Annot Robinson ........ revisiting a remarkable woman

I have decided to revisit Annot Robinson*.

Mrs Annot before her marriage to Sam Robinson

I first came across her   in an excellent account of her contribution to Manchester politics in the early 20th century.**

Just weeks before I had  been reading some of her correspondence to the Daily Citizen in 1915 on the exploitation of woman in the workforce. 

“Women” she wrote “will most certainly have to take the place of men.  

There is already a shortage of men workers in Manchester  but so far as I am aware no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage.“***

She had been born in Scotland in 1874 married and moved to Ancoats in 1908 and returned to Scotland in 1923 where she died two years later.

She had become active in Scottish politics in the 1890s and by 1895 was working for the Independent Labour Party in Dundee.

Annot Robinson speaking at a Suffragette meeting circa 1910 with her daughter

“She entered a marriage based at first on love and shared political ideals but which was ultimately disastrous. 

Subsequently living as a single-parent in an unaccepting age, she struggled in support of her chosen and unpopular causes, a constant and active member of the ILP and at different times of the WSPU, the NUWSS and the Women’s Labour League (WLL), Women’s War Interests Committee, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an ebullient speaker and tireless traveller and twice a candidate in local elections.”****

All of which was set against the backdrop of being “at first the family bread winner and then a single parent of two young children.”*****

And at this point rather than just lift Ms Rigby’sresearch I shall point you towards the article and in the fullness of time return to Annot Robinson when I found out more myself.

Pictures; Annot  before she married Sam Robinson, and Suffragette meeting in Manchester, circa 1910, Annot Robinson standing.  The baby is her daughter, Cathy.  From ANNOT ROBINSON: A FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER SUFFRAGETTE

*Annot Robinson, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Annot%20Robinson

**ANNOT ROBINSON: A FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER SUFFRAGETTE, Kate Rigby, Manchester Regional History Review, Vol 1 Nu 1 Spring 1987,
http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/mcrh/files/2013/01/mrhr_01i_rigby.pdf

***"no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage" ............stories from the Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/no-women-taking-on-mans-work-will-be.html

****ibid Kate Rigby

***** ibid Kate Rigby

Letters to the Daily Citizen, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

Annot Robinson ........

Annot before her marriage to Sam Robinson

I have decided to revisit Annot Robinson.*

I first came across her in an excellent account of her contribution to Manchester politics in the early 20th century.**



I had already been reading some of her correspondence to the Daily Citizen in 1915.

“Women” she wrote “will most certainly have to take the place of men.  

There is already a shortage of men workers in Manchester  but so far as I am aware no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage.“***

She had been born in Scotland in 1874 married and moved to Ancoats in 1908 and returned to Scotland in 1923 where she died two years later.

She had become active in Scottish politics in the 1890s and by 1895 was working for the Independent Labour Party in Dundee.

Annot Robinson speaking at a Suffragette meeting circa 1910 with her daughter

“She entered a marriage based at first on love and shared political ideals but which was ultimately disastrous. 

Subsequently living as a single-parent in an unaccepting age, she struggled in support of her chosen and unpopular causes, a constant and active member of the ILP and at different times of the WSPU, the NUWSS and the Women’s Labour League (WLL), Women’s War Interests Committee, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an ebullient speaker and tireless traveller and twice a candidate in local elections.”****

All of which was set against the backdrop of being “at first the family bread winner and then a single parent of two young children.”*****

And at this point rather than just lift Ms Rigby’sresearch I shall point you towards the article and in the fullness of time return to Annot Robinson when I found out more myself.

