The impact of the early British organic movement's anti-science bias and New Age
religious beliefs on relations with agricultural scientists and policy makers*
Erin Gill
Aberystwyth University, UK
This paper begins with a discussion of the intellectual origins of the British organic
movement, as it developed in the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, and is followed by a
brief description of the post-war establishment of Britain's first membership organization
dedicated to promoting the organic cause, the Soil Association. This body represents the
public birth of the organic movement in Britain, however, the nature of the organization has
been subject to little attention by historians. This paper explores the unconventional religious
tenor of the organization's founder, Lady Eve Balfour, and a significant number of other, early
members. Unconventional religious belief provoked a vehement and negative reaction from
orthodox agricultural scientists, who dismissed the Soil Association and its supporters as
purveyors of nothing more than “muck and mystery”.
Organic intellectuals of the 1920s & 1930s
Britain has one of the oldest campaigning movements in support of organic methods of
agriculture in the world. Only the German speaking nations of Europe – Germany and
Switzerland – and New Zealand have as lengthy a tradition of organic campaigning1. In the
interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s a motley collection of individuals gradually drew
together in Britain as they discovered shared concerns about the dangers posed by industrial
farming. This group included dissident agricultural scientists, medical doctors and rural landowning aristocrats. Chief amongst this diverse group was agricultural scientist Albert Howard,
whose many years in India working on behalf of the Colonial Service, exposed him to local
farming methods. Over time, Howard and his wife, Gabrielle, became convinced that
composting represented the best, indeed, the only acceptable way of protecting and
maximising soil fertility. In 1931, Howard returned to Britain and spent the rest of his life –
until 1948 - seeking to convince the agricultural community there and across the British
empire that modern farming should be founded on large-scale composting and not on new,
increasingly user-friendly inorganic fertilisers. Howard believed passionately that agrichemistry was unsound, and that inorganic fertilisers altered soil microbiology, resulting over
time in deteriorations in soil quality and lower disease resistance in crops.2
Howard presented his arguments in two books and through public speaking, and by the late
1930s he had developed a substantial following both in the UK and in various British
colonies, including India, Rhodesia and South Africa. Howard and his supporters were
arguing for adoption of systematic composting at a time when farmers were also being urged
by an emerging agri-chemical industry to apply inorganic fertilisers based on nitrogen,
phosphorus and potassium (NPK) on a routine basis to their fields. Inorganic fertilisers were
promoted as the modern, scientific, and easy-to-use solution to farmers' perennial desire to
maximize crop yields. NPK fertilizers generally produced rapid, positive, and noticeable
effects, often increasing both crop yields and the speed of plant growth.
1
2
G Vogt, 'The Origins of Organic Farming', in Organic Farming: an international history, edited by William
Lockeretz, Cabi, 2007, pp.9-27.
Conford, 'Introduction' in Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease, Sir Albert Howard, Soil
Association, 2006, pp. VII-XXIII; Conford, Origins, pp. 53-59; Conford, 'Howard, Sir Albert' in Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
During the same period, a second and significantly different proponent of composting was
also having an influence in Britain. This was Rudolf Steiner, a German 'guru' who developed
a new religion in the first decades of the twentieth century called Anthroposophy. Emerging
from Theosophy, Anthroposophy combines ideas from Christianity with Western European
forms of esotericism.3 There is a strong emphasis within Anthroposophy on correspondences
between developments on the so-called 'material' plane of existence – what people generally
view as day-to-day reality – with alleged cosmic forces emanating from other, parallel worlds
of existence. Just months before he died in 1924, Steiner gave a series of obtuse lectures about
how Anthroposophic concepts should be applied to agriculture. These were developed by his
followers, notably Dr Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, into what is known today as 'biodynamic
agriculture', a system of farming that includes composting and that eschews modern
chemicals. Biodynamic farming also incorporates occult methods, such as planting and
harvesting according to the phases of the moon, the use of herbal preparations to promote
plant growth and homeopathy to cure livestock diseases, as well as the burial of animal bones
and other items in the soil in order to improve its fertility.4
Although Howard dismissed the Steiner approach to agriculture as no more than “muck and
mystery”, both men's ideas were influential within Britain during the 1930s, and both the
Howard and Steiner schools promoted composting as a primary method for protecting and
enhancing soil fertility. Howard and Steiner both argued that composting was the 'natural' and,
thus, the safe way to farm, and during the 1930s this became linked with others' arguments
about the importance of nutrition in determining human health. Vitamins and other essential
nutrients were only beginning to be identified during this period and there was considerable
discussion in Britain about nutrition. In 1936, John Boyd-Orr's seminal book Food, Health
and Income drew attention to the fact that a large proportion of the British population did not
eat enough and, thus, were deficient in many key nutrients. Boyd-Orr's work was instrumental
in ensuring that the British government incorporated nutrition when designing its war-time
civil food rationing programme; this alone protected British civilians, to a significant degree,
from malnutrition during the Second World War.
