Jambusters (36 page)

Lady Denman used her speech at this AGM to encourage the members to start planning for the peace to come. She told them how proud she was that their water and sewerage survey had met with almost universal praise and she reminded her audience ‘that there had hardly been a government department which had not asked, through this organisation, for the help and cooperation of country women. Both have been given freely by the Institutes all over the country.’

Another topic that concerned the WI from the mid-1940s was the
Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services.
Presented to Parliament in November 1942 by its
author, Sir William Beveridge, it recommended principles that he believed necessary to abolish poverty from Britain. The Beveridge Report, as it soon became known, was radical, suggesting as it did that the war provided the opportunity for a fundamental change. He said: ‘Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.’ The report was well received by the public, and the WIs were as vocal in their praise as other groups. They particularly liked the emphasis on ‘social expenditure to the care of childhood and to the safeguarding of maternity’. They had long been arguing the case for an allowance for families with children under fifteen, claiming that it would help towards ‘preventing widespread malnutrition, encourage the birth rate, and remove children from the consequences of those modern world diseases – slumps, industrial disputes and so on – which they should not have to bear’.
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The WI welcomed the Beveridge Report as a real advance on current thinking: ‘Evolutionary not revolutionary. The logical outcome of the national insurance we already know. Everyone is talking about it and yet there is hardly anyone who disagrees with its general principles.’
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Lectures, discussions and debates on the report were held in institutes throughout the country from the time of its publication in December 1942.

An article in
Home & Country
in January 1943 addressed specific issues relating to family life in the report: ‘In order to understand some of the recommendations of the Report, we have to consider a very important fact which underlies them. This is the fact that in England today we have a great many old people and
far too few children
. It is a matter of common sense that many hands make light work, that if there is no one to speed the plough there can be no harvest.’
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The birth rate in Britain had been on a downwards curve since
the 1920s and by 1942, when the statistics for the previous year were made public, it was a gloomy picture. The rate had declined by some 40,000 live births per year since 1938 and the 1941 figure of 579,091 was an all-time low. In fact the turning point had been reached and the birth rate began to rise from 1942 onwards, so that in 1944 nearly 200,000 more babies were born than in 1941. It marked the beginning of the so-called ‘baby boom’ that would last for the best part of fifteen years. But this was all in the future and the WI was concerned about how the country would function with an ageing population and no new blood to boost the working population in years to come.

In 1943 an article appeared in
International Women’s News
entitled ‘Mothers and Homes: Need for Outside Interests’. The author, Gwen M. Bark, argued that it was wrong to expect women to be forced to spend their entire lives in their homes and to devote themselves solely to the running of the house and the care of husband and children. She herself worked as a volunteer with the cadet corps of her local Girl Guides and she asked herself why so many of the young girls in her group showed evident interest in and fondness for babies yet Britain was suffering from a decline in the birth rate. The conclusion she came to was that motherhood was not particularly appealing, especially in the countryside, where it could appear to be one long lifetime of drudgery. She argued in the article for women not only to develop outside interests but to become involved in local affairs so that they could have a say on water, electricity, sewerage, education and so on. And, of course, being a member of her local WI, she recommended joining at as early an age as possible so as to have some say in things that would affect not only the women but their children in the future.

Gwen Bark had trained as a doctor in Liverpool before marrying in 1938. Her husband had been called up but was
invalided out of the Army in 1940 during the evacuation from Dunkirk. Their house in Wallasey had been destroyed by a bomb so they moved to Tarporley, in the middle of the Cheshire farming community. Her husband joined a spinster, Dr Clifton, in practice and during the war Dr Gwen, as she was always known, ran baby clinics. She also lectured on child welfare and contributed to the WI’s war effort by knitting, sewing, growing vegetables and keeping goats, pigs and geese. She played the piano and loved music as well as walking, all of which passions she passed on to her children. At the time she wrote the article, she had two young children and went on to have two more. She was very keen on encouraging better conditions for children and working mothers. In 1944 she proposed ‘that this institute should notify their MP of their opinion that the proposed allowances for children, under the Beveridge Report Scheme should not be paid to the father as suggested, but to the mother’, giving the reason that the father was more likely to spend it on other things.

Another report from 1942 that pleased the WI was the Scott Report on
Land Utilisation in Rural Areas
. The NFWI had been represented by Lady Denman, who was appointed to the committee in October 1941, and evidence had been given by Mrs Vernon and Mrs Neville-Smith of the Executive Committee, Miss Farrer in her capacity of General Secretary and Miss Walker, the NFWI Agricultural Secretary at the time. The committee had as its brief the question of post-war planning, housing, water supply, electricity, rural industries and seasonal employment for women. They were so pleased with the report that they felt the Scott Committee deserved a vote of thanks from WIs ‘for keeping so steadily in mind the vision of
Jerusalem
’.
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The National Executive urged local institutes to take a lively interest in the Scott Report and to attend or even organise meetings and discussions about it in their village. Norfolk led the way in this by combining forces
with the Parish Councils Advisory Committee, inviting speakers to come and explain points in the report so that they could make recommendations to their local MPs prior to the report being discussed in the House of Commons. It told women that they had a once in a lifetime opportunity to preserve true local government in England and although this would be a weighty responsibility it was one that they should welcome for the post-war era.

