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AGRICULTURAL LABOUR AND THE CONTESTED NATURE OF WOMEN'S WORK IN INTERWAR ENGLAND AND WALES*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2009

NICOLA VERDON
NICOLA VERDON*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
*
Department of History, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SH. n.j.verdon@sussex.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article uses a case-study of agriculture to explore the range of anxieties and contradictions surrounding women's work in the interwar period. National statistics are shown to be inconsistent and questionable, raising questions for historians reliant on official data, but they point to regional variation as the continuous defining feature of female labour force participation. Looking beyond the quantitative data a distinction emerges between traditional work on the land and processes. The article shows that women workers in agriculture provoked vigorous debate among a range of interest groups about the scale, nature, and suitability of this work. These groups, such as the National Federation of Women's Institutes, the Women's Farm and Garden Association, and the National Union of Agricultural Workers represented a range of social classes and outlooks, and had diverse agendas underpinning their interest. Consequently women's agricultural labour is exposed as a site of class and gender conflict, connecting to wider economic and cultural tensions surrounding the place of women in interwar society.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 109 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) for the financial assistance provided during the year 2005–6 when I was a Research Fellow, and when much of the initial research for this article was carried out. The staff, as ever, provided invaluable assistance and expertise. A version of this article was delivered at the AHRC-funded Interwar Landscape and Environment seminar network in Sheffield, and at seminars in Huddersfield and Sussex. The audiences there helped formulate the structure of the argument, whilst Hilary Crowe, Alun Howkins, and Anne Meredith provided helpful comment on earlier drafts.

References

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2 See, for example, Brace, Catherine, ‘“A pleasure ground for noisy herds?” Incompatible encounters with the Cotswolds and England, 1900–1950’, Rural History, 11 (2000), pp. 75–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jeans, D. N., ‘Planning and the myth of the English countryside in the inter-war period’, Rural History, 1 (1990), pp. 249–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London, 1998); Miller, Simon, ‘Urban dreams and rural reality: land and landscape in English culture, 1920–1945’, Rural History, 6 (1995), pp. 89–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. J. Moore-Colyer, ‘From Great Wen to Toad Hall: aspects of the urban–rural divide in inter-war Britain’, Rural History, 10 (1999), pp. 105–24; Tebbutt, Melanie, ‘Rambling and manly identities in Derbyshire's Dark Peak, 1880s–1920s’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp. 1125–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 See, for example, Deidre Beddoe, Back to home and duty: women between the wars, 1918–1939 (London, 1989); Gerry Holloway, Women and work in Britain since 1840 (London, 2005).

9 Hussey, ‘Low pay, underemployment and multiple occupations’, p. 218.

10 Howkins, Death of rural England, p. 82.

11 Ibid.; Hussey, ‘Low pay, underemployment and multiple occupations’, p. 227.

12 With the exception of 1922 when no return was made.

13 Howkins, Death of rural England, p. 77.

14 His Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO), ‘Employment of women in agriculture’, Report of proceedings under the Agricultural Wages Regulation Act (for the year ending 1927) (London, 1928), Appendix ix, pp. 65–84 at p. 65.

15 See, for example, Higgs, Edward, ‘Occupational censuses and the agricultural workforce in Victorian England and Wales’, Economic History Review, 48 (1995), pp. 700–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Celia, ‘The hidden workforce: female fieldworkers in Gloucestershire, 1870–1901’, Southern History, 6 (1984), pp. 139–61Google Scholar; Nicola Verdon, Rural women workers in nineteenth-century England: gender, work and wages (Woodbridge, 2002), ch. 4.

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19 Higgs, ‘Occupational censuses and the agricultural workforce’, pp. 707–8; Howkins, Alun and Verdon, Nicola, ‘Adaptable and sustainable? Male farm service and the agricultural labour force in midland and southern England, c. 1850–1925’, Economic History Review, 61 (2008), pp. 467–95 at p. 471CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 ‘Wage rates’, The Land Worker, Sept. 1930, p. 11.

21 HMSO, Proceedings of 1927, p. 27.

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23 HMSO, Proceedings of 1927, pp. 76, 69.

24 Census, 1921, County of Northumberland, p. xxxii.

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26 HMSO, Proceedings of 1927, p. 67.

