METROPOLITAN COMMITTEE FOR WAR SAVINGS

It appears that this is the only main minute book of this body. It does not, however, contain the minutes of its various sub-committees and ancillary committees.

Ac/76/152

The meetings recorded in the minutes were held at the Mansion House and the Lord Mayor was normally in the chair. Attendance at the first two meetings was large and included a number of mayors and a sprinkling of senior council officers. Attendance at the Executive Committee meetings was usually nine or ten.

Although intended, no doubt, to be primarily an organization for the promotion of the sale of War Loans and Savings Certificates, the Committee by no means confined itself to this activity. It dealt with economies in the use of food and in the cooking of food, nutrition, inequalities in the distribution of food, and even salvage or re-cycling of materials.

At one period the Committee was much concerned with racial tension caused by the fact (the truth of which was agreed by the Chief Rabbi) that foreign Jews in the East End (most of whom, it was said, could not understand English) could obtain from Jewish shops ample supplies of foodstuffs which the English populace could only obtain in small quantities after queueing for long periods at the ordinary English shops. The Committee proposed a system of rationing. It examined closely the quality of the war-time bread. It even considered a report on the possibilities of extracting grease from the London sewers.