Masculinities Challenged? Reserved Occupations in Britain, 1939-1945
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Kent
Department Name: Sch of History
Abstract
In the lead up to the outbreak of World War Two, the British government began to prepare for military conscription and the parallel control of its manpower resources. In 1938, following discussions between the armed forces, industry and the Ministry of Labour, the government devised a Schedule of Reserved Occupations (SRO) which made provision for 'skilled workpeople who would be required in time of war for the maintenance of necessary production or essential service' to be exempt from enlistment in the armed forces. Statistically, far more men remained on the home front (working in the heavy industries, such as shipbuilding, iron and steel manufacture and coal mining, as well as in 'white collar' occupations, such as the civil service and the medical profession). Yet, to a remarkable degree, the civilian male worker is largely absent from popular and cultural representations of World War Two in Britain whilst the figure of the 'soldier hero' remains predominant. Furthermore, male civilian workers of military age who remained on the home front were often vilified as 'shirkers' who were avoiding military service and were exposed to the discourse of effeminacy surrounding conscientious objectors. Fundamentally, this research project aims to explore the question first articulated by Penny Summerfield in Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives: 'if wartime heroism and masculinity were embodied in the military man, where did that leave the civilian male worker?' (1998: 119)
This research builds on a pilot study undertaken by the applicants in Falkirk and will explore the extent to which male civilian workers made use of alternative sites of masculinity. For example, the hegemonic wartime discourse of masculinity, that exalted the combatants, potentially clashed with traditional 'hard man' notions of masculinity pre-existent in working class communities. In the latter areas the dominant inter-war discourse stressed the tough, brutal struggle in the workplace to win coal, forge iron and make ships by hard men desensitised to danger and risk. This 'hard man' masculinity may well have been sustained during the war and even been bolstered by it. In contrast, professional men with reserved status may have operated within the framework of 'respectable' or 'tempered' masculinity which also emerged in the inter-war period.
An examination of reserved occupation workers/civilian male workers is important for three key reasons:
1) To date, there is no single socio-historical study of reserved occupations in Britain. Summerfield (1998) draws attention to the complexities surrounding the status of the male civilian worker whilst Peniston-Bird, in her work on wartime masculinities (2003), touches upon the question of reserved status.Yet no major work has been devoted solely to this topic which remains essentially unexplored. In 2004 Johnston and McIvor (the CI) flagged up the need for 'a systematic oral history of the "reserved occupations"'. Any academic research which looks at the question of male civilian workers on the home front has limited its focus to the role and function of the Home Guard (Summerfield and Peniston-Bird 2007).
2) There is no current dataset in existence relating directly to the topic of reserved occupations. Whilst it is likely that some interviews with male civilian workers exist within British archival sources it requires dedicated research to locate them. No systematic collecting has been done of those who were civilian workers for the duration of the war, contributing to their cultural invisibility.
3) The lived experience of those in reserved occupations will soon be lost forever as this generation (now aged 89 and above) die so there is an urgent need to record the testimonies of surviving civilian male workers.
This research builds on a pilot study undertaken by the applicants in Falkirk and will explore the extent to which male civilian workers made use of alternative sites of masculinity. For example, the hegemonic wartime discourse of masculinity, that exalted the combatants, potentially clashed with traditional 'hard man' notions of masculinity pre-existent in working class communities. In the latter areas the dominant inter-war discourse stressed the tough, brutal struggle in the workplace to win coal, forge iron and make ships by hard men desensitised to danger and risk. This 'hard man' masculinity may well have been sustained during the war and even been bolstered by it. In contrast, professional men with reserved status may have operated within the framework of 'respectable' or 'tempered' masculinity which also emerged in the inter-war period.
An examination of reserved occupation workers/civilian male workers is important for three key reasons:
1) To date, there is no single socio-historical study of reserved occupations in Britain. Summerfield (1998) draws attention to the complexities surrounding the status of the male civilian worker whilst Peniston-Bird, in her work on wartime masculinities (2003), touches upon the question of reserved status.Yet no major work has been devoted solely to this topic which remains essentially unexplored. In 2004 Johnston and McIvor (the CI) flagged up the need for 'a systematic oral history of the "reserved occupations"'. Any academic research which looks at the question of male civilian workers on the home front has limited its focus to the role and function of the Home Guard (Summerfield and Peniston-Bird 2007).
2) There is no current dataset in existence relating directly to the topic of reserved occupations. Whilst it is likely that some interviews with male civilian workers exist within British archival sources it requires dedicated research to locate them. No systematic collecting has been done of those who were civilian workers for the duration of the war, contributing to their cultural invisibility.