27 Melvyn Bragg, Speak for England (London, 1976), p. 48.

28 Winifred Foley, A child in the forest (London, 1974), p. 200.

29 See for example BPP 1919, ix, Report by investigators, vol. ii, Carmarthen, p. 425, and Pembroke, p. 491.

30 ‘A promising career’, Farmer and Stockbreeder, 9 Aug. 1926, p. 1654.

31 HMSO, Proceedings of 1927, p. 66.

32 Howkins, Death of rural England, p. 72.

33 Joan Thirsk, Alternative agriculture: a history from the black death to the present day (Oxford, 1997), p. 195.

34 HMSO, Proceedings of 1927, pp. 73, 79.

35 ‘Poultry promises a future’, Farmer and Stockbreeder, 5 Feb. 1934, p. 317. See also ‘A profitable calling for girls’, Farmer and Stockbreeder, 2 Feb. 1931, p. 250.

36 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, The practical education of women for rural life; being the report of a sub-committee of the inter-departmental committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Board of Education (London, 1928), p. 32.

37 BPP ix 1919, Reports by investigators, vol. ii, Lincolnshire, p. 158.

38 HMSO, Proceedings of 1927, pp. 74, 72.

39 Ibid., p. 65.

40 Ibid., p. 75.

41 BPP ix, 1919, General report, vol. i, pp. 54, 89.

42 ‘Women's labour on the farms’, The Land Worker, Feb. 1925, p. iii.

43 BPP Ix, 1919, Reports by investigators, vol. ii, Kent, p. 125.

44 HMSO, Proceedings of 1927, pp. 71, 72–3, 74.

45 Ibid., p. 74.

46 Ibid., p. 76.

47 Ibid., pp. 72, 74, 76, 81.

48 W. H. Pedley, Labour on the land: a study of the developments between the two great wars (London, 1942), pp. 28–33.

49 Gowers, Robin and Hatton, Timothy J., ‘The origins and early impact of the minimum wage in agriculture’, Economic History Review, 50 (1997), pp. 82–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Northern England consisted of Durham, Northumberland, and the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, whilst the north-east region was formed of the East Riding of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk. See Pedley, Labour on the land, p. 5, for a full explanation of regions.

51 Ibid., pp. 44–7.

52 ‘Scandal of low rates for women’, The Land Worker, Mar. 1938, p. 11.

53 MERL, BUC 2/2/1, Chorley manor farm, High Wycombe, 1926–32; ESS 8/4/1–6, labour payments, 1926–38, unknown farm; KEN 4/7/3, Labour payments and work book, Goss Hall, 1926. On the Buckinghamshire farm, women were paid 5d per hour in the late 1920s when the minimum rate was actually 6d, but on the Essex farm, women received the set rate of 5½d per hour and in Kent they were paid above the set rate of 5½d at either 6d or 7d per hour.

54 ‘Scandal of low rates for women’, p. 11.

55 HMSO, Report of Proceedings under the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act, 1924 (for the year ending 30 Sept 1925) (London, 1926), p. 22.

56 Ibid., p. 18.

57 Ibid., p. 22.

58 Pedley, Labour on the land, pp. 30–1.

59 BPP ix, 1919, Reports by investigators, vol. ii, Oxfordshire, p. 262.

60 Clare V. J. Griffiths, Labour and the countryside: the politics of rural Britain, 1918–1939 (Oxford, 2007), p. 197.

61 Pretty, David A., ‘Women and trade unionism in Welsh rural society, 1889–1950’, Llafur, 5 (1990), pp. 5–13 at p. 11.Google Scholar

62 Margaret Wintringham, ‘Women and agriculture’, Time and Tide, 24 July 1925.

63 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, The practical education of women for rural life, p. 11.

64 ‘Letter to chairmen of agricultural wages committees regarding female workers’, Appendix ii, HMSO, Report of proceedings under the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act, for the year ending 30 September 1928 (London, 1929), p. 35.

65 ‘Women workers on the land’, Home and Country, 11 (Jan. 1929), p. 7.

66 Margaret Wintringham, ‘Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act, 1924’, Home and Country, 13 (Feb. 1931), p. 64.

67 MERL, SR WFGA/B/1-2, Annual report, 1918–19, p. 7.

68 See Anne M. Meredith, ‘Middle-class women and horticultural education, 1890–1939’ (D.Phil. thesis, Sussex, 2001), ch. 6.

