FIRST WORLD WAR BRITAIN ZEPPELIN RAIDS WOMEN WORKERS VAD WARTIME SHORTAGES OXO BOVRIL

ExLIBRIS SOFTBOUND BOOK by PETER DOYLE

BRITAIN IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR WW1 (THE END OF THE EDWARIAN AGE, THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 1914, THE GREAT ROYAL NAVY SUPER DREADNOUGHT BATTLESHIPS)

FAMILY LIFE (SEPARATION ALLOWANCE, PENSIONS FOR THE WOUNDED, WAR SAVINGS CERTIFICATES, WARTIME MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE, THE WAR OFFICE TELEGRAM, WAR MEDALS)

HOME AND NEIGHBORHOOD (WORKER HOUSING, DEFENSE OF THE REALM DORA PERMITS BOOK, ZEPPELIN AIRSHIP AND GOTHA BOMBER RAIDS ON THE UK, THE POTTERS BAR ZEPPELIN SHOOTDOWN)

WORK (MUNITIONS, LADY RECRUITERS, KITCHENER BLUE EMERGENCY UNIFORMS, NATIONAL REGISTRATION, CERTIFICATE OF EXEMPTION, ON WAR SERVICE BADGE)

WARTIME SHORTAGES: BEER, POTATOES, SUGAR AND MONEY

FOOD AND DRINK (RATIONING, BREAD SHORTAGES, WOMEN’S LAND ARMY WLA, BOVRIL AND OXO MEAT EXTRACTS)

THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA & ANTI-GERMAN RIOTS

SHOPPING AND STYLE

THE SILVER WAR BADGE

TRANSPORT

RELAXATION AND ENTERTAINMENT

EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICE

HEALTH (VOLUNTARY AID DETACHMENT VAD)

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Additional Information from Internet Encyclopedia

The first Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) was passed on 8 August 1914, during the early weeks of the war, though in the next few months its provisions were extended. It gave the government wide-ranging powers, such as the ability to requisition buildings or land needed for the war effort. Some of the things the British public were prohibited from doing included loitering under railway bridges, feeding wild animals and discussing naval and military matters. British Summer Time was also introduced. Alcoholic beverages were now to be watered down, pub closing times were brought forward from 12.30 am to 10 pm, and, from August 1916, Londoners were no longer able to whistle for a cab between 10 pm and 7 am. It has been criticized for both its strength and its use of the death penalty as a deterrent – although the act itself did not refer to the death penalty, it made provision for civilians breaking these rules to be tried in army courts martial, where the maximum penalty was death.

Particularly in the early stages of the war, many men, for a wide variety of reasons, decided to "join up" to the armed forces—by 5 September 1914, over 225,000 had signed up to fight for what became known as Kitchener's Army. Over the course of the war, a number of factors contributed to recruitment rates, including patriotism, the work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee in producing posters, dwindling alternative employment opportunities, and an eagerness for adventure to escape humdrum routine. Pals battalions, where whole battalions were raised from a small geographic area or employer, also proved popular. Higher recruitment rates were seen in Wales and Scotland, though in the case of the Welsh and Irish, political tensions tended to "put something of a blight upon enlistment".

Recruitment remained fairly steady through 1914 and early 1915, but fell dramatically during the later years, especially after the Somme campaign, which resulted in 500,000 casualties. As a result, conscription was introduced for the first time in January 1916 for single men, and extended in May–June to all men aged 18 to 41 across England, Wales and Scotland, by way of the Military Service Acts.

Urban centres, with their poverty and unemployment were favourite recruiting grounds of the regular British army. Dundee, where the female dominated jute industry limited male employment had one of the highest proportion of reservists and serving soldiers than almost any other British city. Concern for their families' standard of living made men hesitate to enlist; voluntary enlistment rates went up after the government guaranteed a weekly stipend for life to the survivors of men who were killed or disabled. After the introduction of conscription from January 1916 every part of the country was affected.

