Vauxhall Motors took 17 of its munition girls to a tribunal in London charged with leaving work without permission on the afternoon of Friday, May 26th, and on Monday, May 29th, 1916. But things didn't quite go as planned and the girls were given a token one shilling fine and a warning while the firm emerged with some egg on its face from a case which one of its managers had to admit "might have been better conducted".

A representative of the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph was the only member of the Press at the Tribunal hearing on Thursday, June 1st, and his exclusive report appeared the following Saturday under the heading "Strike sequel. Luton girls charged in London. Firm and employees criticised". Vauxhall was not identified during the hearing, probably due to wartime restrictions as the firm was involved in Government war work, although the notice sent to the girls and republished at the start of the Telegraph report came from a munitions tribunal and so implied the nature of their jobs.

LOCAL MUNITIONS TRIBUNAL FOR THE METROPOLITAN DISTRICT

Take notice that a complaint having been made against you as set out below by the -------- ----- -------, evidence will be taken at a meeting of this Tribunal to be held at 11 am on the 1st June at Caxton Hall, Westminster, and if you wish to reply to the charge you should attend at the time and place above mentioned, and bring with you any witnesses you desire to call.

If you do not attend the hearing as above and do not send a reasonable excuse, the Tribunal, if satisfied that the complaint alleged below is well founded, is empowered in your absence to impose upon you a fine not exceeding £3.

The complaint alleges that you absented yourself without leave on Friday, 26th May, and again on Monday, 29th May, contrary to Rule 2 of the Rules approved by the Minister of Munitions and posted in the establishment.

These were the terms of the summons on a buff document sent by registered letter to 17 of the girls who came out on strike at a local works yesterday week. There were 14 Luton, two St Albans and one Harpenden girl, and on Thursday morning, with 17 friends as witnesses, they journeyed to London to defend the charge.

Neatly and tastefully dressed, they were a jolly party, and the train journey from Luton on the 8.55 am partook of the nature of a picnic party, and song and laughter rang out merrily. When the girls alighted at King's Cross Metropolitan, the way they sang 'My Old Kentucky Home' made a more or less staid business man pause to listen and put up his monocle to scrutinise them, and caused him to mutter, "Goo-good gracious! Suppose these are munition girls we hear so much about! Bless my soul, but they sing well."

The journey to Caxton Hall, Westminster, was made in various ways, but at eleven o'clock the whole of the party had arrived, along with Mr George Dallas (chief London organiser), Mr Hy White (organiser, Bedfordshire and district) and Miss F. Sayward (ladies' organiser), all the Workers' Union.

The girls were as follows - Misses Maggie Gore, of 49 Albert Road; Olive Cannon, of 6 Crawley Green Road; E. Browne, of 46 Kimpton Road; Blanche Stimpson, of 63 Windmill Road; May Ellingham, of 39 Hibbert Street; Ursula Blackburn, of 30 Albert Road; Florence Isaacs, of 43 King's Road; Grace Breading, of 26 Langley Street; Grace Thompson, of 53 Queen Street; Ethel Greatholder, of 47 Pondwicks Road; Lily Chapman, of 45 Essex Street; Cissie Blake, of 200 Hitchin Road; Lily Pakes, of 3 Ashton Street, and Gladys Warren, of 53 May Street, all of Luton; Misses E. Tansley and Adelene Thompson, of St Albans; and Violet Lawrence, of No. 1 Common Lane Villas, Batford Mills.

The firm's representative, Mr Edward H. Bolton, was also present, accompanied by three or four foremen.

The Telegraph report then went into lengthy detail about evidence in the hearing that was eventually begun around 2.30 pm after a replacement assessor had to be found and then arrived late for a rescheduled 2 pm start.

Mr Bolton, for Vauxhall, denied being told in advance what the grievances were or that he had received an organised request from the girls for him to to meet a deputation. Mr Dallas claimed there had not been time following an eventual meeting between Mr Bolton and labour representative Mr White for the girls to be informed of what had taken place and when the factory gates were shut at 8 am they had been told to go home rather than absenting themselves.

Individual girls said they had made approaches about a wage increase, but Mr Bolton said he had been approached by only three girls asking for a wage rise, two of them on a special kind of work. He had refused to give an increase and said they could have their discharges if they wanted them.

The question of hours and wages was also raised. In reply to a question from the Chairman, Mr Bolton said wages ranged from 2½d to 4½d working 54 hours a week, although only two girls actually received the 4½d rate. He denied a claim by Mr Dallas that examples of earnings shown on a paper handed to the Tribunal had been chosen because the girls receiving them were amongst the highest paid.

The Telegraph report was spread over two pages and included all question and answers at the hearing. Eventually it said that the Chairman gave the decision of the Tribunal after a deliberation last seven or eight minutes.

The Chairman said that whatever their rights in ordinary times, under the Munitions Act no strike or cessation of work of this kind was permitted, and if there was a dispute as to the amount of wages or anything else they were not allowed to come out of strike as in ordinary times. That was for this important reason: "It is absolutely necessary for the welfare of the country that at works of this character there should be no stoppage at all under any circumstances."

