Conscription is in the air
On 15 July the order that all citizens (men and women) aged 18 to 40 had to be registered came into force. Looking back we can see, even though conscription did not come in until a year later, that the government knew that the war would drag on and casualties more difficult to replace through volunteers alone.
In another move, prompted by the political scandal of lack of munitions at the front, the Munitions of War Act was passed this month. This brought private companies supplying the armed forces under the control of the newly created Ministry of Munitions, regulating wages, hours and employment conditions. The Act made it a penal offence for any worker to leave their current job at a “Controlled Establishment” without the consent of his employer. In practice this was “almost impossible” to obtain. One outcome was to give new impetus to organised labour. Specifically the Clyde Workers’ Committee was founded to oppose the Act. Perhaps establishing the militancy that pervaded the Clyde right up to the days of Jimmy Reid.
In August 1915, Edith Smith was appointed the first woman police constable in England with full power of arrest. Her duties were to deal with cases where women were involved. She was particularly concerned with trying to reduce the number of prostitutes in Grantham who were attracted there by the nearby army base. Another much unreported outcome of war.
The work in Grantham was contentious amongst the Women’s Police Service as Boyle felt that women should not be punished with a curfew when it was the men who were at fault. This led to a disagreement and Boyle left the service and Dawson reformed the service with herself as the new head.
Smith left the service after working seven days a week for a period of two years. Sad to think she was still not eligible to vote.
On the war front the stalemate on the Western front continued. Two notable battles that reverberated down some 30 years were the capture of Brest-Litovsk and Byelostok in Poland by German forces. Events in the Dfardenelles had also settled into a war of attrition.
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