A relatively minor aspect of public debate about food and health in 1930s Britain focused on
the issue of food quality rather than quantity. While Boyd-Orr and others emphasised the role
of poverty in preventing many Britons from eating enough food, especially foods such as
meat and dairy, to avoid malnutrition, a smaller group of dissident doctors, who included
Lionel Picton and Guy Wrench,5 argued that a huge amount of ill health was the result of
people eating not so much too little food, as too much of the wrong types of food. They both
championed research conducted by medical researcher Robert McCarrison, who like Howard
had been influenced by decades spent in colonial India. According to his supporters,
3
4
5
For a brief summary of the origins of the Anthroposophical movement see Kevin Tingay, 'The
Anthroposophical Movement', in New Religions, A Guide: New religious movements, sects and alternative
spiritualities, edited by Christopher Partridge, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp.325-327.
These are unusual techniques, and discussion of them is beyond the scope of this paper. However, it is worth
noting that biodynamic farming remains an important sub-sector within organic agriculture, particularly in
Europe.
Lionel Picton was a general practitioner in the northern English county of Cheshire. He was a dedicated
campaigner on issues relating to nutrition and organic agriculture and was instrumental in securing
publication in 1939 of a “medical testament”, written by a committee of GPs of which he was a part. The
testament argued that most ill health in Britain was the result of poor nutrition. Picton's book, Thoughts on
Feeding (reprinted in 2006 by The Soil Association) was published in 1946. Guy Wrench's book, The Wheel
of Health (C W Daniel, 1938), popularised McCarrison's research and detailed the diets of pre-industrial
populations around the world. Wrench argued that such people's so-called whole food diets were far superior
to typical British diets and, as a result, such peoples were significantly healthier than modern-day Britons.
McCarrison's research proved that the British people, especially its working class population,
subsisted on foods that had little or no nutritional value. A British working class diet of the
day, dominated by huge volumes of white bread and sweet tea, lacked most of the nutrients
needed for good health and, thus, the people who ate such food were beset by all sorts of
entirely-preventable ailments, according to McCarrison.6 In addition to arguing that good
health is the result of eating the right foods, these doctors insisted that the right foods are
made more nutritious and, thus, offer more 'vitality' – vitality being a quality that was never
defined – if they are grown or produced using compost. The argument went as follows: crops
grown using inorganic fertilisers and livestock fed those crops are not as nutritious as crops
grown, and livestock fed on, crops grown using compost-based methods. Therefore, the
complete recipe for superior health and vitality is to eat the right types of food produced using
organic methods of agriculture.
A third group interested in organic arguments during the interwar period comprised of rural
landowning men, many of whom boasted aristocratic titles or connections to such circles.
These men were disturbed by changes taking place in British society as a result of
industrialization and what today might be categorized as globalization. One side-effect of
Britain leading the world in industrial development was that its own agricultural land began to
loss financial value toward the end of the nineteenth century. With a national economy based
on the export of industrial goods in exchange for the import of lower value products,
particularly foodstuffs, a situation developed whereby the majority of Britain's food was
imported, often from as far afield as Argentina and New Zealand, where the cost of
production was far lower. This resulted in the value of British agricultural land falling sharply
at times, and which in turn undermined the financial health of rural communities.7
A group of rural revivalists that included Gerard Wallop, Walter James and Rolf Gardiner8
became very angry about these changes. They established a series of secret and semi-secret
clubs to discuss their concerns9 and, over time,they each developed idiosyncratic visions for a
6
7
8
9
McCarrison sought to demonstrate the validity of his nutrition-based theory of health by feeding rats a range
of diets, including that of typical working-class British people of the day. McCarrison and his supporters
argued that his findings clearly showed that the typical British working class diet guaranteed a preponderance
of chronic ill health, disease and behavioural problems such as nervousness and aggression, all of which were
far less common amongst rats fed whole, fresh foods similar to the healthier diets of the Hunza and Sikh
populations. In 1936, McCarrison presented his findings and arguments in 'The Cantor Lectures' at the Royal
Society of Arts in London.
Jonathan Brown, Agriculture in England: A survey of farming, 1870-1947, Manchester University Press,
1987; Richard Perren, Agriculture in Depression, 1870-1940, Cambridge University Press, 1995; Whetham,
Edith, The Agrarian History of England & Wales VIII 1914-1939, Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gerard Wallop is often known by his aristocratic titles, Viscount Lymington and, later, Lord Portsmouth. His
1938, far-right polemic and pro-organic tract, Famine in England, was a significant influence on war-time
and post-war organic supporters. See Conford, 'Organic society: agriculture and radical politics in the career
of Gerard Wallop, ninth Earl of Portsmouth (1898-1984)', Agricultural History Review, 2005, pp. 78-96.
