From 1917 British soldiers who were unfit or too old for front-line service were to serve unarmed and within the range of German guns for weeks or even months at a time undertaking labouring tasks. Both at the time and since they have arguably not been given the recognition they deserve for this difficult and dangerous work.
From non-existence in 1914, by November 1918 Military Labour had developed into an organised and efficient 350,000-strong Labour Corps, supported by Dominion and foreign labour of more than a million men. Following the war, the grim and solemn tasks of clearing battlefields and constructing cemeteries, which continued until 1921, were also the responsibility of the Corps.
Here, John Starling and Ivor Lee bring together extensive research from both primary and secondary sources to reveal how the vital, yet largely unreported, role played by these brave soldiers was crucial to achieving victory in 1918.
From 1917 British soldiers who were unfit or too old for front-line service were to serve unarmed and within the range of German guns for weeks or even months at a time undertaking labouring tasks. Both at the time and since they have arguably not been given the recognition they deserve for this difficult and dangerous work.
From non-existence in 1914, by November 1918 Military Labour had developed into an organised and efficient 350,000-strong Labour Corps, supported by Dominion and foreign labour of more than a million men. Following the war, the grim and solemn tasks of clearing battlefields and constructing cemeteries, which continued until 1921, were also the responsibility of the Corps.
Here, John Starling and Ivor Lee bring together extensive research from both primary and secondary sources to reveal how the vital, yet largely unreported, role played by these brave soldiers was crucial to achieving victory in 1918.
No Labour, No Battle: Military Labour during the First World War
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Overview
From 1917 British soldiers who were unfit or too old for front-line service were to serve unarmed and within the range of German guns for weeks or even months at a time undertaking labouring tasks. Both at the time and since they have arguably not been given the recognition they deserve for this difficult and dangerous work.
From non-existence in 1914, by November 1918 Military Labour had developed into an organised and efficient 350,000-strong Labour Corps, supported by Dominion and foreign labour of more than a million men. Following the war, the grim and solemn tasks of clearing battlefields and constructing cemeteries, which continued until 1921, were also the responsibility of the Corps.
Here, John Starling and Ivor Lee bring together extensive research from both primary and secondary sources to reveal how the vital, yet largely unreported, role played by these brave soldiers was crucial to achieving victory in 1918.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750958790 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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No Labour, No Battle
Military Labour During the First World War
By John Starling, Ivor Lee
The History Press
Copyright © 2014 John Starling & Ivor LeeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5879-0
CHAPTER 1
Section One: Home Service
GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION AND CONTROL
Outbreak of War
During the First World War soldiers stationed in Britain played a major part in ensuring the economy satisfied the needs of both the civilian and military population. In order to understand why and how soldiers played this role it is necessary to consider Government policy and its intervention in both army recruitment and running of the economy during the war.
In 1914 the Liberal Government had been in office for some nine years and pursued policies based upon free trade, social reform, maintaining peace, non-intervention in foreign affairs and preserving the liberty of the individual. The war was to force a change in direction despite attempts to maintain Liberal principles.
Even before war was declared the King issued a proclamation which commanded the people to obey any instructions or regulations issued in the Defence of the Realm. This was followed on 8 August by the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) conferring on the King in Council power to make regulations during the war. DORA passed through Parliament in one day and was 'in many ways one of the most extraordinary legislative measures ever passed by the British Parliament'. The Act gave the Authorities and its agencies unprecedented rights to control the lives of the nation. It specified a number of acts for which a civilian could be tried by court martial including spreading false reports or communicating with the enemy. In addition it enabled the military authorities to demand all or part of a factory's output and to take possession of any land or building they needed.
