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Delivering the Goods: Reappaising the Ministry of Munitions: 1915-1916

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

R.J.Q. Adams
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Extract

David Lloyd George's reputation and political position seemed unassailable in 1918. Lord Beaverbrook, perhaps somewhat extravagantly, wrote of that period:

The war was over. Lloyd George was now the most powerful man in Europe. His fame would endure forever. He was admired and praised in all countries.

Not the least praised of all his works during the First World War was the formation between May 1915 and June 1916, of the Ministry of Munitions. In the eyes of many Britons, he had patriotically given up the prestigious and powerful Chancellorship of the Exchequer to take up the burden of munitions production when the shortage of shells and guns seemed to frustrate the British military effort. Some time thereafter the necessary armaments appeared, and the Minister and his associates shared in the popular acclaim. The apparent early success of the Ministry of Munitions helped to propel him from the Munitions Office in Whitehall Gardens to Number 10 Downing Street itself. Peter Lowe has written in his recent evaluation of this episode of Lloyd George's career:

The Ministry of Munitions was crucial to the rise of Lloyd George to supreme power. In a government grappling with stalemate on the western front, failure at Gallipoli and muddle at Salonica, the organization of munitions production on vastly improved lines was a dramatic success.

The erosion of his political position after the war and the long period of his eclipse gave opportunity for critics to revise the popular view of the career which had received so much applause.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Fall 1975 , pp. 232 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1975

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References

1 Beaverbrook, Lord, Men and Power: 1917-1918 (London, 1956), p. 324.Google Scholar

2 Lowe, Peter, “The Rise to the Premiership,” in Taylor, A.J.P., ed., Lloyd George: Twelve Essays (London, 1971), p. 106.Google Scholar

3 SirArthur, George, Life of Lord Kitchener, Vol. III (London, 1920), p. 287.Google Scholar

4 Dewar, George A. B. and Boraston, J. H., Sir Douglas Haig's Command, Vol. I (London, 1922), p. 69, n. 1.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 364.

6 Ibid.

7 Cruttwell, C.R.M.F., A History of the Great War (London, new ed.; 1964), p. 160.Google Scholar

8 SirEdmonds, James, A Short History of World War I (London, new ed.; 1968), pp. 96–98.Google Scholar

9 Barnett, Correlli, Britain and Her Army: 1509-1970 (New York, 1970), p. 382.Google Scholar

10 The standard history of the Ministry remains that produced by the Historical Section of the Department following the end of the War, The History of the Ministry of Munitions (London, 1918–1922)Google Scholar. The twelve volume work was published only for Government use and has become fully available to scholars only since the end of the Second World War. Two sets of the entire History exist in America: one in the New York Public Library and the second in the Stanford Institution for Peace, War, and Revolution. For the writing of the History see Hay, Denys, “The Official History of the Ministry of Munitions, 1915-1919,” Economic History Review, XIV (1944): 185–190.Google Scholar

11 This memorandum of 27th May. 1919, is preserved among the papers of the Ministry of Munitions, Great Britain, Public Record Office, Ministry of Munitions papers. PRO/MUN 5/181/1300/95, [hereafter cited as PRO/MUN].

12 Ibid. See also, in this regard, the Departmental memoranda collected in PRO/MUN 5/180/1300/26.

13 In the spring of 1915, Lloyd George chaired a Cabinet Committee charged with the task of increasing the supply of munitions. He requested of the Master General of the Ordnance, Maj. Gen. Sir Stanley von Donop, certain statistics in regard to armaments production. Lord Beveridge, then a civil servant working with the Committee, recalled in his memoirs: “‘I'll get him the figures,’ said von Donop, ‘but they will delay production of shells for two days. The statistics are absolutely secret, known only to me. I'll have to spend two days with a sliderule on them myself, instead of getting on with my job.’ This was the organization [wrote Beveridge] with which we faced Germany at the outset of World War I.” Power and Influence (London, 1955), p. 124Google Scholar. It was such episodes which convinced Lloyd George, after the Ministry of Munitions was formed, of the tremendous importance of statistical information.

14 In charge of the Survey was the famous economist A.L. Bowley. See PRO/MUN 5/199/1700/4.

15 See PRO/MUN 5/199/1700/15 for an evaluation of the Machine Tool Department, dated May 1917.

16 These figures are those of the Addison, Rt. Hon. Christopher, Politics from Within, Vol. II (London, 1924), p. 114Google Scholar. Addison was the first Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry and later served as Minister of Munitions during Lloyd George's premiership. He, with the assistance of Walter Layton, made the first statistical study of munitions needs, soon after the Ministry was created.