Walter James was generally known by his aristocratic title, Lord Northbourne. He was the author of the 1940
rural revivalist book, Look to the Land (Dent) and said to be the person who coined the term “organic
farming”. A collection of his writings was recently published: James, Christopher and Joseph A Fitzgerald, Of
the Land & the Spirit: the Essential Lord Northbourne on Ecology & Religion, World Wisdom Publishing,
2008. Rolf Gardiner was a Dorset landowner with strong ties to Germany and a commitment to rural culture,
which he believed should incorporate organic agriculture. See: Richard Moore-Colyer, 'A Northern
Federation? Henry Rolf Gardiner and British and European Youth', Paedagogica Historica, 2003, pp. 305324; Moore-Colyer, 'Rolf Gardiner, English Patriot and the Council for the Church and Countryside',
Agricultural History Review, 2001, pp. 187-209.
The best known of these groups was one of the latest to form, Kinship in Husbandry, but others included the
English Mistery and the English Array. Richard Moore-Colyer and Philip Conford, 'A 'Secret Society'? The
Internal and External Relations of the Kinship in Husbandry, 1941-1952', Rural History, 2004, pp. 189-206.
revival in British rural life. Given that this was the interwar period, it is little surprise that
many of these visions included fascist or at least far-right solutions. Several of these men,
including Wallop and James, can be classed as having been, for a time, fascist, fascist
sympathisers or, at least, strongly attracted to many of the solutions promoted by interwar
fascism.10 Crucially, this group of affluent rural landowners, enraged by a perceived
disintegration in the fabric of British rural society, also incorporated organic agriculture into
their visions for the future of farming. They championed composting, disseminating the
arguments of Howard, McCarrison, Picton and Wrench, including the idea that compostgrown crops and the animals fed on them result in more nutritious food. Their visions of the
future were generally undemocratic, borrowing as heavily from Victorian interpretations of
British medieval life as from continental forms of fascism. Typically, they were based on
dreams of a rural idyll involving organic farming, nutritious food, happy peasants and
benevolent feudal leaders. Because these rural revivalists were members of the elite, they
were able to disseminate their ideas widely. They published books, wrote letters to the Times,
and debated rural issues in Britain's second parliamentary chamber, the House of Lords. As a
result, they were instrumental in transforming dissident ideas about farming and food into a
more coherent set of ideas, one which became quite widely known and discussed in the last
years before, and throughout, the Second World War.
Going public: the creation of the Soil Association
Although the Second World War created a great many obstacles for campaigners and
dissidents of all stripes in Britain, including those campaigning for organic agriculture, it was
also a time of unprecedented levels of public interest in British farming and food production.
With food imports cut significantly, all methods of increasing domestic food production were
supported, including composting. Thus, alongside the promotion of conventional approaches
of farming and gardening there was substantial increase during the Second World War in the
dissemination of organic ideas and techniques, ensuring that they reached a far wider
proportion of the British population had previously been familiar with them.11 By the end of
the war, the nascent organic movement was sufficiently sophisticated and confident in its
future to establish the first public-facing, membership organisation aimed at spreading the
organic message. Called The Soil Association, and founded in 1946, this body represents the
true beginning of an organised organic movement in Britain.
Over time, the Soil Association would prove to be the most significant advocate of organic
food and farming in Britain, however, until the late mid-late 1990s, the Soil Association – it
still exists – had a membership of just a few thousand and it did not begin to have any
noticeable influence on the behaviour of consumers, farmers or policy makers until the late
1980s. As its contemporary influence has grown there has been growing interest in its history,
not least in examining how and why the Soil Association survived the 1950s and 1960s, when
industrial agriculture seemed unstoppable in Britain.
10
11
Colin Cross, The Fascists in Britain, Barrie & Rockliff, 1961; Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the
Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-9, Constable, 1980; Conford, 'Organic society: agriculture
and radical politics in the career of Gerard Wallop, ninth Earl of Portsmouth (1898-1984)', Agricultural
History Review, 2005, pp. 78-96; Richard Moore-Colyer, 'Towards 'Mother Earth': Jorian Jenks, Organicism,
the Right and the British Union of Fascists', Journal of Contemporary History, Sage, 2004, pp. 353-371.
Conford, 'The Organic Challenge' in The Front Line of Freedom: British farming in the Second World War,
edited by Brian Short, Charles Watkins and John Martin, British Agricultural History Society, 2007, pp. 6776; Erin Gill, 'Chapter two: The Second World War, Eve Balfour's organic conversion, and The Living Soil',
forthcoming PhD thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2011.
Pro and anti-science?
