewife was a prime focus of attack by the Ministry of

Health in the 1930s, with comments such as “malnutrition is perhaps as much a question of

ignorance as £.s.d.” by the Ministry’s Dr R.H. Simpson (Mayhew, 1988, p.453), a common

occurrence. One of the tasks of the Ministry’s Nutritional Committee therefore was seen to be

the dissemination of nutritional information, particularly in order to educate the working-

class housewife (ibid, p.448). Certainly, as Harris (1993, p.73) notes: “it was the wife’s skill or

ineptitude in making ends meet that largely determined the comfort or dereliction of working-class

homes.” Yet, domestic skill alone could not overcome an absence of income. Hence at the same time

as the Ministry of Health were making their pronouncements, the charitable organization, the

Pilgrim Trust, was raising concerns over the health of the housewife in the face of

unemployment and poverty, stating that women were “literally starving themselves in order

27

to feed and clothe the children reasonably well” (Stevenson, 1984, p.284). Such claims were

given substance in the results of studies of maternal mortality, such as those by Lady Rhys

Williams, which concluded that rates decreased significantly when pregnant women in South

Wales received extra food (Mayhew, 1988, p.455).

Rather than such isolated reports however, what was needed was a comprehensive study of

the working-class house wife, and an important step in achieving this end was reached with

the 1939 publication of Working-Class Wives: Their Health & Conditions. As the report’s

author, Margery Spring Rice observed, this publication addressed a neglect of the housewife

as a particular focus of inquiry:

Expert committees have examined and continue to examine problems of nutrition, the

essential needs of children, the improvement of recreational facilities, housing,

conditions of work, the effects moral and physical, of unemployment, and last but not

least the needs of the mother in pregnancy and child-birth. But currently little

attention is paid, and no scientific method is applied to the problems and needs of the

woman as housewife, as family chancellor, as friend, companion, nurse to her

husband and children, or even as mere human being (Spring Rice, 1929, p.27).

The report presents the results of a survey of the conditions of 1,250 married working class

women from 42 locations across Britain. The study was undertaken by the Women’s Health

Enquiry Committee which was established in 1933 by representatives from various women’s

organisations. For example, committee members included representatives from the Midwives

Institute, Women’s Co-Operative Guild, and Women Public Health Officers’ Association.

The author, Margery Spring Rice, was the first Secretary of the League of Nations Society

28

(the forerunner of the League of Nations Union) and was co-founder of the North Kensington

Women’s Welfare Centre, the largest of the London Voluntary Clinics for women. The data

for the study was collected by city and country Health Visitors using a questionnaire.

The results of the survey indicated the “deplorable extent” to which the housewife would

starve herself in order to feed her children (Spring Rice, 1929, p.157), or was simply too

exhausted to feed herself properly (ibid., p.161). In the great debate between income or

ignorance, the report was firmly on the side of a lack of income as the cause of this distress,

declaring: “Much might be done with more education and better facilities but the basic

difficulty of the great majority of these 1,250 mothers is the lack of financial resources.”

(Spring Rice, 1929, p.170). The current lack of such resources, it was argued, implied that

working-class housewives were unable to meet “basic nutritional needs” (ibid., p.156). The

report concluded with a range of recommendations to help the plight of these women.

Domestic education for young wives, to be provided by local Education Authorities, was

suggested as a useful means of ensuring the health and hygiene of the family. However, more

fundamental reforms to alleviate poverty were suggested which included support for a rise in

wages and a system of family allowances (payable to the mother). An extension of the system

of national insurance to cover the whole family and more maternal health care facilities were

also recommended. Consequently this study, alongside the results of household budgetary

surveys, provided further support for the introduction of a new system of welfare provision.

6 Governing the diet of the nation

It became increasingly difficult to ignore the issue of income and assume that good

housekeeping alone could solve nutritional needs in the light of further corroborating

inquiries such as those by Sir William Crawford and Herbert Broadley, whose 1938 study

29

The People’s Food was based on a sample of 5,000 family budgets. Similarly, a 1936 follow

up investigation by Seebohm Rowntree to his classic study of York determined that

household income was simply insufficient to sustain health and wellbeing in the 16,362

families surveyed (Briggs, 1964, p.292). Specifically, Rowntree established the notion of a

