Archive Article: 2000/08/04
WAR was looming and emergency legislation was brought before parliament preparing agriculture. Measures included the break-up of grass for cereals and the regulation of prices.
Harvest labour was in short supply, with prospective workers taking better-paid work on militia camp construction where they could earn up to £8 a week.
The shortage of labour was so serious in Bedfordshire that the NFU there appealed to schools for help. Elsewhere, students from Oxford and other universities pitched in. In the New Forest, gipsies were recruited and farmers in the northern counties resorted to "pleading" with tramps for help.
A war was also being waged against rabbits. County councils were given the power to compel landowners to destroy the animals. "Long overdue," was how FW described the move.
In Lancashire, other matters were more pressing. In a low-raftered room of the Sitting Goose Inn at Bartle, the annual gooseberry show took place.
Growing and showing the fruit was, according to enthusiasts, akin to a disease. Will Parker won the "premier" gooseberry award. "If you get a championship one year, youve got to keep getting championships to prove the first one wasnt a fluke," he said.
Housewives, meanwhile, were reportedly being "duped" with imported pigmeat sold as British. Pork – some from Argentina – was being imported, cured and then sold under label "home-cured". This, although technically correct, was deemed "misleading".
One proposal was that the Merchandise Marks Act was amended to require effective indication of origin.
Maybe they should have considered labelling the pukka stuff with a little blue and red tractor logo?