The original Act was supplemented on 28 August and 27 November. The 1914 Acts prohibited such things as owning a homing pigeon, trespassing on a railway line or publishing information that would be of benefit to the enemy. As the war went on further Acts introduced a wide range of controls including food-rationing, licensing laws that included determining the times when public houses could be open, employers in key industries being told what to produce and what wages to pay, employees being forbidden to strike or demand higher wages and the introduction of passports and identity cards. Although the original Act gave the authorities the power to direct the lives of the people of Britain, the initial reaction to controlling industry and commerce suggests that the Liberal Government hoped to continue to operate according to their pre-war principles.
It is doubtful whether anyone could have envisaged the tremendous effect the outbreak of war in August 1914 was to have on commerce, industry and agriculture in Britain. On 4 August, David Lloyd George, speaking to businessmen, promised that the Government would 'enable the traders of this country to carry on business as usual'. Whether this was meant merely to calm fears of unemployment, inflation and trade collapse or, as has been suggested, also to reflect the wider view that the Navy blockading German ports would bring the war to an early end, is not certain. What is certain is that the Government wanted to ensure trade was kept as close as possible to pre-war levels. The following day Lord Kitchener was appointed Secretary of State for War. Two days later he informed the Cabinet that Britain had to be prepared for a war lasting several years with an army of millions. Taking millions from the labour force and a long war meant that the concept of business as usual would not work; but as will be seen, this does not appear to have been accepted by the Government until the spring of 1915 at the earliest.
Enlistment and industry
The declaration of war saw huge numbers of men clamouring to enlist. On 7 August 1914 Kitchener called for the first 100,000 volunteers to join the Army. In mid-August stories of German atrocities in Belgium started to appear in the press and at the end of the month news was received of the British retreat from Mons. By the end of August nearly 300,000 men had enlisted in the Army, a month later that number had expanded to over 750,000, a third of the total number of men who enlisted within the first year of the war. Numbers alone do not present a full picture of what was a complex situation. The majority of these men enlisted in the period between 25 August and 15 September 1914, with more men enlisting in the first four days of September than the 130,000 who enlisted in October. This was not only a drain on the civilian labour force but also created major logistical problems. At the time there were only enough barrack places for about 175,000 men and the munitions industry was equipped to supply an Army of 100,000 men, not one of a million or more. The Army of 1914 was based on their previous experiences of numerous small colonial wars, in today's jargon 'low intensity operations'.
Industry, terrified by the possible loss of overseas markets, reacted by cutting nearly 500,000 jobs by the end of August so that despite military recruitment, unemployment rose sharply in August and September 1914. The situation was considered so grave that the Prince of Wales and the King made two national appeals for money to prevent distress caused by unemployment. The Engineering Employers and Trades Unions met on 19 August to discuss ways of overcoming rising unemployment. However, in the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer: 'By September, 1914, these fears were dispelled, for the dislocation of work in certain directions brought about an actual dearth of labour.'
Although unemployment grew during the first two months of the war large-scale unemployment soon became a thing of the past, to be replaced by a shortage of labour in industry. One of the primary areas of concern in 1914 was the loss of skilled workmen in the engineering industry since they were required in both ordnance factories and armament works and no measures were taken to restrict the recruitment of these men. Whilst the Government may have been concerned about the loss of skilled engineers, a study of recruitment in 1914–1915 showed that the situation affected all areas of industry and commerce.
Despite the high levels of unemployment in Britain before the war, recruits came from all occupations and backgrounds. It has been suggested that the popular concept of a 'rush to the colours' is inaccurate and that the initial recruits tended to be the young, those without commitments, the unskilled, the unemployed and the desperate. This was not the view expressed in 1923 by Wolfe, who stated that the difficulty was not to find the first 100,000 men but to choose the most suitable: 'The first rush was universal. All classes, and ... all types of industry gave equally.' In reality there were differences in enlistment rates between the different sectors and also in different industries within the same sector. It has been suggested that in August 1914 it was the commercial sector that was affected more than agriculture, manufacturing or transport. Unfortunately, at the time the government did not keep ongoing statistics of the loss of labour from each industry, although from October 1914 onwards it did carry out a number of sample surveys. In July 1915 it estimated that some 20 per cent of labour in manufacturing industries had enlisted, varying from 16 per cent of the textile sector compared to 24 per cent of the paper and printing sector. What is true is that all sectors of industry and commerce were to be affected by the major loss of workers.
The Board of Trade survey found that during the first twelve months of the war almost 1,250,000 men enlisted from manufacturing industries, 20 per cent of the total male labour force for the sector. Although the comparable figure for agriculture was only 120,000 men, this represented 15 per cent of the male labour force and, of course, had a major impact on what was a manual labour dominated industry. Figures do not exist for enlistment from the transport, commerce or public services sectors for the period up to July 1915. However, Board of Trade statistics for July 1916, 1917 and 1918 show that the highest proportion of enlistment came from the commercial sector, followed by manufacturing, public services, transport and agriculture.
By April 1915, around 36 per cent of the male population of London of military age had joined up, a similar figure to the agricultural county of Westmoreland (35 per cent), and the industrialised county of Lancashire (34 per cent). An ad hoc approach to enlistment meant that by July 1915 the electrical engineering and chemical and explosive industries had lost almost a quarter of male employees. The coal mines, iron, steel and engineering industries lost about one-fifth of their labour.
At a local level the creation of 'Pals' Battalions often had a major effect on labour supply in the area. Lord Derby, the War Minister, is generally credited with the creation of the Pals battalions, units formed in one business or industry or from one locality. Although Derby announced the idea on 24 August 1914, it was originally discussed at the War Office almost two weeks before and the first Pals battalion, the 10th (Stockbrokers) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers began recruiting on 21 August. Over 140,000 men were to be enlisted in 144 Pals Battalions, each unit drawn from a specific area, industry or from men with a common interest. Often the creation of a Pals Battalion merely served to heighten the problem of the loss of labour. When, for example, the North Eastern Railway Company raised their own Pals Battalion, the 17th Northumberland Fusiliers, at the end of September 1914, the company was to lose a further 1,000 workers in addition to the 2,000 or so employees who had already enlisted. As a recruiting tool it was a brilliant idea but what was not realised was the effect that the removal of large numbers of the labour force from specific locations would have, or as was to be seen after the carnage on the Somme on 1 July 1916, on the lives of whole communities.
Popular sentiment fuelled by the media in response Lord Kitchener's call to arms and Lord Derby's Pals battalions saw large numbers of skilled workers swelling the ranks of the Army. Among the volunteers who joined prior to January 1915 were some 10,000 skilled engineers, 160,000 miners and 145,000 from the building trades. Although the Government realised that the men industry needed for the war effort were enlisting, solving the problem was not easy. Some skilled men were sent back to work in their industries but the Army did not want to give the impression that they did not need men. At the same time the concept of conscription was, in 1914, an anathema to the Liberal Government and politicians saw the levels of enlistment at the time as proof that compulsion was not necessary.
Government action during 1914 suggests that their primary concern was to ensure Kitchener obtained his army of 1,000,000 men. The planning and organisation of the war during its initial phase appears to have been carried out in a reactive rather than a proactive manner. The War Office, for example, altered the minimum height requirement for recruits four times between August and November 1914. It was raised from 5ft 3in to 5ft 6in on 11 September to try to cut down the number of recruits. As a result 10,000 men who had been enlisted were sent home on arrival at their Army establishment. However, a fear that Kitchener's Army of 1,000,000 would not be achieved resulted in the height requirement being reduced to 5ft 4in on 23 October, and on 14 November, two days after Kitchener obtained the permission to increase the Army by a further 1,000,000 men, down again to 5ft 3in.
By the end of July 1915, 2,008,912 men had enlisted, creating a major drain on the labour market.
Badging
By the end of 1914 the Army had grown by over 1,000,000, but there was almost no intervention to stop men in vital industries enlisting in the period up to the end of 1914.