A recurring question raised by historians and others who have looked at the early history of
the Soil Association has been whether it should be viewed, in its early, post-war expression, as
a pro-science or anti-science organization.12 It is indisputable that the early Soil Association
had a sincere and sustained interest in science. Indeed, for its first twenty-five years scientific
research lay at the heart of its activities, with the organization responsible for a farm-based
scientific experiment in the eastern English county of Suffolk, begun by its leader Lady Eve
Balfour. Known as the Haughley Experiment – named after the village of Haughley in which
the experiment was located – the goal of the research project was to identify differences in
soil and food quality arising from conventional versus organic methods of farming. Begun in
the 1940s, the hope was that the Haughley Experiment would prove the fundamental organic
argument: that a chemical-free, compost-based approach to farming results in more fertile soil
and in food of a higher nutritional quality. On the face of it, the mere existence of the
Haughley Experiment would suggest that the Soil Association took a positive view of
science.
Another sign suggesting that this new organic campaigning body was pro-science was its
consistent appetite for news about scientific developments. Even a cursory glance at its
publications makes this abundantly clear. Discussion about developments in scientific
research, particularly developments in biology and the emerging field of ecology as well as
discussions about progress in agricultural science and technology, were a dominant feature of
the early Soil Association's quarterly journal, Mother Earth. Mother Earth was full of extracts
and summaries of science-focused articles originally published in other magazines. The
journal also regularly included articles penned by Soil Association members devoted to
scientific explanation - and speculation.
The organization also sought to engage directly with the scientific community. From the late
1940s onward, attempts were made to collaborate with and to attract support and funding
from the most important figures and organizations within agricultural science, not least the
world-renowned centre for soil science, the Rothamsted Research Station, and the
Agricultural Research Council. In 1949, the Soil Association succeeded in gaining status as an
official "agricultural research association".
However, the early Soil Association's genuine enthusiasm for science was far from
unreserved. Just as noticeable as its voracious appetite for news of exciting scientific
developments and its desire to be recognized as part of the scientific research community, was
its frequent and trenchant criticism of what it perceived to be "wrong" science, often
described as "fragmented" science. Chemistry, particularly commercially-driven, applied
chemistry was the organic movement's primary enemy, and the Soil Association was trenchant
in critiquing agricultural science's reliance on what organic supporters viewed as overlysimplistic explanations of soil and its functioning. Agricultural science's then-almost
exclusive focus on inorganic nutrients to explain plant growth was not only woefully
inaccurate and unsophisticated, according to the Soil Association, it was also dangerous,
because it encouraged farming practices that led to soil degradation and, thus, to poorer
quality crops and livestock. Fundamentally, the early Soil Association did not accept post-war
12
Those who have considered this question include: Virginia Payne ('A History of the Soil Association',
unpublished MSc thesis, Manchester University, 1971); Tracey Clunies-Ross ('Agricultural Change and the
Politics of Organic Farming', unpublished PhD thesis, University of Bath, 1990); and Philip Conford ( 'The
Natural Order: Organic Husbandry, Society and Religion in Britain, 1924-1953', unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Reading, 2000 and The Origins of the Organic Movement, Floris Books, 2001).
science as being the source of true answers to questions about soil, health and the functioning
of the natural world. Organic supporters did not believe in science in the way the scientific
community expected them to. The organic movement refused to accept science as infallible
and sought to engage in debate about fundamentals in a manner the agricultural scientific
community either could not or would not.
At the heart of the early Soil Association's criticisms of science was a conviction that for
science to be good science, what the Soil Association often called "whole" science, it must
respect natural processes and natural limits. In 1950, organic farmer Ralph Coward described
his position thus:
"I have no objection to science, but I do object to those 'scientists' who speak as if they
had all the 'facts', for, like the rest of us, they are liable to make many mistakes.... My
experience as a farmer has taught me that the natural processes, if only we study them
intelligently, are more efficient than artificial substitutes... I believe, moreover, that they
are the right processes, in the sense that they are the ones we are meant to follow".13
The general view of the early Soil Association was that biology held the key to genuine
scientific enlightenment, not reductive chemistry or physics, the latter with its links to
engineering and technology. The organization's charismatic leader, Eve Balfour, articulated
this perspective clearly: "biology, hitherto the most neglected of sciences, is the most
important of them all, for while we have learned how to use the sciences of physics and
chemistry to produce material things and to bring about mass destruction, we have patently
failed to solve the problems of how to live in harmony with ourselves, with each other, or
with our surroundings".14 Organic supporters of the period had a noticeable tendency to view
biology, and any solutions it might develop to deal with agricultural pests and diseases, as
benign, especially when compared to the highly-visible and indiscriminate effects of the thennew insecticide sprays produced by the agri-chemical industry. The emerging field of ecology
held particular appeal, since organic supporters already subscribed to what was, essentially, an
ecological view of the world and humanity's place within it. A quote from Albert Howard
printed on the cover of the summer 1950 edition of Mother Earth summed up this ecological
organic perspective: "The crucial test of real scientific achievement is whether it recognises
and respects the supremacy of Mother Earth..."15 Such a statement is a spiritual or at least a
sentimental expression of the argument that lies at the heart of orthodox ecological science:
that humanity is a part of, not outside of, a global system of interdependence with all other
species and natural processes.