Pictures; Annot  before she married Sam Robinson, and Suffragette meeting in Manchester, circa 1910, Annot Robinson standing.  The baby is her daughter, Cathy.  From ANNOT ROBINSON: A FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER SUFFRAGETTE

*Annot Robinson, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Annot%20Robinson

**ANNOT ROBINSON: A FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER SUFFRAGETTE, Kate Rigby, Manchester Regional History Review, Vol 1 Nu 1 Spring 1987,

***"no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage" ............stories from the Great War, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=stories+from+the+Great+War

****ibid Kate Rigby

***** ibid Kate Rigby

Letters to the Daily Citizen, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 5 living through the Great War

Our house in 2014

The centenary of the Progress Estate has long passed.

Now we can lay claim to about thirty of those 100 years having moved in to 294 Well Hall Road in the middle of 1964 but I gave seldom thought to the history of the house or to the people who occupied it before us.

But now I am drawn to that past and have begun to explore something of what our home would have been like a century ago.*

And because I am deep into researching for a new book on the Great War the events of that year when the Arsenal workers and their families began new lives in Well Hall has special signifigance.

The popular story of how we coped during the four years tends to fasten on the participation of women on the shop floor and in the fields; the impact of Zeppelin raids and the blackout but all too often skips over the huge hike in the cost of living.

As Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”**

And this was the context behind the industrial conflicts which rumbled on and which some at the time and since have sought to characterise as greedy workers exploiting a country at war.

The reality was very different as Sam Hague who spoke at a meeting in Manchester was quick to point out, “there never had been a time in the nation’s history when the working classes had so solidly backed the Government.”***

The aims of the committee, 1915

Working hours increased, and under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and The Munitions War Act 1915 workers were being prosecuted for absenteeism and striking over wages and conditions.

In Manchester the first prosecutions under the Munitions War Act were held at the Town Hall on Friday July 30 when thirty-two men employed at Craven Bros Ltd Reddish were brought before the Recorder charged with going on strike over wages and working conditions without first submitting the matter to the Board of Trade.

And in response to the rising cost of living the Labour movement set up local emergency war committees and food vigilance committees, which reported to the War Emergency Workers National Committee in London which had come into being on the day war broke out.

The idea of a food vigilance committee seems oddly old fashioned but back in 1915 it was seen by many as an essential way of preventing the  growing practice of adulterating food and the rise in the cost of living.

The London Food Vigilance Committee was a joint body made of the London Joint Committee of Co-operative Societies, the London Trades Council and the London Labour Party.

And cooperating with the Royal Arsenal Co-op in our part of London was Councillor William Barefoot of the Woolwich Labour Party.

These committees set out clear policies on how to manage shortages by insisting that “the Government purchase all essential imported food stuffs, commandeer or control all home grown food products and make effective use of ships and the control of transport facilities” thereby securing both a fair share of what was available and at a controlled price.”****

And a key part of this would be local authorities who should be “power to deal with the distribution of food stuffs and coal, and to establish Municipal Kitchens.”

There will be some who see in this a creeping form of state control but the reality was that war time legislation had already given the authorities sweeping powers but there was a woeful lack of action over the rise in rents, coal and food prices and the lowering of the quality of what was on offer to eat.

The Committees were fully aware that at some point rationing would have to be introduced and it followed therefore that the Co-op and Labour movements should be represented on official committees given that they "had an understanding of the food requirements of the workers.”

All of which brings me back to the Arsenal workers who were beginning to take up residence in their new homes and some of whom will have been actively involved in that committee.

Pictures; our house on Well Hall Road, 2014, courtesy of Chrissie Rose, extracts from documents from The London Food Vigilance Committee, 1915, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester,http://www.phm.org.uk/

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20100%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall   

**Manchester Guardian February 19 1915

*** Free Trade Hall, Manchester February 14, 1915

**** The London Food Vigilance Committee, 1915

Another side to life on the Home Front in Manchester during the Great War

“This meeting views with grave concern the enormous rise in the price of foodstuffs and coal, which is equivalent to a considerable reduction of wages of those fully employed and the enormous profits that Shipping, Dealers and other gamblers in the means of life are at present reaping by their unholy profiteering.