He went on to dwell upon the sacrifices and hardships suffered by soldiers at the Front, and the vital necessity of the support they should receive from those at home. It was necessary that all engaged in work of such a nature as this disputed over should put up with all sorts of hardships and discomforts for the benefit of the country.

The legislation had provided for disputes of this kind, and if there were disputes over wages or hours it was provided that the matter should go for arbitration, and under one portion of the Act - to show the serious view the legislation took of the matter - it was provided that anyone coming out on strike was liable to a penalty of £5 per day.

The girls were not charged under that section, but he would not say they ought not to have been. They were not charged with striking or they would have been before a different court and might have been fined £5 per day. They were charged under a section which enabled that court to deal with the matter and impose a penalty not exceeding £3 "for stopping out of work".

"There is no doubt you did stop out of work on Friday," he proceeded. "You did lose time, and that is an offence under the by-laws. We cannot go into the merits of the dispute. It is not for us to say whether the wages were sufficient or insufficient. You desired a higher rate of wages, and it seems that many of you girls made representations which had not been met, and therefore you, no doubt honestly, thought you had a grievance, but unfortunately you did not take the proper steps to have the question determined by the Minister concerned or the Board of Trade as to whether your wages ought to have been raised.

"You disobeyed orders in not returning to work after the dinner hour, and therefore an offence was committed. Although you are not to blame for that, there is a certain amount of blame on both sides, and we feel your employer did not meet you as fairly as he might have done and did not give you that assistance and advice which he was in a position to give you.

"I don't know whether he ought to have given you higher wages or not. There may have been a difficulty about that, but it does strike one at first sight that the rate of wages is not very large for the work you are doing, but perhaps I ought not to express an opinion because there are other persons to determine that question.

"We think Mr Bolton and those acting with him might have made it easier for the girls at an earlier stage if they had met the deputation and discussed the grievance to see if it could not be remedied and a higher rate of wages paid, instead of doing what they did on Friday and acting in the somewhat arbitrary way of shutting the girls out on Saturday. They were not charged, and properly so, with that date because they could not work if they were shut out, and it was a great misfortune that the opportunity was not given to the girls to come back on Friday and that the employers did not say: 'Go back and we will talk over things, and we will discuss the grievance and meet a deputation'. That might have met the purpose of the girls and they might have been glad to get back on Saturday.

"Instead of that the works were closed and the girls did not go back until Monday, and on Monday the proceedings that went forward were somewhat hostile. The girls came back and apparently found notices posted up that the works would not be open till Wednesday. Most of the girls came back willingly to see what was going on, and I cannot help thinking, and I think the other members of the Tribunal agree, that had a little more time and a little more tact been shown on that Monday morning most of the girls would have been at work again by eight o'clock.

"Whether there was actually time for Mr White to address the girls or not does not matter. It was not a very long time to go back and speak to, and perhaps persuade or sway the girls into returning, and I think that if the firm had used a little more tact and judgement instead of shutting the door at eight o'clock it would have been much better. And even if Mr Bolton or another representative of the firm had gone out and backed up Mr White, and said: 'We are going to settle matters. Only come back now and go in and do your work,' so far as we can see the greater part would have gone back, and probably all these matters would have been smoothed over.

"Under these circumstances, we cannot propose to regard the not going back on Monday as an offence in any sense. It might have been taken as a second offence, but we don't take that into consideration because we think the circumstances might have been different for you.

"Going back to the Friday night, an offence was committed, and we cannot pass over that offence. Parliament has imposed upon us the great duty of enforcing that Act and seeing that people do not come out of their work and lose time when they ought to be at work. We should be failing in our duty if we did not pass the sentence we propose to inflict upon the girls who have been guilty of a breach of duty, and we hope this will be a warning both to them and to others interested in the case not to take the law into their own hands and go out on strike. You must make every effort to have a conference with your employer, and failing that must go to the Board of Trade.

"Having regard to the fact that the blame is not all on one side, I think more tact might have been shown by the employers, and also having regard to the fact that you are not earning a great deal of money, and perhaps most of you had to pay your fares to London and will be losers to that extent, and that you were unable to work and lost two days - having regard to all the circumstances, the Court thinks that a fine of one shilling for each girl will be sufficient (laughter).

"Don't go away and crow over it," said the Chairman to the girls. "Don't go away and treat the matter as trivial and think because it is only a shilling fine you have white-washed it. We don't want anything of that. The Court regards the fine as marking their opinion that your conduct has not been what it should have been, and whilst we hope and trust that this will be a warning to both sides, the employers and the girls, to go back and smooth over your difficulties.

"We sincerely hope, as we have inflicted only a small penalty, that neither side will go away and feel they have secured a victory, but that both will go away and feel in the wrong and work amicably with each other."

In conclusion, the Chairman urged the girls when any disaffection should rise in future to rely on Mr White or some other leader and get the trouble sorted in the proper orthodox way.

[Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: June 3rd, 1916]

[The local Trades and Labour Council raised about £50 in voluntary donations towards the girls' expenses arising from their action.]