PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

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423WH Munitions Workers 26 MARCH 2013 Munitions Workers 424WH [Mark Reckless] their contribution to the winning of the second world war, it would clearly be a good thing, if it were possible, for them to get the recognition that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South seeks. Although the Minister here is not the Minister we would expect to respond to such a debate, I welcome him in terms of his ability to push discussions within Government, and to put the issue on the agenda and have it looked at with a fresh pair of eyes. Regarding medals for groups that perhaps have not received rightful recognition, two things in particular have struck me. The response a few weeks back to the announcement of a medal for those involved in the Arctic convoys was important, and I have just had a constituency case involving a gentleman in Cliffe Woods village who served at Suez but did not get the medal of recognition he should have received. When my office pressed the issue, it appeared that there had been some confusion and his service had fallen through the cracks, so to speak, within the Ministry of Defence. We were able to provide the firm evidence that he had served in Suez, and the medal was then awarded. To the gentleman, the recognition was a source of great pride. That was one of the most rewarding pieces of constituency casework with which I have been involved. I represent Rochester and Strood, and the Medway towns more broadly, and I am not sure whether constituents of mine would fall under the definition put forward by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South. He mentioned Faversham, however, and of course at Woolwich there was the large Royal Ordnance munitions manufacturing base, and from Rochester or Strood—Chatham station is also in my constituency—Faversham and Woolwich are both within half an hour’s travel. I have no doubt that significant numbers of constituents in my area served in munitions manufacture, and a number of them are perhaps still alive and resident there. The hon. Gentleman kindly said that there were problems with the definition. Understandably, he and his group have settled on a clear definition and I wish them well in seeking recognition for the people who fall within it, but I hope he does not mind my saying that there are other groups of people—he himself drew attention to the people who worked on airframes. My constituency had Short Brothers, based on the Esplanade in Rochester. That is now all modern housing, with great river views, but there is great pride in the area’s industrial heritage of Short Brothers and the flying boats developed and manufactured at that site. The hon. Gentleman drew attention to the movement of factories during the war, and the vulnerability of Rochester to German bombing may have led to Short Brothers’ greater focus on its manufacturing in Northern Ireland. However, I believe that the skills base developed by those who worked on airframes in Rochester deserves recognition. Similarly, the royal dockyard in Chatham had many thousands of military workers, to whom we owe a great deal for both the first and second world wars, and indeed for many other wars going back several centuries. To conclude, I associate myself and my constituents with the hon. Gentleman’s call that, just as those who worked and particularly served in military campaigns have been recognised with different medals and clasps, people who worked and contributed in such roles are also deserving of recognition. If, even at this late stage, the Government gave them the measure of recognition sought by the hon. Gentleman, I would very much welcome it. 10.1 am Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab): I speak as a member of the all-party group on recognition of munitions workers, which aims to obtain recognition for the many thousands of such workers, mostly women, who did dirty, smelly and dangerous work in munitions factories. I endorse all the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), who described the bravery of the women and men of the munitions factories. I am grateful to my constituent Mr Les George, who has undertaken research into the local Royal Ordnance Factory at Pembrey in my constituency. He became interested because his mother had been a munitions worker there and narrowly escaped from explosions, the memories of which remained with her for her life. Our parliamentary group has looked at some form of medal or veterans badge for munitions workers, like those for the Bevin boys or land-girls. In April, we will launch our fundraising campaign in <strong>Parliament</strong> for a permanent memorial to munitions workers in the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Mr George has prepared information for display on the former site of ROF Pembrey, and we hope that the county council will support recognition of the role of local people in the munitions factory. The research has not been easy because of the secretive nature of such factories. Pembrey has a long history of manufacturing explosives: a powder works was established on the Pembrey Burrows as far back as the 1800s, and was known as the New Explosive Company of Stowmarket. Detonators, fuses and other explosives were produced on the site, which covered an area of some 150 acres, stretching along the Pembrey coastline. The factory employed almost 80 people, including young boys and girls. As the work was highly dangerous, employees were paid by piece work that enabled them to earn between 2 shillings and sixpence and 3 shillings a day. At the time, that was comparatively good pay, so there was a local shortage of people wanting to be domestic servants. The industry was not without its dangers. A minor explosion occurred at the Pembrey Burrows site on 11 November 1882, but fortunately no one was injured. It prompted Sir John Jenkins, my predecessor as MP for the area, to ask a parliamentary question on Thursday 16 November, because the sheds apparently held well over the legal limit of 150 tons of material authorised under the terms and conditions of the company’s explosives licence. He asked the Secretary of State: “If he is aware of the fact that about 300 tons of dynamite is stored in one room at Bury Port…within a comparatively short distance of the shipping…and of large works where hundreds of workmen are employed…?”—[Official Report, 16 November 1882; Vol. 274, c. 1533-1534.] Sadly, the following day there was a large explosion, causing the tragic loss of life of seven young workers—three males and four females, ranging in age from just 13 to 24. The noise of the explosion was so great that it was heard as far away as Pembrokeshire.