We therefore call upon the Government to take immediate action to control supplies to regulate food prices and to put an end to this flagrant exploitation of the necessities of the poor.”*

Such was a resolution passed by a large audience in the Free Trade Hall on Sunday February 14 1915.

It was the culmination of a few days of factory and street corner meetings which focused on the swift rise in rents as well as food and coal prices since the beginning of the war.

And it is an aspect of life on the Home Front which does not always feature prominently in many accounts of the Great War.

The popular story of how we coped during the four years tends to fasten on the participation of women on the shop floor and in the fields; the impact of Zeppelin raids and the blackout but all too often skips over the huge hike in the cost of living.

As Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”**

And this was the context behind the industrial conflicts which rumbled on and which some at the time and since have sought to characterise as greedy workers exploiting a country at war.

The reality was very different as Sam Hague who spoke at that Free Trade meeting was quick to point out, “there never had been a time in the nation’s history when the working classes had so solidly backed the Government.”***

Working hours increased, and under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and The Munitions War Act 1915 workers were being prosecuted for absenteeism and striking over wages and conditions.

In Manchester the first prosecutions under the Munitions War Act were held at the Town Hall on Friday July 30 when thirty-two men employed at Craven Bros Ltd Reddish were brought before the Recorder charged with going on strike  over wages and working conditions without first submitting the matter to the Board of Trade.****

But this is to get ahead of ourselves.

Back in January the Manchester Guardian had reported “the all-round advance in the price of most household commodities since the outbreak of hostilities – an advance amounting in several instances to over 50% [was] causing concern to the average householder whose income is inelastic”*****

And amongst working class families this all-round advance was causing great hardship more so because it was accompanied by rises in rents and fuel prices.

But strikes to maintain living standards were not the only response to the jump in the cost of living.
On the day war broke out the Labour Movement had formed the War Emergency Workers National Committee tasked with defending the interests of organised working people.

During the next four years it received daily reports all on everything from rises in rents, the cost and quality of food to pensions and conditions in factories and on the land as well as the railways, war babies, air raids and women’s war service.

Much of the correspondence came from local Labour and Trades Councils across the country which set up their own local committees.

Here in the city the Manchester & District Workers (War Problems) Joint Committee consisted of Manchester & Salford Trades and Labour Council, Manchester & Salford Labour Party, Gorton Trades Council, the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades Federation, Building Industries Federation, Women’s Trade Union Council, Manchester and Salford Women’s Trade & Labour Council, Manchester & Salford ILP, Manchester Salford  & District Co-operative Societies, Women’s Co-operative Guilds, Women’s Citizen’s Association, and the Women’s War Interest Committee.

This was a broad cross section of those organisation representing the working class.
In turn Food Vigilance Committees were set up across the country to monitor prices and ensure local councils were enforcing regulations on both prices and the quality of food.

They also called meetings, distributed leaflets and like the War Emergency Workers National Committee pushed hard for more Government intervention in regulating the abuses thrown up during the war.

Now that to me promises to be a fascinating story.

Pictures; courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

*Resolution passed at the Free Trade Hall on February 14 1915

**LABOUR AND FOOD PRICES. A FREE TRADE HALL PROTEST, Manchester Guardian Feb 15 1915

***ibid Manchester Guardian Feb 15 191

****O’Neil Joseph, Manchester in the Great War, 2014

*****FOOD PRICES AND THE WAR, Manchester Guardian January 31 1915

Burrowing deep into the Great War ................the War Emergency Workers National Committee

Women munition workers Belsize works, Openshaw, 1918 

Yesterday I was thinking back to  one of those mornings which for me was pretty near perfect.

I had been in the Labour History Archive and Study Centre in the Peoples’ History Museum looking at the work of the War Emergency Workers National Committee which was formed the day the Great War broke out “by the Labour Party, the Trades Union Congress, and the Co-operative movement, plus a number of other affiliated organisations such as the Fabian Society. 

