Working for Victory: A Diary of Life in a Second World War Factory

by SueBruley (Author), Bruley (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.35

  During the Second World War, over 1.5 million women found themselves thrust into the previously male dominated domain of the workplace, having to learn new skills within a matter of weeks. Their contribution to the war effort often remains unheralded, but it is without doubt that these women played a central role in an Allied victory. Kathleen Church-Bliss and Elsie Whiteman were two such women. The previous owners of a genteel restaurant, they volunteered for war work and soon found themselves in an aircraft components factory. Thrown into tough industrial work, they kept a joint diary providing a unique insight into life in a wartime factory. Working for Victory reveals the poor conditions suffered on the factory floor, as well as the general disorganisation and bad management of this essential part of the war effort, but it also describes how war work opened up a new world of social freedom for many women. This diary, both tragic and humorous, brings women's war work vividly to life.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $4.32

  Whilst running their genteel restaurant in the Home Counties, Kate Bliss and Elsie Whiteman found themselves directed by the Ministry of Labour in late 1941 to work in an aircraft component factory at the height of Britain's war effort. Thrown into a whole new world of industrial work, the two women kept a joint diary from 1942 to 1944. This diary provides a unique insight into life in a wartime factory, the destiny of one and half million British women. The entry of large numbers of women into the workforce brought about a permanent change in the attitudes to womens employment and the diaries record the effect of the new social and economic freedoms. Sue Bruley's introduction places these diaries in the context of women's experience in WW II and discusses their relationship to other published women's memoirs of the time.