Lest we forget - the Merchant Navy lifeline

True, Britain's 'Dig for Victory' campaign staved off the threat of starvation during World War II. This island nation grew only enough food to feed one in three of its 48 million people before 1939. 


Ten thousand square miles of land was "brought under the plough" during the conflict. Increased food production halved reliance on imports by 1945. But we mustn't forget food imports helped keep the people alive and well. 


Britain's Merchant Navy vessels carried 268,650,000 tons of imports to Britain between 1939 and 1945 - a vital lifeline. But the human cost of this lifeline proved enormous. 30,248 merchant navy sailors and fishing fleet crew members lost their lives when their ships carrying vital food and supplies to Britain were sunk by German battleships and submarines. 

Britain's merchant navy consisted of some 3,000 deep sea cargo ships and tankers and another 1,000 coasters when World War II broke out in 1939. An average of 2,500 merchant ships required protection on any given day during the war. 

You'll recall my postings about one of these ships - the Andalucia Star - sunk by a German U-Boat in October 1942. The ship was one of 1,923,000 tons of shipping lost during the height of the U-Boat offensive in 1942. 

U-Boats sank 7,622,400 tons of British merchant shipping by the end of the war. 
British shipping represented 54% of world shipping sunk during World War II.


This week, rightly, we wear red poppies to remember the soliders, airmen and sailors killed during World War II. Remembrance Sunday is also our opportunity to remember those 30,248 merchant navy sailors and fishing fleet crew members who never saw the end of the war.

Paul Coleman, London, November 2010.

Support the Royal British Legion, Britain's custodian of Remembrance. 

Statistics and image: Imperial War Museum, London.

People are hungry for land

Will there be enough land available in Britain if we have to grow more of our own fruit and vegetables during the 21st Century?

That's the question I posed in my last post which invoked Winston Churchill's war cry, 'We must plough up the land'. 

The common perception says land is scarce in Britain. Journalists like Kevin Cahill and Jason Cowley argue this perception is based on a myth.  

Cahill says there's plenty of land that could be cultivated for food. The problem is Britain's land is owned and controlled by a tiny minority.

The United Kingdom consists of 60 million acres, says Cowley. A massive 41 million acres are defined as "agricultural". Mountains, forests and rivers account for another 15 per cent, much of which is owned by the Crown for use by the Ministry of Defence.

That leaves four million acres where most of Britain's 61 million people live. Increasing congestion in this 'urban plot' consequently inflates already expensive land and property prices.

So who owns Britain? Almost 70% of Britain's land is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population. Put more starkly, 41 million acres are owned by 158,000 families. Some 24 million families live in the four million urban acres.

Only Spain rivals Britain for such an unequal concentration of land ownership. Britain's wealthiest landowner is the Duke of Westminster, the owner of a land portfolio that includes Belgravia and Mayfair. 

Urban agriculture is chiefly confined to the 250,000 allotments that remain out of the 1,400,000 allotments created in World War II. 
True, it's a big decrease but another statistic suggests the loss of allotments is far from being the end of Britain's land ownership saga.

"More than 100,000 people are on the waiting lists for any that become vacant, and the queue is still growing," says Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall. "People are hungry for land."

Paul Coleman, London, November 2010.

The coming battle over land and property, by Jason Cowley (additional reporting by Duncan Robinson), New Statesman, 18 October, 2010.

Image from Ministry of Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London.

Quote from The Ministry of Food, Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2010.

"We must plough up the land" - Winston Churchill

My last posting 'Mind the carrot...etc' ended by asking what would be the impact if 100,000 people in London started growing their own fruit and vegetables?

To find out, I embarked on a quick sortie to the Ministry of Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in Kennington, south London.

The 'Dig for Victory' artefacts on display unearthed (sorry, pardon the pun) some juicy statistics. 

For instance, six million British families grew their own vegetables during World War II. 

The number of allotments rose from 850,000 in 1939 to 1,750,000 by 1943.

Allotments sprouted (oops!) in unlikely places, such as around Queen Victoria's precious Albert Memorial in Hyde Park (see photo). 

Vegetable production increased by 55% during the war. Potato output rocketed up 80%.

One million British households kept chickens, geese and turkeys in 1943. 

Over 100,000 people joined 4,000 registered pig clubs. These produced 6,000 tons of meat per year - enough bacon for 150 million breakfasts.

