Agricultural History Review, Volume 41 Part 2 (1993), pp. 155–168

Agriculture emerged from the First World War facing the problems of a drastically expanded and largely urban electorate, the decline of the traditional landowning class, with a greater political dependence on the inexperienced National Farmers Union. Meanwhile, the closer working relations with Government, embodied in the price and wage guarantees of the 1920 Agriculture Act, implied that a new era of agrarian policy had arrived. The repeal of those guarantees in 1921, now remembered as the 'Great Betrayal' - a classic symbol of State neglect - attracted little opposition from the NFU or parliamentarians. The contested removal of the ban on Canadian cattle imports reveals more about agriculture's political weakness. The crisis demonstrated a firnl Government commitment to urban priorities and exposed differences among agriculturists. In its intensity, scale and consequences, the Canadian cattle crisis was in political ternas a more serious 'Great Betrayal' than the Agriculture Act's repeal. 

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