‘poverty line’ – a minimum income level needed to achieve the dietary requirements set out

by the British Medical Association (Briggs, 2000; Veit-Wilson, 2000, p.43). Together these

surveys and polemics provided a strong case that income, not ignorance, was a crucial factor

in malnutrition, and that significant sections of the working class were simply unable to

properly feed themselves from their meagre income (Webster, 1982, p.121). As Stevenson

(1984, p.283), observes: “by the end of the thirties there was an impressive catalogue of

evidence from the depressed areas that unemployment was producing poor nutrition and ill-

health”. Additionally, contrary to previous and potentially subjective investigations, the

budgetary surveys of Orr and others produced “an ‘objective’ measure of the cost of a

minimum diet” (Petty, 1989, p.106). As such, the budget provided an illustrative example of

a calculative technology by translating the subjective issue of a nation’s diet into “the

“elegance of the single figure” (Miller, 2001, p.382). In governmentality terms, the budget

gave credence to the existence of a problem of malnutrition due to poverty and hence

provided the moral justification for intervention. It supported and enabled the programme of

welfare reform advocated by left wing activists.

Such a programme of reform stood in stark contrast to the propaganda of the government’s

National Fitness Campaign and the construct of the fit and healthy citizen. As Zweiniger-

Bargielowska (2010, p.329) aptly observes:

30

The National Government’s celebration of healthy, fit, and happy citizens served as a

counterpoint to the figure of the hunger marcher and the stunted, malnourished bodies

of the unemployed and the poor. These representations literally embodied the

competing policies and ideologies of the right and the left.

As a political ploy though, the government’s fitness campaign was a successful distraction to

the ‘Hungry England’ debate, and similar to the promotion of domestic education to the

working class housewife, offered a low cost alternative to more significant welfare reform

(Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2010, p.281). Gradually, however, the Ministry of Health began to

recognise the problems revealed by the various surveys of family budgets and investigations

of working class conditions, particularly in the wake of the appointment of George

Newman’s successor as Chief Medical Officer in 1935 (Webster, 1982, p.122). Under the

new Chief, a second Advisory Committee on Nutrition was appointed by the Ministry

(Mayhew, 1988, p.459). Although its first report published in 1937 did not set out the cash

equivalents for dietary standards, its recommendations regarding the daily milk needs of

pregnant women and children obviously carried an economic consequence (Mayhew, 1988,

p.459).

Beyond the formal political arena, various bodies began to emerge during the 1930s with an

agenda for social reform, such as the Next Five Years Group (founded in 1934 and of which

Seebohn Rowntree was a member) and the policy think tank the Political and Economic

Planning group (founded in 1931) (Stevenson, 1984, p.322). Another important player was

the New Fabian Research Bureau which produced numerous research pamphlets on the

socialist cause throughout the decade (Graves and Hodge, 1950, p.259). Indeed, support for

social reform often brought together traditionally diverse camps: the Communist paper the

31

Daily Worker flourished on the basis of financial support from wealthy patrons (Graves and

Hodge, 1950, p.258).

The outbreak of war and a change in government in the spring of 1940, however, brought

about new initiatives which substantially improved the welfare and diet of the nation

(Webster, 1985, p.229). The new coalition government formed between the Conservatives

and Labour under Winston Churchill (Hinton, 1983, p.160), introduced food rationing which

immediately raised the food intake of poor families to that of the pre-war skilled craftsman

(May, 1995). As Zweiniger-Bargielowska (2010, p.339) observes “rationing was one of the

great home front successes”. The debates of the 1930s helped shape such war time welfare

feeding policies and launch state programmes of nutritional supplementation (Petty, 1989,

p.102). For example, a National Milk Scheme offering free or cheap milk to pregnant women

and children was launched (ibid.). Its effectiveness was perhaps evidenced in the fact that

1944 recorded the lowest infant mortality rate (May, 1995, p.403). By 1948, one third of a

pint of milk was being consumed daily by each of the nation’s schoolchildren, who were also

receiving free school meals (May, 1995, p.403, p.424). Such initiatives were no doubt

facilitated by the fact that Boyd Orr, the former bane of the Ministry, had now stepped into an

important advisory position to government following the appointment of his friend Walter

Elliot as Minister of Health (Mayhew, 1988, p.461). Orr’s main objective in formulating a

war time food policy was to increase the population’s consumption of vital protective foods

(dairy, vegetables, fruit and eggs) (Orr and Lubbock, 1940, p.34). In this manner, Orr came to

have a profound influence on the diet of the nation in the 1940s (Zweiniger-Bargielowska,

2010, p.289).