In June 1942, following a national House and Planning Conference on 28 May, the WI sent a housing questionnaire to county federations for distribution. They also announced a county competition, observing that ‘Institutes seem to be taking to house planning like ducks to water,’ adding that ‘since the majority of members are housewives that is only to be expected’. The Ministry of Health had set up a Design of Dwellings Subcommittee to which the WI was asked to submit evidence. Houses mattered far more to rural working women than to their menfolk, since the home was run by the housewife for her husband and her children. This was the point emphasised in the opening paragraph summing up why the National Executive felt the response to the survey had been so positive. The editor of the questionnaire challenged the membership: ‘In order to get really reliable ideas as to what most people want there must be as many answers sent in as possible. So cast your net wide, Counties, and see that the Committee has a huge catch to deal with.’
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Some WI surveys were accompanied by lectures or leaflets from experts giving advice to institutes on the topic in hand but on this occasion the National Federation was anxious to find out members’ views on what kind of house they would like to live in. They asked for plans for a house, including fitments, its sanitary arrangements, outhouses and garden, and finally any other points of special importance. The subcommittee responsible at national level was particularly taken with the replies to the last point in the
questionnaire, which had clearly captured the interest of members who were given the chance to vent long-pent-up feelings. The authors concluded that the combination of evacuation and films had meant that the country housewife ‘had developed a healthy desire for an improved standard of housing’. Many said they had never enjoyed anything so much as answering the questionnaire and ‘it showed the sound common sense of the average cottage housewife. It showed, too, how much she has suffered from the daily irritation of badly designed interior fittings . . . Nearly every member wants electric light and there is hardly one paper out of the hundreds returned that does not plead for built-in cupboards in every room, upstairs and down.’
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What makes both fascinating and sobering reading seventy years on is the fact that so much of what today is taken for granted, even in remote rural homes, was considered something to be desired but not expected: Aga stoves (or their equivalent) and fridges for example. ‘A small number asked for some form of central heating and an Ideal boiler to burn rubbish.’
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It is worth remembering that few rural villages had rubbish collection more than once a month at the time.

A picture of a typical rural cottage was painted by Kitty Blanche, whose aunt, Delyth Jones, lived near the Welsh village of Corwen in a farm cottage. It stood at the bottom of a lane, about half a mile from the main farmhouse up on the hill. At one stage the cottage had been tied to the farm but now her aunt rented it from the farmer.

The cottage itself faced west and stood back from the lane. In the front garden my aunt used to grow lovely cut flowers but as soon as the war came she dug them up and planted potatoes. They grew quite well, except for those against the wall, which never got quite enough light. The back garden could be approached through the cottage or through a gate on the left beside a shed that kept all our garden equipment, auntie’s bicycle, an old pram and two wooden frames, one for coal and one for wood.

Kitty spent all her summer holidays at the cottage and remembered the basic amenities:

I had come from a nice house in Nottingham with electricity and running water and of course a flush loo. My mother cooked on a gas stove and we had central heating. Staying with my aunt was like going back half a century. Inside the cottage was low and dark. Facing east/west you might have expected it to be light but it had tiny windows and thick walls so that the sunlight seldom penetrated far into the rooms, except in winter when the sun was low in the sky. Downstairs there was a parlour to the left of the front door, stairs straight ahead and a tiny front room on the right which my aunt used as her sewing room. Along the back of the house was the kitchen. It was a long, thin room with three little windows overlooking the garden. On the left hand inside wall was a big fireplace which shared a chimney with the parlour and on the right was the dining area with a table and two dressers with crockery and cutlery. There was no sink in the kitchen but my aunt had a long work surface opposite the fireplace which was half wood, half slate and there she did all her cooking and baking. The sink was in the scullery which was two steps down from the kitchen between the house and the shed. Not long before the war they had had a pump installed in the scullery so that my aunt no longer had to heave water from the well up by the farm. The scullery also had a long, slate surface where she stored her cooked and uncooked foods. Jars of jam, vegetables and fruit were stored on shelves above and the washing copper lived in a corner of the scullery but was trundled outside under the awning outside the scullery on wash days. There was a mangle too, of course.

Upstairs the cottage had two bedrooms, one at the front for my aunt and one at the back for me. In addition there was a tiny box room which she used to store clothes before the war but during the war she converted it to an apple store so that for all the world when I close my eyes and think of my bedroom in the cottage I can smell nothing but apples.

The privy was outside, beyond the hen house in the back garden. Kitty described it as a superior brick building with a green wooden door. Her aunt had asked the local builder to put in a concrete floor to make it easier to clean than the old slabs that had been there before. ‘Unfortunately the levels were not right and rainwater tended to run in rather than out of the privy, so we then got our friendly carpenter to make us some slatted boards which meant we could use the loo in shoes and not wellington boots. During the war my aunt cut up newspaper as loo rolls were scarce. Funnily enough, I have no recollection of that privy smelling bad. She must have managed it very well.’

The housing questionnaire was completed by women who lived in properties like Mrs Jones’s and the authors of the report were struck by the two basic needs emphasised in every reply – the need for an adequate water supply and the need for female architects and for working-class women on housing committees. ‘A woman would avoid the only too usual mistake of building sinks at a back-breaking level, or fixing cupboard doors so as to prevent the light from reaching inside. As for the need for an adequate water supply, it is so vital that some Institutes could think no further than this. It would be time to discuss bathrooms and lavatories, they said, when the village was supplied with water.’
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