The Consumer Council was established as a consultative body in January 1918 by Lord Rhondda, former Food Controller, in conjunction with his successor, J. R. Clynes, to enlist the co-operation of the organised working classes and the co-operative movement in the gigantic task which lay before the Ministry, [of Food]. Representatives were invited from: Parliamentary Committee of Co-operative Congress, Parliamentary Committee T.U.C., War Emergency Workers National Committee, Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women's Organisations (SJCIWO). In addition to the bodies listed above, there were three representatives of unorganised consumers on the Consumer Council.
Dr Marion Phillips represented the Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women's Organisations (SJCIWO) on the Consumer Council, and the eight boxes of Consumer Council papers would appear to be hers. It seems likely that no main group of Consumers Council records has survived amongst the public records (Class MAF.), so that this set, although incomplete, probably has greater significance than merely as the papers of one Council member.
The problems with which the Council had to deal, essentially the control of increasingly scarce foodstuffs, are amongst those with which the Labour movement's War Emergency Workers' National Committee (ref. LP/WNC.) was concerned.
From the guide to the Consumer Council Papers, 1917-1920, (Labour History Archive and Study Centre)
