The impact of the EEC on UK farming in the 1980s - and the call to buy local produce today

Thames TV YouTube clip from July 1983

By HILARY GAVIN

THERE’S no denying that I felt quite superior donning a scientist’s white coat for my holiday job at the EEC Food Intervention Board’s grain mountain in Tangmere, West Sussex, in the summer of 1984.

Of course, I would have appeared even more imposing to strangers if I’d have needed to wear boffins’ spectacles in my early twenties – but I’m glad to say I had perfect 20/20 vision in my younger days.

For those of you who don’t know, young people – even graduates – felt despondent about their future job prospects in Britain in the early Eighties as unemployment figures hit record levels.

At the time, I was desperate to leave the UK for a while to go travelling abroad so I was lucky to find THREE meagrely-paid holiday jobs to save up money for my adventures.

Luckily, my Mum and Dad didn’t ask me to pay them rent after returning home to Chichester in West Sussex as a history graduate from Aberystwyth, University College of Wales, so the holiday money I was earning from BT Directory Enquiries, a production job at a cheap jewellery business, and the European Economic Community’s (EEC) Intervention Board quickly totted up.

There’s no doubt that I truly grafted over the summer of 1984 and I have fond memories working at the old Battle of Britain airfield at Tangmere with two other twenty-somethings.

Sadly, I cannot remember the young lads’ names – or whether they were fellow graduates – but they were friendly, and, as the Thames TV “Against the Grain” clip embedded above reminds me, they faced dangers working at EEC Grain Intervention hangars.

In brief, my fellow workers would wait for farmers’ lorries carrying grain to arrive at Tangmere when they would clamber onboard the back of them, place wooden planks across the yield to walk along and vacuum up samples of the grain from the load for me to test.

If I’m honest, I’ve no idea why my local Job Centre thought I was the ideal candidate for a job testing the quality and moisture of the grain, which if I remember rightly was just wheat, because I’d been a carefree Arts and not a serious science student at university.

Saying that, once I’d donned my white “doctor’s” coat, I took my role sifting through the debris in the grain samples handed into me at “my laboratory” in one of the old Battle of Britain RAF airfield outbuildings in West Sussex deadly seriously.

I used tweezers to separate good wheat from the chaff before weighing it to calculate percentages for my paperwork, and I had one of those “new-fangled” microwaves to partially cook the grain to ascertain its moisture content etc.

At the time in the early Eighties, Britain had been facing a heightened threat from the Soviet Union in the Cold War, when the capitalist West placed a premium on science and not the Arts.

In the late 1970s, I distinctly remember feeling like a dunce as an A-level arts student at school in Chichester compared to academic pupils who studied chemistry, mathematics and physics.

To be honest, I don’t know how teachers stream secondary school pupils nowadays but I recently heard that young people, who would rather study the creative arts than science, might be dissuaded – as some of us were in the Seventies – because “it doesn’t pay.”

A pity really, because often the creative arts (especially painting and textiles) involve a lot of science. A cousin of mine is a stonemason, which – like architecture – involves artistic flair and a mathematical bent, so, I – for one – never understood this “division”.

Anyhow, I’m mentioning my brief stint working at Tangmere in 1984 because I am keen to promote responsible local farming here on the Manhood Peninsula in West Sussex and across the globe.

Of course, some people my age more than likely recall Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof taking PM Maggie Thatcher (a former chemist) to task on telly over the ethics of EEC Butter Mountains a year or so later in the Eighties.

At the time, Bob Geldof, and his fellow global rock stars, were raising the plight of starving Ethiopians following BBC Michael Buerk’s report on telly highlighting the famine in Africa.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly “Sir Bob” – and Ultravox’s Midge Ure – garnered support from their celebrity buddies and from the general public for the Live Aid concert in 1985.

Personally, I like to believe that the eagerness in which ordinary people embraced this cause reflects the good nature of the human race which- on the whole – doesn’t wish man/womankind ill!

Of course, farming in Britain is very different today from the protectionist times of the EEC Food Intervention boards in the 1980s. Today, farmers are struggling as PLC-run supermarkets maintain a stranglehold over global food production and buying.

If you have read my WordPress blog or social media posts, you’ll be aware that I have shared http://www.produceandprovide.co.uk and http://www.sunshineandgreen.co.uk Facebook videos, so I hope you too get on the growing local produce bandwagon in Britain.

After all, eating a healthy diet and knowing where your food comes from isn’t only good for our individual wellbeing – hopefully, it also benefits our local eco-structure and nature too.

See links below:

Home – Farming With Wildlife

Manhood Peninsula Partnership

Hilary Gavin

A freelance journalist who wants to see a return to public accountability in the local press

Hilary Gavin

Freelance Journalist & Writer

T/A Business ‘n’ Commas (Sole trader)

6 Southover Way

Hunston

CHICHESTER

West Sussex

PO20 1NY

Tel: 07940 444664

Email: grumpywoman@hilarygavin.blog

Hilary Gavin

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