Lord Woolton. The man who used statistics (and more) to feed a nation at war

Transcription

1 Lord Woolton The man who used statistics (and more) to feed a nation at war Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo As Minister of Food during the Second World War, Lord Woolton kept Britain from starving but in the archives of the Royal Statistical Society, he is remembered best for making statisticians part of the solution to the problems he faced. By Brian Tarran

2 Journalists love a scoop. A big one will earn them a front-page headline and the grudging respect and envy of colleagues. But the thrill of discovery is often reason enough to seek them out. There s a genuine excitement at being able to tell a story no one has told before. It is a feeling William Sitwell experienced some time ago now, while reading through the private diaries of Frederick James Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton, in the University of Oxford s Bodleian Library. I really did feel I had an exciting scoop here, says Sitwell, a broadcaster, food writer and editor of the magazine Waitrose Food. I would hurry across to the Weston wing of the Bodleian Library and check the entry registry to see if anyone else had been in there. I just thought, Wow! How come this hasn t been written about? The story Sitwell discovered is now contained in his book, Eggs or Anarchy. 1 It features wartime drama, political intrigue, high-stakes gambles, black-market deals, and triumph in the face of adversity. It is the story of a saddler s son from Salford, in the north-west of England, who rose through the ranks of British society to become a key figure in the government of Winston Churchill, at the height of the country s battle against Nazi Germany. The protagonist is a man with a mission to do the impossible: to feed a nation at war in incredibly difficult circumstances, says Sitwell, who saw it as one of the great untold stories of the Second World War. In telling this story, Sitwell does more than fill a gap in our collective knowledge of history s deadliest conflict; it allows us to reconnect with a man who was a standard-bearer for evidence-based policy, and a firm believer in statistics as the instrument of truth and servant of reform. That man is Lord Woolton, wartime Minister of Food and Minister of Reconstruction, and postwar president of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) from 1945 to The deal-maker If the name Lord Woolton seems familiar, it is probably because of a vegetable pie (see page 27). As Minister of Food from 1940 until 1943, Woolton s job was to stop the nation going hungry at a time of scarcity. A system of rationing had been implemented so that everyone received a fair share of what was available, and Lord Woolton pie was one of several recipes promoted by the Ministry to inspire housewives to make the most of what was available to them. While the pie seems to have been well received in its day, Sitwell is not a fan. He describes the dish as grim and dull much like his initial impression of Lord Woolton. Sitwell first encountered the man while writing a chapter about the Second World War and rationing in his previous book, A History of Food in 100 Recipes. I thought he sounded like a bit of a dull administrator, says Sitwell. But then I found a photocopied page of his biography where he hinted at tacitly consenting for one of his agents to buy food on the black market overseas in order to feed Britain. This was a startling discovery: throughout the war, Woolton and his ministry waged a public relations campaign against those who sought to cheat the ration, to buy goods illegally and to profiteer. Sitwell s immediate thought was that there must be more to the man, more to the story, than first appeared. I actually pitched an entire book based on a hunch and was incredibly lucky when I discovered that there wasn t just one story, there were many, and that this guy was doing all sorts of incredible things to feed Britain. One of Sitwell s favourite stories is that of Lord Woolton and Pasha Abboud. Pasha Abboud is an Alexandria-based businessman, who controls the world s sugar business or thinks he controls it, right up until the point he comes across Lord Woolton, explains Sitwell. Abboud is trying to sell Britain sugar for rather more than Britain should be paying, and Woolton s department is at a complete loss as to how to deal with this. If they buy the sugar at the price Abboud wants, they blow the Ministry of Food budget, which means they then haven t got money for other stuff. But if they don t buy it, they don t get the sugar so there s the problems ensuing with that. Woolton comes up with a scheme whereby he lets it be known that he will start selling sugar [cheaply] on the market in Alexandria by importing it from Australia, and slowly but surely, Abboud surfaces in London, has a meeting with Woolton, and they do a deal. In overseeing the control and distribution of food throughout Britain and its empire, Lord Woolton frequently called on the advice of experts, including statisticians of the RSS The deal is a pretty good one: Abboud, having been charmed and impressed by Woolton, announces that he will gift Britain a million tons of sugar as a contribution to the war effort. But Woolton is too canny to accept that, fearing he may be asked for a favour in years to come. Instead, he agrees to take the sugar on loan, and either pay for it in full or return the equivalent tonnage at the end of the war. After the war, says Sitwell, Abboud writes to Woolton and says: I so enjoyed our dealings, would you join the board of my company? That was not Woolton s only successful deal; nor was it his only offer of employment after the conflict ended. Most offers 2017 The Royal Statistical Society June 2017 significancemagazine.com 25

