On This Day, 2 May 1918

Birmingham Daily Post

Thursday 2 May 1918

THE NEW RATION SCHEME

It is not unlikely that residents in Birmingham will be critical of the pending change in rationing regulations. The city had the distinction of devising and putting into practice the first local rationing scheme, which originally applied to tea, butter, and margarine. We are leaving out of account sugar, which is rationed nationally. The Birmingham scheme was frankly experimental, but it was the product of much thought and consultation, and the expectation that it would work successfully was reasonable. Its basis was the family or household, and not the individual. The advantage of the system was that it simplified clerical work both for the Food Control Committee and the retailer; the disadvantage was that it made no provision by which any inhabitant going to another rationed district could conveniently obtain supplies of the rationed articles. However, the scheme has worked very well, and has formed the model on which many other local schemes have been constructed. So long as it was limited to tea and fats, and there was but partial rationing of these articles elsewhere, it could have been retained without serious difficulty.

In recent weeks, however, the situation has changed. A universal meat rationing scheme has been established, necessarily based on the individual coupon system, and it is now proposed universally to ration tea and fats. Moreover, we have obviously approached definitely nearer to the rationing of other articles. Under these circumstances the Ministry of Food has had to consider the whole question from the standpoint of the nation, rather than from that of the localities which pioneered the work of rationing, and in so doing it could not avoid concluding that any general scheme must concern itself with the individual and not with the household. Even though a household basis might be practicable for tea and fats, it is evident that it could not apply to bread (which may yet have to be rationed). The only sound policy to adopt, therefore, was to set up a uniform system applying to all articles which now are, or may be, rationed and to remodel all local schemes now in operation in conformity therewith. Birmingham may not be unreasonable in regretting that such necessity should have arisen but we hope no resentment will make its appearance. It has to be realised that the Ministry of Food is taking the only course which is practicable, and the best must be made of a bad job. The city, however, has every right to ask that the Ministry should give special facilities for making the change-over as little inconvenient as possible. Even at present, satisfactory as the Birmingham system has proved to be in essentials, the regulations are rather vexatious in some respects, and the staff at the disposal of the Food Control Committee is quite inadequate to the work it is called upon to do. If we are asked to muddle through the change from the household to the individual system without a greatly enlarge staff, and under the harassing inconvenience of excessive “red tape,” we are certain to encounter a great deal of public discontent. Already we have witnessed the irony of huge queues assembling at the Food Office consequent on the operation of a scheme which was devise primarily to abolish queues. Unless exceptional measures are permitted to be adopted in issuing the new cards the queues will become so great as to be almost unmanageable, and the community will be put to a vast amount of avoidable discomfort and inconvenience. At best the inconvenience inherent in any such change of system as is contemplated must be considerable, and any unnecessary addition would certainly jeopardise the smooth working of the new scheme, if it did nothing else.