Manchester Tramways Employees in uniform, 1915

The main concern of the WNC was to defend the interests of organised working people. 

The size of the collection goes some way toward showing the impact of the war on people’s lives. 

With over 20,000 pages of correspondence on all domestic matters relating to the war including: rents, food, employment, agriculture, pensions, railways, war babies, air raids and women’s war service etc. 

Bullet Factory, the Royal Arsenal Woolwich, 1918

It is a large collection of papers that relates very closely to the day to day domestic environment during the war. 

Importantly it depended on the actions of what used to be called the ‘rank and file’ of the labour/trade union movement for its running, it was far from a ‘top down’ committee.”*

Now there will be those that mutter I have wandered off into the academic stratosphere but not so.

During the war there were massive rises in food prices along with fuel and rents, a persistent concern about the adulteration of food and growing anger at pay levels and working conditions.

And all these issues were being grappled with by the National Committee.

There are correspondence about the separation allowances paid to the wives of men who had enlisted, reports of sweated labour and the exploitation of children and the availability of speakers on a range of issues from food prices to rent rises.

It is the stuff of everyday life made more vivid by the backdrop of the war.

In 1915 the Stockport Labour Party reported on the level of representation on pensions committees, and Mr J. Robinson of the Stockport Branch of the Tailor’s Society queried the rates for making Khaki tunics.

Later still in 1917 the National Committee was engaged in the registration of shops in Manchester and the rising price of coal.

What makes these documents fascinating is that not only do they cover the whole country but are powerful examples of ordinary people challenging wrong doing and seeking to improve conditions.

So I have no doubt that they will reveal much about life during the war

All of which just leaves me to reflect on what a pleasant place the archive centre is for burrowing deep into the past.  The staff were most helpful and friendly and there are grand views of the river.

Pictures; Women Munitions workers Belsize works, Openshaw, 1918 m08093, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass the Bullet Factory, Arsenal, Woolwich, 1918,  from the collection of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm and  Manchester Tramways Employees in uniform, 1915 Don’t You Wish you were boak in Bolton from the collection of David Harrop

* Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Information Guide No. 8, http://www.phm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/8-World-War-I.pdf Peoples’ History Museum, http://www.phm.org.uk/

“No boy ought to be kept from school to work"........ stories of child labour in the Great War

Now I am off on a search for the story of John Thomas Longhurst.

On the meadows circa 1880

He was born in 1902 in Weston Underwood in Buckinghamshire, and his father and brother were agricultural labourers and in the July of 1915 he too was working the land.

Now nothing much remarkable perhaps in all that except that John Thomas Longhurst featured along with six others in a report on child labour in agriculture complied by Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union.

He was working in Pitsford, Northamptonshire which was in the next county north of his birth place.  It was still common for agricultural labourers as young as Thomas to work away from home.

During the 19th century farmers had undertaken to house and feed young farm labourers of both sexes in return for paying a reduced wage.

Of course it may also be that the Longhurst family had moved into the area.

On the meadows in the 1950s

What is more interesting are the details of his employment and the background to how at just 13 he was working in the fields in Northhamptonshire.

Since the outbreak of the Great War agricultural labour had become scare.

This was in part because many young men had enlisted but also because wage levels remained low.  In 1914 county weekly wage rates varied from twelve shillings in Oxfordshire, fifteen shillings and nine pence in Northampshire and sixteen shillings in Buckinghamshire.

In the northern counties wages were higher.  In Cheshire they were eighteen shillings and in Lancashire twenty-two shillings and three pence.

This disparity had been pretty much the case during the 19th century and reflected that simple fact that farmers in the north had to compete against the pull of the great manufacturing towns and cities.

And the Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union pointed out that where there were military camps or alternative industrial employment labourers were tempted to better themselves and leave the land.

All of which had produced serious concerns about agricultural productivity and the practice of employing both women and children.

Virtually everyone was opposed in principle to the use of child labour but it was three creeping in as was the employment of women.

