ABSTRACT
When, a decade later, Jenks wrote about the origins of the organic movement, the Soil Association was a permanent presence, in which he had a pivotal position. However, his description of its beginnings as ‘a young plant of great promise set in the midst of a storm-ravaged landscape’ connoted a body which, although vigorous, was vulnerable, as it worked to build a viable organisation.1 Although the uncertainty about his position caused by Massingham’s stance on editorial independence had been resolved, in October 1945 Jenks was ‘yet only on the fringe’ of the movement.2 Nonetheless, with his other work for Church and Countryside, the ERC and the RRA, he was active over a broad front. He summed up his situation to Saunders:
I seem to have collected a lot of part-time jobs, none of them particularly lucrative, but all more or less interlocking. It sounds a lot, and certainly keeps me busy, but it will be some time yet before I can call myself “rehabilitated”.3
