Congratulations -

Celebrating 90 Years

16 April 2009

At our Spring Council Meeting we celebrated in style with an historical commentary illustrated by 9 decades of fashion. This was followed by a selection of songs from the last 90 years performed by Lori Tingay.

Later, in June, we held an afternoon tea with a show of today's fashions, at which our celebration cake was cut and enjoyed by all.

Our 90 years from 1919 to 2009
The first WI in the world was formed in Canada in1897, but it was not until the First World War began that it was realised in England that such a movement would meet the need that was then strongly felt for producing more food as well as its better preservation. The movement was launched in 1915 under the auspices of the Board of Agriculture and helped with a Government Grant. It was taken up everywhere with enthusiasm and in 1917 the first Annual General Meeting was held in London at which the National Federation was formed and Lady Denman elected President. The first WI in Great Britain was opened in Wales in 1916 and in Berkshire the 5^th WI was formed in Hurst the same year. Sadly Hurst is no longer with us and our oldest continuing Berkshire WI is Burghfield founded in 1917.
By 1919 Berkshire had 20 WIs and the County Federation was formed. In February 1921 eight Groups were formed comprising 55 institutes.

In 1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic; sadly she disappeared in 1937 while on a flight.This year also saw a great step forward in the running of our Federation. With over 100 Institutes we could now afford to rent an office in Watlington House and employ a salaried County Secretary.

1936 was the year in which we were ruled by three monarchs. George V died in January and was succeeded by Edward VIII who abdicated in December of that year and was succeeded by his brother, George VI.

In the world of entertainment “Talkies” had come to the cinema and films could now be made in colour. This was the era of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and the horror films – Dracula, Frankenstein and King Kong. Radio or “the wireless” became the dominant mass media.

The 1930s also saw the rise of the Nazi party under Adolf Hitler, and by the end of the decade the country was preparing for war. The WIs were involved in the arrangements for receiving children and mothers with babies from the cities to be billeted with country families in order to escape bombing and where possible whole schools were moved together with their teachers.

On 3^rd September 1939 the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced to the country that Britain was now at war with Germany.

In the early days of the War it seemed that normal monthly meetings would be impossible in many villages as halls had been commandeered or filled with evacuees, but in nearly every Berkshire village it was found possible to get accommodation of some sort for the regular voluntary organisations, and throughout the County members reported good attendances at meetings and increased membership.

Talks on Food Preservation, Growing Vegetables and Make Do and Mend were popular. Canning and Jamming Centres were set up throughout the County. Herb Collections were organised and members collected nettle leaves and hawthorn berries to be dried for medicinal purposes; also rosehips, conkers and acorns. Elderflowers and foxglove leaves were collected for drying. Many institutes held blackberrying picnics in September in place of the normal monthly meeting. Mr. Sutton of Suttons Seeds, Reading, donated thousands of collections of vegetable seeds to WIs to be sold at a discount.
Institutes held dances and whist drives in aid of (among others) Great Ormond Street Hospital, St. Dunstan’s, the Red Cross and the Royal Berkshire Hospital for whom they also collected and donated root vegetables. Institutes also made up parcels for invalid prisoners of war and started National Savings Groups and Produce Associations in their villages.
Lots of institutes had their own Entertainments Committee which put on programmes of music and drama at their own meetings, and many of the evacuated mothers were the leading lights and were greatly missed when they eventually went back to London.

In 1944 the WI were asked to conduct a detailed survey of water and sanitation in rural areas. At this time the majority of houses in the country had no piped water or drainage which must have been quite a culture shock for the evacuees from London.

1945 and the end of the war, but rationing still continued and there was an acute housing shortage with so many properties having been bombed and the Government had no funds to pay for reconstruction. Do you remember the prefabs which were put up as a temporary measure which were supposed to last for 10 years, but some of which are still occupied today? It took a while for factories to convert from making tanks, aircrafts and munitions to becoming car and tooling plants. Jobs in Civvy Street for the 4,300,000 men and women who had left the Armed Forces were in very short supply.
The country suffered recession even worse than the one we are suffering now, and to compound the misery the winter of 1946/47 was one of the worst of the century.

WIs received generous food parcels from institutes in Australia, New Zealand and Canada which were most welcome, and we in turn, from our own meagre resources, sent food parcels to the starving Germans and Austrians; a perfect illustration of “Love thine enemy”.

On the positive side, Denman College opened in 1948 and at that time, of course, it was in Berkshire.
Having dressed in utility clothes throughout most of the decade, in 1947 Dior brought us the New Look – glamour at last!

Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote a cantata, The Four Seasons, especially for the WI and three county festivals took place in Abingdon, Wokingham and Reading. From this three choirs were chosen to sing at area festivals and one of these, Basildon, gained a place in the special choir at the Albert Hall.

1951 was the Festival of Britain and, as the Berkshire Federation’s contribution, it was decided to restore the garden at the County headquarters, Watlington House, to its former beauty. Many institutes provided volunteers for this work and also for its ongoing maintenance.

On February 6^th 1952 our beloved monarch, George VI died from cancer and Princess Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. In May Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay became the first people to reach the top of Mount Everest as part of a British expedition.
This year saw the official visit to Holland for 25 Berkshire members, many of whom had never been abroad before. This was a most successful visit and many members subsequently received their Dutch hostesses in their Berkshire homes. This marked the start of many subsequent overseas Federation holidays now organised by the Travel Committee.