32

However, one final political shift was required to comprehensively convert left wing calls for

social reform into a formal programmatic of government.

7 A programme of reform: the rise of the welfare state

The new Labour government which swept into power in the 1945 General Election

“inaugurated the ‘welfare state’” (May, 1995, p.419). In practice, the Welfare State

comprised of a number of individual acts which together revolutionised access to not only

food and health, but also education and housing. Much of the origins of this legislation lay in

the work of Sir William Beveridge who, in 1941, was appointed to chair an interdepartmental

Committee of Social Insurance and Allied Services with a remit to review social insurance

policy (Harris, 1997, p.371). As noted earlier, the country’s system of insurance benefits had

been woefully inadequate to deal with the depth of the earlier economic recession. Pressure to

review the archaic and complex system came from a number of sources, but particularly the

general council of the Trades Union Congress (Briggs, 1964, p.307).

The Committee’s investigations (commonly termed the Beveridge Report) were published in

December 1942 (Stevenson, 1984, p.455). It recommended a range of welfare initiatives

with regard to health, education, employment and social insurance. Essentially the Report

sought to provide all citizens with five freedoms: freedom from want, disease, ignorance,

squalor and idleness (Flinn, 1963, p.268). In arriving at these recommendations, Beveridge

was much influenced by the work and thoughts of Seebohm Rowntree, particularly

Rowntree’s advocacy of a system of family allowances to alleviate poverty in large families

(Briggs, 1964, p.275), and publicly acknowledged his reliance on Rowntree’s “scientific”

expertise (Stevenson, 1984, p.305). Rowntree in turn was an ardent advocate of the

Beveridge Report and an activist for its implementation (Briggs, 1964, p.309).

33

The Report was well publicised by the Ministry of Information (Harris, 1997, p.415); it sold

100,000 copies within a month of publication and enjoyed widespread popular appeal (May,

1995, p.406). The Report’s recommendations gave rise to a number of government White

Papers on health, employment, and national insurance (Stevenson, 1984, p.457). However, no

legislation was enacted on these issues by the Coalition government of the time; Churchill, in

particular, advocating for a deferral until the post war period (Harris, 1997, p.422). This tactic

ultimately created one of the conditions for the subsequent Labour Party election success

(May, 1995, p.407).

Labour achieved a landslide victory in 1945 (Hinton, 1983, p.160). It provided the party with

an overall majority for the first time since it had emerged as a political party in 1906 (Flinn,

1963, p.245), capturing 393 seats compared to the Conservatives’ 213 seats (May, 1995,

p.411). The new government quickly enacted a range of reforms. The National Insurance Act

of 1946 ensured that for the first time all persons were entitled to claim unemployment

benefits (Flinn, 1963, p.306). However, Beveridge’s recommendations were not fully

implemented with regard to the level of benefits, hence many still had to resort to means

testing (Hinton, 1983, p.161). The Beveridge Report’s recommendation regarding a system

of family allowances though was adopted in the shape of the 1945 Family Allowance Act.

This policy was viewed as a less expensive option of alleviating poverty, particularly in large

families, than the introduction of a minimum wage (Stevenson, 1984, p.305). The National

Health Insurance Act of 1946 introduced free health care for all while the Education Act of

1944 opened access to a system of national secondary schooling (Flinn, 1963, p.306). In

terms of housing, A New Towns Act in 1946 resulted in the creation of 29 new towns to deal

with the problem of overcrowding in city slums (May, 1995, p.424).

34

In total these wide ranging social reforms contributed to “an irreversible change for the better

in the position of the working class in Britain” (Hinton, 1983, p.161). Evidence of such a

societal shift, and its repercussions for the diet of poor in particular, is seen in the results of

Rowntree’s 1951 survey of York. Compared with a 31.1% incidence of poverty among the

working class of the town in 1936, by 1951 this figure had dropped dramatically to 2.8%

(Stevenson, 1984, p.142).