The ecological perspective of the early Soil Association was one of its strongest and most
clearly-articulated features, and one that marks out the organization, in hindsight, as being
ahead of its time. However, there were times when Soil Association members' and leaders'
criticisms of orthodox science went beyond constructive questioning or enthusiastic support
for emerging ecological concepts, instead devolving into wholesale dismissal of the benefits
or value of all scientific endeavour. Such negative views were often expressed in letters
published in Mother Earth. More than one questioned the wisdom of the the Soil
Association's own scientific research project, the Haughley Experiment, such as this letter
from 1948:
13
14
15
Ralph Coward, "Organic Farming Comes Naturally", Mother Earth, Spring 1950, p. 38.
E B Balfour, "Taking Stock", Mother Earth, Winter 1948/49, p.6.
Quote from article by Howard published in Organic Gardening magazine, August 1945. Reprinted on front
cover of Mother Earth, summer 1950.
"I am a little perturbed at the present tendency to emphasize the importance of scientific
'proof'. Scientific knowledge is but partial knowledge, and so is apt to lead off at a
tangent, each set of facts demanding a further set of facts to support it. My own view is
that we can take part in the wholeness of life without precisely understanding it, and
give practical effect in our lives to a greater understanding than all science can ever add
up to, simply through a feeling for the nature of things."16
Links to an underground 'New Age' religion
The complex response of the early Soil Association to science is confusing unless another
aspect of the organization is recognized and accepted: that the early Soil Association was led
by an individual with a profound New Age religious faith and that a substantial number of the
organization's early, active members held similar beliefs. It is within the context of New Age
religion that the Soil Association's seemingly contradictory response to science should be
interpreted.
The Soil Association was founded by, and led for more than twenty years, by Lady Eve
Balfour. Eve was a great niece of the nineteenth century British prime minister Lord Salisbury
and niece to another former British prime minister, Arthur James Balfour, the latter perhaps
better known internationally as the politician who lent his name to the Balfour Declaration,
which paved the way for the creation of Israel. Unusually for a woman of her class, Eve chose
to become a farmer, training during the First World War at the pre-eminent agricultural
college of the day, part of what is today the University of Reading. While it was not unknown
for middle class women to study gardening and horticulture or, in some cases, dairying and
poultry keeping,17 Eve studied agriculture. After the war, she and her sister bought a farm in
eastern England, and Eve farmed there throughout the interwar period, a financially
challenging time for small-to-medium-scale owner occupier farmers such as Eve. In 1938,
Eve encountered the organic ideas discussed earlier - the arguments of Howard, Steiner,
McCarrison, Wallop, James, Picton and Wrench - about the importance of composting for the
protection and enhancement of soil quality and the production of nutritionally-superior food.
She embraced these ideas wholeheartedly and quickly becoming an organic campaigner, a
focus that would last the rest of her life. In 1943, her book, The Living Soil, setting out the
case for organic farming was published.18 It would prove to be a bestseller into the mid-1950s,
with numerous reprintings and translations.19
A less well known aspect of Eve Balfour's life is her religious belief. Eve grew up in a family
that was not simply political, it was also Spiritualist. Most of the adults around her, including
her parents, devoted much of their time, energy and money attempting to prove the central
Spiritualist belief in communication with spirits of the dead.20 Instead of rejecting the religion
16
17
18
19
20
Maurice Renshaw, "Correspondence: Importance of Bi-Sexual Grazing", Mother Earth, Winter 1948-49 ,
p.41.
Anne Meredith, 'Middle Class Women and Horticultural Education, 1890-1939', unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Sussex, 2001, p. 45.
E B Balfour, The Living Soil: Evidence of the importance to human health of soil vitality, with special
reference to post-war planning, Faber & Faber, 1943.
Erin Gill, 'Chapter two: The Second World War, Eve Balfour's organic conversion, and The Living Soil',
forthcoming PhD thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2011. It is also worth noting that while Eve Balfour had
good relations with several organic supporters who held far-right views, she was herself staunchly anti-fascist
and offered considerable and highly-visible assistance to Jewish refugees during the Second World War.
For a brief overview of Spiritualism see: Nigel Scotland, 'Spiritualism', editor Christopher Partridge, New
Religions, A guide: New religious movements, sects and alternative spiritualities, Oxford University Press,
of her family, Eve accepted it and, as her religious worldview evolved, incorporated
Spiritualist ideas into an increasingly complex and flexible set of beliefs that correlate closely
with what historians of religion now categorize as New Age religion, as it was practised in
post-war Britain.21 There is extensive evidence that religious belief was of enormous
importance to Eve Balfour: that she thought carefully about her beliefs, that they were
unconventional, and that they had a bearing on how she interpreted events and came to
decisions, not least events and decisions relating to the organisation she led, the Soil
Association. There is also considerable evidence that Eve's religious perspective had much in
common with the beliefs of other members of the early Soil Association, many of whom
either shared her unconventional beliefs or subscribed to related heterodox religious
movements, including Spiritualism itself as well as Christian Science and Rudolf Steiner's
Anthroposophy.22
Eve Balfour's private papers, as well as some of her public writing, suggest that her belief was
based around seven themes, all of which correlate strongly with significant concepts with
British post-war expressions of New Age religion. These themes are:
- There is a supreme intelligence or creative energy that possesses a cosmic plan.
