ABSTRACT
In 1915 women were asked to ‘Do Your Bit. Replace a Man for the Front’ . Thousands did work on munitions. In Woolwich Arsenal itself there were 27,000 women at most, in 1917; in the Woolwich area 60,000 women in war work where women had not been working before. The Health o f Munitions Workers Committee reported that some o f them had accepted ‘conditions of work which, if indefinitely prolonged, would ultimately prove injurious to health’ . They ascribed this to patriotic exertions which overcame the factor (or expressed it) that ‘woman is the life-giver, not the life destroyer’ . Trade unionists feared the patriotism o f women because they saw it as a major factor in the risk war posed to established conditions o f work. But, as Edith Cavell said in explaining her activities in wartime, which endangered her life while saving others, ‘Patriotism is not enough.’ It does not explain why women chose the work they did, w hy some stuck to it throughout and w hy their comments on it are in the main, enthusi astic. As an issue it demonstrates the need to look at war-work bifocally - as work and as war service - and to recognise the particularity o f both in these women’s lives at this time. Women created their own allegiances at work in a work-related community, while appropriating or exploiting other evocations o f group experience as in class, race or gender and accepting the formulations o f patriotism or nationalism when expressed in personal terms.
