Women on The Home Front

Conference on Saturday 24 March 2012

At The National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire

In the twentieth century wars were fought not just on the battlefield but on the Home Front; in the factories, shops, kitchens, gardens, halls and cinemas of Britain. This conference is intended to critically explore the myths, memories and histories of womens lives on the Home Front in the First and Second World War. Talks including: The housewife and the politics on food on the First World War home front Challenging Gender Stereotypes on Britains Inland Waterways during the Second World War Shifting relationships between women, cats and dogs: challenges to the peoples war Wartime Day Nurseries in the Midlands The lived experience of women on the Home Front in the Second World War Nationalising hundreds of thousands of women : Domesticity and Evacuation in Staffordshire Wars Forgotten Women : War Widows

The conference is organised by: The Midlands Region of the Womens History Network, The National Memorial Arboretum and The University of Worcester. To book a place contact janis@staffs111.fsnet.co.uk or maggie.andrews@worc.ac.uk Conference Fee 15 and 7:50 for concessions Students free, to include lunch and coffee. Coffee and registration from 10:15 in morning, conference will finish at 3:45

Women on the Home Front - 24th March 2012

11:00 The housewife and the politics on food on the First World War home front Karen Hunt, Keele University k.hunt@his.keele.ac.uk The First World War brought food (its availability, distribution, price and quality) rocketing up the political agenda. Food was traditionally seen as a womans concern. She had the principal responsibility in most households for translating the familys income into meals on the table. During the war the context for this daily task was one of food shortages, unequal distribution of food and fuel, long food queues and even hunger which affected the home fronts of all combatant nations. In response to this, violent cost-of-living protests erupted across the world in 1917 and 1918. Their most striking feature was the significant involvement of unorganised working-class housewives. It is striking that there were no comparable violent mass actions in wartime Britain. There were certainly significant food shortages and profiteering which prompted a politics of food on the British home front. Yet it had a different character to that of other nations. This paper explores the relationship between the ordinary housewife dealing with the food crisis in her daily life and the local politics of food in Britain. It asks whether the politicisation of the food supply and shopping enabled organised women to reach out to housewives hitherto untouched by any kind of politics. Did the shortages and food queues provide the catalyst for housewives to take action themselves? Exploring ordinary practices in extraordinary times reveals the ways in which domestic matters were reconfigured as political issues. Thus the politics of food resonates beyond the home front: it reveals the possibilities for a new kind of womens politics. 11:30 Wars Forgotten Women Helen Millgate helen.millgate@ntlworld.com Our project titled Wars Forgotten Women is self-explanatory. For there is no doubt that the women who lost their husbands fighting for this country in both world wars were treated shabbily by successive governments until the latter years of the 20th century. During the wars and in the immediate aftermath their lives were particularly bleak, their meagre pensions even subject to income tax and most women had to struggle to provide the basic necessities for themselves and their children. We undertook this project on British widows of the Second World War because it had been seemingly neglected by everyone else. Seemingly neglected, but not quite, for it was the subject of Janis Lomas thesis and it is thanks to her generosity that we were able to dig deeper and wider and scour the amazing archive gathered by the remarkable Iris Strange and held at the University of Staffordshire. Added to this cornucopia was the information gathered countrywide from some of the surviving widows and/ or their offspring by the fairly straightforward method of trawling the regional newspapers. The resultant 70 or so replies represented a good stepping stone from which to carry on our researches.

We approached the subject historically, examining the enormously complicated pension schemes from earliest times to the situation today. We searched out other support structures such as from -1971- the War Widows Association and the various benevolent societies and drew our own conclusions. The results may not have been greeted with unbridled enthusiasm by government and institutions our satisfaction comes from the reaction of our many correspondents who have thanked us above all for at last revealing the dismissive and penny-pinching policies of most postwar governments toward the war widows of this country. 12:00 Idle Women: Challenging Gender Stereotypes on Britains Inland Waterways during the Second World War Barbara Hately-Broad barbara_hately_broad@hotmail.com Studies of how women broke through gendered employment barriers during the Second World War are unlikely to spend much time considering the inland waterways as a location of radical change or a beacon for future emancipation. In the official history, their contribution as an auxiliary labour force commands only seven lines in a volume of more than 600 pages. However, closer examination reveals a more complex picture that highlights how women performed many critical but largely unacknowledged roles on Britains inland waterways before the conflict began, and how, in spite of some entrenched initial resistance from both canal companies and carriers, a small number of determined volunteers took over sole responsibility for the delivery of essential suppliers on the inland waterways for the duration of the war. Although the continuing decline of the canals as a mode of transport after 1945 meant there were few opportunities for these volunteers to continue their work after the war, nevertheless the employment roles developed provide a valuable insight into changing roles which impacted not only on those female volunteers themselves but also on the lives of traditional canal women. Utilising archival material together with personal recollections and autobiographies of the women concerned, this continuing research examines the roles played by women on the Inland Waterways before the start of the Second World War together with the impact of wartime changes waterways personnel and the changing role of women in relation to this mode of transportation during the war. 12:30 Shifting relationships between women, cats and dogs: challenges to the peoples war Hilda Kean HKEAN@ruskin.ac.uk The 1939-45 war on the Home Front is often referred to as the peoples war implying particular (positive) qualities. However, this wording ignores the role played by non-human animals both as the first victims of war, being slaughtered in hundreds of thousands at the start of the war and later providing emotional and practical support to humans. This paper will draw on various contemporary accounts including those of Lilian Margaret Hart, Nella Last, Glawdys Cox, Alice Rosman and F.Tennyson Jesse to explore the particular relationships between individual women and their companion cats or dogs. It will argue that although the massacre of some 400,000 companion animals in London alone at the start of the war divided animals and humans, the domestic circumstances on animals and humans alike drew them both closer during the war, in some ways blurring the species distinctions. It argues that even if one is not particularly interested in animals one cannot ignore the impact of the animal human relationship at this time.