Now the agricultural labour’s union was opposed to both and on the grounds that there was clear evidence that it was driving down wages.

The union cited cases of women being employed on much lower wages  and made it clear that if  women were “to be allowed to engage in labour ordinarily undertaken by men, [it could only be for] the same rates of pay.”* 

Harrowing mustard, 1899

But that said it remained implacably opposed to child labour,

“No boy ought to be kept from school to work.  

The mind gets clogged if a boy is made to work so young and it is impossible like that for the mind to expand as it should.  

We want educated men as farm labourers.”*

And the evidence that came in from union branches where children  were employed was not good.

Young John Thomas was paid four shillings a week for a ten and a half hour day, which included field work, carting manure and scaring birds.

The union was able to detail both pay and hours along with the tasks undertaken each day which helps reveal another side of the the Great War.

There is much more research to do and along the way something more of John Thomas Longhurst’s life will be revealed.

Pictures; from the collections of Alan Brown,  and the Lloyd collection, and Harrowing in Mustard on stubble from A Farmer’s Year, 1899, Haggard, H Rider, 

*Report on Child Labour in Agriculture, Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union.
April 1915, courtesy of the Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

Looking for the stories of the children who worked the land during the Great War

I have pretty much admitted defeat in the search for Herbert Catchpole.

Now anyone who has gone looking for a relative as part of a family history project will know how frustrating it can be.

Despite acres of official documents, parish records and the off chance of a newspaper story there is nothing  on him save an entry in the 1911 census and a reference in a report from the National Agricultural Labourers’ & Rural Worker’s Union dated 1915.

Not that this is that surprising for even at the beginning of the 20th century it was still possible for an individual  to fall through the cracks or just reinvent him or herself

Some missed having their birth registered, avoided being recorded on a census return or  might never offer personal information about work, shopping preferences or voting intentions.

In the case of Herbert Catchpole I know he was born in 1903 in Woodton in Norfolk, that his mother’s name was Caroline and that she was single, worked a sick nurse and in 1911 was 46 years old.

And that is pretty much all I have on her.  There are two earlier census references but they do not add much to what I know.

Now all of this matters because of what Herbert was doing in the April of 1915 a year into the Great War which is where that report from National Agricultural Labourers’ & Rural Worker’s Union comes in.

The union was much concerned with the employment of both women and children on the land at a time when agricultural labourers were leaving to enlist and others were being tempted by better wages in the towns and cities.

The response of some farmers was to take on women and boys but pay them substantially less than men.

The union’s position was simply that if women were to be employed it had to be on the same wage rates as men and remained totally opposed to the use of child labour and collected evidence on both the exploitation of women and the use of children.

And so Herbert appeared on that report for April 1915 along with six other boys aged between 11 and 13.

The report detailed the pay they received, the hours they worked and what they were expected to do.

Herbert was working in both Norfolk at Woodton and on the Suffolk border, was paid 3 shillings a week , and worked six out of the seven days for nine hours each day.

The remaining six worked similar or longer hours with some being paid slightly more.

So far a search of the records for two of the other boys has also turned up very little.
Fred Noble was paid four shillings for working the fields with the men, digging, weeding and keeping cows while John Thomas Longhurst spent 10½ hours a day, scaring birds, thistle spudding, horse hoeing and carting manure.

Both were just 13 years old, but apart from one census return there is so far nothing more.

In time I will pursue the records of the union and the degree to which more evidence come to light about child labour but I doubt little will surface of the lives of these three and for that I am saddened.

Pictures; extracts from Report on Child Labour in Agriculture, Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union.

*Report on Child Labour in Agriculture, Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union.
April 1915, courtesy of the Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

"no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage" ............stories from the Great War

“Women will most certainly have to take the place of men.  

There is already a shortage of men workers in Manchester  but so far as I am aware no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage.“*

Now it is easy to fall into that view of the Great War which portrays women as coming out of the shadows and somehow being liberated by the conflict.

