The origins and early development of the National Farmers' Union

Abstract

The early history of the National Farmers' Union (NFU) has hitherto been comparatively neglected. The associations of agricultural interest which preceded it and the circumstances of its formation in 1908 are outlined. Whereas agricultural interests had often been divided and weak, the union, particularly under Colin Campbell's leadership, established both its credibility and a sound organizational structure. The period of the Great War consolidated and extended its ability to speak authoritatively for the needs of agriculture and the significance of the War Agricultural Executive Committees is considered. Emerging NFU positions on the issue of protection and its moves towards a more positive and constructive role in policy formulation are examined. Circumstances at the outset of the Second World War forced a recognition of the need for a working partnership between farmers and the state: a development of corporatist relations made possible by the prior emergence of a representative farmers' organization with the necessary organizational capability and political acumen. This paper shows how those competences were acquired. National Farmers' Union of England and Wales was formed in 1908 and rapidly rose to prominence as the major representative organization for farmers. By the 1920s its membership had reached more than 100,000. It peaked at 210,000 in 1953 and is currently around 120,000. Remarkably, there is no readily available published account of the origins of the National Farmers' Union (NFU), although it would be hard to underestimate its importance to the twentieth-century development of agricultural policy in England and Wales. Its role in the immediate post Second World War period did, of course, receive scholarly attention in the seminal study by Self and Storing, but that work provides only a brief outline of the origins of the Union. l This paper seeks to go some way towards remedying this deficiency in our understanding of twentiethcentury agricultural politics. In accounting for the Union's rapid success, Self and Storing emphasize its partisan dedication to the needs of tenant farmers in contrast to earlier and unsuccessul agricultural organizations which had atte pted to represent all three branches of agr culture workers, farmers and landowners. Newby claims, rather more explicitly, that the Union was formed in direct response to growing trade union activity among farm workers and the undue political influence of landlords, especially in Lincolnshire where the first Union branch was formed.2 He cites as evidence the high incidence of union activity in that county and the formation of the Central Land Association ( he forerunner of the County Landowners' Association) in Lincoln in 1907. However, his claim that the NFU was a direc response to the landowners' organization is somewhat misplaced, since the Lincolnshire branch was formed in 1904 an not 1908 as he claims. 1908 was the year in which the national union was launched, and by that time other factors had come stro gly into lay. This paper examines the formation of the Union and argues that whilst it did indeed 1 P Self and H Storing, The State and the Farmer, 1962. 2 H Newby, Country Life: A Social History of Rural England, 1987,