There simply weren’t any men left working in the famous potteries industry who could be spared to fight on the Western Front.
The industry had been bled dry.
On the day Germany launched it’s Spring Offensive, March 21, 1918, a meeting of the Stoke-on-Trent Local Tribunal heard that if any more men were taken by the military, then factories would be forced to close.
Virtually all the workers left in the famous factories of Wedgwood, Johnson Brothers, Burgess and Leigh and Royal Doulton were over the age of 37 and would likely have been granted an exemption from service in the armed forces due to poor physical condition or their personal circumstances, even if they weren’t badly needed at work.
These remnants of the industry were working up to 10 days at a time without a break – and as a result managers had seen the ability of these workers to carry out a good job decline, as they grew more and more fatigued.
But on the very day that Mr Edmund Clowes declared that the pottery industry could supply no more, German shock troops were breaking through the British front lines manned by men of the 1st and 5th battalions of the North Staffordshire Regiment.
Men who had worked in the pottery factories before the war were fighting a last stand against insurmountable odds as they found themselves surrounded by the enemy. Former muffin makers, mould runners, clay wedgers, pressmen, and bottom knockers were shot dead by stormtroopers, or were captured, then rounded up and transported to Germany where they would see out the rest of the war in POW camps.
It would later be revealed that March 21, 1918, was the second bloodiest day ever faced by the British Army. Only on July 1, 1916 – the opening day of the Battle of the Somme – were more men killed.
For the North Staffordshire Regiment, the losses were nearly insurmountable. Some 344 men had been killed by the end of the Spring Offensive, and many more wounded and captured.
By 1918, many of the local men who had marched to France and Flanders three or four years earlier had been killed or invalided out of the army. Their replacements were not exclusively from the Potteries, in fact north east, southern and even Scottish accents mingled with the North Staffordshire dialect of the locals.
But out of those 344 men of the regiment who were killed, a total of 146 were local men. Local men who could not be replaced from the ranks of the workers who had been left behind in the Potteries.
At the same that the men of the North Staffordshire Regiment were fighting for their lives against overwhelming numbers of German troops who moved with speed and used battlefield tactics which had never been seen before; Mr Edmund Clowes delivered a report from the Pottery Trades Standing Joint Committee to the Stoke-on-Trent Local Tribunal.
In November, 1917, medical examinations had passed from the army to civilian control. Each man was given a numbered grade depending on their suitability for service ranging from one (fit for service) to four (totally unfit for service).
Mr Clowes explained that the factory men in who were medically fit to serve (grade one or grade two) were almost all aged between 37 and 42 and that, “had they not obtained exemption on business grounds, their personal claims would have been of such a character that no doubt they would have been left to continue civil employment.”
The Sentinel reported: “The committee had never once recommended a young man for exemption without first giving the case complete and searching investigation.
“He (Mr Clowes) doubted whether there was another industry in the country in which there were so few young men left behind. No work had imposed such an invidious and difficult task. The committee had done it with a desire to be absolutely fair in every case.
“They had now reached the rock bottom and there was a considerable number of factories where the taking of one man now would so dislocate the work that they could probably have to close down.
“Mr Clowes also spoke of the work of the committee and said it had been their endeavour to supply as many men for the army as possible, without destroying the roots of the potting industry.
“They were now at that point that no more men could be spared until the country stepped in and said that business could be no longer considered. He hoped they would never see that day.
“In the oven department particularly, not another man could be taken if the trade were to exist at all. There were men in that trade who had put in for weeks past eight, nine, 10 day a week. It was impossible for them to keep up under that strain any length of time. They saw those men gradually become worse men. From that it would be seen that every available man had been released.”
But it wasn’t just in the pottery industry where manpower had been all but exhausted. Men had joined up in large numbers from the mining industry, from the steel and ironworks and from engineering.
Five days after Mr Clowes had told how the pottery industry had sent all the men it could spare, Mr R.A. Rotherham, from the Local Government Board, addressed a meeting of traders, municipal representatives and other interested parties at Stoke Town Hall.
He called on traders to organise themselves, “so that the goodwill of a business of a man who was called to the Colours would be saved.”
In short, the army was so desperate for men that it needed to call upon traders and small businessmen. Men whose families would not eat if they could not work, who stood to lose their livelihoods should they be sent overseas to work.
Mr Rotherham said it was, “for each district to work out its own salvation.” But it was clear he expected traders to look out for each other’s business, should some of them be called to the Colours.
The following day, The Sentinel’s leader column warned that Mr Rotherham’s advice should be heeded, “lest the needs of the nation should lead to compulsory measures of a less satisfactory character”.
The paper declared: “We have already referred to the admirable recruiting recently amongst the North Staffordshire miners, the refusal of the local engineers to fall in with the unofficial agitation for a strike to resist the comb-out, the comb-out which is proceeding amongst the miners and the engineers, and to the exhaustive manner in which the comb-out of the potting trade for recruiting purposes has been voluntarily conducted.
“As we said before, the miners, potters and engineers of North Staffordshire have a worthy record. Now the local miscellaneous trades and businesses are being appealed to.”
It added: “The war has quickened the alertness of everybody, and in this matter, alert and sensible action is called for. The news from hour to hour reveals the crisis by which England and the Allies and Civilisation are confronted.”
By then, news of the German attacks had reached North Staffordshire. March 21, 1918 was undoubtedly the county’s blackest day since October 13, 1915, when 500 men of the 1st/5th North Staffordshire Regiment had been gunned down in the space of a few minutes.
But news of the losses suffered specifically by the North Staffordshire Regiment had not reached home. After the disaster of 1915, at the end of the Battle of Loos, The Sentinel had reported how: “There are many desolate homes throughout the district, and the wave of sorrow is well nigh overwhelming.”
There were no such platitudes in the immediate aftermath of the 1918 Spring Offensive, not with the need to keep morale high at home at a critical phase of the war. Instead reports focussed on the general pluck and resilience of the British Army and their resolve to stop the enemy assault.
Still it was clear the fighting men on the Western Front were facing a terrific threat from the enemy.
If anyone wasn’t clear about the magnitude of that threat it was spelled out by the Minister of Munitions, the future Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had returned to Government after a spell on the front line as an officer with the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars.
Churchill implored munitions workers – many of them North Staffordshire women, as well as men – to work quickly to replenish supplies of bullets and weaponry which were being swiftly used up in defence against the Spring Offensive.
That Sentinel reported the Churchill said in a speech to munitions workers: “I rely upon everyone concerned in the manufacture of munitions to put forward their best efforts.
“There should, therefore, be no cessation of this work during the Easter holidays. I acknowledge with gratitude the spontaneous assurances already received from the men in many districts that there will be no loss of output.
“Now is the time to show the fighting army what the industrial army can achieve.”
In 1918, Easter was cancelled. After all, there was work to do – and a war to be won.