Domestic Impact Of War

Question 1

DORA

Answer 1

• Direction of labour (people could be sent to where they were most needed)
• pub opening hours (reduced, not open on Sundays, couldn’t buy rounds)
• local councils (took over land to grow food)
• newspapers (were censored)
• Military (railways and dock came under military law)
• British summertime was introduced to allow for more daylight hours for extra work

Question 2

Why was rationing introduced

Answer 2

• food shortages due to German U-boat campaign
• concern that food shortages would lead to malnutrition
  -lack of skilled workers on farms so food production suffered
  -priority was to provide food to soldiers at the front meant food shortages at home
  -need to slow rising food prices (fear that only the rich could afford food)
  -fear of food riots

Question 3

Changing role of woman

Answer 3

• better paid jobs, in some cases double the wages they had been on before the war (still not equal to a man doing the same job)
  -lots of employment opportunities ( due to huge expantion of munitions industry)
• made it more acceptable for woman to work
  -had more rights over property, marriage, divorce and their children
• woman gained new skills which helped some keep some jobs after the war

Question 4

Woman’s war work

Answer 4

-munitions
-land army
-typists and secretaries
-post woman
-bus and tram conductors
-nurses

Question 5

Conscientious objectors

Answer 5

-political parties (opposed to war eg:ILP)
-wrong to fight (Scotland wasn’t directly threatened)
-peace (should be achieved by negotiation not fighting)
-political ideas (believed the war was a rich man’s fight)
-religious groups (Quakers)
-moral reasons (didn’t believe in killing, it was wrong)

Question 6

Decline of heavy industry

Answer 6

-foreign competition (jute industry moved to India)
-demand fell for ships
-jute industry in decline (less demand for sand bags)
-cheap food imports from abroad (Scottish farmers came under pressure)
-valuable export markets to Germany and Russia were lost (eg: fishing markets)
-new machines could do the jobs of the previously skilled workers

Question 7

New industries in the 1920s

Answer 7

-car manufacturing
-busses and lorries
-electricity grid
-Factories made : vacuum cleaners, sewing machines, electric irons

Question 8

Events during the rent strikes

Answer 8

-used propaganda to get their message across
-meetings to get their message across
-flour, rotting food and wet clothes were thrown at bailiffs to stop them entering buildings
-male factory workers also strikes for a wage increase
-some blocks woman posted as a sentry to warn others if the bailiffs arrived
-woman’s housing association was formed to resist the rent increase

Question 9

Tactics used by suffragettes

Answer 9

-chained themselves to railings
-attacked high profile politicians
-refused to pay fines
-slashed paintings
-cut telephone wires
-smashed windows
-set fire to post boxes