Jambusters
Page 29
At the time the conference was held, mobilisation was at its height and the war effort was being redoubled so some women wondered why there was such an emphasis on reconstruction when the war was not yet won and no one knew how long it would last. The answer was supplied by Dr Melville Mackenzie, the chairman of the Allied Medical Advisory Committee set up to deal with post-war problems. The Allies were endeavouring to benefit from the lessons ‘so tragically taught at the conclusion of the last war when more individuals died from famine and disease than were killed in the war itself. This was to a great extent due to the fact that great chaos existed in relief work owing to the fact that no machinery had been set up before the end of the war to meet problems which must inevitably arise.’27 What the medical profession most feared was an outbreak of an epidemic that would devastate populations weakened by severe undernourishment. He called on the WI to take food production as seriously as Miss Tennant had suggested but he also wanted the WI to be involved in specific projects, such as helping to feed and clothe students who would join training schools for midwives and nurses. And he appealed to the caring side of women’s nature by painting a horrific picture of the plight of 300,000 orphans in Eastern Europe whose parlous state of health and lack of any decent housing had so shocked his committee. ‘Special mention should be made of the difficulty of providing any form of entertainment or education for these great numbers of children and the value of toys could not be overestimated.’28 He then delighted them by suggesting that tiny presents of packs of flower seeds would be appreciated more than they could ever know since the children could plant them and bring pleasure to other, older people in the population. This could be of inestimable psychological value in the rehabilitation of refugees. Mr McDougall, an economic adviser, was asked to spell out the current state of agriculture in Europe and to give his estimate of its state at the end of the war. It was of course a miserable picture. In western Europe alone 135 million people depended on agriculture and farming productivity had deteriorated as a result of the war. The majority of the population was surviving on two thirds of the food they should be eating to live adequately, with children and adolescents suffering the most. The harvest of 1943 would dictate the state of European food supplies for the future since all food stocks had been depleted during the harsh winter of 1942. Mr McDougall’s committee estimated that Britain and America would be feeding Europe for two harvest seasons after the war.
Miss Vernon told the delegates:
Although it is not urged at present, our speakers in showing us the immensity of the problems to be faced have been so inspiring that all of us here must feel more than ever before the worthwhileness of our Institute work and have a new incentive for doing it well. This feeling we must carry back to our members, so that they, too, will know that the humdrum job of looking after evacuees, growing more food, jam making, handicrafts and all the rest, have a very real part to play in fitting us to help in post-war reconstruction. After all it is the incentive that supplies the energy, and our motto as helpers in these days should be ‘Be Prepared’.29
Just as Lady Denman had sought to manage expectations at the outbreak of the war, so now, in 1944, she wanted to have her say on the peace that she believed would come soon. She asked the women at the AGM to keep up their courage and faith as the final assault on the enemy was launched. But then she asked more of them:
Despite all the difficulties and anxieties we have had to face, it is hard for us to imagine what countrywomen in other parts of Europe have suffered. We shall soon have our chance to help them, and our war task will not be done until we have done all in our power to feed and clothe the victims of Hitler’s New Order. We cannot give them back their murdered husbands and sons, nor restore to life the children who have been starved to death, but we can at least relieve their physical suffering.
With that end in view we will still accept rations and regulations and go on with the countrywoman’s own task of growing and preserving food even after peace is declared. It has not been easy for countrywomen to carry on their many heavy tasks in wartime, and we all long for a real holiday and relaxation – but with peace in sight and the knowledge that we are able to help the women and children of other lands whose lot has been so terrible we shall all, I know, make a supreme effort to finish worthily the work which countrywomen have carried out so splendidly since the war began.30
As the war in Europe was drawing to a close, so Edith at Red House Farm in Smethcote seemed to be busier than ever. The WI had been asked to make pillows for homeless in Hackney and she spent time in March 1945 baking feathers to put in the pillows. She was also knitting coats for refugees in Europe and packing up parcels of books, magazines, eye ointment, toothpaste and stationery for Leonard. On 12 April she wrote: ‘sudden death of President Roosevelt. Jack takes trap to blacksmiths.’ By the middle of the month there were daily notes in her diary about the progress of the war in Germany and the success of the American and Russian armies in cutting the German army in two. Then, on 2 May, she wrote: ‘Berlin fallen to the Russians. Officially reported Hitler is dead. Jack sows marigolds. Total surrender in Italy. WI meeting in Smethcote.’ Six days later it was all over: ‘Germany signed total surrender (oh joy). Thanksgiving service in church. We had bonfire on field.’ The following evening there was a meeting about bringing electricity to Smethcote. No agreement was reached. They finally got electricity at Red House Farm in the late 1950s.