17 For this correspondence and the details of this remarkable story see PRO/MUN 5/195/1600/15 and PRO/MUN 5/195/1600/16.

18 For these figures see the report of the Trench Warfare Supply Department dated 1st November, 1915, PRO/MUN 5/195/1600/10.

19 Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, circulated a memorandum among his Cabinet colleagues on 31 st May, 1915, in which he cited the labor shortage as the greatest balk to munitions production, PRO/MUN 5/1000/120. Von Donop, the Master General of the Ordnance, reported almost the same findings to a meeting about the munitions crisis chaired by the Prime Minister on 5th Match, 1915. The minutes of that meeting are preserved as PRO/MUN 5/6/170/22.

20 See the circular dated 7th September, 1914, issued by the Board of Trade to the Labor Exchanges throughout the country, anticipating great unemployment. Great Britain, Public Record Office, Board of Trade Labor Exchange Department (hereafter cited as PRO/Labor Exc.) CO. Circular 1598.

21 It is interesting to compare the view cited above with that of only one week later, for the unexpected demand for labor was already beginning to manifest itself. See PRO/Labor Exc. CO. Circular 1607, 14th September, 1914.

22 Wolfe, Humbert, Labor Supply and Regulation (London, 1923), p. 14Google Scholar. Wolfe served, for a time, with the Labor Department of the Ministry of Munitions.

23 See PRO/MUN 5/62/322/8 and PRO/MUN 5/10/180/43 for the badging procedures employed at this early point in the war.

24 See SirWoodward, Llewellyn, Great Britain and the War of 1914-1918 (London, 1967), pp. 468–469.Google Scholar

25 See Crow, Duncan, A Man of Push and Go: The Life of George Macauley Booth (London, 1965), pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

26 This memorandum, complete with the lists of Reserve Occupations, is preserved as PRO/MUN 5/9/180/16.

27 See the minutes of L.W. Llewellyn to the Director General of Munitions Supply, Sir Fredrick Black, of 26th October, 1915, in regard to the dire effects of recruiting on the labor supply in the metals industry. PRO/MUN 5/64/322/126.

28 For the efforts of the committee to make the best use of the information gathered by the Registration, see the collected reports preserved as PRO/MUN 5/65/322/130.

29 For the difficulties faced by the Ministry in regard to the badging of workers, see the collected correspondence on this matter in PRO/MUN 5/66/322/155.

30 See Maj. Scott's report of June, 1916, PRO/MUN 5/69/323/6.

31 For a post-mortem of the War Munitions Volunteer scheme by the Ministry, see PRO/MUN 5/57/320/3.

32 Proconsul in Politics: A Study in Lord Milner of Opposition and in Power (London, 1964), pp. 291–292.Google Scholar

33 See the “Note” of Owen H. Smith to Lloyd George, dated 30th November. 1915. on the matter of control of profits, London, Beaverbrook Library. David Lloyd George Papers, D/13/2/3. The finalized “Rules for Limitation of Profits in Controlled Establishments” of 15th September, 1915, are preserved as PRO MUN 5/100/360/13.

34 See PRO/MUN 5/49/300/23 and PRO/MUN 5/353/360/2 for the matter of Controlled Establishments regulation. See also the memorandum titled “Control under the Munitions of War Act,” dated 31st January, 1916, PRO/MUN 5/100/360/6.

35 The Department of Area Organization had as its main task the organization of non-munitions engineering shops for the production of armaments. In at least one respect its success was one of Lloyd George's greatest triumphs, for the War Office Ordnance Department had fought this so-called “contract-spreading” until authority over munitions production passed from their hands into those of the Ministry. See my “Arms and the Wizard: David Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions,” Ph.D. dissertation. University of California, Santa Barbara, 1972.Google Scholar

36 Chester, D.N. and Willson, F.M.G., The Organization of British Central Government: 1914 1964 (London, 1968), p. 219.Google Scholar

37 For this fascinating thesis on Centralism and Control, see Taylor, A.J.P., “Politics in the First World War” in Politics in Wartime (London, 1964)Google Scholar, and Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, chapters X and XI.