Jorian Jenks - Post-war Activism

Post-war Activism

After the war he did not join the Union Movement, although he did assist in preparing its policy statement None Need Starve, which offered a new agricultural plan. He sought to build a 'spiritual ecologism' that would bond man and soil. To this end he joined Lady Eve Balfour's Soil Association, a pro-organic farming group, in 1945. He also joined Rolf Gardiner's Kinship in Husbandry and H. J. Massingham's Council for the Church and Countryside, two other traditionalist rural groups He argued in favour of organicism, feeling that the quality of food and the health of a nation were inextricably linked. He felt that the key to health was Bergsonian vitalism, but added to this the belief that the decline in food standards would directly precipitate the fall of Western civilisation.

It was with the Soil Association that he reached the widest audience as he edited the group's Mother Earth journal. Although Jenks remained associated with the Soil Association until his death the group later moved to the left and Jenks' role has subsequently been marginalised. His other main group involvement was in the Rural Reconstruction Association, a group initially founded in 1929 by Quaker Montague Fordham. Jenks served as press secretary for the RRA and edited their journal Rural Economy whilst building up a coterie of former fascists or fascist sympathisers within the group in the shape of ex-BUF members Derek Stuckey and Robert Saunders as well as some former members of the English Mistery. Jenks used his position as editor of the RRA journal to advocate agricultural autarky.

Jenks' post-war writings included The Country Year (1946), British Agriculture and International Trade (1948), From the Ground Up: An Outline of the Rural Economy (1950) and The Stuff Man's Made Of: The Positive Approach to Health through Nutrition (1959) which was much more ecological and less fascist than his previous works. Although the organic movement has in general moved away from the politics espoused by Jenks, his influence has been felt as his themes of sustainability, small farming, opposition to the over-reliance on mechanised farming and mistrust of international food trade over local produce remain central. At the suggestion of Rolf Gardiner he sent his work to the former Nazi Agriculture Minister Richard Walther Darré who continued to write on the themes of blood and soil after the war.