3 were turned down, but there was one voluntary position he was only too happy to accept: becoming RSS president. From Marquis to Lord I am greatly honoured by the position I take to-day, said Lord Woolton, in his inaugural address to the RSS on 22 November 1945, but my pride is tempered with trepidation. I am the latest of a line of erudite men who have occupied this chair and I am fearful lest the pride that led me, with inadequate equipment and knowledge, to accept the proffered office should lead to the disappointment of the Society. For I can make no claim to add to your understanding of the science of which you are masters and, for the most part, active practitioners. 2 Woolton s trepidation is perhaps understandable. Despite being a fellow of the RSS since 1916, he had only one statistical publication to his name a 1912 paper, published in the RSS Journal, back when he was known simply as Fred Marquis.3 26 SIGNIFICANCE June 2017 BELOW Lord Woolton, seen right with arm outstretched, welcomes the first delivery of food from the United States to Britain under the Lend Lease programme (bit.ly/2qhbmon) But in the years since that paper was published, Fred Marquis had become a major figure in British public life. He was made a Lord before joining the government of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in April 1940, taking the name Woolton after a suburb of the city of Liverpool in which he had once lived. But to the populace at large, he was fondly known as Uncle Fred the man who kept the nation fed throughout the Second World War. The RSS archives do not record exactly why Lord Woolton was invited to take the position of president. One is tempted to think that it was the RSS admiring of the fact that Woolton did use facts and statistics as the basis of his policy and how he worked, rather than short-term political needs, says Sitwell. Indeed, in overseeing the control and distribution of food throughout Britain and its empire, Woolton frequently called on the advice of experts, including statisticians of the RSS. His insistence on bringing statisticians into the operations of government, and making their work part of his decision- Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo IN DETAIL

4 making process, meant the RSS had cause for gratitude to Lord Woolton, said Dr E. C. Snow, Woolton s immediate predecessor as president. In a written vote of thanks to Woolton s inaugural address, Snow said: He was in a position during the greater part of the war to see that statisticians were called upon to play a full part in the solution of the many problems which presented themselves, and it was fortunate that one so fully convinced of the need for skilled statisticians held such important offices at critical periods. It might well have been otherwise. 2 Engaging the Society Lord Woolton was a successful businessman, running the department store chain Lewis s, when the Second World War broke out in With experience of clothing the country through his retail business, Prime Minister Chamberlain asked Woolton to clothe the British Army. Woolton agreed to do so, but in setting about the task, he said: [T]he War Office had no statistical evidence to assist me I had the greatest difficulty in arriving at any figures that would show how many suits of uniform and how many boots were involved. Clearly this would not do. In Eggs or Anarchy, Sitwell describes Woolton as a man of firm mind and steely determination [who] remained resolute that no decision, no public comment should ever be made without a very clear understanding of the facts. Woolton did have some idea of the number of mouths he needed to feed, thanks to an identity card system that was introduced at the outbreak of war Woolton felt that to guess at what was needed was to endanger the chance of victory and the security of the State, so he called upon the services of Professor Major Greenwood, a former president of the RSS, to help create a statistical basis on which the operations of this aspect of the war effort could be built. In his inaugural address, Woolton was clear in his view that this statistical work had been pivotal. I believe that it was because we established this statistical branch in the War Office and it was subsequently transferred to the Ministry of Supply when I became Director-General of Equipment and Stores that this section of our Supply Service never failed, even after the military disaster in France, to meet all the calls that were made upon it, he said. We were operating on a plan that had allowed for the probable deviations of chance, and organization had greatly reduced the need for improvisation. Lord Woolton pie In hotels and restaurants, no less than in communal canteens, many people have tasted Lord Woolton pie and pronounced it good, wrote The Times on 26 April The recipe, publicised by the Ministry of Food, was the creation of François Latry, the French-born chef of the Savoy Hotel. Ingredients: 1 lb each of diced potatoes, cauliflower, swedes and carrots; three or four spring onions; 1 tsp vegetable extract; 1 tbsp oatmeal; chopped parsley; for crust, use potato or wholemeal pastry. Method: (1) Cook vegetables, extract and oatmeal together for 10 minutes, with just enough water to cover ingredients; stir occasionally to prevent sticking. (2) Allow mixture to cool, then transfer to a pie dish, sprinkle with chopped parsley and cover with pastry. (3) Bake in a moderate oven until pastry is browned. (4) Serve hot with a brown gravy. Subsequently the statisticians came to be recognized in the Ministry of Supply as an essential part of the organization: they gave confidence and security to the decisions of the executive, and I am certain that they saved the country very large sums of money. The efficiency with which these tasks were handled convinced Chamberlain that Woolton could ably manage an entire ministry specifically, the Ministry of Food. But on arrival in this new department, Woolton again encountered the same lack of statistical data. Again, he called on the services of RSS fellows. Here indeed was a field for the statistician, he explained. We were in a position of much danger. Our resources were very limited; our shipping was subjected to risks, capable of statistical analysis; our needs had to be interpreted in terms of calories and vitamins and other food values rather than in the customary considerations of human appetites; different classes of the people had widely different needs if their health and vigour were to be maintained. Our armies had to be fed according to the needs conditioned by fighting in widely differing climates; our children and nursing mothers had to have food appropriate to their particular needs; and all these variations had to be expressed, finally, in terms which would enable us to determine the nature of our home production and the precise tonnage of our imports of the many items that constituted our programme of purchases overseas. Woolton did, at least, have some idea of the number of mouths he needed to feed, thanks to an identity card system that was introduced at the outbreak of war. It was part of a scheme that had been in the planning ever since the end of the First World War, when Britain very nearly starved, says Sitwell. National Registration Day was 29 September At 6:30 pm that day, all men, women and children in the country of which there were approximately 46 million were to record their name, address, date of birth, marital status and occupation so that ID cards could be issued. This would help June 2017 significancemagazine.com 27

