Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 2 (2004), p. 222

Like many small countries, Wales is inordinately proud of its national institutions of which the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society is one of the foremost. Founded in 1904, the Society was to become closely involved with many developments in twentieth-century rural Wales and, by way of its annual shows, the shop-window forWelsh farming. Indeed, a disproportionate amount of David Howell’s book comprises rather lengthy accounts of the shows themselves; of attendance figures, exhibitors, financial problems, schemes for raising money and all manner of other matters from the ‘growing abuse of alcohol’ to the complex logistics of car parking. As we have come to expect from Professor Howell, his reading of the sources appears painstaking and methodical, but since he offers no footnotes and only the briefest of bibliographies the reader is unable further to pursue the unfolding story. Even so, whether writing of the petty feuds and jealousies marking the early doings of the Society, the tardiness of agriculturalists to subscribe to its coffers, or the extraordinary efforts of the organization to acquire and develop a permanent site for the show in the 1960s and 1970s, he seems to have left few reports unstudied and few minute books unread. Merely thinking of Howell’s exhaustive labours as I worked my way through the book left me a little weary! With enthusiasm akin to that of the small band of individuals who ensured the survival of the Society in the difficult inter-war years, he happily engages with details of stock judging, wrestles with the arcane and embarrassing names which people have the habit of giving to perfectly innocent bulls and rams and discusses the numerous ‘entertainments’ seemingly craved by the non-farming public who flock to today’s shows and gaze rapturously at the voluptuous charms of ‘Miss Royal Welsh’.

But the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society was much more than the sum of its shows. As Howell points out, the past century has witnessed the involvement of the organization with a whole spectrum of activities aimed at improving the lot of the Welsh farmer and livestock breeder. The establishment of tubercule-free dairy herds, the vital issue of rabbit clearance, sire licensing and breed society registration, the founding of an influential journal; these and other matters, including a variety ofeducational initiatives, all came under the aegis of theSociety. Confronted with the perennial Welsh language lobbyists who argued that the Society’s limited local influence reflected insufficient use of Welsh in itsdealings, the Society moved increasingly in the direction of a bilingual approach, while concurrently striving to ensure that its shows reflected a balance between technical demonstration/education for farmers and entertainment for the rest. If the Royal Welsh show has developed to become a major event in the social calendar, attracting many thousands of visitors from home and abroad, the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society, for all its involvement in farming affairs, appears to have singularly failed as a lobbying organization. Attempts to promote an animal health research station in Wales, to secure a Welsh substation of the National Institute of Agricultural Engineering, to revive the excellent Welsh Journal of Agriculture, all seem to have withered on the vine, along with a recent approach to the Millennium Commission to establish the Llanelwedd show site as a centre of excellence for rural Wales. Even if one sets this litany against the successful promotion of the national Welsh Agricultural College in the 1970s, the track record is less than impressive. Howell points out these bold facts but offers little in the way of explanation. And this is one of the major drawbacks of his book. Lavishly illustrated with photographs of the great and the good (human, bovine, porcine, equine and ovine), it contains little in the way of social and economic context and less in the way of critical analysis. We are told, for example, that there ‘is no mistaking’ the steady improvement in livestock quality exhibited at the show between 1910 and 1939, but Howell gives no indication of the criteria on which this judgement is based. There are, indeed, many who would question the whole relevance of agricultural shows in the matter of livestock improvement! Again, a close analysis of why the Society failed to attract membership (e.g. in 1939 there were only 1133 members compared with some 10,000 in the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland) would have provided an important insight into the nature of Welsh rural society in the inter-war period. In the sense that the history of so important an organization could have been used as a vehicle for a critical study of the economic background to rural Wales over the past century, one cannot escape the conclusion that this book represents an opportunity lost.

Readers of this Review who know and admire Professor Howell’s earlier works, noteworthy as they are for their rigorous and meticulous scholarship, will wonder how far the present contribution was subject to direction from above; I strongly suspect that the form, nature and tone of the book was pre-determined from the start. Knowing Howell, I very much doubt, for example, that given a free hand he would have resorted to the sycophantic hagiography which dominates the latter part of the work. As a narrative history of the Society, the handsomely-produced volume will give much pleasure to the members, most of whom will probably make the index their first port of call. Historians of Welsh agriculture and rural life will quarry the odd nugget from it, but on the whole will find little here to quicken their pulses.