69 MERL, SK WFGA E/1/23, 1933–4, p. 6.

70 MERL, WFGA/E/1/17, 1927–8.

71 ‘Women's rates on farms’, The Land Worker, May 1939, p. 2.

72 The president of the WFGA was Princess Louise.

73 ‘Women on the farms’, The Land Worker, Sept. 1925, p. 11.

74 ‘Getting at the women – II’, The Land Worker, Sept. 1921, p. 15.

75 ‘Women's rates on farms’, The Land Worker, May 1939, p. 2.

76 Ibid.

77 John G. O'Leary, ed., The autobiography of Joseph Arch (London, 1966), p. 93.

78 MERL, SR NUAW B/VI/6, Report of the biennial conference, 1932, pp. 136–7; SR NUAW, B/vi/7, Reports of the biennial conference, 1938, 1936, and 1934, pp. 147–8.

79 ‘No women on the land’, The Land Worker, May 1921, p. 6.

80 ‘Biennial conference: the employment of women on the land’, The Land Worker, July 1932, p. 10.

81 MERL, B/vi/7, Report of the biennial conference, 1938, 1936, and 1934, p. 148.

82 ‘Should women work on the land?’, The Land Worker, Jan. 1921, p. 4.

83 Sally Alexander, ‘Becoming a woman in London in the 1920s and 1930s’, in Sally Alexander, Becoming a woman and other essays in nineteenth- and twentieth- century feminist history (London, 1994), p. 205.

84 Quoted in Pedley, Labour on the land, p. 33.

85 ‘Women's rates on farms’, The Land Worker, May 1939, p. 2.

86 ‘Should women work on the land?’, The Land Worker, Jan. 1921, p. 4; ‘Women on the land’, The Land Worker, Sept. 1921, p. 4.

87 ‘Women on the land’, The Land Worker, July 1921, p. 4; ‘No women on the land’, The Land Worker, May 1921, p. 6.

88 ‘Biennial conference’, The Land Worker, Aug. 1934, p. 2.

89 Hicks, ‘Give the women a chance’, The Land Worker, Feb. 1921, p. 6.

90 Karen Hunt, ‘Negotiating the boundaries of the domestic: British socialist women and the politics of consumption’, Women's History Review, 9 (2000), pp. 389–410 at p. 404.

91 Hicks, ‘Give the women a chance’, The Land Worker, Feb. 1921, p. 6. Hicks went on to manage a small farm of her own. On the ‘back-to-the-land’ impulse see Jan Marsh, Back to the land: pastoral impulse in England from 1880–1914 (London, 1982); Jeremy Burchardt, Paradise lost: rural idyll and social change since 1800 (London, 2002); Meredith, Anne, ‘From ideals to reality: the women's smallholding colony at Lingfield, 1920–1939’, Agricultural History Review, 54 (2006), pp. 105–121Google Scholar.

92 Catherine Flory, ‘Let the women have a chance’, The Land Worker, July 1921, p. 7.

93 Ruth Uzzell, ‘A woman's point of view’, The Land Worker, Oct. 1921, p. 12.

94 Howkins, Death of rural England, p. 86; W. A. Armstrong, Farmworkers: a social and economic history, 1770–1980 (London, 1988), p. 195.

95 Uzzell, ‘A woman's point of view’, The Land Worker, October 1921, p. 12.

96 Hicks, ‘Give the women a chance’, The Land Worker, February 1921, p. 6.

97 MERL, NUAW, B/vi/6, Report of the biennial conference, pp. 136–7.

98 Miriam Glucksmann, Women assemble: women workers and the new industries in inter-war Britain (London, 1990), pp. 43–6; Selina Todd, Young women, work and family in England, 1918–1950 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 56–67.

99 For an overview of the gender division of labour in agriculture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries see Sharpe, Pamela, ‘The female labour market in English agriculture during the Industrial Revolution: expansion or contraction?’, Agricultural History Review, 47 (1999), pp. 161–81Google ScholarPubMed.

100 Bingham, Adrian, ‘“An era of domesticity?” Histories of women and gender in interwar Britain’, Cultural and Social History, 1 (2004), pp. 225–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

101 Alexander, ‘Becoming a woman’; Claire Langhamer, Women's leisure in England, 1920–1960 (Manchester, 2000); Todd, Young women.

102 Todd, ‘Young women, work and family’, p. 94.