Kate was interviewed by Alison Fell who asked her what inspired her to write her latest book. Kate reports from places where everyone else is leaving and she was once referred to as a 'woman in Northern Ireland' when she was working there, but felt that she was only one in 52% of the population of Northern Ireland and that in all the images of war, you don't see many women. The violence and the victims are there and some take part, support and help the war effort. In Bosnia, The Congo, Africa etc. 'the battlefields and front-lines' don't exist, life is fluid and war is everywhere, so it is more likely to be a random bombing or army movements that predict battlefields.
Kate grew up in a house in Sunderland with a sideboard that contained bits of iron in it due to WWII and she is conscious of this when she is reporting. The first World War was the first big war in Western Europe where everyone was dragged in, before it was foreign lands and expanding empires. The first action directed at British land was when Hartlepool was shelled from German battleships; in one hour over a 1,000 shells were fired that caused enormous damage and casualties.
In Syria it is figures flitting between ruins, most old men and teenagers, this is war today. In 1914-18 the stories are great of extraordinary individuals that are so compelling, they needed to be discovered, like Northern working women, but history is mainly written by posh people about posh people due to literacy standards, but in 1914 nearly all went to school 6-12, then it was raised to 14. Most men would write postcards home and their wives write back. Not diaries, letters to newspapers, but on the women's side, remarkable little letters that are still turning up in attics today. There is still the chance that we could have something in our attics, pictures or letters from World War One now.
The class divides were rigid in those days. Those recruited into uniforms of the new women's auxiliary corps were likely to be women from the suffrage movement or volunteer groups who organised welfare and work, these were the women that asked about it. It was believed that they could not have Officers that were female and that the women should have men commanding them. One general said 'Will they mainly be working class?' and the answer was, considering the pay and uniform yes, so he replied that it 'Might be better if women were in charge as he had never spoken to a working class woman.'
There were moral panics, in 1914 women had to replace men that had been called up in great numbers. The French had terrible casualties in the first three months and thousands of British were back over the channel already wounded. Trains were coming to Newcastle etc. as London couldn't treat that many. There were gaps in the workforce, due to volunteering in the first year and conscription after that and women filled these jobs. Shopkeepers had been men because you had to take money from men (which wasn't done apart from one particular industry), but women had to work on the railways and such like. She remembers a photograph of women cleaning the steam trains in Bradford which was filthy enough work without the cleaning. Women were down coke works, electricity and gas stations and as a result, an imperceptible change in ordinary life came about. Women were getting up at 4am to get on a train to get to work doing things like heavy engineering in factories. The moral panic was because women were doing hard labour and un/skilled work, even middle class women were going off to work in voluntary groups as more bandages, medical equipment etc. was needed and via concerts, bring and buy sales etc. this was made possible.
Back then, cigarettes were thought to be health-giving and she has seen pictures of nurses forcing patients to smoke. There were mass camps, poverty on a mass scale where people were hungry by the end of the week if not in the first three days. Lots of women engaged in prostitution and business was brisk. When women are doing something that shows independence and want to earn money, it was seen as morally wrong, even if it wasn't in prostitution. Up to then working women had received a pittance in domestic service and Lloyd George paid them for munitions work. There was a large workforce and women got paid more - in fact, they got just under half what the men got, but most had never had any money at the end of the week as for the working/middle class woman it was the norm for the husband to work to keep you and it was seen as demeaning if the woman had to go out to work. So women were getting more money in a pay packet than they had ever received and as a result, they discovered shopping. There were letters to the Yorkshire Post, The Times etc. along these lines: One sees it in the high street, late of an evening, girls buying trinkets, gloves etc., wasting money in these hard times.' Women were losing sight of their virtuous behaviour and going into pubs and buying themselves drinks - this was a social revelation that set tongues clacking through society.
Conflicts cause violence, unfairness, ruthlessness, ghastliness. It has been dressed up for years as heroic and necessary, chivalrous even, in order for people to stomach what occurs and women have always been victims. In Syria women are raped as men always get the guns because women shouldn't use them. Women are seen as life givers and men as life takers and this is a deep and complex argument that ruffles feathers whenever roles are intermingled. In the Middle East, women are 5th class citizens, abused, given no voice and get the worst treatment. In Afghanistan when the Russians invaded (9th century) harsh measures were enforced against women and when the Russians captors came over and randomly chucked land mines and bomblets on houses and mud huts in villages, men had headed for the hills with their weapons, but the women were not allowed to leave the homes without a man present, so more women died than the men.
The Royal Marines are still considering allowing women to try for the Green Beret and there are still letters to The Times about it. Basic arguments in 1914 when the government declared war, no woman could vote or stand for government, yet the man/woman differences in conflict are repeated in wars the world over.