3) The lived experience of those in reserved occupations will soon be lost forever as this generation (now aged 89 and above) die so there is an urgent need to record the testimonies of surviving civilian male workers.
Planned Impact
There are a number of 'users' who will be interested in and will benefit from the proposed research:
The interviewees: Over the last decade there has been an upsurge in interest in commemorating the 'forgotten groups' of World War Two Britain, reflected in the recent issuing of commemorative badges to groups such as the Bevin Boys and Land Army members, and Heritage Lottery-funded initiatives such as Veterans Reunited. Those who served in reserved occupations remain a historically-neglected group whose contribution to the national war effort has not been explored or critically examined - a gap which our research proposes to address. There are indications of the timeliness and topicality of our proposed project. For example, Falkirk Council recently held a ceremony in which local men and women who served in reserved occupations were awarded the Freedom of Falkirk Council Area, the highest civic honour which the Council can bestow. Recipients at this event clearly valued the recognition of their wartime activity. In November 2008, to facilitate the planning and direction of our proposed research, we initiated a pilot project in the Falkirk region with reserved status workers, interviewing four men and one woman (later undertaking another two interviews in Glasgow). As with Falkirk Council, we will work in partnership with other local authorities to develop our project on reserved occupations. Contacts with Glasgow and Edinburgh City Councils have been made. A positive aspect of the research is the sense of validation given to interview participants. Pilot interviews indicate that interviewees found the process of reminiscence and reflection on their wartime work a rewarding and enjoyable experience. Following strict ethical guidelines, interview transcripts are returned to interviewees for comment and correction. We have found that this is another positive outcome for interviewees, providing them with a printed record of their history to share with their families.
Policy-makers within national, local and devolved government: In addition to the initiative by Falkirk Council, a parliamentary debate in May 2008 underlines the relevance of our proposed research. A request by Labour MP Jon Trickett that those who worked in the mines during the Second World War receive an award 'equivalent to a Bevin Boy badge' resulted in a commitment by the then Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, John Hutton MP, to establish a way to recognise the contribution to the war effort 'not just by the miners, but by those in other reserved occupations, too.' (Hansard 22 May 2008, Vol. 476, col. 381) Our proposed research would, therefore, be of direct benefit to politicians and policy makers within local government, Westminster and the devolved parliaments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland who are planning to take forward initiatives on reserved occupations. Currently, there is a huge deficit in academic research on this topic and a lack of information in the public domain.
The wider public: One of the key mechanisms for identifying suitable interviewees would be via the pensioner associations of different occupational groupings. We would hope to work closely with these agencies and disseminate our findings via these networks. We plan to develop a website containing an overview of the project and, subject to copyright clearance, sample audio, video and written excerpts from interviews, increasing access to the collected material to participants and the wider public. A project blog will be created that will allow us to publish regular updates on the project and related items of interest as a categorised and searchable news feed. The system itself would be hosted on dedicated Enhanced Web Development Service servers at the University of Strathclyde. We would also seek to publicise our work in popular publications such as History Scotland, BBC History Magazine, People's Friend and Scottish Memories.
The interviewees: Over the last decade there has been an upsurge in interest in commemorating the 'forgotten groups' of World War Two Britain, reflected in the recent issuing of commemorative badges to groups such as the Bevin Boys and Land Army members, and Heritage Lottery-funded initiatives such as Veterans Reunited. Those who served in reserved occupations remain a historically-neglected group whose contribution to the national war effort has not been explored or critically examined - a gap which our research proposes to address. There are indications of the timeliness and topicality of our proposed project. For example, Falkirk Council recently held a ceremony in which local men and women who served in reserved occupations were awarded the Freedom of Falkirk Council Area, the highest civic honour which the Council can bestow. Recipients at this event clearly valued the recognition of their wartime activity. In November 2008, to facilitate the planning and direction of our proposed research, we initiated a pilot project in the Falkirk region with reserved status workers, interviewing four men and one woman (later undertaking another two interviews in Glasgow). As with Falkirk Council, we will work in partnership with other local authorities to develop our project on reserved occupations. Contacts with Glasgow and Edinburgh City Councils have been made. A positive aspect of the research is the sense of validation given to interview participants. Pilot interviews indicate that interviewees found the process of reminiscence and reflection on their wartime work a rewarding and enjoyable experience. Following strict ethical guidelines, interview transcripts are returned to interviewees for comment and correction. We have found that this is another positive outcome for interviewees, providing them with a printed record of their history to share with their families.