The policy of relying on volunteers had sharply reduced the capacity of heavy industry to produce the munitions needed for the war. Historian R. J. Q. Adams reports that 19% of the men in the iron and steel industry entered the Army, 22% of the miners, 20% in the engineering trades, 24% in the electrical industries, 16% among small arms craftsmen, and 24% of the men who had been engaged in making high explosives. In response critical industries were prioritised over the army ("reserved occupations"), including munitions, food production and merchant shipping.

In April 1918 legislation was brought forward which allowed for extension of conscription to Ireland. Though this ultimately never materialised, the effect was "disastrous". Despite significant numbers volunteering for Irish regiments, the idea of enforced conscription proved unpopular. The reaction was based particularly on the fact that implementation of conscription in Ireland was linked to a pledged "measure of self-government in Ireland". The linking of conscription and Home Rule in this way outraged the Irish parties at Westminster, who walked out in protest and returned to Ireland to organise opposition. As a result, a general strike was called, and on 23 April 1918, work was stopped in railways, docks, factories, mills, theatres, cinemas, trams, public services, shipyards, newspapers, shops, and even official munitions factories. The strike was described as "complete and entire, an unprecedented event outside the continental countries". Ultimately the effect was a total loss of interest in Home Rule and of popular support for the nationalist Irish Party who were defeated outright by the separatist republican Sinn Féin party in the December 1918 Irish general election, one of the precursors of the Anglo-Irish War.

The conscription legislation introduced the right to refuse military service, allowing for conscientious objectors to be absolutely exempted, to perform alternative civilian service, or to serve as a non-combatant in the army, according to the extent to which they could convince a Military Service Tribunal of the quality of their objection. Around 16,500 men were recorded as conscientious objectors,[86] with Quakers playing a large role.[citation needed] 4,500 objectors were sent to work on farms to undertake "work of national importance", 7,000 were ordered non-combatant duties as stretcher bearers, but 6,000 were forced into the army, and when they refused orders, they were sent to prison, as in the case of the Richmond Sixteen. Some 843 conscientious objectors spent more than two years in prison; ten died while there, seventeen were initially given the death penalty (but received life imprisonment) and 142 were imprisoned on life sentences. Conscientious objectors who were deemed not to have made any useful contribution were disenfranchised for five years after the war.

German zeppelins bombed towns on the east coast, starting on 19 January 1915 with Great Yarmouth. London was also hit later in the same year, on 31 May. Propaganda supporting the British war effort often used these raids to their advantage: one recruitment poster claimed: "It is far better to face the bullets than to be killed at home by a bomb" (see image). The reaction from the public, however, was mixed; whilst 10,000 visited Scarborough to view the damage there, London theatres reported having fewer visitors during periods of "Zeppelin weather"—dark, fine nights.

Throughout 1917 Germany began to deploy increasing numbers of fixed-wing bombers, the Gotha G.IV's first target being Folkestone on 25 May 1917, following this attack the number of airship raids decreased rapidly in favour of raids by fixed wing aircraft,[104] before Zeppelin raids were called off entirely. In total, Zeppelins dropped 6,000 bombs, resulting in 556 dead and 1,357 wounded. Soon after the raid on Folkestone, the bombers began raids on London: one daylight raid on 13 June 1917 by 14 Gothas caused 162 deaths in the East End of London. In response to this new threat, Major General Edward Bailey Ashmore, a RFC pilot who later commanded an artillery division in Belgium, was appointed to devise an improved system of detection, communication and control, The system, called the Metropolitan Observation Service, encompassed the London Air Defence Area and would later extend eastwards towards the Kentish and Essex coasts. The Metropolitan Observation Service was fully operational until the late summer of 1918 (the last German bombing raid taking place on 19 May 1918).[107] During the war, the Germans carried out 51 airship raids and 52 fixed-wing bomber raids on England, which together dropped 280 tons of bombs. The casualties amounted to 1,413 killed, and 3,409 wounded. The success of anti-air defence measures was limited; of the 397 aircraft that had taken part in raids, only 24 Gothas were shot down (though 37 more were lost in accidents), despite an estimated rate of 14,540 anti-air rounds per aircraft. Anti-zeppelin defences were more successful, with 17 shot down and 21 lost in accidents.