With middle class women, it was a case of what would the neighbours, husbands think, but only charity work was available previously, so women shot out of the house to do vital war work and effort went into the welfare for the families where men had been killed. Two groups spread throughout the country, the women's volunteer police reserve and patrols. They were tolerated by the men, for example women dealt with brawls in pubs by going in and telling the men not to do that and it worked. There were women in the civil service, banks, clerical and supervisory work, volunteers for hospitals and convalescent homes. VADs were disliked by the professional nurses, but they were in several counties in big country houses, girls from Harrogate were in canteens behind enemy lines in France, a female doctor from Edinburgh was performing surgeries as she couldn't in England and on the front-line in Macedonia and Serbia. This showed what women could do next to men in their professions.
In 1918 men began to come back and all the jobs had been held in a contract 'for the duration' so the women were expected to give their jobs back to the men. There were newspapers in 1919 that spoke of the 'parasites wanting to stay in the jobs the men have' yet some managed to cling on. But change had occurred and the women did not want to go back to being the 2 million strong domestic servants. It wasn't like Downton Abbey, only a small proportion, 95% were parlour maids as it was scandalous in the middle class if you had to open your own front door, so lower and lower/middle class had to get up before and go to bed after their mistresses for a pittance. The war had left a huge legacy and they couldn't say that women could not do it as they had already proved that they could. In 1914 they had been considered incapable of doing so. Male MPs in the House of Commons debated on giving the vote to women as 'they'd have to take decisions and they were worried their smaller brains may boil by doing so' (hear, hear would come the call from the benches). But the next 4 years proved that they were equal in brains, strength, skills and courage to go to work and to war. They had worked under fire, quite a lot were killed an the next few decades were spent convincing the men that they should do it. Kate believes that there is still a bit to go, but it's about what they ought to do not what they can do. Women are expected to be Mothers still today, he goes out to work and she stays at home for certain fixed hours. Before the industrial revolution it was not like that, but this became the norm and child care and division of duty is still not worked out.
A lot of men had to wait for uniforms in the first few weeks of the war. There was a factory in Somerset that took strips of cloth to go round boots. 849 miles of length of cloth and it increased its production overnight and this was repeated a thousand-fold all over the country. The linen mills of Ireland called on women to make shirts but there were still huge shortages even though production went through the roof. Even the Queen said that we needed to do more for the soldiers and she was never seen without a pair of knitting needles. There were several million women knitting and millions of knitted goods were left in front of St. James' Palace to supplement the basic uniforms.
Kate was sent to the source of a story, there was no such person as a war correspondent to start with, they were just dished out jobs, e.g. go to the Belfast riots, get on a plane and go to Angola. They were sent to the place but had no training, they were just a journalist and there was no immunity, they may be/just as likely to be targeted as anyone else as 'angry people may take it out on the twit with a camera who has just arrived and is foreign.' Kate feels the first thing you need is good manners so you do not antagonise/provoke or make things worse. Pictures and cameras are quite provocative anyway, so go very carefully and don't upset people. Then they had first aid training and how to recognise problems such as mines - awareness training like watching an episode of MASH. Journalists never carry weapons ever. If you have a gun to your head, you have to get out of it, don't announce you are from the BBC and don't become a casualty as there are limited medical teams in these places.
The difference between WWI and WWII was that there were far more women in manufacturing as more factories, clerical work, medical, lawyers and accountants. Churchill had the same attitude though, when asked about the women's home defence league being shocked by having seen Dad's Army turn up to act as defence (men who were elderly, limp or too young, therefore incompetent) Dottie Summerkill was enraged as she remembered her Mother in WWI and suggested teaching women to shoot (even though some already could). Churchill said no as it would demean men as they would be seen to be not defending our women. Women with weapons training were not recognised until the 1950s. The RAF, Wrens and ATS, but not to fight as they were denied entrance to the RAF even though there were women who knew how to fly having emulated Amy Johnson) but said no as it was War, but they were allowed to fly newly minted aircrafts out of the factories to deliver them to particular RAF stations. The men were watching the women, knowing that they had never flown this particular plane before, waiting for mistakes.
In York, ladies worked on anti-aircraft guns and in mixed crews at night in the fields doing sightings of aircraft to calculate height and range, the short movement between saying what it was and being ready to fire, but women were not allowed to operate the guns even though it made more sense as they were the ones spotting/recognising the aircraft. In 1945 out they went, there were posters of women with their hair done in frilly pinny's and high heels in front of immaculate front doors open to show a gleaming interior with slogans - Make it a house fit for him to come home to.
Kate has optimism for the improving conditions for women in the Middle East, as you should always have optimism. So many more educated women and men accept this now. Sweden has a much greater degree of equality that really prospers. We can educate, teach people to read and write, give them the knowledge and skills to change lives. Change the law so we are all equal - citizenry - what it truly means, so that we are part of a nation not an appendage. Look at how far we have come though, we are out in a hall with men wearing trousers, with short hair and it wasn't dictated to you.
Kate Adie's book Fighting on the Home Front is available to buy now.
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