Britain’s women free
tary service, huge numbers of men were recruited for munitions k, many putting in more than hours a week. This was part of a ge of female recruitment into ditional masculine occupations. By end of the second year of war, ,000 women were working in ineering, 700,000 as clerks and ther 250,000 on the land.
SOME of the new additions to the workforce were surprising. At the Vickers aments factory in Erith, Kent, y Colebrooke and Lady Gertrude wford were employed as master ners, while Lady Scott, the widow the Antarctic explorer Captain tt, worked in the company’s ctrical department.
Her deftness, acquired in her art a sculptor, allows her to do work uiring great deftness of touch,” mmented The Times newspaper. Women were pushing new frontiers rywhere. Having decided to ploy women as bus and tram ductors, Glasgow Corporation nd that by 1915 its female ployees in these roles outnumed men by 1,200 to 400. Similarly, in London, the Metropolitan Police lifted the ban on women working on buses and trams.
Constabularies were also changing their profiles. In August 1915, Edith Smith of Grantham became England’s first female police officer with full powers of arrest. Some did not like the influx of women into the factories and public services, believing it had the potential to promote immorality and undermine family life.There were also grumbles from the affluent about the difficulties of recruiting staff.
But even the vast increase in the female working population was not enough to solve the manpower problem at the front.
A more drastic approach was needed, and it came through the introduction of full conscription in 1916. Essentially, all British adults except the elderly were ordered to put themselves at the disposal of the state. It was described by writer HG Wells as “a real turning point in the British mind, the close of a period of chaotic freedom almost unprecedented in the history of communities”.
The introduction of compulsory service spelt the death knell for Asquith, who had long opposed this measure precisely because of its illiberalism. In a ruthless internal coup, he was replaced by Lloyd George, a man of less principle but more energy.The new prime minister, the first working-class man to reach Downing Street, carried Government expansion to a new level. A large array of ministries were created, including those for food, reconstruction, information, shipping and pensions. The Ministry of Munitions alone had 8,000 clerks and porters. As officialdom grew, the last vestiges of pre-war life disappeared.
Amid limited supplies of food, the rationing of many goods was imposed, while prices were strictly controlled and beer output was restricted. Fuel shortages meant many, poorer people found it difficult to cook, so the government set up a system of national kitchens to provide takeaway soups, stews and puddings.
The scope of DORA reached into every facet of society. Under its ever more draconian regulations, those with spare rooms were forced to offer them to workers, nightclubs were shut, dog shows banned, paintings
‘Bus conductresses in London mounted a strike to ensure they were paid the same bonuses as men’ THE NEW ERA: From top, women bus conductors in south London; a recruitment poster for the Women’s Royal Naval Service; and loading coal in Coventry
censored, and it became an offence for a woman with venereal disease to have sex with a serviceman. German bombing of coastal and southern English towns led to the introduction of air raid shelters, sirens and blackouts, as well as the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918.
By then, women were indispensable in almost every arena. Threequarters of the 3.4 million-strong workforce in munitions was female and 200,000 were in the Women’s Land Service Corps. Even the armed services opened up through the creation of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps and the Women’s Royal Naval Service, both established in 1917 to provide logistical, medical and administrative support. Women were also becoming more militant. In August 1918, bus conductresses in London mounted a successful strike to ensure they received the same war bonuses as men. By the end of the war in November 1918, the total number of working women had reached 7.3 million. It was a huge contribution that not only helped to achieve victory but also made an unanswerable case for women to be given the vote.
Asquith, now Leader of the Opposition, rightly asked in Parliament, “How could we have carried on the war without them?”
The franchise was duly extended at the end of 1918, though, irrationally, women aged under 30 were denied the vote. But the reform still represented a giant leap towards democracy, just one legacy of the cataclysm.
By the time of the Armistice, half of all economic output was in the public sector.
The age of deference, small government, low taxes, domestic service and class hierarchies was over.
Yet the price the nation had paid to bring about the revolution had been a terrible one. More than a million British citizens had been killed, a shadow that lingers to this day.
●●Staring At God: Britain In The GreatWar by Simon Heffer (Windmill Books, £12.99) is out now. For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via www.expressbookshop. co.uk