Humanity and the natural world are part of this creative energy and all human and nonhuman behaviour and actions contribute to the unfolding of the cosmic plan, whether
the actors are conscious of this or not
- All of the world's major religions and all of the ways in which people experience this
supreme intelligence/ creative energy/ God are valid because, at root, they arise from
the same impulse and are fundamentally seeking the same thing, which is the unfolding
of the cosmic plan and the dawning of a New Age
- Everyone has an eternal, spiritual self. Our material/ physical bodies are “lower” than
our “higher” spiritual selves and are temporary vehicles, assisting in the evolution of
our higher, spiritual selves. Each person is at a different stage of spiritual evolution. The
ultimate goal is for all humans to evolve beyond their “lower” selves, and thus leave
behind material existence, thereby achieving “wholeness”. Life on the material/
physical plane of existence is about learning spiritual lessons and trying to transcend the
lower/ outer physical self
- Our spiritual selves simultaneously live and have lived on multiple planes of
existence/ consciousness. Communication between different planes of existence is
possible and is to be encouraged
- A New Age will dawn when humans have become more fully conscious of, and have
evolved beyond, their “lower/outer selves” and into their “higher/ inner selves”
21
22
pp.319-320.
Historians that have explored the beliefs and history of New Age religion as it was practised in post-war
Britain include: Wouter J Hanegraaff, (New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the mirror of
secular thought , E J Brill, 1996); Steven Sutcliffe (Children of the New Age: A history of spiritual practices,
Routledge, 2003), and Paul Heelas (The New Age Movement, Blackwell, 1996). Eve Balfour's syncretic
approach to diversity of religious ideas is typical of New Age believers, according to Hanegraaff. For
discussion of Spiritualism's contribution to, and links with, New Age religion, see Hanegraaff (pp.374-377,
435-441) and Sutcliffe (pp.36-41, 85).
Erin Gill, 'Chapter four: Eve Balfour, The Soil Association, Science and Religion', forthcoming PhD thesis,
Aberystwyth University, 2011.
- Because our spiritual lives represent the 'true' arena of human evolution, our thoughts
and ideas have real power and can influence events on the material plane. Positive
thinking and other methods of thought control/ shaping are of great significance and
assist in an individual's spiritual development and in the unfolding of the cosmic plan
- Disease and ill-health are not simply a physical/ material reality. They have a spiritual
meaning and are often caused by spiritual problems. Thus, non-physical, spiritual forms
of healing have an important role to play in preventing and curing disease. Health is the
ultimate goal and is an outward sign of spiritual “wholeness”.
In addition to such beliefs corresponding with New Age religion of the day, Eve was a
member of several 'underground' New Age networks identified by historians as playing a
significant role in the emergence of New Age religion within Europe and North America. Eve
and other members of the early Soil Association had links with New Age networks developed
by Sir George Trevelyan (warden of Attingham College, later The Wrekin Trust), Anthony
Brooke and Monica Parrish (The Universal Foundation) and, possibly, Liebie Pugh's network.
Latterly, Eve and other members of the Soil Association gave assistance to the well-known
New Age community based at Findhorn in north east Scotland.23
Much of the time, Eve Balfour presented herself as the leader of an organization and a
scientific research project that was mounting a well considered, rational challenge to the
agricultural science community's vision of modern farming. However, her highly-unusual
beliefs about the nature of existence and the meaning of events in the here and now were not
entirely hidden from Soil Association members or the wider public. For instance, in 1953 Eve
ended an account of a recent visit to America to promote the Soil Association there with a
complicated, 'New Age'-infused message, which includes the use of unconventional terms
such as “life-energy”, “cosmic forces”, “a directive intelligence” and “creative mind in
action”:
“It is certain that life is governed by natural laws, but though many of these still remain
hidden, their very existence is often not suspected when our search for knowledge starts
from the wrong premise – that the behaviour of tangible, material plants and animals
can all be explained in terms of tangible matter that can be weighed. This approach
ignores the multitudinous life-energy and cosmic forces, because these, at present, are
intangible...The higher mathematicians have discarded the possibility of evolution
through chance. A directive intelligence, they now say, is the only explanation that fits
the known facts. Shall we discover that the invisible thread holding all these 'beads'
together is nothing less than directed energy of Creative Mind in action? Do I hear a
murmur that this is metaphysics and what had it to do with ecological research?
