[WarInEur] how the british went to war

[sgminfo]

CHAPTER V


MOBILISATION


(i)


The First Phase

It is the purpose of the present section to summarise the main
movements of British manpower, both military and industrial during
the first nine months of the war. The next section will discuss the
main problems of manpower policy during the same period.

The bare numerical outline of military mobilisation up to the fall
of France is sketched in the following table:

Strength of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom
(excluding locally enlisted abroad)1
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn1> 




Thousands

End of Month
Royal Navy2
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn2> 


Army
Royal Air Force
Total
1938
June
113
197
73
383
1939
June
127
241
112
480

September
180
900
193
1,273

December
214
1,130
215
1,559
1940
March
241
1,365
240
1,846

June
271
1,656
291
2,218

There are one or two features of the table (apart from the
comparatively small matters referred to in the footnote) which
invite comment. To begin with, the table shows some marked
fluctuations in the rate of intake. Between the outbreak of war and
31st December 1939, gross intake—thanks chiefly to the immediate
calling-up of reservists and auxiliaries—had amounted to more than a
million men; but after that, the rate fell to about 350,000 men in
the first quarter of 1940. Heavy recruitments of May and June raised
the total for the second quarter of 1940 to above 400,000. The
figures of net intake,^3
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn3> 

as reflected in the table, were considerably affected by

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the abnormal wastage that accompanied each of the two periods of
abnormal recruitment: in the autumn and winter of 1939, a
considerable number of skilled workers was returned to industry, and
in the early summer of 1940, after the losses in the Dunkirk
campaign, still more men were returned to industry, either
temporarily or permanently.

The totals shown by the table are reasonably impressive—an increase
of Service establishments between the eve of war and June 1940 from
approximately half a million to nearly 2¼ million men. Moreover, the
Ministry of Labour was ready at need to build up still more rapidly
the strength of the armed forces. By 22nd June 1940, registration
for military service had reached the 1910 class (men of thirty years
of age) and the total of men already registered by that date was
above three million. Of these, about half a million were available
for immediate call-up.

However, the strength of a nation's fighting forces has to be judged
not merely by autonomous national figures, but by realistic
comparison with the enemy's strength. After all, it was not until
the beginning of 1939 that the British Government had finally
discarded the concept of a war of 'limited liability'; even if its
preparations since then had achieved maximum efficiency, they would
not have had time enough to bring all three Services to the strength
required in the battles of 1940. It was the Army that had suffered
most severely from the late start. After Dunkirk, there were
nominally available in Britain about 1½ million soldiers to fight
the invading German armies, if Hitler should succeed in getting them
across the Channel. But of this total, a full quarter were trained
for air defence or coastal defence or other static warfare, while
another quarter, including men in the R.A.M.C. and R.A.S.C., were
not trained at all for actual fighting. Of the rest, 150,000 had
received no more than two months' training, while many of the
others, including the 275,000 veterans from Dunkirk, had a
sufficiency of training but an insufficiency, if not an absolute
lack, of weapons. Including 22,000 Canadians and 16,000 Australians
and New Zealanders, there were in Britain barely half a million men
who had both the training and the equipment for violent fighting
against the more heavily equipped enemy forces.

Equipment, not recruitment, was the urgent problem of that summer.
There would have been no sense in choking the armed forces with
zealous men for whom there were no weapons. Nor would there have
been any sense in turning men out of their jobs in the so-called
'unessential' industries before the munitions factories were ready
to employ them on new jobs. What needs now to be investigated is the
pace of industrial mobilisation during the first nine months of war.

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A word needs first to be said about the balance between the Services
and industry. The nation had roughly nine million men in the age
group 16-40: of this total, approximately 5.3 millions or fifty-nine
percent, would be retained for industry under the Schedule of
Reserved Occupations or excluded from the Forces through age,
health, hardship or conscientious objections, while 3.7 millions or
forty-one percent would be available for service in the armed
forces. Later in the war, the growing stringency of military
manpower led to a progressive tightening of the tests of reservation
until in the end the Schedule itself became obsolete; but in the
first nine months the Services were able to get within its framework
as many men as they could absorb. By 1st July 1940 they had absorbed
more than half the male population in the age group 20-25 and more
than one fifth in the age-group 26-30, with smaller intakes for the
various groups below twenty and above thirty years of age. In total,
they had received nearly a quarter (22.6 percent) of the male
population between sixteen and forty years of age, and rather more
than one-half of the full number allocated to them in the pre-war
division of British manpower in to a group of fighters and a group
of workers.

Looking at these figures from the other angle, we see that industry
had as yet made little more than half the sacrifice required from it
under the Schedule. Industry was still enjoying days of grave. How
was it using them? Was it drawing fully upon the supplies of labour
available to it? Was it regrouping its labour force in the way best
calculated to serve the nation's war needs?

