Defending the Tichborne Dole
The introduction of bread rationing by the postwar Labour government threatened the centuries-old tradition of the Tichborne Dole and, with it, the national understanding of what England was.
In 1947 a small Hampshire village briefly became the focus of national attention. On Lady Day, 25 March, some 800 villagers were due to take part in the centuries-old annual custom of the Tichborne Dole, in which a gift of flour was distributed by the local landed family, the Tichbornes, to those living on their estates. However, with the introduction of bread and flour rationing in July 1946, the government had withdrawn permission for the 1947 Dole. The resulting exchanges between the Whitehall bureaucracy and the Tichborne family would have been a suitable subject for one of the Ealing comedies that were first filmed that year. The outcome of the tussle over what was to happen – or not happen – in the village of Tichborne would be determined by events beyond Britain’s borders. The Dole posed a unique problem for the Labour government, elected on a landslide in 1945 but, two years on, grappling with a postwar settlement and a climate crisis that threatened starvation overseas and shortages at home.
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