Daft Laddies – The Womens’ Land Army

Daft Laddies. Farming Tales of North Tyne and Rede 50 years on.


By Clive Dalton and Donald Clegg

An extract from the book - Daft Laddies. Farming Tales of North Tyne and Rede 50 years on (2003) By Clive Dalton and Donald Clegg. If you would like a copy, contact donaldclegg@btopenworld.com

The Women's Forest Corps - Kielder (1939-45)
L to R: Sally Lawrence; Who are the others? Let me know

Whereas the contribution of women in the armed services during the 1939-45 war has been recognised with medals and monuments, it’s sad that those who toiled on farms will probably never achieve the same recognition. The Womens’ Land Army (WLA) we believe deserves similar recognition because of the way they supported the drive to feed a hungry nation, always under threat of being cut off from our food lifeline by a determined enemy.

Bellingham WLA
The Bellingham branch of the WLA did stalwart service without any obvious formal recognition. There are certainly nee monuments or plaques in the valley to commemorate their loyalty and dedication to the war effort. The farmers they worked for certainly appreciated their efforts and told many tales of their good humour, regularly doing hard physical and boring jobs in tough conditions with great spirit.

Who were these women?
The list below are a few that local folk can remember - there may be more that we have missed so please let us know.

• Kate Parker (organiser)
• Violet Mathews
• Lizzie Dodd
• Margaret (Shaftie) Armstrong
• Ethel Colling
• Chrissie Armstrong
• Betty Armstrong
• Joan Coulson
• Maisie Morpeth
• Betty Walton
• Kathy Walton
• Issa Scott
• Kitty Hutton
• Helen Elliott
• Jenny Thompson
• Jean Stevenson

What farm experience did they have?
Some had been hired as a sarvant lass while others were from farming families and had always helped out in busy times. Those with limited experience soon picked up the necessary skills guided by their work mates. Motivation wasn’t difficult when frequently the sad news came through of another village lad having made the supreme sacrifice overseas.

What was their working year?
They started in spring singling turnips and then could hoe weeds amang the tetties and turnips just afore the plants met i’ the drills. If the weeds got away badly, they would be employed to pull them by hand – a hard and often miserable wet day job.

Haytime and harvest would follow – times of major work load especially if the weather was catchy. They would do everything in the hayfield – from pikin hay to leading it home and stacking. In the corn harvest they’d be involved with stooking, leading and stacking. Then in autumn they’d be hired for the tettie picking, pulling turnips and were always in high demand for the threshings to cut bands, carry chaff and pitch sheaves.

Dress
The Bellingham WLA didn’t wear the traditional uniform of riding breeches, green pullover and broon felt hat. They were issued with khaki bib-&-brace overalls but generally wore thor aadd claeas, and a head scarf or clooty hat on fine days. Strong shoes, boots and Wellingtons were their standard footwear. They generally carried their baits but were happy to enjoy a bit of farm fair when offered. Up to the time of her death at 95, Issa Scott could still remember the mooth-wattorin apple pies that Hesleyside Mill was famous for.

Control
They were under the control of the “War Ag” – the War Agricultural Executive Committee - and were paid by them. The farmers paid Kate Parker who presumably kept the accounts for the War Ag and did up the pay packets. The War Ag was set up by government to order farmers to plough up pasture land and grow crops like grain and root crops for human and animal feed. The officers were not always the most popular of folk around because of their powers to direct farmers. But it was a tough job trying to bring about change and meet government targets in two very traditional valleys of the North Tyne and Rede.

Wages
Nobody can remember how much the Bellingham “Land girls” were paid. And getting to their places of work was no easy feat either, as there was little public transport with petrol rationing and even fewer cars. Their regular work beat of the Bellingham gang covered Hesleyside mill, Hesleyside gardens, Dunterley, Briaredge, Bent House, The Hott, Demesne, Riverdale, Blakelaw, Rawfoot, The Hole, Low Leam and Redeswood. Other farms used them less frequently.

Transport
They used the local bus to get up the Tyne, down as far as Wark along to Woodburn. There was the train if they had to go further up the valley and were collected by tractor and trailer by the odd farmer who had transport. And of course they waalked te woork!

Pay tribute to their memory
So let’s end wor farm laddie memories with a tribute to the women folk. It’s mebbe not ower late to erect a monument to the Bellingham WLA in the village – a few female figures in winter garb, huddling together te keep warm with thor bait bags ower thor backs waiting for Norman’s bus, or standin with thor bikes waiting to head oot to take on the challenges of the day.


Footnote (2008)
The surviving members of the Womens’ Land Army and Forest Corps had a letter from PM Mr Gordon Brown on behalf of the British Government enclosing a brooch to recognise their service and an invitation to have tea at No 10 Downing Street. He was reported in the newspaper welcoming them to No 10, and said that he felt they had waited too long for recognition. Sixty Three years! I hope he'd arranged a courier delivery up to the Porly Gates for the Bellingham lasses.

Clive's 92-year-old cousin Mary proudly wearing her brooch which arrived with the PM's letter. She couldn't make the journey to No 10. At least she lived long enough to wear the brooch - few others did. Mary did her service on Northumberland farms from the Stamfordham WLA hostel.



The long-awaited brooch from the Queen.
Womens Land Army and Timber Corps

The Forgotten Army

The “forgotten army” of WW2 was the British troops left behind in the jungles of Burma and Malaya with few resources to fight the advancing Japanese. The survivors got their well-deserved medals soon after VJ day in 1945.

But there was another forgotten army – “The Women’s Land Army and Forest Corps” and they have just got their recognition after waiting 63 long years! It’s a scandal.

