Oct 18 2006
Next Seminar – Saturday 11 November
Volunteering and the First World War
Time: 10.30am – 1pm (refreshments available from 10.15)
Venue: Cass Business School, 106 Bunhill Row, London EC1Y 8TZ (Room 3002)
Peter Grant
The First World War saw the greatest act of volunteering ever witnessed in this country. Over two-and-a-half million men volunteered to fight in a conflict that cost hundreds of thousands of them their lives. But there was another act of volunteering between 1914 and 1918 on at least the same scale. This was the voluntary effort on the home front both to support the men at the front, health and sickness, and in aid of numerous other charitable causes. There was a massive increase in charitable voluntary activity during the First World War, from a base less significant than is often suggested. The value of their fund-raising was probably at least £100 million and their legacy was significant.
Meta Zimmeck
Within the context of employment in the Civil Service this paper will look at how the spectre of post-war unemployment, the emerging needs of the disabled and traumatised and competition from newly-enfranchised women workers transformed existing ex-servicemen’s organisations and prompted the establishment of new organisations. It will look at the leadership and objectives of these organisations and, in particular, how the landscape of organisations expanded to include self-help organisations that had a more radical social agenda than the traditional organisations run for but not by ex-servicemen.
