s The
Munitions of War Act 1915 ended the shell crisis and guaranteed a supply of munitions that the Germans were unable to match. The government policy, according to
J. A. R. Marriott, was that, No private interest was to be permitted to obstruct the service, or imperil the safety, of the State. Trade Union regulations must be suspended; employers' profits must be limited, skilled men must fight, if not in the trenches, in the factories; man-power must be economised by the dilution of labour and the employment of women; private factories must pass under the control of the State, and new national factories be set up. Results justified the new policy: the output was prodigious; the goods were at last delivered. Following the creation of the
Ministry of Munitions, new factories began to be built for the mass production of war materiel. The construction of these factories took time and to ensure that there was no delay in the production of munitions to deal with the Shell Crisis, the Government turned to railway companies to manufacture materials of war. Railway companies were well placed to manufacture munitions and other war materials, with their large locomotive, carriage works and skilled labourers; by the end of 1915 the railway companies were producing between 1,000 and 5,000 6-inch high explosive shells per week. As well as the components for a number of different types of shell, the railway companies, under the direction of the Railway War Manufactures Sub-Committee of the
Railway Executive Committee, produced mountings for larger artillery, water-tank carts, miners' trucks, heavy-capacity wagons, machinery for howitzer carriages, armoured trains and ambulances. In 1916, when the many factories being constructed by the Ministry of Munitions began producing large volumes of munitions, the work of the railway companies in producing war materials actually increased and they continued to produce high volumes of munitions throughout the war. The official record, presented to the government in May 1920, of the munitions work done throughout the war by the various railway companies ran to a total of 121 pages, giving some idea of the scale of what was undertaken by the railway companies across the country. Many of the companies undertook this vital war work to the detriment of the maintenance of their locomotives, carriages and wagons. The Munitions of War Act 1915 prevented the resignation of munitions workers without their employer's consent. It was a recognition that the whole economy would have to be mobilised for the war effort if the Allies were to prevail on the Western Front. Supplies and factories in
British Commonwealth countries, particularly
Canada, were reorganised under the
Imperial Munitions Board, to supply adequate shells and other
materiel for the remainder of the war. The
Health of Munitions Workers Committee, one of the first investigations into
occupational safety and health, was set up in 1915 to improve productivity in factories. A huge munitions factory,
HM Factory, Gretna was built on the English-Scottish border to produce
cordite. There were at least three major explosions in such factories: • An
explosion at Faversham involving 200 tons of TNT killed 105 in 1916. • The
National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell exploded in 1918, killing 137. • The
Silvertown explosion occurred in
Silvertown (now part of the London Borough of Newham, in Greater London) killing 73 and injuring 400 on Friday, 19 January 1917 at 6.52 pm. ==See also==