8 ‘Light green uniforms, white aprons and caps’
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John Field
Abstract
Women never seem to have entered the thinking of those who developed and ran government work camps. After the Great War, rising unemployment among women workers led to a number of training programmes designed to produce domestic servants, and from the mid-1920s these increasingly included residential training centres. Initially, these were jointly developed with the Australian government, which sought to recruit white young women with domestic skills. After 1929, the training centres were redesigned to produce domestic servants for the British labour market. The centres were managed nationally by an arm’s length non-governmental body, which provided a forum for female policy makers to develop their own labour market measures, but these were always constrained by the focus on domestic service.
Abstract
Women never seem to have entered the thinking of those who developed and ran government work camps. After the Great War, rising unemployment among women workers led to a number of training programmes designed to produce domestic servants, and from the mid-1920s these increasingly included residential training centres. Initially, these were jointly developed with the Australian government, which sought to recruit white young women with domestic skills. After 1929, the training centres were redesigned to produce domestic servants for the British labour market. The centres were managed nationally by an arm’s length non-governmental body, which provided a forum for female policy makers to develop their own labour market measures, but these were always constrained by the focus on domestic service.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Abbreviations ix
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 Colonising the land 9
- 2 ‘We work amongst the lowest stratum of life’ 32
- 3 Labour colonies and public health 57
- 4 Alternative living in the English countryside 77
- 5 ‘The landless man to the manless land’ 99
- 6 Transference and the Labour government, 1929–31 125
- 7 Incremental growth 148
- 8 ‘Light green uniforms, white aprons and caps’ 173
- 9 Camps as social service and social movement 195
- 10 ‘Down with the concentration camps!’ 222
- Conclusion – Understanding work camps 245
- Select bibliography 264
- Index 271
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Abbreviations ix
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 Colonising the land 9
- 2 ‘We work amongst the lowest stratum of life’ 32
- 3 Labour colonies and public health 57
- 4 Alternative living in the English countryside 77
- 5 ‘The landless man to the manless land’ 99
- 6 Transference and the Labour government, 1929–31 125
- 7 Incremental growth 148
- 8 ‘Light green uniforms, white aprons and caps’ 173
- 9 Camps as social service and social movement 195
- 10 ‘Down with the concentration camps!’ 222
- Conclusion – Understanding work camps 245
- Select bibliography 264
- Index 271
