Скачать или смотреть The History of Organic Farming

Episode 21 - The Organic Movement. The rise of European Fascism inspired the British aristocracy to develop an ultra-conservative revolutionary movement intended to restore feudalism and return the aristocracy to their former position as the ‘ruling class’. William Sanderson established a racist, misogynistic critique of industrial society. Gerard Wallop, Viscount Lymington and later 9th Earl Portsmouth put his significant wealth behind the idea, giving rise to the English Mistery. The Mistery attempted to hijack the conservative party and install Lord Lloyd as a dictator.

Upon failure, Lymington founds the English Array and Lady Eve Balfour’s estate becomes the Haughley Experiment, to defend their blood-and-soil ideology from scientific critique. Rolf Gardiner leads Kinship in Husbandry during the war, while Jorian Jenks is temporarily interned for being a threat to national security.

After the war they found the Soil Association, which included Jenks and Gardiner who corresponded with Nazi Food and Agriculture Minister Richard Walter Darre after.

The effects of this are discussed - the Sustainable Farming Incentive, the Land Recovery Schemes etc.

We take a look at the Soil Association’s selective account of its own history, its focus on ‘Lady Eve’, and the claims of its supporters on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Great Lives’. Sarah Langford, author of ‘Rooted’, and Patrick Holden, former director of the Association, both speak very fondly about Lady Balfour while continuously dodging questions about why she wasn’t taken seriously in her lifetime.

And we follow Lymington as he abandons his soil in favour of new ‘servants’ in British Kenya.

0:00 - Intro
0:30 - Blood and Soil
2:55 - Fascism?
5:00 - British Fascism?
6:10 - The Context
8:44 - Modern Feudalism
13:15 - The English Mistery
15:05 - Peasants!
17:46 - Continental Friends
19:05 - The Plan
21:39 - The English Array
22:39 - ‘The Soil’
26:00 - Anti-science
27:00 - Lady Eve Balfour
29:30 - A Second Chance?
30:20 - The Soil Association
31:08 - A Long Shadow
33:14 - The Soiled Association
34:59 - The Cover-up
39:35 - A Happy Ending

Secondary Sources:
‘Ur-Fascism’ by Umberto Eco
‘Eating Nature in Modern Germany: Food, Agriculture and Environment c.1870 to 2000’ by Corianna Treitel
‘Neo-Tories: the Revolt of British Conservatives against Democracy and Political Modernity’ by Bernhard Dietz
Dietz calls them ‘Neo-Tories’ where I call them organicists, because they wanted to return to the Toryism of the 18th century and earlier. Dietz does not define ‘fascist’ in his book, but his description of ‘Neo-Toryism’ fits firmly within Eco’s ‘Ur-Fascism’, which is the definition I believe best reflects the strange dynamics of fascist ideology. Dietz also concludes the movement fell into irrelevance upon the outbreak of war which overlooks its continuation as Kinship in Husbandry and the Soil Association.
Stone, D., ‘The English Mistery, The BUF, and the Dilemmas of British Fascism’ in The Journal of Modern History Vol.75, (Chicago, 2003) pp. 336-358.
Moore-Colyer, R. J., ‘Back to Basics: Rolf Gardiner, H.J. Massingham and “A Kinship in Husbandry”’, in Rural History, Vol.12 Iss.1, pp. 85-108.

Primary Sources:
Stamp, D. L., ‘Soil and Civilisation’ in Nature Vol.158, (London, 1946) p. 853.
Wrench, G. T., Reconstruction by Way of the Soil (London, 1946).
Wrench, G. T., Restoration of the Peasantries, with Especial Reference to that of India (London, 1939).
Lord Lymington, Famine in England, (London, 1938).
Lord Lymington, ‘Soil and Survival, Can the Health of the Land Survive Urban Science?’, in Country Life Vol.88, pp.125 (London, 1940).
Lymington, ‘A Knot of Roots: an autobiography’, 1965
Balfour, E. B., The Living Soil: Evidence of the Importance to Human Health of Soil Vitality, with Special Reference to Post-war Planning (London, 1943)
Jacks, G. V. and Whyte R. O., The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey of Soil Erosion (London, 1939).


Websites:
https://www.soilassociation.org/who-w...
https://www.soilassociation.org/take-...
https://www.gov.uk/government/publica...
https://researchbriefings.files.parli...

Media used:
Beethoven's 5th by Abydos_Music on pixabay, creative commons
'A Farmer's boy', British Council, creative commons,
'Make Fruitful the Land', British Council, creative commons
Planned greatergerman reich By Hayden120 - "Utopia: The 'Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation'". Institut für Zeitgeschichte. München - Berlin. 1999., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Hare by marwan2023 on Pixabay, Creative commons