Other factors also facilitated further growth and prosperity during the 1940s. The economy

began to grow strong again with the adoption of Keynesian policy in the War Budget of 1941

(Stevenson, 1984, p.447). Keynes’ classic text, the General Theory of Employment, Interest

and Money, had been only recently published (1936) and was to have a significant influence

on government spending and market intervention (May, 1995, p.378). Employment rose by

2.9 million between 1939 and 1943 (Stevenson, 1984, p.448). This growth could be traced

not only to the redevelopment of traditional industries such as coal, steel and shipbuilding as

a result of war activity (Stevenson, 1984, p.449), but also to the rise of new areas of

manufacture such as motor vehicles, plastics and rayons (Stevenson, 1984, p.111). Full

employment, in turn, created stronger unions with effective bargaining power for workers’

rights (Stevenson, 1984, p.199). Such changes together with the new welfare policies were to

transform British life. As Briggs (1964) observes, there was a significant change in mentality

towards social welfare from the 1940s onwards; a shift which saw the focus of social policy

widen to all of society and not just the poor and homeless. The transition from the Poor Law

of the 19th century, in which poverty was viewed as a moral problem and a failing of the

pauper (Flinn, 1963, p.268), to the so called Welfare State of the 1940s captures the essence

of this social transformation.

35

As welfare reform began to address the problem of malnutrition, the debates began to shift

from income levels and minimum dietary needs toward the issue of domestic education.

Traditionally left wing activists had been vehemently opposed to the government’s education

initiatives, but they now embraced it as a means to achieve scientific rationalization in diet

(Kamminga and Cunningham, 1995, p.12). For example, communist author Frederick le Gros

Clark, a key figure in the pressure group, the Committee against Malnutrition, and left wing

commentators George and Margaret Cole, both ardently advocated the dissemination of

scientific knowledge of nutrition as a means of maximising the health of the nation (Smith

and Nicolson, 1995, p.305). Women’s associations proved a useful medium through which

such knowledge could be communicated. For example, Women’s Voluntary Services, a

voluntary association of mainly middle class women, launched a ‘food leader’ scheme which

sought to enrol housewives (both middle and working class) into the task of spreading, by

word of mouth, government information on preparing economically nutritious meals (Hinton,

2002, p.168).

In this manner, the two previously opposing programmes of government became aligned. In

an environment of employment and welfare provision, domestic education, and even fitness

campaigns, sat easily alongside issues of income and minimum dietary standards.

8 Discussion and concluding comments

Governmentality offers a useful theoretical framework to understand the nutritional debates

of the 1930s. The two opposing political camps essentially reflected two diverse programmes

of government (Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose and Miller, 1992). In the absence of medical

evidence to the contrary, the official position of the coalition government was one which

denied the existence of a problem of malnutrition due to poverty. The optimistic tone of

36

successive Ministry of Health reports and pronouncements regarding the health of the nation

gave credence to government social welfare policy. Rather, malnutrition, it was argued was a

problem of ignorance or extravagance on the part of the working class housewife. In

governmentality terms, domestic arrangements represented the domain in need of curing

(Miller and Rose, 1990). Consequently the programmatic of government becomes education,

a low cost alternative to expensive welfare reforms. A further programmatic of the coalition

government was the National Fitness Campaign aimed at producing the fit and healthy body.

In this campaign we witness governmentality in the shape of the successful enrolment of a

range of diverse individuals, clubs and organisations into a network mobilised in the pursuit

of physical fitness (Rose and Miller, 1992). Both programmes sought to influence behaviour

indirectly by equating domestic education and exercise with good citizenship. This chimes

with Miller and Rose’s (1990, p.48) concept of government in liberal democracies where the

free thinking individual becomes self-regulating and citizenship is “active and individualistic

rather than passive and dependent”.

By contrast, left wing commentators mocked the notion of a fitness campaign aimed at a

starving nation. For them, the problem of malnutrition was tightly bound up with

insufficiency of income. In governmentality terms, starvation arising from poverty

represented the “difficulties and failures” which campaigners sought to rectify (Rose and

Miller, 1992, p.181). Pioneering nutritional research had enabled optimum dietary needs to be

made calculable and normalised, the complexity of food and the body had become translated

into a single calorific figure (Miller, 2001, p.381) What remained unknown however, was the

ability of the working classes to meet these dietary norms. Surveys of family household

budgets revealed the extent of malnutrition and its link to insufficiency of income, and this

knowledge was powerful to welfare campaigners. As Turner (1982a, p.268) remarks, “the

37

social survey of working-class diet represents an important illustration of Foucault's analysis

of knowledge/power”. The subjectivity of previous measures of malnutrition was instantly

displaced by the objectivity of a calculative regime. Through this calculative technology, the

dietary deficits of citizens across geographically distant spaces became knowable and

calculable (Miller and Rose, 1994; Miller and Napier, 1993). In this manner, the budget gave

shape to the problem of poverty and malnutrition of the nation as a whole and therefore

supported a programmatic for welfare reform. As Miller and Rose (1993, p.189) argue: “to

have problematized a particular activity or technique is part and parcel of that process of

articulating a new set of proposals that promise to remedy the deficiencies of existing ways of

managing and calculating.” Hence the budget represented a technology of government, a

means by which welfare activists sought “to embody and give effect to governmental

ambitions” (Rose and Miller, 1992, p.175). Only when the problem of income was cured

could the citizen become self disciplining with regard to diet. Consequently, left wing

campaigners were vehemently opposed to the coalition government’s programme of domestic

and nutritional education.

