Consumer Council

LP/CC

Consumer Council

1918-1920

The papers comprise minutes and correspondence relating to the Central Classification Committee for Supplementary Rations; fruit, soft & dried; general papers; jam; meat & bacon; sugar; milk production & distribution; national kitchens; potatoes; printed papers, circulated to Consumer Council; rationing; Sub-committee on Reforms.

Minutes and correspondence have been arranged chronologically and by topic into 13 series: Centreal Classification Committee for Supplementary Rations; circulated papers; fruit, soft and dried; general papers; jam; meat and bacon; milk production and distribution; national kitchens; potatoes; printed papers, circulated to Comsumers' Council; rationing; Sub-Committee on Reforms; sugar.

<p>Some other papers of Dr. Marion Phillips (Chief Woman Officer of the Labour Party, d. 1932), relating to her Sunderland constituency, have also been listed (ref. MP).</p>

English

9 boxes

The Consumers' Council was established as a consultative body in January 1918 by Lord Rhondda, former Food Controller, in conjunction with his successor, J. R. Clynes, to enlist "the co-operation of the organised working classes and the co-operative movement in the gigantic task which lay before the Ministry" [of Food, est. 1916].

Representatives were invited from:

Parlty. Cttee. of Co-op. Congress

Parlty. Cttee. T.U.C.

W.N.C.

St. Jt. Cttee of Industl. Women's Organisations [S.J.C.I.W.O.]

One of the representatives of the latter body was Dr. Marion Phillips, and the eight boxes of C.C. papers would appear to be hers. In addition to the bodies listed above, there were three representatives of "unorganised consumers" on the C.C.

It seems likely that no main group of Consumers' Council records has survived amongst the public records (Class M.A.F.), so that this set, although incomplete, probably has greater significance than merely as the papers of one Council member. The problems with which the Council had to deal, essentially the control of increasingly scarce foodstuffs, are amongst those with which the Labour movement's War Emergency Workers' National Committee (ref. W.N.C.) were concerned, and there is a close relationship between certain parts of the two groups of records.