Mrs Milburn had followed the last few weeks of the war in Europe in her diaries but her real interest was in the fate of her son, Alan, and how soon he would be released from his prison camp. On 8 May she wrote: ‘The morning’s weather seemed symbolic. It was as if in the thunder one heard Nature’s roll of drums for the fallen, then the one loud salvo of salute over our heads, and the tears of rain pouring for the sorrow and suffering of the war. And then the end of the orgy of killing and victory symbolized as the sun came out and shed its brightness and warmth on the earth.’31
At Bletchley Park Betty Houghton was in the cinema. ‘The manager came onto the stage and said: “You’ll be pleased to know that the war in Europe is over.” There was no clapping, no noise, no triumphalism. Just dead silence and I sensed that everyone was thinking what I was, “Now what are we going to do?”’ Betty went back to Chiddingly but she knew that life would never be the same as it had been before the war. Her brother had been killed in 1941. Their family life had been completely changed, as had so many other people’s. The war in Europe had lasted for years, for the whole of Betty’s late adolescence and early adulthood. She explained: ‘We had put all our energy into winning the war and now it was over. So many men had been killed, so much had changed. The atmosphere among our age-group was one of “Whatever next?”’
Ann Tetlow remembered the end of the war in Europe. She was nine years old. ‘We hung a Union Jack out of the window on VE Day and the blackout came down. We had a devil of a time removing the sticky tape from the windows. That had been put on to stop the glass shattering if there was an explosion nearby and it took months, if not years, to get the marks off the windows.’ There may have been celebrations in the village but there was no jubilation in Bradfield WI. They were war weary and the message, as it had been up and down the country, was echoed in the words of Cecil Beaton who said: ‘Victory does not bring with it a sense of triumph – rather a dull numbness that the blood-letting is over.’ Mrs Ward minuted the June meeting, the first after the declaration of peace in Europe: ‘Mrs Howlett took the chair and spoke a few words about this historic meeting, the first since the war in Europe had been won. The minutes of the last meeting were read out . . .’ and life continued in Bradfield.
Miss Moore, in her editorial in Home & Country, looked towards the future and suggested that the WI would have to brace itself to carry on rather than allowing itself a rest after the long and destructive years of the war:
VE day has come and gone. We imagine that the majority of our 88,000 readers celebrated it with
quiet thankfulness and gratitude to all those who have saved Europe from the horrors of Nazi domination. Now we turn our faces forward to the problems of peace and the tremendous opportunities for action that are offered to the National Federation and to every individual member of every Institute. This brave new world of the countryside, how are we going to achieve it?32
The WI, always keen to look beyond its own borders, embraced post-war planning with enthusiasm. Lectures and slide shows on the economy, history and politics of European countries appear on the monthly programmes of institutes throughout England and Wales. After the end of the war in Europe the WI was indeed asked to supply surplus food, to make toys for children and knit clothes and send garments to women in France, Belgium and Germany. In addition a great deal of effort and help was extended to women’s organisations whose lives had been so badly affected by the war. In June 1945 three WI members, Mrs Egerton from Yorkshire, Mrs Pick from Nottingham and Mrs James from the Isle of Ely, were invited to spend a week in France by the Entre Aide Française to see how the clothes and necessities collected by WIs were being distributed to peasant families in Normandy. ‘This will, incidentally, give the WI representatives first hand information upon conditions in rural France today.’33 Miss Deneke was among a small group who went to Germany to meet women’s groups who were beginning to re-form and consider how best they could help their fellow countrymen. Interest in these and other such visits was intense and Miss Deneke wrote an article about her experiences on her return: ‘Conditions of living in Germany are grievous. What can we eat? How can we get clothing? Where can we find shelter? These questions pre-occupy the average German woman. At home we are troubled with ration books, clothes coupons, and a housing shortage but in Germany distress is acute.’ She described the extraordinary juxtapositions: farms with carefully cultivated and ordered fields, herds of brindled cattle yet 2 million refugees from Poland and nearly 9 million homeless Germans on their own soil. ‘Men are scarce. Before POWs were released, women in Germany outnumbered men by 70 per cent and the disproportion will remain for a lifetime at least.’ She was pleased to tell readers that the Landfrauenvereine, the German counterpart of the WI, which Hitler had dissolved in 1933, was to be revived. She hoped that English and Welsh institutes would welcome and offer hospitality to German women who would be coming over to develop their ideas and see how the WIs had flourished in the twelve years since they had existed in their own country. And then the plea: ‘But meanwhile even in the German countryside there are no supplies of needles and thread for mending clothes, there is no leather for shoes, and there are no stoves or utensils for refugees.’34 There was work to be done.
