New ministries in Britain

On 22 December 1916 the royal commission giving assent to fifteen Acts was read in the House of Lords, among them two that changed the shape of the British administration. The New Ministries and Secretaries Act established the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Shipping, and the Ministry of Pensions Act created a separate department dealing with war pensions and allowances. Linked to the Acts is the appointment of Lord Devonport as Food Controller, which the British chronology of the war records under 26 December.

Ministries for a new government

The new departments were part of the reconstruction of the state announced by David Lloyd George, prime minister of the coalition government since 7 December. They were to be headed by men already named in the list of ministers published on 10 December. The Act was thus largely a confirmation of the existing state of affairs: the ministers had been at work for a fortnight or so, and Parliament had to give them a legal basis and powers. The bill was introduced on 18 December by the Home Secretary, George Cave, and the House of Commons dealt with it within a few days. During its passage a clause was added giving ministry status also to the Air Board, until then merely a committee coordinating supplies for the army and naval air services. The Act also allowed additional parliamentary under-secretaries of state to be appointed.

Critics, among them the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna, accused the government of putting men from outside Parliament at the head of departments who would not be answerable to it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Andrew Bonar Law, replied that the very point was for them to do the work rather than defend it in the House of Commons. That role was to be taken over by their deputies.

Food and Lord Devonport

The Minister of Food, with the title of Food Controller, was Lord Devonport, Hudson Kearley. He had started in the Tetley tea firm and then built up International Stores, a chain of more than two hundred grocery shops. From 1892 to 1910 he was a Liberal MP, under Henry Campbell-Bannerman he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, where Lloyd George came to know him, and from 1909 he chaired the Port of London Authority without pay. The prime minister valued his organising ability and believed that no one in the country knew the food trade better. Devonport’s appointment was officially announced as early as 10 December, and on 14 December he spoke in the House of Lords as Food Controller. The date of 26 December given by the chronology falls after the Act had come into force.

The Act laid on the Controller the duty of regulating the supply and consumption of food so as to ensure the country was properly supplied, and of encouraging its production. He could take over the powers of other departments, and the government could grant him further powers under the Defence of the Realm Act. The situation was serious. The country imported more than half its grain from overseas, the area under cereals had been shrinking since the start of the war, German submarines were sinking more and more grain ships, and food prices were rising. Even before Devonport’s appointment the government had introduced a census of potatoes, a new standard for flour and bread and maximum prices for milk, and on 18 December an order came into force limiting meals in restaurants and hotels to three courses in the evening and two at other times. Devonport announced in the House of Lords that fair distribution was what mattered most, that the flaunting of sugar in fancy cakes would come to an end, and that if voluntary restraint was not enough he would introduce rationing. During the debate on the Act the new President of the Board of Agriculture, Rowland Prothero, warned that the country was a “besieged city” and that the war could be won or lost in Britain’s corn and potato fields. At the end of December Henry Rew became secretary of the ministry, with the economist William Beveridge as his deputy.

Shipping and Joseph Maclay

The Ministry of Shipping, with the title of Shipping Controller, went to Joseph Maclay, a Glasgow shipowner and partner in the firm of Maclay & Macintyre. He sat in neither House of Parliament and admitted himself that he could not work at the ministry and in the House of Commons at the same time. He was defended there by his deputy, the Liberal MP and economist Leo Chiozza Money. Lloyd George regarded shipping as the country’s “jugular vein”, and in his first speech as prime minister he announced that the whole merchant navy would come under state control, like the railways. Maclay opposed nationalisation. The ships remained the property of the shipowners, who were to go on earning, though their excess profits were taxed, but the state decided what they carried and where. Under the Act the Controller was to oversee and regulate shipping so as to make the best use of tonnage in wartime conditions. He took over tasks hitherto divided between the Admiralty, the Board of Trade and various committees.

Pensions and labour

The Ministry of Pensions was to bring together matters previously handled by several bodies: the War Office, the Admiralty, the Commissioners of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and other offices. It was responsible for war pensions and allowances for soldiers and sailors and their families, and for the treatment of disabled ex-servicemen. Given the enormous losses on the Somme and the growing number of maimed men, this was one of the most pressing domestic issues. The minister was the Labour politician George Barnes, with the Conservative Arthur Griffith-Boscawen as his parliamentary secretary.

The Ministry of Labour, headed by another Labour man, John Hodge, took over from the Board of Trade the labour exchanges, conciliation in industrial disputes and employment statistics. It soon also took on the task of easing conflicts in the war industries, where high prices were provoking more and more strikes.

What came next

The new ministries carried out their tasks with varying success. Devonport long delayed compulsory rationing and resigned in June 1917, officially on grounds of ill health. Maclay remained in office until 1921. He developed shipbuilding to a few standard types and was among those who in 1917 supported the introduction of the convoy system. In 1917 further new departments followed, among them the Ministry of National Service and the Ministry of Reconstruction.