It is an attractive idea and of course has some substance.

Women were employed in a whole range of occupations some of which were totally new to them but in the process faced opposition from male colleagues.

In 1915 the secretary of the National Agricultural Labourers’ & Rural Worker’s Union wrote “I am to point out that we shall oppose to the uttermost the employment of women in Agriculture and if the policy outlined is pursued our 300 Branches scattered throughout the country will undoubtedly have something to say on the matter, and I am quite certain trouble lies ahead.  

We oppose the employment of women in the Agricultural Industry on moral and economic grounds.”** 

And a few months later the union wrote of one woman employed on a farm in Shropshire who “worked for days in succession driving a pair of horses attached to harrows or other agricultural implements , to cultivate the land.  This woman receives one shilling a day in wages without any other allowance s for the service s which she renders to the farmer.”***

Of course it might be easy to dismiss such evidence as a one off, but as Annot Robinson pointed in March 1915, “no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage” and going on to reveal that “the Women’s Emergency Corps have undertaken an enquiry  to find in what trades women could replace men .  

It has not found a single instance where women’s wages have been increased to meet the rise in the cost of living.

In the majority of cases a percentage has been taken off their wages and the amount employers are offering for clerks for instance is generally about 5 shillings a week less than the current  rates before the war.”

Nor had things improved a year later when she reported that few employer’s in the Manchester munition factories were following the government’s recommendations of a flat rate for women of at least a £ a week.

So that much advanced idea that women gained from the war has to be judged more carefully as does that equally hawked view that a grateful nation rewarded the contribution made by women by finally granting them the vote for in reality the extension of the franchise was limited.

Now for some this will not be a revelation but for others I think it will, and so I shall be revisiting working conditions in the Great War, drawing on the correspondence of the War Emergency Workers National Committee and looking more closely at Annot Robinson who was a remarkable women.****

Pictures; the Tube Factory, the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, 1918,  from the collection of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm Women Munitions workers Belsize works, Openshaw, 1918 m08093, and  Women working in a munitions factory, date unknown, m08096   courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

*Mrs Annot Robinson, Daily Citizen, March 20 1915

**letter to the War Emergency Workers National Committee, February 27 1915, archives People’s History Museum

*** letter to the War Emergency Workers National Committee, April 26 1915

****War Emergency Workers National Committee, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20War%20Emergency%20Workers%20National%20Committee

Letters to the War Emergency Workers National Committee, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

The power of the Union ............ half forgotten stories from the Great War

“This meeting views with grave concern the enormous rise in the price of foodstuffs and coal, which is equivalent to a considerable reduction of wages of those fully employed and the enormous profits that Shipping, Dealers and other gamblers in the means of life are at present reaping by their unholy profiteering.

We therefore call upon the Government to take immediate action to control supplies to regulate food prices and to put an end to this flagrant exploitation of the necessities of the poor.”*

Such was a resolution passed by a large audience in the Free Trade Hall on Sunday February 14 1915.

It was the culmination of a few days of factory and street corner meetings which focused on the swift rise in rents as well as food and coal prices since the beginning of the war.

And it is an aspect of life on the Home Front which does not always feature prominently in many accounts of the Great War.

The popular story of how we coped during the four years tends to fasten on the participation of women on the shop floor and in the fields; the impact of Zeppelin raids and the blackout but all too often skips over the huge hike in the cost of living.

As Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”**

And this was the context behind the industrial conflicts which rumbled on and which some at the time and since have sought to characterise as greedy workers exploiting a country at war.

The reality was very different as Sam Hague who spoke at that Free Trade meeting was quick to point out, “there never had been a time in the nation’s history when the working classes had so solidly backed the Government.”***

Working hours increased, and under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and The Munitions War Act 1915 workers were being prosecuted for absenteeism and striking over wages and conditions.

