This chapter examines the main threads of stability and change as rural Britain entered total war. And in examining the rural societies within which the CWAECs were to operate, we encounter the perceptions of rurality held by different social groups, the tensions internal to rural areas, and the differing contemporary perspectives on farming and on countryside living.

Rural society in interwar Britain

Despite the increasing attention paid by government to the economic problems of farming, rural working families could reasonably consider themselves as second-class citizens on the outbreak of war. By 1939 80 per cent of the population of England and Wales was urban, compared with 50 per cent 90 years before, as farmworkers and their families had left the land to seek higher wages and better living conditions in urban industrial and service employment. Many ex-servicemen were disillusioned on their return to civilian countrysides after the Great War:

National employment in agriculture and forestry fell from an average of one million in 1920–22 (6.3 per cent of total employment) producing 6.1 per cent of national income, to 735,000 (3.9 per cent) producing 3.5 per cent of national income by 1937–38. In Wales, only the counties of Carmarthen, Denbigh and Flint showed population growth between 1921 and 1931, and for places undergoing depopulation there was also the loss of rural trades and crafts, owing to the growing consumption of mass-produced goods. And alongside the departure of the younger members, ageing populations were left in the villages, where high streets were becoming residential rather than the location of shopkeepers and tradespeople.