Another matter where Britain was caught short in the opening phases of the Great War was that an administration that was geared to peacetime was overwhelmed by the increased demands of running what became a world war. The call for volunteers, almost 750,000 by September 1914, was the first problem. The scale of advertising and recruitment had to be increased enormously. Venues had to be hired and staff put in place.
The number who responded led to even more difficulties. Every volunteer who left his job and was rapidly whisked away for training meant one family suddenly deprived of their bread-winner and the first task was to issue ration cards to the wives of the volunteers and arrange for food to be distributed in every town. I believe that in the early days, before soldier's wages started to flow back into the economy this was a free issue of food. In Barlick this took place in the Seven Stars Yard and there were women turning up every day for their share of the food.
Longer term, food was going to be a problem. One of the weapons of war used by both us and Germany was to blockade ports so that food from abroad couldn't enter the country. In 1914 58% of Britain's food came in by sea and this was immediately disrupted. By late 1916 Britain had only six weeks stock of food and rationing started in 1917, sugar and butter remained on ration until 1920. Before rationing, supplies were limited and a sort of grape vine built up where the word would go round that say the Maypole had butter in stock and before you could blink a queue formed. In 1916 a new ministry was formed, the Ministry of Food Control. It controlled and allocated all food supplies and did so until 1921 when it was transferred to the Board of Trade which maintained a small section to deal with food. This became the Food (Defence Plans) Department in 1937 and then the Second World War Ministry of Food in 1939.
Coal was the life blood of our industrial economy and almost as soon as the war started the Board of Trade imposed control on the mining industry which were virtually nationalisation. Apart from regulating production, wages and distribution, one of the first problems was the fall in production caused by miners volunteering for war service. This was so serious that not only was recruitment of miners stopped but many who had volunteered were brought back out of the forces to resume work in the mines. This government takeover of the mines was so successful that after the war the miners didn't want to go back under private enterprise and in 1919 the Sankey Commission was set up to investigate the industry. They recommended full nationalisation but the government vetoed this and gave control back to the owners which in the end led to the General Strike of 1926. At least one good thing could have come out of the war!
Seven Stars Yard in 1982. This was the food distribution centre in 1914.