In Manchester the first prosecutions under the Munitions War Act were held at the Town Hall on Friday July 30 when thirty-two men employed at Craven Bros Ltd Reddish were brought before the Recorder charged with going on strike  over wages and working conditions without first submitting the matter to the Board of Trade.****

But this is to get ahead of ourselves.

Back in January the Manchester Guardian had reported “the all-round advance in the price of most household commodities since the outbreak of hostilities – an advance amounting in several instances to over 50% [was] causing concern to the average householder whose income is inelastic”*****

And amongst working class families this all-round advance was causing great hardship more so because it was accompanied by rises in rents and fuel prices.

But strikes to maintain living standards were not the only response to the jump in the cost of living.
On the day war broke out the Labour Movement had formed the War Emergency Workers National Committee tasked with defending the interests of organised working people.

During the next four years it received daily reports all on everything from rises in rents, the cost and quality of food to pensions and conditions in factories and on the land as well as the railways, war babies, air raids and women’s war service.

Much of the correspondence came from local Labour and Trades Councils across the country which set up their own local committees.

Here in the city the Manchester & District Workers (War Problems) Joint Committee consisted of Manchester & Salford Trades and Labour Council, Manchester & Salford Labour Party, Gorton Trades Council, the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades Federation, Building Industries Federation, Women’s Trade Union Council, Manchester and Salford Women’s Trade & Labour Council, Manchester & Salford ILP, Manchester Salford  & District Co-operative Societies, Women’s Co-operative Guilds, Women’s Citizen’s Association, and the Women’s War Interest Committee.

This was a broad cross section of those organisation representing the working class.
In turn Food Vigilance Committees were set up across the country to monitor prices and ensure local councils were enforcing regulations on both prices and the quality of food.

They also called meetings, distributed leaflets and like the War Emergency Workers National Committee pushed hard for more Government intervention in regulating the abuses thrown up during the war.

Now that to me promises to be a fascinating story.

Pictures; courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

*Resolution passed at the Free Trade Hall on February 14 1915

**LABOUR AND FOOD PRICES. A FREE TRADE HALL PROTEST, Manchester Guardian Feb 15 1915

***ibid Manchester Guardian Feb 15 191

****O’Neil Joseph, Manchester in the Great War, 2014

*****FOOD PRICES AND THE WAR, Manchester Guardian January 31 1915

Revisiting the Great War nu 4 ............ "there shall be NO STRIKE OR LOCKOUT"

Munitions workers, Openshaw, 1918

The right of ordinary men and women to go on strike during a war came in for a lot of comment in the newspapers during 1915.

And a century or so later there might still be those who think it was wrong, unpatriotic and more than a little cynical given the sacrifice being played out on the Western Front.

Of course then and now the reasons for that industrial conflict have for some been neatly swept to the corners, and words like greed, unprincipled and even cowardly could be used to explain what went on.

Certainly at the time the papers were quick to print letters from men at the Front questioning the strikes while the Government forced through compulsory arbitration for wage disputes and suspended trade union rights in munitions factories making strikes in factories engaged in war work illegal.*

Bullet Factory, Woolwich Arsenal, 1918

“One of the most emphatic provisions of the Act is that, during the war, whatever differences may arise there shall be NO STRIKE OR LOCKOUT ........ Under the Act the meaning of the terms “strike” and “lockout” are broader than their generally accepted meaning in normal times.  

Workmen need not necessarily walk out, to be on strike, nor need the doors be closed against the men to constitute a lock out.  

Any concerted action by workmen, which involves any stoppage of work, with the purpose of compelling an employer, to accept, or to aid workmen to compel an employer, to accept any “terms or conditions of or affecting employment” is, in the sense of the Act, a strike**

For which the penalty for any workmen involved in a strike was £5 a day or part of a day

Added to which in factories engaged in the manufacture of armaments workers were forbidden to leave their current job for another without obtaining the consent of the employer were prevented from refusing to take on a new job regardless of the rate of pay and could not refuse to do overtime whether this was paid or not.