Newspapers during the war were subject to the Defence of the Realm Act, which eventually had two regulations restricting what they could publish: Regulation 18, which prohibited the leakage of sensitive military information, troop and shipping movements; and Regulation 27, which made it an offence to "spread false reports", "spread reports that were likely to prejudice recruiting", "undermine public confidence in banks or currency" or cause "disaffection to His Majesty". Where the official Press Bureau failed (it had no statutory powers until April 1916), the newspaper editors and owners operated a ruthless self-censorship. Having worked for government, press barons Viscount Rothermere, Baron Beaverbrook (in a sea of controversy), and Viscount Northcliffe all received titles. For these reasons, it has been concluded that censorship, which at its height suppressed only socialist journals (and briefly the right wing The Globe) had less effect on the British press than the reductions in advertising revenues and cost increases which they also faced during the war. One major loophole in the official censorship lay with parliamentary privilege, when anything said in Parliament could be reported freely. The most infamous act of censorship in the early days of the war was the sinking of HMS Audacious in October 1914, when the press was directed not to report on the loss, despite the sinking being observed by passengers on the liner RMS Olympic and quickly reported in the American press.

The most popular papers of the period included dailies such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Post, weekly newspapers such as The Graphic and periodicals like John Bull, which claimed a weekly circulation of 900,000. The public demand for news of the war was reflected in the increased sales of newspapers. After the German Navy raid on Hartlepool and Scarborough, the Daily Mail devoted three full pages to the raid and the Evening News reported that The Times had sold out by a quarter past nine in the morning, even with inflated prices. The Daily Mail itself increased in circulation from 800,000 a day in 1914 to 1.5 million by 1916.

On 13 August 1914, the Irish regiment the Connaught Rangers were witnessed singing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" as they marched through Boulogne by the Daily Mail correspondent George Curnock, who reported the event in that newspaper on 18 August 1914. The song was then picked up by other units of the British Army. In November 1914, it was sung in a pantomime by the well-known music hall singer Florrie Forde, which helped contribute to its worldwide popularity. Another song from 1916, which became very popular as a music hall and marching song, boosting British morale despite the horrors of that war, was "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag".

There was also a notable group of war poets who wrote about their own experiences of war, which caught the public attention. Some died on active service, most famously Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen, while some, such as Siegfried Sassoon survived. Themes of the poems included the youth (or naivety) of the soldiers, and the dignified manner in which they fought and died.[citation needed] This is evident in lines such as "They fell with their faces to the foe", from the "Ode of Remembrance" taken from Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen, which was first published in The Times in September 1914. Female poets such as Vera Brittain also wrote from the home front, to lament the losses of brothers and lovers fighting on the front.

In line with its "business as usual" policy, the government was initially reluctant to try to control the food markets. It fought off efforts to try to introduce minimum prices in cereal production, though relenting in the area of controlling of essential imports (sugar, meat and grains). When it did introduce changes, they were only limited in their effect. In 1916, it became illegal to consume more than two courses whilst lunching in a public eating place or more than three for dinner; fines were introduced for members of the public found feeding the pigeons or stray animals.

In January 1917, Germany started using U-boats (submarines) in order to sink Allied and later neutral ships bringing food to the country in an attempt to starve Britain into surrender under their unrestricted submarine warfare programme. One response to this threat was to introduce voluntary rationing in February 1917,[68] a scheme said to have been endorsed by the King and Queen themselves. Bread was subsidised from September that year; prompted by local authorities taking matters into their own hands, compulsory rationing was introduced in stages between December 1917 and February 1918, as Britain's supply of wheat stores decreased to just six weeks worth. It is said to have in the most part benefited the health of the country, through the 'levelling of consumption of essential foodstuffs'. To assist with rationing, ration books were introduced on 15 July 1918 for butter, margarine, lard, meat, and sugar. During the war, average calorific intake decreased only three percent, but protein intake six percent.

