The Women's Land Army (WLA) was a British civilian organisation created during the First and Second World Wars to work in agriculture replacing men called up to the military. Women who worked for the WLA were commonly known as Land Girls. The name Women's Land Army was also used in the United States for an organization formerly called the Woman's Land Army of America.
In effect the Land Army operated to place women with farms that needed workers, the farmers being their employers.
Contents |
The Board of Agriculture organised the Land Army during the Great War, starting activities in 1915. Towards the end of 1917 there were over 250,000 - 260,000 women working as farm labourers, with 20,000 in the land army itself.
With 6 million men away to fight in the First World War Britain was struggling for labour. The government wanted women to get more involved in the production of food and do their part to support the war effort. This was the beginning of the Women’s Land Army. Many traditional farmers were against this so the board of trade sent agricultural organisers to speak with farmers to encourage them to accept women’s work on the farms.
As the prospect of war became increasingly likely, the government wanted to increase the amount of food grown within Britain. In order to grow more food, more help was needed on the farms and so the government started the Women's Land Army in June 1939.
The majority of the Land Girls already lived in the countryside but more than a third came from London and the industrial cities of the north of England.
In the Second World War, though under the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, it was given an honorary head - Lady Denman. At first it asked for volunteers. This was supplemented by conscription, so that by 1944 it had over 80,000 members. The WLA lasted until its official disbandment on 21 October 1950.
The Women's Land Army was the subject of the Angela Huth book Land Girls and a film loosely based on the book, The Land Girls, and also of the 1970s ITV sitcom Backs to the Land.
It also figured largely in a 2004 episode of the ITV detective series Foyle's War, entitled "They Fought in the Fields".
In the detective novel A Presumption of Death, taking place in the early days of World War II, the plot centers on Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey trying to solve the murder of a land girl who had come to work at a village in Hertfordshire.
During World War II the Women's Land Army of America was also formed in the United States as part of the Emergency Farm Labor Service, lasting from 1943 to 1947, and the Australian Women's Land Army was formed in Australia, lasting from 27 July 1942 until 1945.
In December 2007, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) announced that the efforts of the surviving members of the Women's Land Army and the Women's Timber Corps would be formally recognised with the presentation of a specially designed commemorative badge.[1]
The badge of honour was awarded in July 2008 to over 30,000 former Land Girls.