News that the government is setting up a ‘land bank’ of brownfield sites, consisting of bits and pieces of spare or disused land, and encouraging councils and private landowners to lease these out to local groups as allotments, underscores the impression of a national appetite for ‘growing your own’.
News that the government is setting up a ‘land bank’ of brownfield sites, consisting of bits and pieces of spare or disused land, and encouraging councils and private landowners to lease these out to local groups as allotments, underscores the impression of a national appetite for ‘growing your own’. Certainly, according to the National Society of Allotments and Leisure Gardeners, there are at least 100,000 names presently on allotment waiting lists.
John Denham, Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government (or DoSAC, as we devotees of The Thick of It like to call it), compared this initiative to the wartime ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. Presumably, he did so on the grounds that this is the first time since the war that allotments might be created by local authorities, rather than relentlessly sold off for building or other construction works — most famously, the century-old Manor Garden Allotments, which were bulldozed to make a path on the periphery of the Olympic Park.
‘From guerrilla gardeners to community growers,’ intoned the minister, ‘there is a real keenness to combine ’40s-style frugality and ’70s-style good-life ethics to meet 21st-century demands for healthy living, cheaper meals and locally sourced food.’ In the words of Malcolm Tucker, ‘What the f**k does this fellow know about Forties frugality, when his government has helped saddle us with debts of £860 billion?’
There are profound differences between the Dig for Victory campaign of the 1940s and today’s headline-snatching initiative. Then, we were a country at war, ruled by a coalition government with authoritarian powers. Now, we are experiencing a short-term economic crisis, however uncomfortable, and stoutly (I hope) resisting curtailment of our freedoms. It is impossible to argue that the sense of common purpose, although it exists in many allotment societies, is universally as strong. And, these days, we grow vegetables for health and recreation, not because merchant ships are in danger of being sunk bringing in oranges and bananas. Mr Denham’s facile comparison belittles the scale and seriousness of wartime endeavour.
If you want to get some idea what Dig for Victory was like, I recommend a visit to the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth, which is presently running an exhibition called The Ministry of Food (until next January) about the kitchen and garden on the home front. Small, but carefully curated, it is a delight, particularly because of the prominence given to those wonderfully imaginative and artistic contemporary posters, depicting, for example, a ship’s bow, side by side and the same shape as a spade, with the legend: ‘Use spades, not ships.’ As memorable is the photograph of the enormous boot of Mr W.H. McKie of Acton on his spade, below the words ‘Dig for Victory’. I wonder whether Mr Denham would be happy to see the lawn in front of the Albert Memorial dug up for allotments, as happened in the war, a photograph of which appears in this exhibition.
It would somehow be typical that, just after the government jumped on the grow-your-own bandwagon, it slowed down, as people get thoroughly bored with waiting for an allotment or discover vegetable growing has costs of its own. I should be sorry if that happened, since kitchen gardening is such an obvious good and one of the great pleasures of my life. But government initiatives involving ‘meanwhile leases’ and vegetables grown in skips on building sites are hardly the answer. Stern words from the Secretary of State reminding local councils of their statutory obligation to provide ‘sufficient’ allotments, under section 23 of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908, would surely make more difference.
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