The Munitions of War Act 1915 followed the Shell Crisis of 1915 when supplies of material to the front became a political issue. The Act forbade strikes and lockouts and replaced them with compulsory arbitration. It set up a system of controlling war industries, and established munitions tribunals that were special courts to enforce good working practices. It suspended, for the duration, restrictive practices by trade unions. It tried to control labour mobility between jobs. The courts ruled the definition of munitions was broad enough to include textile workers and dock workers. The 1915 act was repealed in 1919, but similar legislation took effect during the Second World War.

It was only as late as December 1917 that a War Cabinet Committee on Manpower was established, and the British government refrained from introducing compulsory labour direction (though 388 men were moved as part of the voluntary National Service Scheme). Belgian refugees became workers, though they were often seen as "job stealers". Likewise, the use of Irish workers, because they were exempt from conscription, was another source of resentment. Worried about the impact of the dilution of labour caused by bringing external groups into the main labour pool, workers in some areas turned to strike action. The efficiency of major industries improved markedly during the war. For example, the Singer Clydebank sewing machine factory received over 5000 government contracts, and made 303 million artillery shells, shell components, fuzes, and airplane parts, as well as grenades, rifle parts, and 361,000 horseshoes. Its labour force of 14,000 was about 70 percent female at war's end.

Variously throughout the war, serious shortage of able-bodied men ("manpower") occurred in the country, and women were required to take on many of the traditional male roles, particularly in the area of arms manufacture; though this was only significant in the later years of the war, since unemployed men were often prioritised by employers. Women both found work in the munitions factories (as "munitionettes") despite initial trade union opposition, which directly helped the war effort, but also in the Civil Service, where they took men's jobs, releasing them for the front. The number of women employed by the service increased from 33,000 in 1911 to over 102,000 by 1921. The overall increase in female employment is estimated at 1.4 million, from 5.9 to 7.3 million, and female trade union membership increased from 357,000 in 1914 to over a million by 1918—an increase of 160 percent. Beckett suggests that most of these were working class women going into work at a younger age than they would otherwise have done, or married women returning to work. This taken together with the fact that only 23 percent of women in the munitions industry were actually doing men's jobs, would limit substantially the overall impact of the war on the long-term prospects of the working woman.

When the government targeted women early in the war focused on extending their existing roles – helping with Belgian refugees, for example—but also on improving recruitment rates amongst men. They did this both through the so-called "Order of the White Feather" and through the promise of home comforts for the men while they were at the front. In February 1916, groups were set up and a campaign started to get women to help in agriculture and in March 1917, the Women's Land Army was set up. One goal was to attract middle-class women who would act as models for patriotic engagement in nontraditional duties. However the uniform of the Women's Land Army included male overalls and trousers, which sparked debate on the propriety of such cross-dressing. The government responded with rhetoric that explicitly feminized the new roles. In 1918, the Board of Trade estimated that there were 148,000 women in agricultural employment, though a figure of nearly 260,000 has also been suggested.

The war also caused a split in the British suffragette movement, with the mainstream, represented by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel's Women's Social and Political Union, calling a 'ceasefire' in their campaign for the duration of the war. In contrast, more radical suffragettes, like the Women's Suffrage Federation run by Emmeline's other daughter, Sylvia, continued their (at times violent) struggle. Women were also allowed to join the armed forces in a non-combatant role and by the end of the War 80,000 women had joined the armed forces in auxiliary roles such as nursing and cooking.

Following the war, millions of returning soldiers were still not entitled to vote.[160] This posed another dilemma for politicians since they could be seen to be withholding the vote from the very men who had just fought to preserve the British democratic political system. The Representation of the People Act 1918 attempted to solve the problem, enfranchising all adult males as long as they were over 21 years old and were resident householders.[160] It also gave the vote to women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications. The enfranchisement of this latter group was accepted as recognition of the contribution made by women defence workers, though the actual feelings of members of parliament (MPs) at the time is questioned. In the same year the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 allowed women over 21 to stand as MPs.

The new coalition government of 1918 charged itself with the task of creating a "land fit for heroes", from a speech given in Wolverhampton by David Lloyd George on 23 November 1918, where he stated "What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in." More generally, the war has been credited, both during and after the conflict, with removing some of the social barriers that had pervaded Victorian and Edwardian Britain.