1-2:00 Lunch 2:00 You can get a Wartime Nursery in your District Val Wood V.Wood@derby.ac.uk This was the call from the London Womens Parliament in 1941 and the title of a leaflet widely distributed by women activists in the Labour and Trade Union movement in Britain. This paper examines the establishment of War time Day Nurseries in the Midlands region 1941-1945 and considers the extent to which childcare provision met the needs of working women on the Home Front and the legacy of the scheme, in the immediate post war period. The paper will also focus on the personnel who staffed the Day Nurseries up to and subsequent to Nursery Nursing becoming listed as a reserved occupation for the war effort in 1943.Utilising regional archival sources on the War time Nursery scheme in the towns and cities of the Midlands, the author will illustrate the presentation with photographs and draw upon the personal testimonies of women who worked in these settings and used the facilities. The establishment of the Wartime Nursery scheme was both controversial and frequently debated, with the Government insistent that it was to be viewed only as a temporary measure to release women for vital war work. As the author will outline the scheme was not immediately disbanded in the Midlands region and many of the war time nurseries continued long after the cessation of hostilities in 1945.The dominant discourse that nurseries were closed as women returned to the home after the war is contested as a false history. 2:30 Nationalising hundreds of thousands of women : Domesticity and Evacuation in Staffordshire Maggie Andrews Maggie.andrews@worc.ac.uk The wartime evacuee a small child with label, gas mask and suitcase at railway station has become a symbol of the home front in World War Two, however behind the iconic image lies a more complex history. The government evacuation scheme both encouraged and enforced many home owners to share their private domestic space with women and children who they had never met before. The preparation, organisation and monitoring of this scheme led to unparalleled public interference into what had previously been considered to be the private space of the home, such that the violent interruption of the state into the housewives private life was likened by some to nationalising hundred and thousands of women (Cole 1940). This paper draws upon research generated by a Heritage Lottery Funded project On the Move exploring evacuation in Staffordshire to discuss what was seen by some as a domestic invasion. Evacuation was in many ways a military or organisational exercise. Potential billets were examined in relation to space and material conditions; social commentators and popular myth have frequently discussed class tensions between hosts and evacuees. Families, private and domestic lives are constructed through: practices, connections, relationships and traditions which are both socially and individually determined class, region, age, religion and upbringing shape the everyday of domestic life and construct an individuals sometimes tenuous sense of identity. Unsurprisingly perhaps therefore, in 1940 following the failure of the first wave of evacuation, Joan Simeon Clarke pointed out that: Family life cannot be artificially created going on to suggest that the more private billets that are used, the less chance there is of eventual success.

Over six years of the Second World War, however the majority of evacuees continued to be privately billeted and domestic relationships and it will be argued public policy became increasingly entangled in a complex shifting understandings of ideas of the family, domestic labour, motherhood and the home. 3:00 The extraordinariness of ordinary lives The lived experience of women on the Home Front in the Second World War Alison Parr a.parr@educ.keele.ac.uk This presentation explores the role that narrative story telling can play in exploding the presumptions and stereotypes of the meta-narrative of women on the Home Front that exists in history classrooms. The authors, Maria Whatton the award winning professional story teller and Alison Parr - History PGCE Course Leader at Keele University have combined their expertise to research Bruners claims that the narrative mode of thought enables cognitive functioning that provides a distinctive way of ordering experience, of constructing reality (Bruner,J. 1986:11) Teachers work with young people to reconstruct an image of women in the Second World War as the bastions of the Home Front, delivering their evacuated children to strangers, emancipating them to engage in dangerous, masculine wartime occupations. This will be contrasted and supplemented by a multiplicity of stories that will shed light on the many different perspectives of the lived experience. Our intention is to challenge Morgan and Evans view that studies of women in wartime are problematic, with few adequately reflecting the variety of the involvement of women on the Home Front. Reflecting on their experiences of capturing the richness and variety of past experiences, they will develop a multi-dimensional, contested and perspectival account of women on the Home Front. Using a range of media including photographs, video and storytelling the presentation will end with a challenge to the audience to capture and/or tell their own and others lived experience. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BOOKING FORM
For further details, please contact: Dr Janis Lomas or Dr Maggie Andrews

janis@staffs111.fsnet.co.uk or maggie.andrews@worc.ac.uk
To book: Please either return the form to the address below with a cheque made out to Womens History Network Midlands Region or email us

Address: 1, Exeter road, Cannock WS11 1QE.

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Please tick if applicable: Concession Student