Although the armed forces increased by over 1¾ millions and the
civil defence forces by over a quarter of a million between mid-1939
and mid-1940, the total number of men and women employed in industry
only fell by half a million. There were several reasons for this
encouraging fact. During the period the total population of working
age in Great Britain increased by some 159,000: of this increase
about 100,000 was due to net immigration from overseas, including
the return of British subjects from abroad and the influx of
refugees from the Continent. Much more important, the percentage of
the total population of working age in the labour force showed a
substantial rise for both men and women, as increased numbers were
drawn into employment from the 'non-industrial' sector—boys and
girls leaving school, retired people, students, private domestic
servants and women working in their homes. As a result, the
country's total labour force increased by about 926,000 between
mid-1939 and mid-1940.^4
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn4> 

In addition, the number of unemployed fell by more than 600,000 in
the same period—that is, by nearly a half. Added together, these
changes meant that the total number actually in employment

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in the Forces, civil defence and industry rose by about 1,551,000
(1,027,000 men and 524,000 women).

Nevertheless, the numbers employed in industry alone were falling.
Within industry there had not been enough regrouping to satisfy
either the Government's experts or informed public opinion. The
simplest way of indicating the salient trends of movement is to set
down the percentage changes from June 1939 to June 1940 in each of
the three large war-time groups of industries—Group I, the
engineering and chemical industries; Group II, the chief basic
industries such as shipping, land transport, coal agriculture and
the public services; Group III, the industries and services such as
building, distribution, the food trades and textiles, which normally
were chiefly employed on production for civilian consumers.^5
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn5> 



Industrial Distribution of the Labour Force

Men Women

June 1939
June 1940
June 1939
June 1940

%
%
Group I
20
24
11
13
Group II
31
32
12
14
Group III
49
44
77
73

100
100
100
100

These trends were all in the right direction—a decline of employment
in Group III in relation to the other two Groups. In Group III there
had been only a small net change in the employment of women; but the
heavy loss of men to the Services had not been compensated by new
entries and reabsorption of the unemployed. The percentage share of
Group II employment had appreciably risen—a healthy sign. A larger
percentage increase was shown by Group I: the outflow from this
group (whose male workers were well protected by the Schedule) had
been proportionately smaller and there had been besides a measurable
inflow. The numerical net gain, in the numbers employed in the Group
I industries between June 1939 and June 1940, was about 453,000.^6
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn6> 



So far as they had gone, all the changes indicated above were of the
right kind; but they had not gone far enough. As will be shown a
little later, the net increase of employment in the munitions
industries fell far below the requirements of manpower as calculated
by the official experts. There was, however, one other test of
industrial mobilisation which could be applied with rather more
encouraging results—not, this time, the migration of workers from
one Group to another, but the reorientation of their energies within
the particular

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Group to which they originally belonged. Even within the industries
of Group III, many workers were shifting over from peace tasks to
war tasks, stimulated by the restriction of materials for civilian
contracts or, more probably, by the direct increase of government
demand—for example, demand upon the textile industries for uniforms
and other clothing, or upon the building industry for hutments and
factories. Among the industries of Group II, the effect of
government war demand was felt still more strongly; it is sufficient
to specify land transport and the staffs (industrial and
non-industrial) employed directly in the national government
service. It was, however, in Group I that the shift from private
orders to government orders reached its highest level. According to
figures which became available for the first time in June 1940,
aircraft and motor vehicles had just over ninety percent of their
total labour force employed on government contracts. This industry
topped the list; the average for the engineering and allied
industries as a whole was about seventy-five per cent. When it is
remembered that some of these industries were also engaged on
production for export—at the time a cardinal element of the British
war plan—the transfer of labour from peace tasks to war tasks begins
to look more encouraging.

Nevertheless, it fell far below the level that had to be achieved if
the production targets set by the War Cabinet were to be reached, or
even approached. Against the actual modest increase that has been
recorded above for the Group I industries must now be set official
calculations of the immense expansion required in the same
industries. The calculations had been made in December 1939 for the
purpose of aiding the War Cabinet in its decisions upon the war
production programmes. It will be recalled that the final collapse
of the 'limited liability' concept, a bare six months before the
war, had entailed a sudden and sensational jump of the Army
programme to thirty-two divisions. At the beginning of the war, a
Land Forces Committee of the War Cabinet met to determine the number
of divisions which should be assumed as a basis for the production
arrangements of the Ministry of Supply. On top of the thirty-two
United Kingdom divisions they reckoned on eighteen divisions from
the Dominions and India; it was hoped then to place fifty divisions
in the field. As a basis for production arrangements a margin of ten
percent was added, making fifty-five divisions altogether, in order
to cover supplies for Britain's Allies. The supply of equipment for
twenty divisions was fixed as the minimum for the first year of war
and the supply of fifty-five divisions within two years was stated
much more vaguely as an 'aim'. But not even the first year's
programme could be considered really firm until the production
requirements of the three Services had been considered as a whole,
and until two much-discussed impediments to expansion, the

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shortages of hard currency and of skilled labour, had been further
investigated.