5 with both domestic security and food control in the coming years. However, information the Ministry of Food was able to pull together painted a less than rosy picture of Britain s food situation. As Sitwell writes: Britain was a net importer of food, and when war broke out less than a third of the food on British tables was produced at home. Half of all meat, threequarters of all cheese, cereals, fats and sugars, and four-fifths of fruit came from overseas, forming the 55 million tons of food shipped to Britain each year. Threats of enemy attacks on ships and cuts to supply lines would quickly reduce that 55 million tons to just 12 million. These were the hard facts he was presented with, says Sitwell, and his policy however emotive and emotional and successful the PR was firmly grounded in necessity. It was clear that rationing would be required, so Woolton brought in experts to assess the available evidence on the nutrients that were needed for a healthy population, starting with a decree from the League of Nations that working men required 3000 calories per day. Woolton was concerned not only that the public should avoid starvation, but that their diet should not become so monotonous as to be a danger to morale. And so the Ministry looked to studies of working-class families in a selection of London boroughs to better understand the public s eating habits. The interesting thing is that it was a pretty monotonous picture, pre-rationing, says Sitwell, who, on the morning of our interview, was welcomed to the Waitrose Food office with a sample of some tempting-looking fried cheese. Such treats may not have been particularly common in the 1930s or 1940s. Sitwell describes the standard diet as: A breakfast of bread and spread, cups of tea with lots of milk; a cooked meal at midday; more mugs of tea; and maybe some cheese and bread, or biscuit, at tea time, in the evening. The well-off, of course, enjoyed a rich and diverse diet, but there were those for whom even standard working-class fare was hard to come by. Woolton had a deep-seated passion for the poor and malnourished, says Sitwell. The ration, therefore, was not simply a means to prevent starvation and maintain morale; Woolton also took it as an opportunity to improve nutrition across the country. Improving the nation s health A biography of Woolton on the Bodleian Library website notes how, after graduating from Manchester University in 1906 with a degree in science, Woolton worked as a maths teacher in nearby Burnley. However, his interest in poverty and social mobility also brought him into active social work in Liverpool, where in 1909 he became warden of a project established by Lewis s to provide cheap beds and recreation for the poor of the city s docklands (bit.ly/2oj793h). According to this same biography: His output of scholarly articles on poverty led to his appointment in 1910 as research fellow in economics at the University of Manchester. The period in Liverpool was an important one in Woolton s life as indicated, perhaps, by the name he took when made a Lord. According to Sitwell: He never forgot the time when, ABOVE Lord Woolton is interviewed in London, 1944 two doors away, a woman died of starvation and no one knew about it. He was very struck by that: that someone could live in a street without anyone knowing about them and that they could die of starvation in that modern era. Experiences such as these left their mark. Woolton was imbued with a passionate belief in improving the lot of poor people, says Sitwell. In his diaries, he conceives of creating international bodies to help feed the world. He has dreams of free school meals. He writes passionately about the need, the importance, of feeding children and how important it is to make sure kids have a good meal. When the time came to implement the ration, these concerns and ambitions were top of mind and Woolton is considered to have achieved great success both in feeding the nation and improving its general health. As Sitwell puts it: The fat rich got a little slimmer, and the slim poor got a little fatter. In Eggs or Anarchy, he quotes from the memoirs of Lord Boyd Orr, the postwar head of the United Nations Food War Archive/Alamy Stock Photo 28 SIGNIFICANCE June 2017

