Shopgirls (22 page)

At its height, the Woolwich Arsenal in south-east London was the biggest munitions factory in Britain. Some thirty thousand women walked through the massive wrought-iron gates for each twelve-hour shift. Among them were thousands of ex-shopgirls, attracted by significantly higher pay and a certain independence away from the shopfloor managers. The most difficult jobs they were trained to take on were bomb-making and chemical processing. The women who came into direct contact with sulphur were nicknamed the canaries, as the chemical turned their skin yellow: a far cry from the clean white hands, neat dress and gentility of the counter assistant. What’s more, the munitionettes occasionally had a discreet drink together in the pub after work, before returning to their lodgings on the bus, moving about the city unchaperoned.
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The strict, petty rules of the living-in system must have felt part of a different universe.

Now that they were experiencing working life with good wages, increased training and promotions, regulated hours, controlled working conditions and often workplace childcare, women joined unions as never before. There was a staggering 160 per cent increase in female union membership across all unions during the war. Female shop assistants in stores as well as co-operatives were part of this trend, with both the shop assistants’ union (the NAUSAW&C) and the co-operative workers union (the AUCE) seeing huge rises; the AUCE went from having 7,000 female assistants on its books to over 36,000. Some shop-owners still forbad union membership, but in other stores, particularly in the bigger co-operatives and department stores, a large part of the workforce was now unionised. This gave union officer Philip Hoffman more bargaining power than ever, which he was to exercise in the turbulent times ahead.

‘Shopgirl As Strike Leader’: Hilda Canham and the strike committee during the John Lewis & Co. strike, May 1920.

After the armistice, with 900,000 British and Empire members of the armed forces dead and thousands more wounded, the weary veterans returning home faced not only the flu pandemic, but also very insecure job prospects. The staple industries such as cotton and coal mining that had earned Britain its nickname of the ‘workshop of the world’ were in decline, as Britain’s industrial and trading dominance was challenged by Germany and the USA. Now that the war was over, this decline was exposed and unemployment shot up.

Female war workers were made to relinquish their jobs for the returning men – munitions workers were sacked and the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act in 1919 excluded women from most forms of industrial work. Women were expected to return to their former jobs, like domestic service, textile work and shopwork, and married women were expected to devote themselves to their domestic duties again. As the Ministry of Labour put it, ‘As soldiers return to their homes their wives are reverting to housewifery.’ Shopgirls who had taken the place of shopmen all across the retail trade were also required to step back down as the men returned. Some women missed their war work, its new horizons and camaraderie; others were glad to leave their wartime roles, seeing it as an extraordinary but circumscribed period in their lives.
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In spite of all these women having vacated their temporary positions, there were still simply not enough jobs to go around. Working-class wages crashed and many families suffered extreme hardship. Shopworkers were included in this. Stores throughout the country, from Costigan & Co. in Glasgow to John Lewis in London, had hardly raised their wages since the beginning of the war. At the point the union tested its increased strength, picking up the cudgels from where it had left off pre-war, targeting individual shops with demands for minimum wage scales, longer holidays and trade union recognition.

Despite its co-operative beginnings, one of the very worst offenders in terms of low pay was the Army & Navy Co-operative Society, known as ‘The Stores’, on Victoria Street in London. It was a historic establishment, set in its ways, its huge premises taking up a whole block. Before the war, Edwardian shopper Olivia waxed lyrical about its unchanging reliability. ‘The British Parliament is one institution, the Stores are another,’ she wrote in her
Prejudiced Guide
to London shopping. It was still a members-only store, where you had to present your membership number on entry, though it is clear that friends would pass their number on to each other. Olivia confessed that one particular membership number served hundreds of friends. ‘Who first gave it away, or to whom it really belonged, no one knew, but they all quoted it assiduously for spun silk underwear, and dreamed of bargains.’
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After eventually getting behind the War Office demands, the Stores had had a good war and profits were up. Yet none of this was being passed on to the employees. Fifty saleswomen in one department were averaging a miserly twenty-two shillings a week, which was less than half of what the union felt would be a fair living wage.
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And so, the Great Shop Strike began. With the admirals, generals and commanders of the Stores’ board refusing to increase wages significantly, the largest stoppage in retail trade that the country had ever witnessed was under way. At 6.30 a.m. on 4 December 1919, four thousand Army & Navy employees refused to go to work, with picketing shopworkers acting as sentries round the whole block, making sure their fellow staff did not break ranks. The directors made a brave show of continuing as if everything was normal: the lights were on, including the little gas jets at the entrance doorways where customers could light their cigars and pipes. At opening time, a frock-coated and top-hatted under-manager stood explaining to the few confused customers that the shop assistants were ‘out’. One large, fur-clad lady did not understand the term, according to unionist Philip Hoffman’s account. ‘Out, did you say out? It’s all very strange, very strange indeed. Out! I never heard of such a thing! Just fancy! Out!’ Another customer was insistent that she have her sugar ration, as she had important guests for tea, but the flustered under-manager could not help her either. ‘Sorry, Madam, we don’t know where the sugar is. If you leave your address, we’ll send it.’ She was extremely unhappy with that.
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Much to Hoffman’s delight, the strike became a popular cause, supported by the press and even some shareholders, one lady offering her year’s dividends, another her drawing room for the convenience of the staff. On the second day of the strike Hoffman was summoned to meet Alfred Harmsworth, now Lord Northcliffe, the undisputed chief of the British press establishment. In his private office at
The Times
, Northcliffe offered Hoffman a cigar and then proceeded to quiz the trade unionist with short, sharp questions. ‘How are your funds? Have they met you yet? Are you going to win?’ Northcliffe, perhaps unexpectedly, revealed an in-depth knowledge of shoplife, gleaned from years of readers’ letters, and pressed Hoffman on whether conditions at Whiteley’s had improved over the years, as well as running through West End shop gossip. He congratulated Hoffman on the modesty of the union’s demands, told him that he himself could not run his papers without the help of the print union, and promised his papers’ support.