And while the act made it clear that these provisions only covered demands for pay or conditions of work sitting behind this piece of legislation was the far more draconian Defence of the Realm Act*** which could be used against “any person who, inter alia, “attempts to impede, delay, or restrict the production, repair, or transport of war material or any other work necessary for the successful prosecution of the war.”**

Cost of living demonstration, 1915

The year had seen large numbers of strikes, some over issues directly related to the regulations prohibiting workers leaving without the consent of the employer.

In Openshaw in August this had led to confrontation between the firm Armstrong, Whitworth and the workforce over the dismissal of 121 men from the armour plate department without the relevant certificates allowing them to get work elsewhere.

Elsewhere the issue was simply the rising cost of living which was not being matched by a similar rise in pay in some industries.

As early as February 1915 the Manchester Guardian had reported that wages were “much as they were before the war.”****

At a time when the cost of food, fuel and rents were on the increase.

Speaking in Manchester at a large public meeting in February Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”*****

At the Front, 1916

That said not all industrial disputes centred around pay, in Oldham the employees of the Co-op were in dispute over the Society’s refusal to pay women the same rate as men, while at Sandbach the issue was over the refusal of Foden’s the truck builders  to recognise a trade union.

All of which brings us back to that simple observation that here there is much more to find out, including trawling the full records of strikes in 1915 and bringing to the fore the words of those involved.

Pictures;courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/ Women Munitions workers Belsize works, Openshaw, 1918 m08093, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass the Bullet Factory, Arsenal, Woolwich, 1918,  from the collection of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm Daily Mail War Postcards, 1916, courtesy of David Harrop

*Munitions of War Act 1915

**1915 Act, s.2(1), p61, 1915 Act s. 19(b), p81 from Employers and Workmen Under the Muntions of War Act 1915 & 1916, 2nd edition 1917, page 31-31

***Defence of the Real Act, August 1914, It gave the government wide-ranging powers during the war period, such as the power to requisition buildings or land needed for the war effort, or to make regulations
creating criminal offences.

****War Effects on Wages and Conditions, Manchester Guardian February 20 1915

*******LABOUR AND FOOD PRICES. A FREE TRADE HALL PROTEST, Manchester Guardian Feb 15 1915

Snapshots of the Great War nu 1 ..... “If a farmer or milk dealer was selling milk at 4d per quart on Nov 15 1914 is he entitled to charge 6d per qt now?”......

During 1915 and into 1916 the cost of living continued to rise while some foods became in even shorter supply.

In the February of 1916 the National Women’s Labour League expressed their concerns at the restrictions on the import of fruit “it is the cheap fruits that will be chiefly affected, since other food stuff have become so dear, children in poor districts have been fed more than ever on oranges, dried figs and dates.”*

While the Spen Valley Trades & Labour Council in December of the same year reported that Landlords had increased the rent 6d per week “Rates are the same & no repairs etc.  The tenants have refused the increase , but the landlords are entering it in the arrears col” 

These and many other observations and reports were sent in to the  War Emergency Workers National Committee which had been established at beginning of war to protect interests of working classes on matters of everything from employment,  wages, conditions of service and supply of essential commodities.

In turn they gave advice and helped co-ordinate local campaigns against price rises, exploitation and a whole range of issues raising these and many other concerns with the Government.

Sadly in answer to the question of whether a farmer or milk dealer could increase the cost of milk the answer was yes, but the Committee gave practical advice on the rights of both those angered at the price rises and also to tenants facing rent rises while continuing to put the case to the Government and to the general public of the need for greater state intervention in all aspects of the production distribution and pricing of food.

But that is for another snapshot.

Picture; leaflet announcing a Mass Meeting organised against the rising cost of living at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, February 1915, courtesy of the Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum

*Minutes of War Emergency Workers National Committee 1915-1916, courtesy of the Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/