There was some attempt to avoid the loss of vital workers by the Railway Executive Committee as early as 4 September 1914 when they announced that railway and canal workers could only enlist if their employer certified that they could be released. The War Office, in a notice sent to recruiting officers in September 1914, supported this decision. Evidence suggests that many men simply failed to name their employer on enlisting or that recruiting officers 'overlooked' the order.
In September 1914 the munitions company Vickers suggested the idea of issuing a badge to men employed on vital production work to protect them from the recruiting sergeant but this 'was not favourably considered' by the Government. It was not until the end of 1914 that this idea was taken up quite vigorously by the Admiralty in order to protect men involved on production for them. The War Office's reaction to badging, however, was less enthusiastic and it was not until March 1915 that badges were issued to its own workers in the Royal Factories and to some employed by contractors. In May 1915 the War Office informed recruiting offices that certain skilled munitions workers should not be enlisted but the individual employer was to be the arbiter of whether the man was skilled or not.
Despite the Army expanding at a much greater rate than the Navy, between December 1914 and May 1915 the War Office only issued about 80,000 badges compared to some 400,000 issued by the Admiralty.
Voluntary enlistment or conscription
From almost the outbreak of war the Government considered the question of conscription versus voluntary enlistment. As early as 25 August 1914, Kitchener was suggesting to the House of Lords that unlike Germany and Austria, Britain would rely on a voluntary system of enlistment but with the proviso that it produced the soldiers needed. As a result of his speech Asquith informed the House of Commons that the Government was not considering conscription. By Christmas it was apparent that the war would be a long, drawn-out struggle, requiring huge resources of both men and munitions. However, the number of men enlisting dropped from an average of 220,000 a month between August 1914 and January 1915 to less than 88,000 in February 1915.
The Government's view was that there was no need for conscription, and in March Asquith denied the need for the issue to be investigated. A month later Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the House of Commons that the Government did not think that conscription would mean a more successful outcome of the war.
Spring 1915 was a difficult time for the Liberal Government; the shell crisis in March, disagreements within the War Cabinet and growing concerns within the Conservative opposition at the lack of progress in the war. At the same time wives of soldiers serving in France, supported by the Northcliffe Press, began to voice their anger that they had to survive on minimal allowances whilst single men stayed at home earning relatively good money working in safe jobs. The Northcliffe newspapers were also critical of Kitchener and War Office incompetence. All these factors led to the downfall of the Liberal Government and the establishment of Asquith's Coalition Government on 19 May 1915.
As soon as Asquith had resumed his seat after informing the Commons of the Government reorganisation, General Sir Ivor Herbert rose and urged the Government to undertake a census and registration of the male population as preclusion to conscription. His speech was followed by one after another of the Conservative backbenchers expressing their party's policy, and supporting his suggestion.
The Conservative members of the Cabinet took up Herbert's proposal for a national registration scheme, a view actively supported by Northcliffe's newspapers. On 29 June the Government introduced the National Registration Bill, stating that its purpose was to secure knowledge of the forces the country possessed; 'Opposition to it, based mainly on the presumption that it was a preliminary to conscription, came from a small group of Liberal and Labour Members.' When the results of the register were collated it was found that there were some 5,000,000 men of military age not serving with the forces, of whom about 1,800,000 were not in vital occupations or medically unfit. The Government, however, still resisted any move towards conscription.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from No Labour, No Battle by John Starling, Ivor Lee. Copyright © 2014 John Starling & Ivor Lee. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Abbreviations,
List of Tables,
Foreword by Richard Holmes,
Introduction,
Section One: Home Service,
Section Two: France and Flanders,
Section Three: Other Theatres,
Section Four: British and Dominion Units,
Section Five: Foreign Labour Units,
Section Six: Research,
Postscript,
Appendices,
I Transport Workers Battalions – October 1917,
II Allocation of Labour – August 1916,
III A Company Diary,
IV A Divisional Employment Company,
V The March 1918 Retreat,
VI Exhumation and Reburial,
Maps,
Bibliography,
Copyright,