That night, the shop assistants’ union met the Army & Navy directors, and after seven hours of negotiations the directors agreed to put the wage demands to the Industrial Court. This new tribunal had been set up that same year in order to arbitrate in industrial disputes. There was great hope among the Army & Navy shop assistants that this tribunal would back them in a momentous ruling for shop assistants around the country. So on the last day of the year, the union invited seven thousand shop assistants to the Albert Hall to hear the Industrial Court ruling read out. Hoffman claimed it was the largest gathering of shop employees ever seen. ‘They cheered everybody and everything, for they were in a cheerful mood.’ They cried ‘Shame!’ during the opening speeches, when they heard about the paltry wages of a London saleswoman with three years’ service and those of a twenty-year-old shop model. Then they fell silent as the tribunal award was read out, their silence soon turning to joy as the result was announced: a huge 35 per cent increase for those over twenty-one, and fixed minimum wages, a forty-eight-hour week and improved holidays. It had been worth hiring out the Albert Hall, for the effects of this award spread around the country, with wage increases reported across the board.

Despite this triumph of collective action, John Lewis, now aged eighty-four and with a full white beard and whiskers, slightly stooped but still going strong, had no truck with the ‘accursed trade unionists’, as he called them.
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Like other proprietors, Lewis initially agreed to pay increases with fixed minimum wages, as well as shorter hours, longer holidays and sick pay. But then he started sacking staff and engaged new employees on condition that they didn’t join the union.
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Lewis was summoned to the Industrial Court, where he was represented by his barrister son, Oswald Lewis, and advised to comply with his initial agreements. But Lewis senior simply ignored the court ruling. In a last-ditch attempt to change his mind, a deputation of staff was sent to meet their boss. A buyer, a shopwalker, a shopboy and a shopgirl, Hilda Canham, were told by Lewis that he ‘feared neither God nor Devil’ and wouldn’t budge on the matter. So that May Monday morning in 1920, the first day of the Silk Department sale, 400 John Lewis employees went out on strike, including the char ladies. Claiming to be amazed at the action, Lewis railed against the ‘vapourings of the accursed trade unionists’ that caused such mischief.
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Shopgirl Hilda Canham, seven years in John Lewis’s employment, became the heroine of the strike. She ‘radiated energy and enthusiasm’, according to the
Daily Mail
, telling their reporter that she had seen trouble coming for a long time.
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‘The Island of Lewis’, ‘The Battle of Oxford Street’, ‘John Says Nothing,’ screamed the supportive newspaper headlines, with Hilda’s photograph as the ‘girl in brown’ splashed beside them. Shop assistants from other stores supported their fellows, with Harrods’ and Army & Navy store staff contributing £300 per store to the strike fund and the Wholesale Textile houses £250. Theatres sent complimentary tickets, music hall artists volunteered to give concerts and even Queen Mary made sure her contributions were popped into the Oxford Street collection boxes. The striking staff were astonished and overwhelmed by such support. They needed it, for this one was to be a long haul.

Miss Bobbie Stirling had travelled from the north of Ireland to find work in John Lewis’s juvenile department. She was one of the two hundred shopgirls who lived in and who were now out on strike, and at first Oswald Lewis tried to talk each of them round to returning to work. In spite of her precarious situation, Stirling stood up to Oswald Lewis with spirit according to Hoffman’s account:

‘Do your parents understand the steps you have taken in this matter?’ Lewis asked.

‘Yes, they are quite aware. I have explained the whole matter to them,’ Stirling replied, composed.

‘You’re very silly – a young girl like you with no friends in London. If this strike lasts out, what are you going to do?’

‘We’ve got plenty of support … I intend to stop out until we all go in together.’
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The strike was indeed lasting out; a notice was issued that those who were living in the John Lewis hostels were not welcome to return: they should either go home or find work elsewhere. Their first problem was food, so the strike organisers made sure that the girls could get their meals at the YWCA headquarters canteen. Then the public rallied and offered them alternative living accommodation. After five long weeks, the striking staff realised that their old proprietor would never give in to their demands. So they called off the strike and simply left the firm; a ‘wise retirement’ said Hoffman, describing it as a ‘defeat which was victory’. The strikers were high-spirited to the end, singing ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and within days they were snapped up by stores on Kensington High Street, with the general manager of Pontings phoning up Hoffman to request as many former John Lewis shopgirls as possible for his establishment. ‘I haven’t had such girls come into the trade for years,’ the Pontings manager said.

The battle to win a decent living wage for shopworkers all around the country continued against the backdrop of the economic slump and soaring unemployment, which reached new heights in 1921 with two million out of work. Once again Spedan Lewis picked a difficult moment to launch an expensive project. Just two months before his father’s employees walked out on strike, Lewis had launched the radical profit-sharing scheme that he had been dreaming of for years. In the spring of 1920, his Peter Jones store introduced ‘share promises’ for its employees, which twice a year could be exchanged for a cash dividend. For the first time ever, members of staff were getting a share in the profits and were part-owners in the business. Lewis tried to encourage them to treat the promises as savings, though many wanted the cash immediately. So he ruled that people had to make a good case for cashing them in. Florrie, who worked in the staff kitchen, had a pretty good one: she was unmarried and expecting a child. Spedan’s father would probably have sacked her; instead the younger Lewis sanctioned the cashing in of her £16 holding. Matron in charge of the staff kitchen told him of the ‘flurry of excitement’ that ensued among the girls. One girl ran up to her, exclaiming: