Mention the Women’s Institute in wartime and the reaction,
all too often, is: Oh ‘Jam and Jerusalem’. They did sing Jerusalem at their
meetings during the Second World War and they did make jam. A lot of it: over 5,000,000 kilos, all from
surplus fruit.
However that was only the tip of the iceberg. They did a great
deal more and some of it was intangible, unquantifiable work. They kept the countryside ticking and allowed
rural Britain to expand to accommodate and cope with wave after wave of change:
evacuees, evacuated business, prisoner of war camps, Army and Air Force bases,
Auxiliary Units. How did they do this?
By being eminently practical. At the outbreak of war the government decided to
shut down all markets but the WI successfully argued that more people in the
countryside meant more pressure on food supplies. Markets would allow surplus
fruit and vegetables to be sold to feed people. Just one small example of their
clear-thinking, no-nonsense approach to problems.
As an author of four books on the social history of the
Second World War, I am humbled by the extraordinary resilience and bravery of
ordinary people during those long and often dark years. Jambusters
celebrates one of the groups that made an outstanding contribution to life in
rural Britain during the war and I hope it will impress upon people that dogged
determination, hour by hour, day by day, month by month to keep going can be
judged to be as valuable, in its own way, as acts of overt bravery.
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Almost no one did more to battle with bureaucracy and
ministry officials than the WI General Secretary, Dame Frances Farrer. She took on truculent officials and rang
cabinet officers before breakfast, so she could be sure of reaching them but
she saw it as nothing more than her job.
The motto of Cambridgeshire Federation of Women’s Institutes
was: ‘Say little, serve all, pass on. This is the true greatness – to serve
unnoticed and work unseen.’ Members of the wartime WI were, to me, some of the
unsung wonder women. I hope Jambusters will convince others of that
too.
Julie will be celebrating the launch of Jambusters at IWM North on Sunday 3rd March 2013 with a
lecture in the presence of two members of the wartime WI in the book, Peggy
Sumner and Sybil Norcott.