Possibly everything. How big is Wholeness?”24
The publications and administrative documents of the early Soil Association as well as several
unpublished memoirs written by its members indicate strongly that Eve Balfour was not alone
in holding a New Age religious belief that included mystical and/or occult elements. As
mentioned above, a significant number of its active members and leaders also subscribed to
23
24
Erin Gill, 'Chapter four: Eve Balfour, The Soil Association, Science and Religion', forthcoming PhD thesis,
Aberystwyth University, 2011.
Eve Balfour, '9,600 Miles Research Tour Through the USA in a Station Wagon 1953', The Soil Association,
p.107.
dissident religious beliefs as well as faith-based approaches to health care, which included
radiesthesia and psychic surgery.25
'Muck & magic': rejection by orthodox agricultural science
From its establishment in 1946, the British agricultural science community was suspicious of
and, at times, openly critical of the Soil Association. At the end of the war, agricultural leaders
and the agri-chemical industry both secured unprecedented levels of support from political
leaders, with the Soil Association one of the few coherent voices during the period repeatedly
raising questions about the efficacy and safety of industrial farming techniques and agrichemical products.26 In the first full issue of Mother Earth, a highly-critical letter written by
biologist Robert R Walls was given prime position in the "Correspondence" section. Walls had
been sent one of the two shorter, introductory issues of Mother Earth published the previous
year and had found its contents less than satisfactory:
"Perhaps the feature about this book which will antagonize all scientists and biologists
who know anything whatever about the soil is the complete disregard paid by all the
writers to the immense amount of scientific work already done on soil study throughout
the world...
Soil study is a highly developed and progressive science, and a great deal of valuable
work has been done, and is being done... Yet not one word of this valuable science is
mentioned....".27
Walls' letter also attacked the organic movement's central thesis, that the soil is “living”. He
wrote: "You say the living soil is a living element. This is a poetic rather than a scientific
truth... the soil itself is dead, and it is the dead and disintegrated organic matter which
provides the food of plants".28 Walls' letter is a clear demonstration that, from the outset, the
Soil Association – its very existence, perhaps, but definitely its arguments - disturbed and
angered some within the orthodox scientific community.
Another early indication that scientists were suspicious of or hostile to the Soil Association
comes from a comment made in 1948 by Professor Firman Bear, who suggested that organic
supporters "skip blithely from fact to fancy and fall back on the supernatural when pressed by
the scientist".29 The same year, the Fertilizer and Feeding Stuffs Journal quoted anti-organic
commentator Donald P Hopkins, who also emphasized the organic movement's reputation for
unscientific belief, referring to it as the “anti-fertilizer school of 'mystics'”.30
25
26
27
28
29
30
Erin Gill, “Chapter four: Eve Balfour, The Soil Association, Science and Religion”, forthcoming PhD thesis,
Aberystwyth University, 2011.
Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the Twentieth Century: A history, Yale University Press, 1989, pp. 216-218; and
Meredith Veldman, Fantasy, the Bomb & the Greening of Britain: Romantic protest, 1945-1980, Cambridge
University Press, 1994, pp. 1-36, 258-263, 303-310.
Robert R Walls, "Correspondence", Mother Earth, Spring 1947, pp. 40-41
Robert R Walls, "Correspondence", Mother Earth, Spring 1947, p. 40
Firman E Bear, 'Fertilisers and Human Health', Fertilizer and Feeding Stuffs Journal, 7 April 1948, pp. 189196. Bear's dismissal of organic arguments is all the more interesting because it comes after he concedes – in
the same article – that it might be possible for the use of inorganic fertilizer by farmers to lead to nutritional
deficiencies, stating that: “there is some connection between fertilisers and human health, and the fertiliser
industry would do well to finance an extensive research programme to study this problem”, adding that use of
poorly-formulated inorganic fertilisers could promote nutritional deficiencies in food and “could lead to
human disaster”.
'New Editions', Fertilizer and Feeding Stuffs Journal. 19 May 1948, p. 284. Conford describes Hopkins as
having “been given, or to have taken upon himself, the task of studying and rebutting the arguments of the
organic school, which he did with terrier-like thoroughness during the 1940s in... the Fertilizer Journal and
in his 1945 book Chemicals, Humus and the Soil”. Conford, 'Natural Order', p.58.
Thus, from its beginnings the Soil Association was suspected of being both anti-science and
religiously dubious. It is no wonder that the tag “muck and mystery”, first coined by compost
promoter Albert Howard to undermine the credibility of Rudolf Steiner's ideas, was taken up
by the agricultural science community and used to smear the Soil Association. The phrase
“muck and mystery” - also “muck and magic” - refers to animal manure (muck), which is
usually a component of compost, and to religious mysticism or occultism (mystery or magic).
