Over the past months, staff at Coventry Transport Museum have been preparing for our summer exhibition, War Effort. War Effort tells the story of the Shadow Scheme - a Government programme in the 1930s and 40s that saw the British motor industry turning over production to building aeroplanes, aero engines, military vehicles and other items for the war effort.
As part of the research for the exhibition and surrounding events, Krissy (my colleague in the Learning team) and I have been finding out about women factory workers and their lives during this time.
Women played a key part in the success of the Shadow Scheme, and indeed in the success of Britain’s effort throughout World War II.
When we take school groups through the Blitz area of the Museum, we ask them if they know why we’ve placed female mannequins in our Shadow Factory scene. Inevitably they know that it’s because “the men were away fighting” and some have an idea about the conscription of men to the Army, Navy and Air Force. Indeed, in 1938 all men between the ages of 18-41 had to register with the government, and throughout the war were assigned roles in the forces. What many schoolchildren, and adults, don’t realise however is that in 1941 conscription was introduced for women too.
The second National Service Act obliged all single women between the ages of 20-30 to register for war work. By the end of the war, the age bracket had increased to 20-50, appeals had been made to recruit married women and mothers, and over seven million women were involved in the war effort.
Many of those women were sent away from their homes to work in the factories.
As a result of the Shadow Scheme, existing factories had been re-tooled for war industry, and additional ‘shadow factories’ were built to help meet the demand. Thousands of extra workers were needed for the increase in production, and a good proportion of them would be women.
Young women who were sent to the factories could expect to receive a letter in the post informing them where they would be billeted. They would then be sent away to live in hostels, or with host families, and fulfil their new role. At a time when it was still typical for most women to live at home until they were married, this was a daunting (if ultimately liberating) experience for many.
In Coventry, hostels were set up around the city by the National Service Hostels Corporation. They were utilitarian buildings, meant to be simple and cheap to erect. The women shared basic dorms and were provided with meals which would be eaten in a communal dining room. Recreational activities were sometimes organised, and some hostels had games rooms where the women could relax.
As well as the hostels, many Coventry people welcomed workers as lodgers into their homes. An article in the Midlands Daily Telegraph, from November 1941 reports that “no fewer than 16,000 voluntary billets have been found in raid-devastated Coventry”. This was in response to the large number of people who flooded to Coventry to support the War Effort after the infamous air raid the previous November.
It wasn’t just the young, single women who ended up working in the factories. On many occasions young mothers volunteered to work as well. To enable those women who wanted to work, but who had young children at home, the government established a National Childcare Scheme, building nurseries where parents could leave their young while they went to work. Children would be cared for all day, and receive their meals at the cost of one shilling per day.
A letter from Mrs J.L. Jones to the Midlands Daily Telegraph from 24th August 1940 stresses how important these nurseries were;
“The problem of providing nurseries is urgent...Many hundreds of women with children are now working in Coventry’s factories; their children need to be properly cared for. Many hundreds more women would rally to the appeal made daily in your advertisement columns for women to undertake national work – if they were sure that their children would be looked after properly by trained people while they were at work.”
Looking after the children was just one of the concerns that some women had when considering work in the factories. Women reported the difficulty they had in getting to the factories and asked for better transport provision, and many spoke of the practical implications working hours had on food shopping – as one Coventry housewife put it in a letter to the Coventry Evening Telegraph “The goods I want to buy are either all snapped up by free women or the shops are closed!”
An article from December 1941 explains how some factories were trying to solve the shopping problem:
“In many factories women are allowed ‘time off’ to effect their essential purchases, and almost everything has been tried except the cure which might well be the most radical one – the opening of provision centres catering especially for the needs of women war workers.”
Another cause of frustration for women workers was that, for the most part, women were not paid equal wages. A letter to the editor, from a forthright Beryl Jones, on the same page as the quoted article above reads;
“Women are doing men’s jobs, and doing them well – equally as well as the men – but are they getting the same wages? No, not on your life, and who dares to tell me there is such a thing as equality?”
Throughout the war, women campaigned for this situation to be rectified, with some even striking for equal pay. Although reluctant at first, eventually the Unions allowed female membership and helped them negotiate better and more equal pay.
To encourage more women into the factories, Coventry companies created a Women’s War Work exhibition at the Central Hall, and held a procession through the City Centre which over a thousand women workers took part in. The Coventry Evening Telegraph described it;
“Coventry girl war-workers on Saturday afternoon showed their un-enrolled sisters how they ‘went to it’ for the national effort.
“They led a procession through the main streets of the town, dressed in overalls and gowns with ‘V’ signs embroidered on them, they rode on tanks and armoured military vehicles they had helped to make, and they sat at their machines, mounted on lorries, filing, riveting and drilling aeroplane parts as they went along.”
Although it is difficult to give an exact number for how many women worked in the Coventry factories during the war, it was certainly a significant amount. In 1939 the number of female employees working in the motor vehicle, cycle & aircraft industries in Coventry was 3,800; by 1941 this had leapt to 13,900 . This figure undoubtedly rose as the war continued, and doesn’t include the many more working in munitions and other factories.
What we do know however, is that without the thousands of women who were ‘sent to Coventry’, and to numerous other industrial centres, Britain’s shadow factories would not have been able to produce the enormous amount of war vehicles, aeroplanes, munitions and other products that were so vitally needed. While they may have faced challenges with transportation, childcare, food shopping and pay, these women none-the-less rose to the occasion, learnt new skills, put in long hours and much hard work to ultimately help Britain win the war.
To find out more about the Shadow Factory scheme and women's roles in the war effort:
* Visit the War Effort exhibition at Coventry Transport Museum, from 12th July 2013 to 5th January 2014
* Attend the special Women In World War II evening on Thursday 12th September* Enjoy a lunchtime talk on the subject of Coventry Women In Wartime on Wed 9th October.
