The conscription of women in Britain

On 3 December 1941 the House of Commons debated for the second day running a motion put forward the day before by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. The government asked for the obligation of national service to be extended to all the remaining uncommitted reserves of “man-power and woman-power”, and for the necessary legislation to be prepared without delay. The most important and most debated change concerned women: for the first time in British history the state was to have the power to call them up into the uniformed auxiliary services of the armed forces and into civil defence, as it had been calling up men since 1939.

Popular war chronologies record under 3 December that conscription in Britain now covered all men aged 18 to 50, and that women would “not be left out”, since they would serve in the fire service and in the women’s auxiliary services. This needs to be stated more precisely. Nothing had yet come into force that day; the debate was still in progress. Men aged 18 to 41 had been liable to conscription since September 1939; what was new was the raising of the upper age limit to 51 (that is, to cover men until the end of their fiftieth year) and the lowering of the call-up age to eighteen and a half. Nor were women merely to help put out fires: unmarried women aged 20 to 30 could now be called up to serve in the auxiliary services of the army, the air force and the navy.

A labour crisis

Churchill opened his speech of 2 December with a reckoning. The year 1941, he said, had broadly solved the problem of building factories and producing equipment, while 1942 would be dominated by a crisis of “man-power and woman-power”. The new plants had to be staffed, the army had to keep strong reserves in case of invasion and to fight in the Middle East, the air force and the navy were growing, and Britain had undertaken to send tanks and aircraft to the Soviet Union. Britain then had a population of about 46.75 million, of whom 16 million were men and 17.25 million women aged between 14 and 65. According to the Prime Minister, in the 27th month of the war the country was already employing as many women in industry and the services as it had in the 48th month of the First World War. Recalling his promise of “blood, toil, tears and sweat” of May 1940, he announced “a further instalment of toil and sweat”.

For men the government proposed three changes. The first was a gradual move away from exempting whole occupational groups from conscription towards individual deferments, granted only to those whose work was genuinely important to the war effort. The second was the raising of the conscription age from 41 to 51. The older men were not to go to front-line units, but to replace younger soldiers in the auxiliary services or to be directed to work more closely connected with the war. The third was the lowering of the call-up age to eighteen and a half, which was expected to yield some 70,000 recruits in 1942. The government also asked to be released from its pledge that conscripts under 20 would not be sent abroad, and announced the registration of boys and girls aged 16 to 18 and the power to direct men into the Home Guard, the successor to the Local Defence Volunteers.

“Two vultures”

When Churchill turned to the question of women, Nancy Astor, the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons, rose from the benches. The Prime Minister began by reassuring the House: the government did not intend to compel any married women, not even those without children, to serve in the uniformed services, though they could volunteer. Women from the age of 18 were already liable to be directed into industry by the Ministry of Labour, and since the spring of 1941 successive age groups had been registering at employment exchanges. According to the government’s lawyers, however, this gave no grounds for calling them up into the Crown’s uniformed auxiliary services or into civil defence. It was this power that the government now sought, on the understanding that women called up would enjoy the same rights and safeguards as men.

The new power was to apply “in the first instance, and probably for a long time” only to unmarried women aged 20 to 30. There were 1.62 million of them. Most were working anyway, and Churchill estimated that perhaps a quarter or a third of them would have to change their occupation. Those called up were to choose between the auxiliary services, civil defence (including the fire service) and designated industrial plants, above all munitions factories. Those who chose uniformed service, however, did not decide which service they would join. The Women’s Royal Naval Service (the “Wrens”) and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) had waiting lists, whereas the army’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) needed more than 170,000 women, over 100,000 of them for anti-aircraft defence.

Churchill justified this with the image of “two vultures” that would hover over Britain until the end of the war: the threat of invasion and air raids. He reminded the House that the Luftwaffe had been busy with Russia for half a year, but that the Blitz might return at any moment. The new anti-aircraft fire-control instruments required no physical strength, and every woman in anti-aircraft defence released for the field army, as he put it, “four-fifths of a man”. The mixed batteries already in action, in which women operated the rangefinders, predictors and searchlights and men the guns, the Prime Minister called a great success. He made it clear, however, that no woman would be compelled to serve in combat units: only volunteers would go to the batteries.

The debate and the Act

The debate lasted three days. Members asked about married women, whom the government intended to encourage into industrial work without compulsion, about nurseries, about women’s pay and about how the girls called up would be treated in the forces. Some Labour members wanted to combine mobilisation with the nationalisation of war industry, but their amendment was rejected on 4 December by 336 votes to 40. The same day the House approved the government’s motion by 326 votes to 10. Those voting against were chiefly members of the Independent Labour Party and a few Labour pacifists.

The bill was introduced on 9 December by the Minister of Labour and National Service, Ernest Bevin. It laid down in general terms the obligation of all persons of both sexes to perform national service, with service defined to include the armed forces, civil defence and industry. The Act provided that no woman could be compelled to use a lethal weapon without her written consent. On 18 December 1941 the National Service (No. 2) Act received the royal assent. Married women and women with children under 14 living with them were exempt from call-up to the uniformed services. Britain thus became, as is generally accepted, the first country to introduce the conscription of women into military formations. In the Soviet Union women served in the forces in great numbers, but their mobilisations of 1942 were carried out on the basis of party and state resolutions, not a general law.

Place in the war

The first women were called up at the beginning of 1942. Although conscription covered only a few age groups, it changed the face of Britain’s auxiliary forces: at the peak, in 1943, according to various tallies close to half a million women were serving in the ATS, the WAAF and the WRNS, and hundreds of thousands more worked in munitions factories, in civil defence and in agriculture. Women operated radars, rangefinders and searchlights and worked as mechanics, drivers, signallers and cipher clerks, including at Bletchley Park. The Prime Minister’s daughter, Mary Soames, served in a mixed anti-aircraft battery, and in 1945 the heir to the throne, the future Queen Elizabeth II, joined the ATS.

The Act of December 1941 was also the last great step in the mobilisation of British society. Together with individual deferments and the direction of labour, it gave Churchill’s government power over almost every adult in the country. When the United States entered the war a few days later, Britain had already been through what still lay ahead of the Americans: the conversion of the whole of society to the needs of war. The conscription of women ended with the war. Men continued to be called up, under an Act of 1948, until 1960.