It was not until the late 1950s that an agricultural scientist directly and publicly attacked the
Soil Association and its arguments, thus making it clear to anyone with an interest that the
mainstream science and agricultural policy community in Britain considered the organic
movement beyond the pale. This occurred in 1957 when William Ogg, one of the best known
soil scientists of the day and director of the Rothamsted Research Station, wrote a lengthy and
critical article in Country Life magazine in response to the the Soil Association's recentlypublished report on progress achieved by its farm-based research project at Haughley. In his
three-page article, Ogg accused the Soil Association of conducting poorly-designed research
and of promulgating “unfounded beliefs”.31 The same year, the Soil Association applied to the
British Agricultural Research Council for £10,000 in order to continue the Haughley
Experiment – its application was turned down. Given the animosity directed by agricultural
scientists toward the Soil Association it is little wonder that government funding was not
granted.
One more example offers a vivid picture of just how great the gulf was between agricultural
science in the post war period and the organic movement. In November 1966, a new and
ambitious environmental organisation, The Conservation Society, was launched. Its leaders
chose Eve Balfour to give the body's inaugural address in London, largely due to her
substantial public profile as an environmental campaigner. However, the choice of Eve as
speaker was not a comfortable one for the Conservation Society's secretary, Douglas
MacEwen, as Horace Herring has related:
“... as founder of the Soil Association, [she] was well-known to traditional
conservationists, but her views on organic farming were anathema to the scientific
community. MacEwen, as an agricultural research scientist, had qualms. He said: 'I have
to confess that the decision to invite Lady Eve caused me some private heart-searching
because I had been brought up in the orthodox Scottish and English Soil Science
tradition in which mention of Lady Eve was like summoning up the Devil in a medieval
monastery. My chief at the Macauley Institute in Scotland... instilled in me a contempt
for the Soil Association and its tenets”.32
Conclusion
The New Age religious beliefs of Eve Balfour and corresponding beliefs held by other active
members of the early Soil Association allowed the agricultural science community to dismiss
the organic movement. From the perspective of orthodox science, the early Soil Association
could be rejected because it was an organization that prized religious mysticism and mystery
over scientific fact and, thus, was a body with which it was impossible to communicate and
negotiate. Was the early Soil Association fundamentally anti-science? It was itself engaged in
what it viewed to be scientific research, it had many members who were sincerely interested
31
32
Sir William Ogg, "The Haughley Experiment Examined", Country Life, 14 Feb 1957, pp. 276-278.
Horace Herring. “The Conservation Society: Harbinger of the 1970s Environment Movement in the UK”
Environment and History. 2001: 7. p. 389.
in the results of scientific study pertaining to nutrition and agriculture, and its publications
drew attention to relevant advances in biology and chemistry. However, the early Soil
Association was not an organization fully open to and supportive of science. Its leaders and
members feared the impact of science on agricultural practice and on the natural world, and
the Soil Association continuously sought to warn the world of the dangers posed by
"fragmented" science. Such a critical or wary approach to science is noteworthy, expressed as
it was during the years after the Second World War when science enjoyed an unprecedented
level of influence over the strategies and policies of both industry and government. The
importance of religious belief to Eve Balfour and many others active in the Soil Association
should not be discounted: Eve and the organization she led had a tendency to submit science
to religion and to employ scientific facts and findings as proof or evidence to support religious
beliefs.
Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that the Soil Association's more rational, nonreligious arguments against certain aspects of industrial farming were often strong ones. There
were problems with the chemical-based, industrial approach to farming – that is clear today to
policymakers, agricultural scientists, farmers and, sometimes, to the public. Industrial farming
has been one of the biggest contributors to recent, profound degradation of ecosystem
functioning on a global scale, biodiversity loss at an historically-unprecedented rate, and
chemical contamination of food chains. These are scientific facts, not New Age beliefs.
Looking back on the dispute between the organic movement and agricultural scientists of the
post-war years it is possible to argue that it was the potential strength of the organic
movement's warning about the risks posed by a chemical and industrial approach to
agriculture that was the real, initial concern of agricultural scientists and agri-chemical
manufacturers. By the late 1950s, the agricultural science and agri-chemical community in
Britain recognized that it had won the battle with policymakers and farmers, but earlier in the
decade this may not have been clear. Initially, the Soil Association appeared to pose a real
threat and, thus, it makes sense for the unconventional religious atmosphere of the Soil
Association to have been identified as a weakness and exploited. The rumour of
unconventional religious belief was a convenient stick with which to beat the organization, a
way of dismissing its arguments in a single stroke. However, it is my contention that the
“muck and mystery” smear concealed an unspoken fear on the part of the agricultural science
community and agri-chemical industry: that there might be some truth to organic arguments
about the damaging effects of, first, inorganic fertilizers and, later, pesticides and other
biocides.
* This article based on a paper given at the Oxford-Nagoya Environmental History seminar, in
September 2010 at Nagoya University, Japan, and included in a subsequent publication of the
seminar proceedings, entitled The Environmental Histories of Europe and Japan (pp.201-213).