Such sizzling stats, of course, reflect Britain's wartime fear of mass starvation.

The Andalucia Star was just one of hundreds of food-carrying merchant ships sunk during the conflict.Tons of Argentinian meat and eggs bound for Britain cascaded into the Atlantic when a German U-Boat torpedoed and sunk the Andalucia Star - my grandfather Les' former merchant navy cargo vessel - in October 1942.

"We must plough up the land," urged Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Manchester on 27 January, 1940. 

'Dig for Victory' and the Ministry of Food succeeded in keeping Britain fed during the war. 

Today's emergencies might not brandish a swastika or fire torpedoes but rising oil and food prices, financial turmoil and junk food diets all menace us from various directions. 
Maybe, we'll have to grow more of our own food in the twenty-first century.

But will we have enough land?

Image: Imperial War Museum

Paul Coleman, London, November 2010

Mind the carrrot - more from the nef debate

"What would be the impact if every garden in London grew carrots?"

The audience chuckled. David, the guy earnestly posing the question, looked peeved. David's question was serious but the South Bank audience couldn't resist the thought of thousands of Londoners chomping carrots - Bugs Bunny-style - at bus stops, on the tube and down the pub.

Professor Jayati Ghosh, a key player in the nef debate, answered David. Urban agriculture in Cuba, she explained, had switched in recent years from large state-owned mono-crop farms to a system of polycrop smallholdings where citizens grow food for their families, neighbourhoods and for sale at markets.

I'd heard about this Cuban transition a few days earlier at a smaller gathering at the Marchmont Street Community Centre near Russell Square. Cuban agro-ecology scientist Fernando Gunes-Monzote explained how a land redistribution programme started a few years ago had encouraged 100,000 people - many of them young people living in towns and cities - to farm their own land. 

Fernando showed recent photos of these Cuban smallholdings. One showed a strip of land, not much longer and no wider than the average back garden of a London semi, full of flourishing crops - pineapples, yams, cassava, tomatoes and bananas.

Locally organised organic urban farming now supplies the people of Havana and other towns with 80% of their food. 

I began to wonder - what would be the impact if 100,000 people in London started growing their own fruit and vegetables?

Where did our money go? Surviving and thriving in the Great Transition, Wednesday, 27 October 2010, hosted by nef.


Image: Imperial War Museum


Paul Coleman, London, October 2010.

Britain's 'ridiculous collective masochism'

The actress Maureen Lipman strode down Charing Cross Road carrying a bunch of flowers. Hundreds of people enjoyed an evening meal at the restaurant at the Royal Festival Hall. The West End of London was buzzing - and it was only a Wednesday night. 


I rushed down to London's South Bank to hear a lively perspective on Britain's economic woes from Professor Jayati Ghosh, one of the world's leading economists. "It's extraordinary to come to the UK and see all this collective masochism," said Professor Ghosh from the Jawarharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. 


"Y'know, where people in the UK are saying 'it's a disaster, we've all been bad, we have to have suffer and deserve all of our cuts!' In fact, you have this government debt largely because you bailed out a whole lot of banks," added Professor Ghosh. 


"But, in any case, the state can't go bankrupt," she continued. "This whole announcement - 'if we don't do these cuts then we're going bankrupt' - is completely ridiculous. 

"It's surprising to come here and see the extent to which this completely wrong rhetoric about how government debt has to be redeemed immediately, 'it's like a household' and so on, has been absorbed by the population. I think it's extraordinary...and people have to get out of this thinking!"

Andrew Simms, policy director of the new economics foundation, cheekily wondered whether the "new masochism was in any way related to the public school education system". Who on earth could he be thinking of?

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas cited a worrying prediction by Lloyd's of London that oil prices will soar to $200 per barrel by 2013. If this comes to pass, the cost of fertiliser, food transportation and packaging will rise and food prices will go up. 

"Our food supply system is massively insecure," added Lucas. "It only needs a few lorry strikes and demonstrations outside fuel depots to know we're only nine meals away from a food crisis." 


That's six meals for some, if the size of the portions on the plates at the Festival Hall were anything to go by.

The nef's lively and well-attended 'Great Transition' debate at the Purcell Room wasn't all doom and gloom though. Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood certainly stamped her personality and perspective on the proceedings. 

So, I'll return to Professor Ghosh, Lucas and Westwood in later postings. 

