Lucillia
Reeve
Lucillia Reeve
was born in March 1889 and began her working life as a domestic servant. She
was committed to self education and with the encouragement of her mother she
went on to work her way through agricultural college. This in turn led to her
becoming the land agent for Lord Walsingham’s Merton Estate which covered a
great tract of Breckland. She was possibly the first women to hold such a post.
Her spirit of independence and honesty came to the fore in the wake of the
First World War. She campaigned for a proper war memorial for the dead of the
area, instead of just a small wall plaque in the local church. She raised the
money from the villagers and on Armistice Day 1919 unveiled a fitting memorial
to the sacrifice of a generation.
As agriculture
declined in the 1930’s tenanted farms on the Merton Estate fell vacant. At her
instigation new enterprises were introduced to make use of the land such as
large scale rearing of ducklings for the table. In 1935, she noticed an advert.
for a Mosley meeting in Swaffham. She decided to attend with the intention of
heckling. Although this is how she began the evening, by the time Mosley had
explained his case, she was entirely won over. She joined the Blackshirts and
by 1937 was adopted as British Union candidate for South West Norfolk.
The following
year she took on one of the estate farms. One of her farming methods was to
twice plough in the weeds with a covering crop as a cheap way to sustain soil
nutrients (surely an early example of “green” farming).
Writing in the
Blackshirt she drew attention to the men “clad in corduroy trousers and open
necked shirts returning from the harvest fields-who were in fact the unemployed
miners and factory workers who should be employed making the farm implements
needed to restore the land; and who eat meat from the Argentine and eggs from
China, because international finance must flourish. My prayers for myself were
stopped by a wave of anger that these things should be, and I vowed anew that
never should my labours for British Union slacken until we had a restored
British agriculture, and all the men should be employed. We have the land, and
we have the men, and we must see to it that something is done”.
In May 1940 her
house was surrounded by men with guns. An all day interrogation followed.
Despite her campaigning for the Mosley Peace Campaign she was not regarded as a
threat to national security. As a result she was allowed home. Her pet dog, to
which she was much attached, had been stolen by one of the armed guards, no
doubt because he thought, that where she was going she would not need it. In
1941 her land was requisitioned for military manoeuvres, and all her work must
have seemed in vain.
After the war she
had hoped that all would be returned to her. It was not to be. The government
decided to make her home, now the Stanford Battle Area, a permanent fixture.
The compensation offered by the War Ministry was that of pre-war values, which
were derisory. This was the final straw for Miss Reeves and at the age of 61
she took her own life hanging herself in her barn, robbed of all hope.
By Gordon Beckwell (https://www.oswaldmosley.com)
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