My 93-year-old cousin Mary was one of 33,000 who joined up during the 1939-45 war, so the government would not have to spend much money on brooches after 63 years of waiting would they?

Mary said she’d had a nice letter from Prime Minister Mr Gordon Brown inviting her to Number 10 Downing Street for afternoon tea! She couldn’t make it. The PM’s picture appeared in the Telegraph Weekly taking the sugar bowl around a group of the old girls in his front room. To be fair, he did tell them that “it had been too long” for their recognition.

Why didn’t he book afternoon tea at the Palace up the road? They need not have used the posh china – the Land Girls used to drink from tin mugs during the war so they would not have worried. Wouldn’t that have thrilled the old girls. They would not have been a security threat at the palace and could have left their pitch forks, hoes, axes and crosscut saws at the gate.

It’s a disgrace! Why not a give them a medal like the Home Guard and Air Raid Wardens got? A medal with ribbons is recognised worldwide with much more status than a brooch.

What possible excuse could the British government have dug up for the delay? Did the Queen not know about these canny lasses not being recognised? Surely as a wartime ambulance driver herself, the Queen will have a war medal and know how important these small things are for personal sacrifice. And they did make sacrifices.

Surely the provision of food for a hungry nation under siege and timber for building and damage repair was not deemed unimportant. These grand lasses worked in all weathers in tough conditions and put up with all sorts of hazards like rats, mice down their riding britches on threshing days, and the advances of young farm lads on any days! Surely recognition with a decent medal long before 63 long years would have been the decent thing to do!

I can only think that if this insult to the Land Army and Forest Corps lasses is a sign of British efficiency, then God will need to do a lot more in the next 63 years than just “Save the Queen – or the King.”

So if anyone served in the WLA and Forest Corps, then make sure you get your brooch. At least it will be something for your family to value even if the British government didn’t value what they did.

Give the women a go!

Give the women a go!

By Clive Dalton

Years ago when working for the New Zealand MAF Quality Management, my Farm Dairy Adviser mate Peter Gascoigne came in exhausted after being out all day inspecting farm dairies. We tried in vain to kill the term "dairy sheds" to remind farmers they were in the "health food business". We failed - totally.

Peter said he'd had a gut's full as after 30 years, there were still as many "dirty dairies" as when he started. MAF advice had clearly fallen on deaf ears as at that time, only 8% of farmers achieved a Grade-Free Certificate for the season. Financial penalties and appealing for "searching for excellence" had no effect.

But then in a flash, our failure was obvious; for the last 100 years MAF had targeted its dairy messages to the wrong sex!

We'd been trying to get men to develop a passion for hygiene, detergents and cleaning methods. We'd assumed that teats, their care and the cost of mastitis would have soaked in to problem farmers' brains. Instead we started to look for flying pigs!

We tried to tell our bosses that all these issues were natural to women on farms, many of whom used to remind me of the agony of mastitis, swollen mammary glands and cracked teats! Most of them had been in professional careers before farming.

Peter and I gave up. It was far too revolutionary for an industry run by males who sat alone around the polished tables of Dairy Companies, the then Dairy Board and Livestock Improvement boardrooms.

This background came to haunt me recently when thinking about the parlous state of the sheep industry, and who was out there who cared and wanted to help. I really wondered if a major cause of the current economic mess is that for the last 100 years, technical advice and political decisions have all been targeted at "HIM" the sheep and beef farmer.

This was natural I suppose, as sheep farming was a massive part of our New Zealand pioneering history involving the hard physical job of scrub cutting, fencing, dagging, crutching, shearing, dipping, led by All Black icon Colin Mead's image of carrying strainers up steep hills!

If you'd suggested that each sheep farm was a multi-million dollar "business", where financial and marketing skills were far more important and needing more brain than brawn, you'd have been dagged, crutched and kicked out of the woolshed.

So muse on these questions. If women had been in charge of sheep farming for the last 40 years, would things have been the same, better, or worse than they are today? By being involved, I mean making the major operational and business decisions on farms, and driving sheep farming politics off the farm.

You'd have to say that things would NOT have been the same. Then you'd have to admit that they couldn't have been worse! So, you're left with the conclusion that things would have been better!

Now that's a scary conclusion, and needs time to absorb, as the obvious rider to this is – is it too late to let the women take total control of the sheep industry to rescue it?

The real hope for the future of the sheep lies in the New Zealand "Women In Farming" movement. Let's urge them to infiltrate and take major control of meat companies, wool marketing organisations, research organisations, stock and station companies, fertiliser companies, Federated Farmers, get broadband to all rural areas, and be a permanent lobbying force in Wellington where real farmers in the House are as rare as Kakapo parrots.

Women also need to kick agricultural education in the backside and promote farming as a "business" career in schools to young folk, and not just about hooning on bikes. Males should not go near schools to talk about farming as a career – as they look like "farmers" and all the kids' prejudices gained from the media and TV are aroused.

Sheep farming has been based on the ethic that if you were not out the back cutting scrub, fencing or spraying gorse and you appeared back before dark, you were an idle young lay-about. And heaven forbid if you were ever caught in the house, even for lunch, if the bank manager or agent phoned.

"Women In Farming" needs to kill this stupid attitude which came from "the old country" and now get Dad on to the computer, starting off with emailing the kids and grandkids. Then you can get him on to looking for bargains on TradeMe.

At the average age of 55+, male sheep farmers cannot work any harder with stuffed backs, knees and hips. They have to work smarter, and the women in the sheep industry need to take total control of this to make it happen. The men have had a go for long enough and look where we are? Stand back and let the women have a go.