Study of the labour situation was remitted to an inter-departmental
committee7
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn7> 

representing the Ministry of Supply, the Air Ministry, the
Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and the Ministry of Labour with a
chairman provided by the last named. The Committee did not produce
arithmetic covering the whole field of Service supply; it limited
its enquiries to the metal and engineering industries including
shipyards and aircraft engines. Translating the existing production
policies (including the fifty-five divisions proposal) into demands
for labour, and adding to them a fairly generous estimate of demand
for the export and home civilian markets, it reached the following
conclusions:

Net Additions Required (base date=July 1939)
By September 1940:
750,000 additional men

580,000 additional women
By July 1941:
1,365,000 additional men

815,000 additional men

The rates of expansion corresponding to these totals were seventy
percent by the autumn of 1940 and 117 percent by the summer of 1941.
This meant that British war industry would have to achieve in two
years of war an expansion three times as great as that which it had
achieved in the four years from 1914-18. How was it to be done?

Perhaps the Committee believed that it could not be done. Perhaps
its intimidating forecasts of manpower requirements were meant to
suggest that the authorised programmes of war production would have
to be cut down. Be this as it may, it did not explicitly make the
suggestion. It assumed that the whole of British industry, with the
exception of agriculture, mining, raw materials and the mercantile
marine, would be available as a pool of reinforcements for the
munitions industries. It did not deny that a sufficiency of
unskilled labour might be fished out of the pool. But it pointed out
that the war industries would be unable to absorb the unskilled
workers theoretically available to them unless they first succeeded
in satisfying their formidable demand for skilled workers.

Net Additions of Skilled Labour Required
By September 1940:
67.9 thousand=31% increase
By July 1941:
129.6 thousand=70% increase

The Committee offered some suggestions about dilution and training
but was unable to show how the requirements of skilled labour could
be met. Indeed, it did not conceal its conviction that they could
not be met.

These sobering calculations were endorsed and emphasised by the
Stamp Survey. There seemed no escape from the conclusion that the

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Government would be compelled to lower its sights. The fifty-five
division scheme was adjourned to an indefinite future, and doubts
were expressed about the possibility of equipping even twenty
divisions by September 1940. It was suggested that the targets of
achievement might be brought nearer if the scales of British
equipment were lowered, possibly to the French level. Yet the
chances of achieving even these more modest objectives soon began to
seem very doubtful. The Stamp Survey estimated in May 1940 that the
total increase of labour in the engineering industries was likely to
be, at most, twenty percent for the first twelve months of war, in
contrast with the seventy percent postulated by the
inter-departmental committee as necessary to fulfil the war
programmes. This failure was only one side of a sad story, which
Lord Stamp summarised as follows: 'The essence of the present labour
situation is that a disappointingly small transference of labour to
the armaments industry is being attained at the cost of a large
amount of damage to the production of other industries that are
essential to the war effort.'

It would be a mistake to set a high value upon the numerical and
percentage estimates that have been quoted in the three preceding
paragraphs. There was much guess-work in them. The estimated
requirements of engineering labour were not a precise statement of
actual or forthcoming vacancies, an enumeration of the jobs for
which men were wanted now, or would be wanted within the stated
periods; government statistics at that time were not good enough for
realistic forecasting of the effective demand for labour, skilled
and unskilled, over the whole range of industry or even in the
munitions zone. The supply departments were very slipshod in their
arithmetic when they calculated that such and such a programme of
war production would necessitate such and such reinforcements of
industrial labour. In consequence, there was not necessarily any
real cause for alarm and despondency when the actual figures of
labour intake proved to be lower than the estimated figures for
labour requirements. When all this has been said, the calculations
of labour requirementes that were made in 1939 still retain
considerable historical importance. Imperfect though they were, they
were the first shaky step in the general direction of manpower
budgeting. They did moreover give a general impression of the
enormous demands upon labour that must eventually be met if the war
were to be fought whole-heartedly. And their effect was salutary if
they made people feel that the immediate achievement was falling
short of the nation's need.

The conviction that economic mobilisation was moving too slowly was
not by any means confined to the Government's arithmeticians. To the
ordinary citizen, the most discouraging feature of the situation was
the continuing unemployment. Until April 1940, the month of Hitler's
opening bid for total victory in the first year of the war, the

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figure was still above the million mark, despite the large number of
places—nearly 1½ million by the end of March—left vacant by
withdrawals of men for the Services.