Of course, before that happens, I'll have to firstly stop beating myself up over the financial crisis caused by the banks.

Where did our money go? Surviving and thriving in the Great Transition, Wednesday, 27 October 2010, hosted by nef.

Paul Coleman, London, October 2010

American economist warns cuts will damage UK economy

I caught on TV this morning (Monday October 25) an interesting analysis comparing American and British responses to the financial crisis. The Obama administration has spent billions to stimulate demand and spur economic recovery. In Britain, as we now know, the Cameron-Clegg ConDem coalition is committed to deep public spending cuts.

"The British idea appears to be if they make cuts in the public sector, the private sector will come along and re-absorb those people, put them back to work," said Professor James K Galbraith of the University of Texas.

"I don't see how that is going to happen," added the Austin-based Professor Galbraith. "The  British have financial problems similar to ours (in the United States) and I suspect that what is going to happen is that they're going to end up with a great many more people on unemployment, on the dole, or simply retired, without any of the benefit of a rebound of the private economy that they appear to be hoping for. 

"So I think they're pursuing a strategy which is really based upon a very fanciful idea about how an economy works and I would be very surprised if it pays off for them."

Professor Galbraith was interviewed on Al Jazeera TV's Counting the Cost. 


Paul Coleman, London, October 2010.

Toasting the Andalucia Star's brave crews

Out of the blue I recently learnt that another little girl - three-year-old Gillian Ash - was rescued from the sea after the Blue Star Line cargo ship, the Andalucia Star, was torpedoed and sunk on 6th October 1942 during the Second World War.

Gillian Ash fell from the same tipped lifeboat as Jill McNichol, the five-year-old girl whose rescue I've detailed in previous postings. Gillian's mother plucked her from the cold choppy Atlantic and pulled her up into a lifeboat. 

I received details about Gillian Ash from Mary Godward, whose uncle George Godward was on his way to England as a volunteer on board the Andalucia Star when it was torpedoed three times by a German U-Boat submarine - U-107 - and sunk with three lives lost. 

I'll highlight more details about Gillian Ash's rescue story in future postings. But for the moment, I just want to say how pleasing it was to receive the following apt and timely note today from Jill McNichol.

Jill kindly wrote:

"My father always phoned me and we would drink a toast today to the Andalucia Star, her brave crew and all who sailed on her during her many voyages. 

Join me in a glass of anything you like. 

All the best and cheers, Jill."

Sixty-eight years ago, Jill was crossing the Atlantic on the Andalucia Star with her father, S.G. Bicheno. According to one account, Mrs L.A. Green, “an elderly stewardess”, switched on a red light on Jill's lifejacket before lifting the little girl into a lifeboat with other women and children. 

Most of the lifeboats had already been safely lowered but, as another survivor Douglas Gibson later recalled, one of the lowering lifeboats went down bow first, throwing many of its occupants, including Jill (and also Gillian) it seems, into the sea. "The bar steward and an elderly stewardess were crushed between the ship and the lifeboat and killed,” said Gibson. 


William Wheeler, the Andalucia’s lamp trimmer (the ship's lighting technician), heard little Jill’s cry for help and then spotted her red light switched on earlier by Mrs Green. Wheeler immediately dived into the water, swam through wreckage for a distance of 600 yards to Jill and supported her for 30 minutes before helping Jill into the lifeboat. 

"Daddy was getting into a lifeboat when the third torpedo struck," says Jill. "He was very lucky not to have been killed on the spot."

Early October is a poignant moment for Jill and possibly other Andalucia Star survivors and their descendants dotted around the world. "Daddy, every year when he was alive, would phone me on the anniversary of the sinking and we would drink a toast to the ship and her brave crew," says Jill.

So, earlier today, rummaging inside a kitchen cupboard, I found an old bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and two ancient dusty cans of Fosters lager. I opted for the bottle of wine and pondered how a single event nearly 70 years ago continues to echo through the decades and connect with successive generations.

So, I raise my glass to my grandfather, Leslie Coleman (1906-81), who sailed many times as a crew member on the Andalucia Star - and I'll join you, Jill, in the toast you and your father so thoughtfully invoked: 

"To the Andalucia Star, her brave crew and all who sailed on her during her many voyages...we remember and salute you."

Paul Coleman, London, October 2010

Thanks to Jill McNichol.