Imagine you were writing a history of radio and television. You cover the main actors, the writers, the producers, the programmes and the critics. You cover the impact on competing media such as newspapers and movies. But, very carefully, your book avoids any mention of BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, Discovery Channel. You don’t mention the broadcasters
Some years ago I gift aided £10k for the Soil Association to be able to help Philip Conford write a history of the organic network. It was high time the deeds of the organic pioneers of the 60s and 70s were memorialised. He thanks me in his introduction for never seeking to influence his writing. I wish now I had shackled him hand and foot.
His new book “The Development of the Organic Network, Linking People and Themes 1945-1995” sets out to be a history of the development of the organic network from its earliest philosophical beginnings. But it ignores the broadcasters completely. No mention of Harmony Foods, Community Foods, Infinity Foods, Green City Wholefoods, Edinburgh Real Foods, Essential, Harvest, Marigold Foods. No mention of the Natural Products Shows, no mention of Robin Bines, Peter Deadman, John Law or any of the many other founding fathers of the organic food phenomenon. These people and companies were true revolutionaries but, as if in some Stalinist rewrite, they have been airbrushed out of the story in which they were the main activists.
Here’s what Conford’s book left out. My brother Gregory and I started the Harmony organic brand in 1970 and introduced the first organic brown rice. Ivan Seruya and Herbie Girardet visited organic growers in the Home Counties sourcing organic vegetables and fruit in season that they delivered to the new generation of whole food shops popping up all over. We bought all Organic Farmers & Growers organic barley, rye wheat and oats and turned it into flakes for organic muesli. Farmers could plant crops with confidence they'd be sold as organic. Community Foods and European counterparts developed organic dried fruit from Turkey. Infinity Foods introduced Ecover and a wide range of European organic products, seeding the market for UK processors. You could buy a full range of organic products, so people took organic food seriously. The conversion of farm output to consumer products and the retailing and distribution of those products, was the work of these early pioneers, of whom I am proud to be one. I told all of this to Philip Conford, he made notes, but none of this story made it into his book.
Even more irritatingly Conford decries the lack of spiritual values compared to the early Christian organic philosophers of the 1930s. What about Goodness Foods and Community, where Christian values were paramount? The organic movement was also driven by the Buddhism and Taoism of macrobiotics, the Hindu influences on vegetarianism and veganism, the Jewish Vegetarian Society and the humanist animal rights movement. These are ignored completely. Then he mentions a few cooperatives but only ones that failed. What about successful cooperatives like Essential. Infinity, Suma, Harvest and Green City?.
Conford's book covers every detail of the writers and producers, but it completely ignores the vital mechanism that helped transform their ideals into a reality. Deeds speak louder than words.
The true history remains to be written. It should be written while the memories of the pioneers are still fresh. It will be the people's history of the organic movement, the real story of how we got where we are.