While pursuing divergent programmes of government, both political camps were united in

their use of expertise, a defining feature of the governmentality framework. Experts create

enclosures around bodies of knowledge and act as “vital links between socio-political

objectives and the minutia of daily existence” (Rose and Miller, 1992, p.188). This mediating

role is essential to ensure indirect rule in liberal democracies. The nutritional discourses of

the 1930s were significantly shaped by expert opinion in the form of the members of the

nutritional committees of the Ministry of Health and the British Medical Association.

Medical expertise was inherent in the respective budgetary surveys by Orr and M’Gonigle

while the expertise of women’s associations constructed representations of the working class

38

housewife. Both sides drew on this expert knowledge to make claims and counter claims

regarding the diet of the nation.

Consequently, the governmentality framework provides a fruitful lens through which to view

the nutritional crisis of the 1930s, and more importantly, to understand the role of calculative

technologies therein. As noted at the outset of the paper, such an understanding is useful as

the debates surrounding diet and exercise during this decade were to significantly shape

subsequent cultural trends. In terms of diet, the nutritional advances of the interwar period

regarding vitamin intake and optimum calorific requirements cultivated notions of ‘good’

versus ‘bad’ foods – essentially a “food morality” began to emerge (Horrocks, 1995, p.238).

Nutritionally deficient diets come to be equated with moral failings (Kamminga and

Cunningham, 1995). Such conceptions are pervasive in contemporary discourses regarding

food and diet. For example, popular culture, in all its varied forms, is saturated with the

nutritional benefits of so called ‘super foods’ and equalled repelled by the fast food diet. The

inherent lifestyle insinuations associated with each dietary choice is nothing if not moralistic

in character. Additionally, preoccupation with diet and body size has led to the “production of

self-monitoring and self-disciplining ‘docile bodies’” (Bordo, 1993, p.186). Diet, and its

associated arsenal of calorie counting and measurement, argues Turner (1982b, p.24)

represents another form of “government of the body”.

In terms of exercise, the fitness campaign of the 1930s brought physical culture to the fore.

Whether it was cycling, hiking, or camping, a national enthusiasm for outdoor pursuits was

promoted. Most importantly, physical exertion for pleasure moved beyond the realm of men

only, and through public spaces such as lidos and organised activities such as gymnastic

displays, enrolled women too in the fad for fitness (Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2010). These

early initiatives have spawned a global industry based on physical culture. From local gyms

39

to personal trainers, the cult of the body beautiful is a pervasive theme in contemporary

society. The sense of good citizenship cultivated by the coalition government’s National

Fitness Campaign has been further refined and consolidated. For example, public concerns

over the rising cost of treating obesity related illness are laced with accusations regarding the

undisciplined body. As Benson (1997, p.123) so aptly observes:

The bad body is fat, slack, uncared for; it demonstrates a lazy and undisciplined ‘self’.

The good body is sleek, thin and toned. To have such a body is to project to those

around you - as well as to yourself - that you are morally as well as physically ‘in

shape’.

This paper argues that such contemporary cultural perspectives on diet and exercise have

been shaped by the debates and initiatives of the 1930s. Together, the National Fitness

Campaign and the nutritional discourses of this decade cultivated contemporary obsessions

with calorie counting and physical fitness. The paper seeks to highlight, in particular, the role

of calculative technologies within this cultural trend. The humble household budget made the

nutritional deficiencies of the nation calculable and knowable and hence became a powerful

tool for welfare campaigners in promoting dietary reform. An adequately fed nation in turn

creates the cultural preconditions for dieting and bodily self regulation.

Cultural theorists have traditionally dominated all discourse relating to the body, diet and

exercise. However, the accounting discipline can contribute its own cultural insights. In

particular, if we as a community seek to awaken an interest in accounting by scholars beyond

our immediate domain (Chapman, Cooper & Miller, 2009), then engagement with the

cultural field becomes all the more crucial.

