ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 describes the changes that took place during the Second World War in the market for rural and urban land. It looks at how public attitudes changed with regard to the countryside and town and country planning. The chapter describes government intervention in agriculture to guarantee prices and wages in order to increase production to meet a wartime emergency. It outlines the controversial debates over the rights of property and compensation to landlords and focuses on the level of compensation to be paid to landowners after the war when sites purchased by speculators during the Blitz were bought out compulsorily by local authorities wishing to rebuild. The chapter notes the politics of rural land reform and the role of agriculture and the way a political consensus emerged about the need to protect agriculture and the countryside from urban development, including the creation of the green belt and national parks. Finally, it notes how the popularity of farmers was greatly enhanced during the war by the way that farming was run like ‘a national social service’, and how by 1945 the position of the farmers as guardians of the countryside was assured, including the safeguarding of their property rights as owner-occupiers.