The government, women’s magazines and male commentators on child welfare put the onus for tackling the post-war years onto women. There was a sense that they held the key to making the future better for their men and children, that they had a duty of sacrifice in response to everything the men had fought for: ‘That is woman’s main task in the reconstruction of life after the war. She will be the main-spring of a new and better way of living.’35 The WI understood that this was an immense task for women who, exhausted by years of war, rationing, queuing, knitting, sewing, jam-making and childrearing, might have liked nothing more than a little rest. They commissioned an article from the educational psychologist K. M. Catlin, who wrote a generous-spirited and understanding piece which the WI published in June 1945. She acknowledged that there would be difficulties on all sides, and gently reminded women not to feel offended if it appeared their men were criticising them. Their work at home in the countryside, she wrote, had been as arduous in many ways as those who spent the war away from home. Above all, she encouraged women to keep going to their institutes, for there they could find diversion. She concluded:
If family life is to be resumed after the war without conflict and distress, it must be on a basis of sympathy and tolerance. Don’t expect to pick up the threads just where you dropped them. Particularly where a husband and wife are concerned it may be necessary to go back a bit – to get a little nearer your courting attitude, when you weren’t quite so sure of each other and couldn’t afford to take things for granted, but rather set out to please and to win the other’s affection. All but the most fundamental difficulties (which would probably have arisen, war or no war) can be overcome where there is affection, sympathy and tolerance.36
At Coningsby and Tattershall’s AGM, held in Lloyds Bank in Coningsby on 12 December 1945, their guest speaker, Mrs Fieldsend, spoke to the gathered membership about their role in the future: ‘The war is over but there is still strife in the world. Now is the time of building and working for peace not only in our own country but throughout the world. We in the Institutes belong to a huge organisation both here and overseas, and our aim should be a better understanding of all nations.’
There was another aspect of post-war life that would require great strength and commitment and that concerned the return home of 4.5 million servicemen, the tens of thousands of women who had been drafted into the forces and into war work, and the remaining evacuee children from the countryside, numbering several hundred thousand. Families all over the country had to adapt to peace and to the return of fathers, sons, brothers, lovers, daughters. As at the beginning of the war there was major upheaval in the countryside. Now, six years later, there was another. And once again it was the women of Britain who were called on to take the strain, to rebuild family life and to cope with the future in what became known as Austerity Britain.
10
A FINAL WORD
Peace is invisible.
Soviet delegate to the League of Nations, 1937
We ended the last chapter on a note of understanding of just how high the cost had been to women who had battled through the war years and now had to face an austere future. Up to now this book has celebrated the great industry, energy, enthusiasm and determination of the WI not only to survive the war but to do as much as they could for their fellow Britons in the process. In this chapter I want to look at the WI from a slightly different perspective and celebrate it at a more private level.
Seen from the twenty-first century it is hard not to conclude that members of the Women’s Institutes were thoroughly put upon during the Second World War. Actually, I think the picture is more complex and interesting than that. First, it is important to remember that WI members were not a separate species but were the mothers, wives, sisters, friends in the local village or community. They might also have been the village postmistress, the district nurse, the schoolteacher. They might have been married to the local doctor or policeman. Some like Dr Gwen Bark were the local doctor. During the war they could have held several offices or played their part in more than one voluntary organisation. In other words, they were part of the fabric of the community and as such represented women of all types on the rural home front. There was also a very wide spread of wealth, from the poorest women married to farm labourers or, in Northumberland, to miners and industrial workers who lived in villages or, in Cornwall, to fishermen through to the wealthy, landed county gentry, many of whom were as committed to the cause and belief of the WI as their founders in 1915.
Although it would seem that the government asked the earth of them, that they expected them to work for no pay on every conceivable aspect of civilian war work from knitting comforts for the troops to growing surplus vegetables and fruit to feed the nation, from bottling jam to collecting rosehips and foxgloves, from making toys to collecting salvage, or from mending socks to advising on post-war housing, they were accorded a degree of respect from ministers that came as a result of hard-won esteem earned by their twenty-four years of pre-Second World War history. Though others poked gentle fun at the WI and spoke patronisingly of their contribution, assuming them to be relied upon merely to serve tea and refreshment at events, the government knew better than to talk down to Lady Denman and Miss Farrer. Lord Woolton, in his capacity of Minister of Food, was aware that he, through one contact, had access
to the largest voluntary women’s organisation in the country and he did not abuse it, though I would argue that he made the most of it. Certainly he asked a lot of the WI but he was always careful to record his thanks, to explain why he was asking them to do so much and above all he made sure he was seen to be supporting them by turning up at centres or supporting VIP visits. Mr Hudson, in the Ministry of Agriculture, was similarly careful to keep on the right side of the WI and his speech at the 1943 AGM showed a depth of knowledge not only of the countryside but also of the role played by the WI in rural life. Those who showed less understanding and tolerance, such as the civil servants in the Ministry of Supply who made Miss Farrer’s life so difficult in the middle years of the war, demonstrated an ignorance of the relevance of the WI which has in some instances continued to prevail. On a national level the Executive Committee had been desperate to keep spirits up and to emphasise the national importance of their work as praised by the likes of Lord Woolton. Thus an editorial in Home & Country published at the very beginning of the war set the tone:
Without doubt, we Women’s Institute members are a remarkable race. What with war, taxes, black-out, rationed cars, nonexistent buses, Stygian railway trains, packed houses, double-shift dinners, anxiety, loss of jobs, and that inexpressible dreariness that besets all war work – the feeling that you are darning a sock painfully with one hand and cutting off the foot with the other – she thought the members might be too busy to write. That doubt is over. There is nothing whatever Institutes are not doing in this war, from leading the Land Army, like their Chairman, down to sharing a saucepan with a lonely London mother, like Mrs Jones down the lane.1