Policy-makers within national, local and devolved government: In addition to the initiative by Falkirk Council, a parliamentary debate in May 2008 underlines the relevance of our proposed research. A request by Labour MP Jon Trickett that those who worked in the mines during the Second World War receive an award 'equivalent to a Bevin Boy badge' resulted in a commitment by the then Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, John Hutton MP, to establish a way to recognise the contribution to the war effort 'not just by the miners, but by those in other reserved occupations, too.' (Hansard 22 May 2008, Vol. 476, col. 381) Our proposed research would, therefore, be of direct benefit to politicians and policy makers within local government, Westminster and the devolved parliaments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland who are planning to take forward initiatives on reserved occupations. Currently, there is a huge deficit in academic research on this topic and a lack of information in the public domain.
The wider public: One of the key mechanisms for identifying suitable interviewees would be via the pensioner associations of different occupational groupings. We would hope to work closely with these agencies and disseminate our findings via these networks. We plan to develop a website containing an overview of the project and, subject to copyright clearance, sample audio, video and written excerpts from interviews, increasing access to the collected material to participants and the wider public. A project blog will be created that will allow us to publish regular updates on the project and related items of interest as a categorised and searchable news feed. The system itself would be hosted on dedicated Enhanced Web Development Service servers at the University of Strathclyde. We would also seek to publicise our work in popular publications such as History Scotland, BBC History Magazine, People's Friend and Scottish Memories.
Organisations
Publications
Juliette Pattinson
(2016)
'Shirkers', 'Scrimjacks' and 'scrimshanks'?: British civilian masculinity and reserved occupations, 1914-1945
in Gender and History
Juliette Pattinson
(2017)
Men in Reserve: British Civilian Masculinities in the Second World War
| Description | The main output was a co-authored book. It took a socio-cultural approach to address an area of scholarly neglect. By focusing on working class men who worked in industries classified as reserved occupations, we rescued the civilian man from obscurity and inserted him back into the narrative of Britain's war. It is hoped that by restoring the recollections and representations of reserved men to the historical record a re-evaluation of life on the home front during the 'people's war' has been prompted. This was no feminised space, but a world also populated by men who have subsequently been marginalised from popular memory. Few of our interviewees commented explicitly on masculinity as a key marker of their subjectivities. But paying attention to the construction of their stories about hard graft, long hours, large wage packets and lack of leisure time, it is possible to read the implicit workings of masculinity. Moreover, masculinity does not operate independently in the formation of subjectivity. It is always intertwined with other constructions of identity. Especially relevant in this context were age, class, national identity and occupational status, aspects that that our interviewees were much more likely to reflect upon. Together, these cultural codes shape what it means to be a man. Drawing extensively upon the memories of male interviewees whose testimonies would otherwise be lost forever was a key goal. But while an important objective, this has not been solely a project of reconstruction and of recovering marginal experiences to 'correct' popular accounts of the home front. The project was motivated by the widespread notion that any men who were not conscripted were emasculated by the penetration of women into areas of work previously dominated by men and were threatened by the hegemonic masculinity of the combatant. We wanted to subject these understandings to interrogation in order to scrutinise their veracity. A hierarchy certainly existed and was reflected in the narratives that positioned civilian men below that of combatants. For many young men of military age between 1939 and 1945, being drafted into the forces and donning military uniform was a means of becoming a man. This was an important stage in the construction of masculinity and the high status enjoyed by the 'soldier hero' was celebrated on screen and in press. And indeed half of our fifty six interviewees stated that they attempted to evade their reserved status by enlisting, some repeatedly, in order to, by their understandings, contribute more directly to the war effort. They were propelled by a variety of motives to try and leave their essential jobs and join the forces, including patriotism, adventure, shame and the overwhelming desire to wear military uniform. Some of these men constructed moving accounts of how they had felt like lesser men; 'A wis naebody' being perhaps the most poignant. The failure to get out of their reserved occupation was painfully recounted by some. Moreover, Mass Observation reveals that the resumption of the white feather campaign early in the war led to a number of suicides. Many of our interviewees reflecting on their wartime experiences nearly seventy years later did not regard their work as being of sufficient significance to be commemorated. And despite the government preventing men in these highly valued 'essential' roles from enlisting because they recognised the importance of their work to the war effort, there were lingering suspicions that some were shirkers 'scrimshanking' out of their duty. Sir Ralph Glyn, Conservative MP for Abingdon, asked Churchill in 1944 whether national service would be continued after the end of the war as it would 'enable men who have been in reserved occupations but are of military age to make their contribution of active