40

41

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Table 1 Estimated Weekly Expenditure on Food per Income Group

Income Group

Proportion of the Population

Weekly Income per head Weekly expenditure on Food

I 10% 10 shillings and under 4 shillingsII 20% 10 to 15 shillings 6 shillingsIII 20% 15 to 20 shillings 8 shillingsIV 20% 20 to 30 shillings 10 shillingsV 20% 30 to 45 shillings 12 shillingsVI 10% Over 45 shillings 14 shillings

Data from Orr, 1937, pp.65-67.

Table 2 Estimated Food Consumption per Week per Income Group

Income Group

Group I Group II Group III Group IV Group V Group VI

Beef & veal (ozs)

10.5 14.5 17.2 18.9 19.5 18.9

Mutton & lamb (ozs)

3.1 5.6 7.2 9.4 11.6 13.9

Bacon & ham (ozs)

4.3 6.3 6.8 7.3 7.8 9.4

Other meat (ozs)

5.2 5.2 5.9 5.9 5.9 7.2

Bread & cakes (ozs)

66.0 68.0 68.0 67.0 65.0 60.0

Milk fresh (pints)

1.1 2.1 2.6 3.1 4.2 5.5

Milk cond. (pints)

0.7 0.6 0.55 0.5 0.4 0.3

Eggs (no.) 1.5 2.1 2.6 3.2 3.6 4.5Butter (ozs) 3.0 6.5 7.5 8.5 9.5 11.0Cheese (ozs) 1.8 2.5 3.1 3.6 3.6 2.6Margarine (ozs)

4.5 3.5 2.5 2.0 1.6 1.3

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Tea (ozs) 2.2 2.7 2.9 3.0 2.9 2.7Potatoes (ozs) 53.0 56.0 57.0 57.0 57.0 54.0Lard (ozs) 2.7 3.6 4.2 4.4 4.3 3.5Fish (ozs) 2.7 5.5 8.2 10.4 12.2 13.5Sugar (ozs) 13.5 16.0 18.0 19.0 19.5 19.5Jam (ozs) 4.3 5.3 5.2 5.4 5.8 5.5Other sugar (ozs)

6.5 7.5 8.5 9.5 10.5 11.5

Fruit (ozs) 14.0 21.7 25.8 27.9 30.5 39.3Vegetables (ozs)

16.0 20.0 30.6 30.6 32.3 34.0

Data from Orr, 1937, p.73.Table 3 Comparison of Diet as Revealed by Family Budgets with Diet for Optimum Health

Income Group Group I Group II Group III Group IV

Group V Group VI

Calories in Family Budgets

2,317 2,768 2,962 3,119 3,249 3,326

Calories for optimum health

2,810 2,810 2,810 2,810 2,810 2,810

(Deficit)/Surplus (493) (42) 152 309 439 516Calcium in Family Budgets (grams)

0.37 0.52 0.61 0.71 0.83 0.95

Calcium for optimum health (grams)

0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6

(Deficit)/Surplus (grams)

(0.23) (0.08) 0.01 0.11 0.23 0.35

Phosphorus in Family Budgets (grams)

0.81 1.04 1.17 1.28 1.42 1.54

Phosphorus for optimum health (grams)

1.23 1.23 1.23 1.23 1.23 1.23

(Deficit)/Surplus (grams)

(0.42) (0.19) (0.06) 0.05 0.19 0.31

Iron in Family Budgets (grams)

0.008 0.0099 0.011 0.012 0.0127 0.0137

Iron for optimum health (grams)

0.0115 0.0115 0.0115 0.0115 0.0115 0.0115

(Deficit)/Surplus (grams)

(0.0035) (0.0016) (0.0005) 0.0005 0.0012 0.0022

Vitamin A in Family Budgets (units)

1,548 2,500 3,248 4,030 4,420 5,750

Vitamin A for optimum health (units)

3,800 3,800 3,800 3,800 3,800 3,800

(Deficit)/Surplus (units)

(2,252) (1,300) (552) 230 620 1,950

Vitamin C in Family 57 78 90 108 126 158

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Budgets (units)Vitamin C for optimum health (units)

95 95 95 95 95 95

(Deficit)/Surplus (units)

(38) (17) (5) 13 31 63

Data from Orr, 1937, p.40.

49