ABSTRACT
In chapter three it was acknowledged that, as far as the countryside was concerned, the Great War was both a period of change and a period of continuity. The same can be said of the Second World War. At a first, superficial glance, the plethora of published reports and governmental action which actually followed in the years 1939–45 gives credence to the idea that the period was truly one of radical change. The publication of the trilogy of wartime reports—Barlow (1940), Scott (1942) and Uthwatt (1942)—which directly concerned the future of land planning, and the direct involvement of the State, both local and national, in organizing agricultural production, are perhaps the two most obvious areas of evidence of this idea. The post-war rural world which followed has been characterized by two factors above all—a formal land use planning system and a close and continuous governmental involvement in farming. These are, perhaps, the two great themes of post-war England and Wales—and they seem unequivocally to have their origins in wartime fears and wartime controls.
