How the Great War set
UNTIL August 1914, Britain was a country of restricted roles for women, who were neither expected to work nor allowed to vote. The First World War dramatically changed that. Four years of pulverising conflict brought about a transformation in society that laid the foundations of modern Britain.
The breadth of this revolution is spelt out in a magnificent new book
The losses were terrible, the slaughter horrific, but WWI finally allowed the nation’s female workers to throw off their shackles and thrive
by the distinguished historian Simon Heffer. The advent of “total war marked a dramatic break” with Britain’s past, he writes.
In a radical departure from the liberal traditions of the previous century, the government mobilised the entire nation, leaving no activity free from intervention. Ministers seized property, rationed food, dictated pay rates, directed labour, oversaw sport – and brought millions of women into the workplace. The kind of state we have today, complete with large bureaucracies, and expansive welfare, had its origins in the titanic struggle of 1914-1918.
Even British Summer Time, first introduced in 1916, owes its existence to the First World War. The same is true of women’s emancipation, especially in the workplace and polling station.
When the conflict broke out, there were widespread hopes that it was just a temporary difficulty. But as the trenches were dug on the Western Front and the death toll mounted, it became obvious Britain was in for a long, painful slog. At first the Liberal government resorted to modest measures, like the requisitioning of several stately homes for convalescent centres or commandeering flour mills and some merchant shipping.
The recruitment of women also began in hesitant style with the creation of the Women’s Emergency Corps – which later evolved into the Women’s Volunteer Reserve – to provide nurses, mechanics, motorcycle messengers and farm workers.
This initial reluctance to intervene was epitomised by the laissez-faire attitude of Prime Minister H H Asquith, whose brilliant intellect was matched by his fondness for alco- his nickname “Squiffy”.
When King George V took the pledge to abstain from drink for the duration of the war, Asquith refused to join him. His relaxed approach to routine also featured long games of bridge and ardent letter-writing to his mistress, Lady Venetia Stanley, even during Cabinet meetings.
Despite the character of its chief, Asquith’s government systematically widened its machinery, reflected in the introduction of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), which gave officialdom massive new emergency powers. The newspapers were censored, enemy aliens interned, pub opening hours restricted, and sports fixtures cancelled.
The first year of the war alone was estimated by the Treasury to cost an additional £450million. Although taxes rose significantly, the bulk of the money could only be found by borrowing, something the hol, hence
PIONEERING: Female munitions workers at the National Shell Filling Factory in Chilwell, Notts, in July 1917. Left, England’s first WPC, Edith Smith of Grantham
Victorian tenets of sound money had abhorred. As Heffer puts it, “Britain’s role as a debtor nation had begun and would survive indefinitely.”
Yet even with such intervention, the war was going badly in 1915.The most urgent problem was the disastrous shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front, which generated a crisis that forced Asquith to create a coalition government. Appointed the new President of the Education Board, Arthur Henderson, a genial former ironworker, became the first ever Labour Cabinet minister.
Just as significantly, Aquith also set up a Ministry of Munitions under the dynamic Welshman David Lloyd George to take charge of the burgeoning network of shell factories.
It was the first government department to be known as a “Ministry” and was later described by Winston Churchill, who became the minister in 1917, as “the greatest agent for state socialism ever produced”. Because so many men were in milit wom work 70 h surg trad the 800 engi anot
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