6 and Agriculture Organization, who writes that: Lord Woolton produced for the first time in modern history a food plan based on the nutritional needs of the people, with priority in rationing for mothers and children the rich got less to eat, which did them no harm, and the poor, so far as the supply would allow, got a diet adequate for health, with free orange juice, cod liver oil, extra milk and other things for mothers and children. This was a great achievement for which Britain is indebted to Lord Woolton. Woolton, for his part, must have felt indebted to the statisticians who helped him achieve all that. Not only was his ministry required to source large quantities of food grown at home and overseas, it also had to ensure that food could be distributed throughout the country to secure the unfailing validity of the food coupon in even the most remote of villages. In his inaugural address to the RSS, he remarked that: Even when the enemy s air raids had dislocated our transport system, we succeeded in that operation, because we had a statistical basis of facts on which to operate. Putting statistics in its place Lord Woolton was adamant that a statistical basis of facts would be just as important in the postwar era as it was at the height of the conflict. As Britain looked to rebuild itself in the years that followed, Woolton was particularly concerned that social stability should be maintained. This had been one aim of the ration as Sitwell s book title implies, without the provision of eggs and other foodstuffs, the country may well have slipped into anarchy. But in the postwar era, unemployment was a threat to this stability, and one that needed to be addressed. In May 1944, as Minister of Reconstruction, he presented a White Paper on Employment Policy, in which it was stated that the Government accept as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war. Woolton made mention of this policy in his inaugural address to the RSS, because I am convinced that, for its success, it depends not only on the goodwill of Ministers, but upon the co-operation of the statisticians and the business community. Intentions are not enough, he said. We must have knowledge of facts as they are and capacity to deduce future trends from these facts. No Government could be expected to carry out such a policy without having access to such information as it may need. It would be like asking a doctor to be responsible for getting a patient back to health but denying him the right to ascertain the patient s temperature, to check the pulse, test the condition of his heart, or to ask questions about his past health. Woolton argued that, in affairs of government, the time had long since passed where political conclusions could only be based on vague impressions ; he believed firmly that both opinion and legislative action can, and should, be guided by statistical evidence. Public opinion that is founded on statistical evidence is destructive of political prejudice, said Woolton. I want to see Eggs or Anarchy by William Sitwell, is out now, published by Simon & Schuster. See bit.ly/2p4viyy for details the science of statistics take its place as the instrument of truth and the servant of reform. Goodbye to Uncle Fred Lord Woolton died on 14 December 1964, aged 81. In an obituary written for the RSS Journal, it was noted that Woolton was the last of what he had described as distinguished outsiders to serve as president for the full two years of office. Austin Bradford Hill wrote that: It became obvious to [RSS] Council that the demands of the Society had so increased that it was unwarrantable to ask a national figure in whatever walk of life to look after its affairs for more than a year. Lord Woolton s advice was nevertheless at the disposal of the Society for very many subsequent years. 4 In this respect, the Uncle Fred nickname was well earned. A day after Lord Woolton s death, tributes were paid in the House of Lords, and Lord Carrington remarked (bit.ly/2oveisw) that: Almost everyone has, or has had at one time, a favourite uncle who was generous and kind, shrewd and wise and full of good advice and who was, above all, a man whose visits and whose company were especially welcome and greatly enjoyed. All this, and much more, was true of Lord Woolton. Having read his diaries, Sitwell has come to think of Lord Woolton as one of the great heroes of the Second World War. He grew to like Woolton and admire him enormously but, he says: I imagine he was a very difficult colleague, because I think he had a real belligerence about the correctness of his own views. Were he alive today, Sitwell believes Woolton would be astonished by the choice [of food] that we have; I think he would be shocked by the amount of food that is wasted; and I think he would be depressed that we still don t have a proper free school meals agenda in this country. And when confronted with the problems of obesity and the prevalence of junk food in the nation s diet, Woolton would likely be tearing his hair out, says Sitwell. It s an extraordinary scenario we face where we have greater choice than ever, yet we are killing ourselves by indulging ourselves in that choice by making bad choices and the government is either too lame to attack it, or feels that it is an impossible task. But if Lord Woolton s story has anything to teach us, it is that the impossible can be achieved and that a statistical basis of facts is an invaluable aid to getting the job done. n References 1. Sitwell, W. (2016) Eggs or Anarchy: The Remarkable Story of the Man Tasked with the Impossible: To Feed a Nation at War. London: Simon & Schuster. 2. Proceedings of the First Ordinary Meeting of the Session, , Held on November 22nd, 1945, The President, The Rt. Hon. Lord Woolton, P.C., C.H., in the Chair (1946). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 109(1), Chapman, S. and Marquis, F. (1912). The recruiting of the employing classes from the ranks of the wage-earners in the cotton industry. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 75(3), Hill, A. (1965) The Earl of Woolton, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 128(3), June 2017 significancemagazine.com 29