Does anyone remember, just thirty years ago, the controversy surrounding the distribution of `free` butter from the EU? It arose when Brussels decided to try and reduce the `Butter Mountain` that had arisen from over production in the Dairy Sector. There were dozens of `intervention` warehouses packed to the roof and at any one one time hundreds of lorries were transporting container loads to and fro between them just to create extra storage space.
Following a series of cold snaps across the Continent a decision was taken to make a distribution of free butter to the `poor and needy` in the member countries of the Community. Not an overwhelming problem if handed over to the social care and welfare institutions of the individual states. However, in the view of the UK Government the whole thing stank of `socialism` and would entail admitting that there actually was such a thing as the `poor and needy`. Total anathema! Reluctant participants at best, a throw away comment by the Prime Minister led to the process being handed over to the voluntary sector, particularly the WRVS. Whilst a respected and worthy organisation, the flaw was that the butter consignments were just dumped on them without any clear guidance as to the crtiteria of eligibility or any contribution to the distribution set up costs. The Minister responsible for this shambles was one John Selwyn Gummer, if you remember him.
At any rate, whilst everyone had heard about this `free butter` little or nothing was happening where my mother lived until a certain prominent local lady, councillor of the `blue rinse` persuasion, was overheard to remark that her cats were certainly enjoying their fish cooked in butter! That did it, next morning my mother was knocking at her door and, ushered in, said she had come for her butter. After protests about it not having been decided, etc, etc, she insisted that as a pensioner and in need that was what she wanted. Grudgingly a packed fridge was opened and one pack graciously handed over, then a second as mother continued to hold her hand out. The irony was that mother was lactose intolerant and couldn`t eat butter, but it was the principle that was at stake.
Ad-hoc distributions were eventually made around the country but with little advertising or organisation it is doubtful if even fifty per-cent of the total ever reached those it was really intended for.
