This large map provides valuable insight into one of the under-reported crises of the home-front in World War Two. Britain was a net food importer and this lack of self-sufficiency was placed under enormous stress by Germany’s submarine fleet which targeted both military and civilian shipping from as far away as Canada. Concerns over feeding a population of 50 million were such that in 1940 Whitehall revived the Ministry of Food Control (1916-21) - abbreviating it to Ministry of Food. - under the direction of businessman, Frederick James Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton (1883-1964).
Writing in the year that this map was produced, J.J. MacGregor gives an overview of the operations of the Ministry of Food: it “is in touch with everyone, and its role of applying restrictions and controls is bound to be unpopular and made difficult from time to time. Naturally, the Ministry of Food was concerned with imported as well as home-grown food and it has among its functions the responsibility for food imports, the efficiency of distribution, rationing, and the interests of the consuming public” (MacGregor).
Woolton proved more than capable overseeing a bureaucracy of over 50,000, the Ministry set up over 1,000 food distribution centres, and ensured that supplies were protected from enemy action (i.e. bombing) and spoilage, while seeing that the food was well distributed and always available in all parts of the country. His “biggest triumph was getting people to accept rationing as not only necessary and patriotic but also equitable and efficient. He soon became, next to Churchill, the most popular and identifiable government minister. Woolton took the opportunity to implement positive social reform when he began the provision of milk to schoolchildren and orange juice to expectant mothers” (ODNB).
The map was created by S. Owen Reese, the Assistant Divisional Food Officer for Edmund Hill-Snook (1888 -1976), the Ministry of Food’s Divisional Food Officer for South Wales. It would have been consulted frequently, if not daily, to plan for the storage, protection and distribution of precious food supplies across the region. At the time of its creation, the situation was still dire, but with the entry of United States into the war, no longer at its nadir.
Devoted to South Wales, the map shows the entire southern half of the country. Its seven counties (which have since been revised) are all coloured in outline and grouped into six zones: Monmouthshire (Zone 1); Glamorgan (Zone 2, including Cardiff); Carmarthenshire (Zone 3); Pembrokeshire (Zone 4); Cadiganshire (Zone 5); Radnorshire and Brecknockshire (Zone 6, embracing the two counties). These are further divided into rural and urban zones - marked S.WA (South Wales), so ‘Cardiff Urban S.WA 22’, or ‘Neath Rural S.WA 67’ - rural zones having low-density populations and were frequently net producers of food, while the opposite was true of Cardiff, Pembroke and Swansea. The numerous towns and villages that dot the countryside are actually marked to denote the locations of food storage and distribution centres.
An extraordinary survival from the Welsh home front in the heart of the Second World War.
MacGregor, J.J., “Britain’s Wartime Food Policy“ in Journal of Farm Economics, Vol. 25, No. 2 (May, 1943) p.385.