The total of unemployment, as reckoned in Great Britain at this
time, was of course inflated by including within it workers who were
only temporarily and transitionally out of jobs. What was really
disappointing in the first six months of the war was the persistence
of the 'hard core' of unemployment. However, improving economic
activity began to make a real dent in this hard core in the very
months when British and Allied forces were suffering disaster on the
battle fields of Norway, the Low Countries, and France. From April
onwards, the expansion of war work began steadily and progressively
to take up the slack of unemployment. Moreover, the political
upheaval of early May gave Britain a Government with enough
determination and enough popular support to carry through the new
manpower policies that national survival demanded.


(ii)


Manpower Policy.

The studies pursued by the Committee of Imperial Defence between the
two world wars had identified three salient problems of manpower
policy: recruitment for the Services, maintenance of a balance
between the Services and industry, enlargement and redistribution of
the industrial labour force. Under the first two heads, the lessons
of previous experience had been well digested and realistically
translated into policies for the future; but under the third head
there was still, as the Stamp Survey and other critical observers
believed, something of a 'gap'.

For the supply of Service manpower, the instrument was military
conscription; it was operating even before the war broke out.^8
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn8> 

For maintaining a just equilibrium between the Services and industry
the instrument was the Schedule of Reserved Occupations. Both these
instruments were controlled by the Ministry of Labour: how
workmanlike its control of them was during the first phase of the
war has already been shown. But for the third great task there was,
up to the very eve of war, no controlling ministry and no instrument
of control. Far back in 1922, when the waste and loss of the First World

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War were still freshly remembered, a committee of manpower experts
had dared to recommend legal powers of compulsion whereby the
Government could 'control and transfer civilian labour according to
national needs'; but, at the beginning of the Second World War,
nobody who was well-informed thought that organised labour was ready
to accept industrial conscription. Some people, as has been shown
earlier, argued that drastic administrative control was unnecessary.
'Individualism' would do the job.^9
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn9> 



What were the motives of this individualism, and how would they
work? There would be 'the carrot and the stick', the 'push and the
pull', the expulsive force of reduced demand in the 'less essential'
industries and the attractive force of enhanced demand in the
munitions industries. Direct limitation of raw materials supplies
would doubtless give some extra power to the 'push' of reduced
demand. Unfortunately, the 'pull' of enhanced demand would be
limited by the requirements of the Government's anti-inflation
policy. Although differential wage rates were attracting labour into
Group I industries even before the war, and although differential
earnings were operating on top of the wage rates, it was contrary to
the Government's policy to permit money incentives to exercise their
full natural force. Moreover, the dimensions of the required
industrial migration were vast while the time available for carrying
it through was short. The administrators and economist who tried,
early in the war, to measure the task ahead had no faith that
individualism—the uncontrolled personal decisions of millions of
British men and women—would be able to perform it.

For the historian, these speculative estimates and general
reflections are not enough; he must examine the problem of
industrial mobilisation in a specific chronological content. While
the Government's experts were producing their frightening
calculations of future manpower requirements in the munitions
industries and emphasising the insufficiencies of supply in the
labour market, the immediate effective demand for labour remained
disappointingly weak. As has already been seen, industrial
unemployment did not sink below the million mark before April 1940.
Up to the fall of France, the main immediate cause of anxiety among
economists was the deficient absorptive capacity of industry, not
the scarcity of labour.

To this statement there is, however, one important exception.
Skilled labour was scarce. This, at any rate, was the constant and
urgent cry of the supply departments. they argued that shortage of
skilled labour was the main cause of the disappointing expansion of
war industry: if only they could find a few tens of thousands of
skilled men to fill their urgent vacancies, they would be able to

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absorb unskilled workers by the hundreds of thousands. It is
possible that they overstated their case. Skilled labour was not
always the one missing factor of production. Sometimes there were
scarcities of manufactured materials, for example, light alloys for
airframe construction. Sometimes there were shortages of machine
tools and other essential plant. Sometimes there were shortages of
floor space: up to the summer of 1940, no more than two of the large
new ordnance factories were ready to begin production. Managerial
capacity and administrative direction must also have been very
frequently scarce; it takes time to build up a vast administrative
machine and link if effectively with the industrial machine.^10
<http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-WarEcon/UK-Civil-WarEcon-5.html#fn10> 

When all these additional difficulties have been admitted, it still
remains true that there was a real difficulty in securing adequate
supplies of skilled labour. Proof of the shortage may be found in
the misplaced zeal with which departments and firms 'poached' each
others' supplies. The Air Ministry confessed and even boasted that
it was a poacher. The Admiralty, which believed itself to be most
unfairly put upon, denounced the 'stage army of skilled men' which,
so it said, was marching about from firm to firm in search of higher
earnings. Resentful departments and aggrieved employers called on
the Ministry of Labour to do them right.