Domestic Soldiers Read Free Page B

enough.
    The tension in the hardest-hit areas such as Sheffield and Tyneside rose steadily despite this intervention. On 8 December 1922, during a debate about the rising social unrest, Tom Smith, MP, made it clear that the benefit was not enough to feed a family even in the workhouse – the most despised form of welfare available for the poor. When respectable working men lost their jobs, the MP pointed out, they lost everything. ‘I have seen men come in for food or relief who went to school with me,’ he related:
    … good living men, men who tried to maintain a decent standard of life for themselves and their dependants. The piano has gone, the watch has gone, and they have come for relief. What is worse, they have lost a good deal of their self-respect.
    These hard realities, the MP argued, led previously hard-working, stable, men to become radicalized and to take action against the government. It was a dangerous situation that ultimately culminated in the General Strike of 1926, a national strike in sympathy of coal miners whose wages were cut. Over 1.5 million workersdowned tools for nine days – the longest general strike in British history.
    The Grants’ troubles began in earnest when Irene was forced to leave her job. Her husband Tom, one of the ‘respectable’ working men radicalized by his experiences, was in and out of work throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and the family could have used Irene’s income as a teacher to keep afloat, but in 1922 married female teachers across the country were forced to resign. The institution of the marriage bar by many local education authorities, requiring all women to leave a career once they married, was meant to help returning veterans find work. Ironically, it nearly devastated the Grants. Throughout the inter-war period, Irene and Tom’s young family barely managed to scrape by on savings left over from Irene’s teaching days and whatever could be laid by when Tom was in steady work. Although she never wrote about receiving unemployment insurance, it seems likely that the Grants were probably forced to turn to the dole during lean times.
       
    Nella Last also remembered the inter-war period as a time of scarcity in which the domestic skills that her grandmother taught her as a child were indispensable, especially the ‘dodges’ that made the most of the ingredients she could afford. Times were not as difficult for the Lasts as they were for the Grants, however. After the Great War, Nella’s husband Will had taken over his father’s joinery workshop and worked steadily throughout the inter-war period. Those who had work during the depressions of the 1920s and 1930s were generally better-off than they might have been in more prosperous times, because they could take advantage of the lower cost of living that accompaniedthe downturns. In fact, while the Grants and the Rutherfords struggled to keep food on the table and to pay the rent, the Lasts bought a new house with the help of inheritance money from Nella’s father. Will was never an ambitious businessman, but with Nella’s wise household management they were able to raise their two growing boys.
    Nella and Will were married three years before the First World War, and when he enlisted in the navy, they moved to Southampton, where they spent most of the war. While Will worked in the shipyards, Nella took care of their young son Arthur and volunteered at the local hospital. Nella fondly remembered helping the injured soldiers write letters home and entertaining them. She enjoyed bringing a smile to their faces or a glint of light to their eyes with her jokes and light-hearted ‘monologues’. Nella and Will’s second son, Cliff, was born during Will’s service on the south coast. The birth left Nella desperately ill, but a kindly doctor took care of her and secured a month’s leave for Will to help her recover. Though her health was touch and go for a few weeks, looking back on it, Nella figured she was