The Scouring of the Shire

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Selmo

Tolkien said that The Scouring of The Shire was "an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset", but how much detail did he have in place in the 1930s?

I think that, despite Tolkien's denials, this chapter contains much that reflects the real events of the 1940s and his attitude to them. In WW1, Tolkien had fought on foreign soil but in WW2 he was caught up in the fighting in his own beloved country. In the aftermath of the war, he lived through the introduction of Socialism in the UK with its Rules and Gathering and Sharing, organised by men who he would have seen as not fitted to rule. Was it Tolkien's personal fantasy that men returning home after defeating Hitler's Germany would lead the people of Great Britain agianst those he saw as Communists and restore an absolute Monarchy?

The Scouring of The Shire contains to only real allegories in LoTR.
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Firstly, if you analyse the politics of what happened to The Shire, it was not despoiled due to the efforts of Socialism but Venture Capitalism - those resources did not go back to the people but were shipped out of The Shire to be sold elsewhere. Saruman was the epitome of the modern Asset Stripper.

But I also think Tolkien had no such strong right wing agenda - remember that Attlee's Government (using diluted Keynsian economics, not Socialism, certainly not Communism!) was returned to power with a resounding landslide victory by those newly returned from the war and that Tolkien himself was one of those who received the most benefit from the Welfare State; at one time he struggled to find doctor's fees for his family and was often reduced to working well into the night marking school exam papers in order to scrape some more income.

He definitely makes some interesting points about overwhelming State control and about Totalitarianism but Attlee's Government was as far from these as you can imagine. And the Rules and 'gathering and sharing' had been in operation from the beginning of the war, by necessity. The bleak times lasted from 1939 right into the 1950s as rationing had to intensify following the war due to the immense debts which had to be paid to the US (and were only paid off last year).