This is such a good question as it touches on several aspects of wartime Britain that are really interesting, complex and often misunderstood: the economics and strategic purpose of rationing, labour/resource allocation, not to mention the cultural history itself of rationing and the importance of the perceptions of wartime British life in the current national identity. I have been waiting for somebody to come and give a really good answer to it that explains all these complicated issues, as I think it deserves it..…and tumbleweed.

So I have rolled up my sleeves and tried myself to cobble together an adequate answer that answers your question and doesn’t fall to moderation. I cant really answer specifically about the actual rationing details and I know very little about the Agricultural side of things, but I can give you a simple overview of some of the factors that led to rationing and beef in particular being less prevalent.

First off is to quickly consider pre war British economy. In many ways pre-war Britain has a global economy that would not be completely alien to the modern world. It is fully involved in global trade and is one of the world’s premier importers and exporters as well as providing shipping and finances for significant chunks of the rest of the world’s trade. In a crude simplification Britain imported raw materials and exported finished manufactures, services and coal. It was a very large importer of food (approx. 2/3of its needs), often in ways that defy casual common sense but make sense in a global economy (it was cheaper to import Onions from France and Bermuda than grow them in Britain etc). A large chunk of food imports were actually grains for animal feed rather than direct consumption (we imported cheap grains for animals in huge volumes but used national produced grains for people)

With that as a very simplified backdrop we can now consider pre-war Beef in general. There were about 8 million cows pre-war compared to about 20 million sheep and 4 million pigs. A large proportion of this was dairy farming. About half of British meat was imported and a large proportion of beef came from Argentina and the US. A large and “glamourous” industry had boomed in the transportation of refrigerated meat from the Americas, competing to be faster and more efficient than their competitors. These “reefers” (refrigerated ships) were increasingly fast and large and doubled up as fast liners for passengers and mail etc. This industry had expanded to meat from South Africa and Australia. This industry was primarily aimed at good quality meat with carcases transported whole backed by cheaper frozen meat. All this means simply is that most beef eaten comes from overseas while British cows are used for dairy.

Im sure you can see where this going…..But lets quickly cover the concepts of rationing. People commonly misunderstand British wartime rationing as something that is done because food was scarce caused by enemy action or economic weakness and generally aimed at the civilian population to maintain moral and health at a time of pressure.

While civilian moral, public order and public health are all important considerations it fails to cover that simply rationing is often one the simplest and most effective tools a government can have in controlling and adjusting a whole host of economic factors including inflation, labour and resource allocation. Rationing doesn’t just cover food it covers a whole host of commodities and what is or isn’t rationed has a huge knock on effect on those industries involved.

In addition to the aforementioned public health, public order and morale rational, a government through the use and adjustment of rationing can; manipulate domestic markets, guide labour use, control consumer spending, promote savings (and loans to the government), control resource needs, control imports and the spending of currency reserves as well as “the big one” reducing and controlling shipping demands. Rationing was not a choice of weakness it is the most useful tool in prioritising resources.

At the outbreak of war Britain has the largest commercial fleet in the world and inherits a significant chunk of exiled nations ships, notably Norwegian, Dutch and Belgian ships. This fleet is effectively nationalised (its not really) and controlled via the Ministry of Shipping. This is another huge part of the way in which the government hoped to manipulate the economy and control imports, exports and flow of resources and currency. Reducing the importation and exportation shipping demands of food and other commodities to enable its replacement with munitions, troops and other wartime requirements were essential. By 1944 approximately half of all importation was munitions, not to mention the reallocation of munitions and war materials around the globe. The consolidation of all imports was essential.

So after a lot of back story…back to beef. To recap and simplify, we import a lot of nice beef from overseas in particularly shiny fast ships using valuable currency, while domestically we use our cows for milk but need a huge amount of cheap imported grain to feed them (a lot of it from Europe and the US).

The importation of quality beef is reduced as its expensive and is shipping intensive (bulky) and using some of the most valuable commercial shipping. It is replaced in part by cheaper frozen and tinned beef from Argentina, but mostly from even cheaper and compact meat from the US and Australia. Tinned meat is much easier to transport than full cow carcases, and who doesn’t like SPAM? Importation of beef drops by approximately half and that doesn’t take into account the sheer drop in quality which I suspect is almost total (although I cant find details to back that up).

The importation of animal feed is drastically reduced accounting for about 3/4s of wartime reductions in food importation. This has huge impact on stocks of domestic animals with stocks generally reducing by about 1/3 by 1945, and this does take into account the late war recovery of stocks, mid war the levels would be even lower. As for the domestic cows, their stock surprisingly increases. The loss of European dairy imports, especially and obviously cheese places a huge demand on domestic production that cannot be easily replaced. Therefore British cow population actually slightly increases by about 10%, but this is predominantly dairy farming.

As for the rationing itself – I dont really know much about it other than what I would be able to pick up off wkipedia etc. What I do know is that offal is not rationed for meat in general, meaning that “worse quality” meat was more easily available. Rationing strategy was specifically designed to reward the use of unfashionable but available produce.

As an additional aspect Agriculture (just like industry in general) went through quite the period of mass industrialisation during the war moving to even larger and mass production facilities that were more efficient in labour usage and for transport/fuel usage etc. I read somewhere that slaughterhouses dropped from around 300 to 80 but the size and efficiency increased. As part of the efficiency was a greater industrial process for removal of offal and marrow which would certainly support the idea that “poor quality” cuts were available.

So..Yes, your gran was probably right. The was less prime beef available because of

a) Efficient allocation of shipping to priority areas

b) Control of currency reserves, balance of payments and currency value etc

c) Disruption (this seems like a slight understatement) of European diary produce

d) British stocks concentrating on dairy

e) A promotion of offal and cheaper meat through industrial practice and the rationing system

f) Influx of cheap poor quality US meat

I think its worse re-emphasising that all of this was desirable by the government and was a results of various carefully planned economic and shipping policies, rather than because a) we didnt have any cows b) they sunk all the ships or c) we had no money to buy cows. Unfortunately its so common to find these slight misunderstandings of British wartime economics everywhere confusing purposeful choices with either weakness or enemy action.

As to where did the fillet and sirloin go? I don’t precisely know. It was either available in limited quantity and strictly rationed (I don’t know) or not available at all as no quality meat was imported and domestic cows were saved slaughter (I don’t know).

I hope this helps. I know i havnt really directly answered your question. Im still hoping somebody with a really good knowledge of the cultural or agricultural side of rationing will come along.