service in the Armies of Occupation'. The explicit assumption here is that reserved men were not contributing actively in their industrial capacities. Such evidence suggests that civilian masculinities were indeed challenged and supports the thesis of emasculation. Nevertheless, this does not automatically mean that all men who were prevented from serving in the military felt inferior. Some displayed a remarkable degree of comfort with their reserved identities, having little sense of their masculinity being fundamentally challenged: 'I didn't fight against it. I was quite happy.' Others recognised that the State needed them as much as it required service personnel. There was 'no point in robbing Peter to pay Paul. Or taking a skilled engineer out of skilled engineering to be a soldier.' Parity of service and recognition of skill was emphasised in government propaganda. There were many ways in which non-combatant men could maintain their masculine status. An alternative site of (re)constructing working class masculine identities was the workplace. Men who laboured in the competitive, risk-taking culture of heavy industry continued to foster a dominant mode of 'hard man' masculinity through their capacity to accrue high wages and their exposure to risk during the war. While reserved men often defined themselves within a framework of hegemonic masculinity, positioning themselves as below that of the 'soldier hero', there was space for a recuperation of masculinity. Narratives were framed to express active and patriotic contributions to the war effort. The war provided ample opportunities for the expression of provider masculinity: it brought full employment, job security, empowerment, long working hours and overtime, high wages, status and promotion. Non-manual middle class male workers benefitted from these opportunities too, such as clerks, draughtsmen and engineers, who experienced accelerated career progression, as did some apprentices who were upgraded to the full male wage rate more rapidly. For others, exposure to more dangerous working conditions forged masculinity. The oral evidence suggests a wide range of experience across the cohort from clerks and draughtsmen to heavy industry labourers and craftsmen. For those in manual occupations, war work also facilitated the rebuilding of fit and honed civilian male bodies. A culture of masculinity was forged in the workplace where men worked long hours, stood up for their rights and made sacrifices in the more intensified and pressurised production environment of wartime. The war, then, could be experienced as empowering, enabling breadwinner masculine identities, which had been destabilised by the insecurities and job losses of the Depression, to once again flourish. Moreover, the masculinities of older men and those with impairments were enhanced by the need for more male workers, who retained a higher status than female dilutees with their limited training and job experience. In order to augment their masculinities, some reserved men positioned themselves in their narratives hierarchically above the female workers who were considered to be there purely for the duration to assist in the emergency. Thus, the war facilitated the reconstruction of working class masculinities, enabling reserved men to display their patriotic masculinity. This was their contribution to the war effort. In these ways, the thesis of emasculation seems flawed and too sweeping. Because the Second World War strengthened masculinities in these myriad ways, it is problematic to argue that civilian men were emasculated, challenged and lacking in masculinity. Such language risks flattening out the incongruities and ambiguities of civilian working class male experience in the Second World War. The impact of the war on the identities of male workers was complex and sometimes contradictory. Understandably, given that it involved millions of men in an array of occupations, there was no single grand narrative of reserved status; the configurations of reserved masculinity conveyed through discursive and visual associations were often plural and ambiguous. Moreover, there were silences in their accounts which had meaning. Our interviewees did not acknowledge that strikes and industrial action had occurred for example, air-brushing out of their testimonies an aspect of conflict that undermines the almost monolithic notion of communality. Similarly, many struggled with describing their wartime leisure activities, conflicted between their youthful enjoyments and the desire to distance themselves from any suggestion of shirking. Existing language about civilian male status does not convey the ambiguity of shifting, multiple and overlapping constructions of reserved masculinity. These complexities surrounding what it meant to be a man in Britain during the Second World War need expression as it is in these inconsistencies that we see masculinity being contested. Given that one of our primary goals was to give a voice to those who have been long silenced in stories of Britain's war experience it seems fitting to end with the words of one of our interviewees. Eddie Menday, a London-based engineer, asserted: I was there eight years in actual fact. And the end of the war they kindly presented us with certificates saying that we assisted the war effort. I had it tucked away for years and I've recently brought it out and framed it. You know, I'm proud of that . . . I can be just as proud, particularly the long hours that we did, that it was a means to an end . . . I have to look back on those days with pride, because it was a very touch-and-go thing. It is clear, therefore, that while these were reserved men they were not men in reserve. |
| Exploitation Route | I plan to write an article on the oral histories conducted for the project in due course (I am currently finishing another monograph). Other researchers might use this as a springboard and recover the experiences of either middle class men or women in reserved occupations. |
| Sectors | Education,Government, Democracy and Justice,Other |