Once again to the rural community fell the duty and the privilege of making a vital contribution to the needs of the country in a time of emergency.

Stanley Baldwin referred to the ‘stability, solid morality, and wisdom of the countryside’ but appeals to rural idyllicism, to organic solidarity, or even to aesthetic considerations were rapidly relegated when the requirement was for swift increases in productivity. In the harsh conditions of war, even on the rural home front, there would be losers and those called upon to make sacrifices, even if only temporarily and even if such sacrifices were of aspiration rather than life itself. Having detailed their structures and memberships, we now move on to examine the social context of the CWAECs’ work.

All in it together? Working with the farming community?

The surveillance and control with which the CWAECs operated were enacted by people whose behaviour and reputation was embedded, for the most part, within their own rural social networks. But from May 1939, when the committee names were announced, the networks had to encompass a new organisation. Loose affiliations and informal acquaintance and socialising, exchanges based on intimate knowledge, were now overlain by formality and hierarchy. But the CWAECs could in fact only function efficiently by making use of these preexisting networks. Without some trust, mutual understanding and a critical mass of support from their communities, CWAECs could not have mobilised the rapid farming changes that were required. Too many farmers would have reacted according to their memories of the sad aftermath of war committee control 20 years previously, when government promises were retracted. Others came from a younger generation who had to learn how to deal with the CWAECs’ wishes, possibly in part with advice from older farmers.

As well as remaining mindful of the psychological legacy of the interwar depression, the local reception accorded to the committees can be better understood by investigating the non-material contexts: the norms, the institutional frameworks and cultural values of rural communities. And within such communities the newly appointed CWAEC members would themselves have felt changes in their empowerment, self-perception and self-worth. They were basically charged with introducing new or higher standards of farming practice – primarily economic considerations – into greatly differing rural communities across Britain. They were, after all, concerned above all else with food production.