Britishness, farming and War

In the first and second world war, the government used advertising posters to convey
important messages. In particular, images of the countryside were used to recruit
soldiers. Campaigns for workers on the land, and messages about growing food
drew a parallel between agricultural production and war. Ideas about the ‘island-
ness’ of Britain embodied national identity in the land, with farmers as its custodian.

As German blockades in the Second World War prevented the importation of food
supplies from other countries, British food production was central to the war effort.
Previous to the war, Britain had been dependent on imports from other country. Now
that she was under attack, if she did not increase her ability to grow her own food,
starvation of the people of Britain would force the government into surrender.
Posters such as Use Spades, Not Ships and Dig For Victory encouraged people to
grow their own food.

Other Second World War posters call for women to work on the land as farm
labourers. Appeals to individuals to Join the Women’s Land Army echo campaigns
for fighters on the front line, such as the famous Lord Kitchener slogan from the First
World War, ‘Your Country needs You’. The women in these posters are happy,
strong and heroic fighters in this ‘Land Army’. The production of food is a parallel
contribution to the war effort to that of armed combat.

Whilst war posters had an important, didactic message, they were also significant in
the way that they influenced the way that people in Britain saw themselves and the
place of Britain. In Your Country’s Call, a poster from the First World War, a soldier
stands in front of a small village settlement, surrounded by rolling hills, divided neatly
and aesthetically by hedges. The poster asks ‘Isn’t this worth fighting for?’ A similar
poster from the Second World War, Your Britain, Fight For it Now features a similar
image, with a shepherd and flock of sheep in the foreground.

Your Country’s Call can be seen on the internet at:

http://www.firstworldwar.com/posters/images/pp_uk_08.jpg

Your Britain, Fight For it Now:

http://www.ww2poster.co.uk/posters/imagebank/images/NewbouldYourBritain.jpg
First published online in March 2009 by FACE and
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supported by Arts Council England.
Text © Georgina Barney, Images as credited.
In these posters, the thing worth fighting for - ‘Britain’ - is symbolized by a
generalized rural idyll. Rather than showing a specific city or cultural landmark such
as Manchester, or Westminster Palace and Big Ben, ‘Britain’ is the ‘Country’. The
poster argues that the identity of Britain is embodied in the land.

The image of the countryside pointed to by the soldier in Your Country’s Call reminds
me of Palmer’s painting, Coming from Evening Church. Mountains and trees
surround Palmer’s human scene in the same way that the fields surround the village
in this image of ‘Britishness’. Is the poster a kind of pastoral, a quasi pre-industrial
scene? Human habitation is surrounded by agricultural production; the two are
perfectly linked in an ideal rural world.

The landscape in Your Country’s Call and Your Britain is in fact not unspecific. It
does not evoke the moorlands of Yorkshire, the Norfolk Broads or the wild
mountainous landscapes of Western Scotland. Instead it is a place Constable might
have painted rather than the Romantics. ‘Britain’ is a specific place: the fertile,
agricultural landscape of southern England.

In my essay The Victorian Pastoral I argued that the sheep in the painting Our
English Coasts represent British people under threat from foreign invasion. As in the
case of the posters discussed, it was a very particular kind of Britishness, dependent
on a sense of is-land-ness. It is an identity forged by war, which explains in part why
‘Britain’ is presented as southern England: it is the part of Britain most at threat from
foreigners and the place where invaders from across the English Channel would
arrive.

First published online in March 2009 by FACE and

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supported by Arts Council England.
Text © Georgina Barney, Images as credited.
Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep), William Holman Hunt, 1852 (image, Wikipedia
Commons)

The association between a sense of is-land-ness and ‘Britishness’ was compounded

in the Second World War by the drive towards self-sufficient food production.
Advertising campaigns made the production of food a patriotic activity. A theme of
increased agricultural production made vocational farmers heroes, whilst a ‘back to
the land’ sensibility encouraged ‘everyday’ British people to grow their own food.

Is this a contradiction? I find these messages curious in the way that they
simultaneously evoked a yearning for the pre-industrial and paved the way for more
intensive farming methods to feed Britain. This seems to be a contradictory attitude
about food and farming, which I observe remaining in British society today. The art
of these posters is to some degree responsible.

First published online in March 2009 by FACE and

Page |3
supported by Arts Council England.
Text © Georgina Barney, Images as credited.