directors of the company were discovered to have been provided in the 1920s. These loans were immediately repaid on the discovery and "the matter was closed. There are examples of NFUM operating policies between 1930 and 1970, such as holding a ball. During this period NFUM employed Sidney Carter to run a film unit. Anyone attending his film shows would be educated by current affairs films and entertained by dramas and documentaries about how they could be covered by insurance, provided of course by NFU Mutual" By 1940/41, over 100,000 farmers held policies with NFUM and premium income reached £1million with assets at £2million. In 1933 taxation was introduced to cover the trading results of mutuals, this was reversed in 1944 when a tax case went to the House of Lords and the intention of the statute was defeated. The Finance Act of 1964 sought to reverse this defeat, and Edmund Chaumeton, the company secretary, led efforts to oppose regularising mutual tax affairs, a task that "every year successive governments [have been] expected to put it back in place". During World War Two, a mutual employee named Arthur Scarf was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Scarf came from a Lincolnshire farming family and worked for the Mutual's claims department between the wars. In the 1960s, NFU Mutual's assets reached £50m. A significant UK outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 1967 saw NFUM decline to take any new business for that cover. Work with reinsurers enabled NFUM to offer renewal to members who already had cover. In the late 1980s the Mutual determined to move beyond farming; in 1998, the Board put before the members the Articles to enable unrestricted access to all NFUM products which was adopted. A need to reassure NFUM's established farming base resulted in a product called 'Mutual Advantage' being set up, NFU members. Around the year 2000, a number of attempts were made to create shareholder ownership and accountability to the NFU Mutual. Former NFUM director John Murray initially approached the five venture capitalists in the hope of launching a bid. One of the reasons this was advanced the opinion that the company was "eroding its value by selling insurance to non-farming customers at knockdown rates"; at the time, windfalls for members of between £20,000 and £25,000 were anticipated. Commenting to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on the possibility of demutualisation, Andrew Young,