425WH Munitions Workers 26 MARCH 2013 Munitions Workers 426WH In 1886, the New Explosive Company of Stowmarket was taken over by the Nobel Explosives Company of Glasgow, which was owned by Alfred Nobel—the same man who, when he died, left most of his wealth in trust to fund several awards, one of which we know today as the Nobel peace prize. In 1914, with war looming in Europe, the then Secretary of State ordered and approved the construction of a new plant at Pembrey, with the Government bearing the full cost. It was agreed that the Nobel Explosives Company would be retained as administrative agents of the plant and that the 750-acre site would remain Government property after the war. The Pembrey plant was one of the first of more than 200 purpose-built TNT and propellant-manufacturing factories in the UK during world war one. As the second world war approached, work started in July 1938 to build a new factory on the Pembrey site, with the Ministry of Works acting as agents. It opened in December 1939 under the control of the Ministry of Supply, as one of several explosives Royal Ordnance Factories making TNT. Unlike other factories, ROF Pembrey also made tetryl and ammonium nitrate. Production of explosives began in December 1939 and reached its peak in 1942, producing 700 tons of TNT, 1,000 tons of ammonium nitrate and 40 tons of tetryl each week. There was a complex arrangement of buildings, spread out over the 750-acre site and set among the sand hills. The magazines were carefully housed around the plant and were well camouflaged to avoid detection in case of possible air raid or sabotage. The site was self-contained, having its own water plant and a power station for electricity. In addition, the administrative buildings, canteen, doctors’surgery, laundry, police barracks, library and other offices were grouped together at the main site. We can see how big it was. As my hon. Friend pointed out, these factories were under constant threat of attack. Indeed, shortly after midday on Tuesday 10 July 1940, a single German bomber plane made a sneak attack on the factory and dropped about nine bombs just inside the main entrance gates. Tragically, 10 workers were killed outright or died later of their injuries, and others were injured, some severely. Serious though the bombing was, had it been a little later the casualties would have been much greater, as many men and women would have been on their way to the canteen for their lunch break. Production continued at a much reduced scale after the war, except for a sharp upturn in the early 1950s, during the Korean war. One of the main functions of the site after the war was to break down large quantities of superfluous or obsolete ammunition. The TNT was melted out of the shells by jets of hot water, and taken to solidify on isolated stretches of sand, where it burned off. The bright glowing flames of burning cordite lit up the night sky, and could be seen for miles around; it was quite spectacular. Workers in the explosive process units were easily recognised in the area because, as has already been pointed out, the skin of their exposed face and hands was tainted yellow. A stream running from the Royal Ordnance Factory and joining the sea on the west side of Pembrey was reddish in colour, as it had been tinted by the TNT from the factory. That was more noticeable at low tide—it was known locally as the “red river”—and, as the water was always warmer than the sea, locals regularly enjoyed swimming there during the summer months. The Royal Ordnance factory is now closed and there is a country park on the site, which is on a spectacular piece of coastline. Although I am delighted that munitions workers were represented at the Cenotaph last year, we very much hope that, in the National Memorial Arboretum, in a medal for the individuals who are still alive, and in something in Pembrey, we will a permanent memorial to the work done by munitions workers. 10.8 am Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab): It is a pleasure to be under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, to debate a subject that is important for many of our constituents, and to remember the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who worked in dangerous industries during the war to keep our defences going in that period. I want to talk about the munitions factory at Aycliffe, now Newton Aycliffe. In 1941, when Royal Ordnance factory No. 59 opened in Aycliffe, the town of Newton Aycliffe did not exist; it became a new town in 1947. The former site of the ordnance factory is now the second-largest industrial estate in the north-east. If people go to the industrial estate, they can still see the blast walls and some of the buildings where munitions workers worked during that period. At its peak, in 1943, the factory employed 17,000 people, 90% of whom were women. Around the country, there were some 64,500 munitions workers who filled the shells and the bullets. The importance of their work was recognised, as they received visits from Winston Churchill, King George VI and even Gracie Fields, who gave a beautiful rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, which is well remembered by many of the workers. Filling shells and bullets is obviously dangerous work. I understand from a study by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office in 1940 that the Aycliffe Royal Ordnance factory produced more than 700 million bullets during its period of operation. The work was extremely repetitive, fragmented and boring, but there were high levels of companionship among the women as they daily risked their lives filling bombs and bullets. Many of the women started work at 18, but the average age was 34. Workers were supposed to be under the age of 50 to work at the factory, but apparently a Mrs Dillon, who claimed she was 49, was actually 69. She was the best worker in the factory, losing only two days of work in two-and-a-half years. She received the British Empire medal from the King for her work. The women who worked in the factory became known as the Aycliffe Angels because, in numerous wartime broadcasts, Lord Haw Haw used to say: “The little angels of Aycliffe won’t get away with it.” Although there was never a raid on the factory, because it was secret, the workers faced terrible situations. I have a personal interest in this story, because my grandma, Isabella Woods, worked in the factory during that period. Dorothy Addison spoke to the Northern Echo about her time at the station. In a description of what she did, she said: “I was on ‘Group Five’ and our job was to weigh cordite, put it into linen bags and sew gunpowder on top. This was put into ‘25-pounder shells’ and the next block had to put the detonator
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