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Products › British Union of Fascists › Land and the People
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By JorianJenks
Born in Oxford in 1899 Jorian Edward Forwood Jenks was the son of a solicitor and later prominent academic and writer. He was educated at Haileybury, and gained experience as a farm manager in
Berkshire and had travelled to New Zealand, Canada and Australia working,
studying and lecturing, and gaining valuable experience in land management and
soil erosion.
He spent a year as an agricultural lecturer in
Devon and during this time married and had two children. Jenks then realised his life's desire which was to farm for himself.
Jenks was attracted to the only Party which supported the cause
of home agriculture and therefore joined the BUF. Jenks was soon appointed the BUF's agricultural adviser. He developed the Party's
agricultural policy and became a prolific writer in BUF publications often writing under the pen-name "Virgilius". Jenks was convinced that many of the modern diseases
and the increase in cancer was the result of the use of chemical
fertilisers.
Jorian Jenks was one of the founders of the Soil Association. He was a friend of the German Food Estate Minister, Walter Darre who has been described as the Father of the Green Movement.
Both Jenks and Darre were passionate advocates of organic farming and healthy food for
the masses. He continued his work for Mosley after the war.
(See his other work "None Need Starve in the Union Movement category)
In this booklet which was published in 1938 by The British
Union of Fascists the author begins by saying that food imports had
increased dramatically since they first become significant in 1870. He
goes on to say that this had led to the decline of British agriculture
and was caused by persistent and deliberate neglect.
He points out that part of the problem was that the City of
London and the great finance houses had invested money overseas. As a
result they took their interest payments in cheap foodstuffs with which
the British farmer could not compete.
One of his proposals is for the setting up a state guaranteed
Agricultural Bank with special credit terms for farmers. The structure
of a fascist corporation in which agriculture was to be represented is
described which would have included producers and consumers.
The importance of attracting a large population back to the
land is advocated, as is the desire to have plenty of small family
farms and smallholdings for horticulture.
Jenks as always, emphasises the importance of good naturally
produced food, at a price everyone could afford. He says that cheap
food for cheap labour was the current policy, and that Mosley stood
for raising the lowest wages to meet a fair level of prices.
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