1953 - the Queen’s Coronation, the first time such an event had been broadcast on television. Millions of viewers round the world were able to view the pageantry on their television screens, many of which had been bought for the purpose, and those without televisions of their own flocked to their neighbours’ houses to watch.

1956 was the year of the Suez Crisis when petrol rationing was brought back for a short period. The Russians won the first phase of the race to the stars with the launch of man-made satellite Sputnik 1 which orbited the earth in 95 minutes.

1958 was the year when the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was formed and the first of the Aldermaston Marches was held.

Gabrielle Pike, a Berkshire member, was elected Chairman of NFWI and in 1965 the Golden Jubilee celebration of the movement was celebrated in Berkshire at Easthampstead Park.

In 1966 the position of President of the Berkshire Federation was abolished in order to save money (prior to that we had both a President and a Chairman), and the County thought seriously about moving to house of our own, as we were fast outgrowing the cramped office space which we rented in the lovely 17^th century Watlington House.   Ever since 1940 funds had been put aside to buy a house of our own, and it was hoped to move to a house in Eldon Road but Reading Council wouldn’t grant change of use and in any case institutes across the County were fairly evenly divided for and against the scheme. It would be another 20 years before the Berkshire Federation had its own premises.

In 1969, the year which saw the demise of the half pint bottle of milk, Berkshire Federation celebrated its own Golden Jubilee with a Craft Exhibition and, most notably, the production of The Brilliant and the Dark. This was an operatic sequence for women’s voices commissioned by NFWI from the young composer Malcolm Williamson with a libretto by Ursula Vaughan Williams and was first performed in the Albert Hall in June of that year with WI choirs and performers from all over the country taking part, including our own Cookham WI Choir.

In October Berkshire Federation put on our own production of this work in Reading Town Hall.

In 1972 Britain adopted decimal currency. Pounds shillings and pence became just pounds and pence. Each pound was worth 100 pennies under the new system, rather than 240 pennies of yesteryear. Guineas, for many years the staple amount in which professional fees were rendered, became obsolete.
At the end of 1973 our long serving County Secretary, Margaret Latham, retired after 22 years service. When she died in 1979 grateful institutes and individual members contributed to a fund in her memory and in appreciation of the wonderful help and service which was given so freely to all Berkshire members. This became the Margaret Latham Bursary which pays for a course a Denman College for a member each year.

1974 saw the introduction of boundary changes and on 1^st April 1974 the beautiful area of North Berkshire was absorbed into the New Oxfordshire becoming “The Vale of the White Horse District”. Public demonstrations against this move and a petition to the Queen were of no avail and so this historic creature is now outside our county boundary.
This change also resulted in 49 of the Berkshire WIs moving into the Oxfordshire Federation. With the loss of almost a third of our membership the Executive Committee had to face the cold reality of running Berkshire on very limited funds against a background of mounting inflation. To add to our woes we lost our County Treasurer as her institute was transferred into Oxfordshire.

1976 was the summer of the heatwave when we faced the driest hottest summer for more than 250 years. Reservoirs dried up across the country and stand pipes were set up for people to queue for limited water supplies.

In the l970s, because so many WIs now met in the evenings, Spring and Autumn Council Meetings were held in the evening for the first time and were very well attended.

The summer of 1981 saw the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer and more than 700 million people around the world watched the ceremony on television. Back in Berkshire the NFWI’s Promotions bus spent 3 days in Newbury which led to the founding of Falkland WI, and an Autumn Craft Fair was so popular that there was a long queue waiting for entry.
1982 brought the Falklands War, and in December of that year women surrounded Greenham Common military base to protest about the installation of nuclear weapons. They set up camps by the two main gates and remained there until 2000.
In 1984 Torvill and Dean won a Gold Medal at the Winter Olympics.

In the 1980s fashion was influenced by the western economic boom. Youth culture stopped hogging the scene as the teenage market lost impetus. The dominant market was getting older and was also financially secure. Big shoulders and power suits were in; the popularity of TV dramas like Dynasty  and Dallas influenced fashion. Corporate business suit dressing, Margaret Thatcher in tailored evening suits, Yuppies and the copying of styles worn by Diana Princess of Wales, all contributed to 1980s fashion.

1989 was a red letter year for the Berkshire Federation. At long last we moved out of the cramped rented accommodation at Watlington House into our own WI House at Mortimer.

1991 was the year of the Gulf War when Britain sent more than 40,000 troops to support the UN international coalition gathering in Saudi Arabia. The American led coalition moved swiftly to force the Iraqis out of Kuwait in an air offensive called Desert Storm. During a six week attack the Iraqis were pushed back and Kuwait City was liberated.
It was also the year when Robert Maxwell, chairman of the Mirror Group, died in the Canary Islands. He allegedly fell off his yacht. Following his death it became apparent that his company’s pension funds had been misappropriated.

After Croatia and Slovenia became separate states in 1992, the United Nations sent a peace keeping force when Bosnia Herzegovina claimed independence leading to a bloody civil war. Once again British forces were involved in a foreign war.
The National Lottery was launched in 1994 and in 1995 Barings Bank fell when rogue trader Nick Leeson ran up huge losses.
1997 saw the building of the Millenium Dome and devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Queen opened the Scottish Parliament in July 1999.

During all these stirring events WI life went on as usual. In 1990 we had 109 WIs in Berkshire but by the end of the decade this had fallen to 89. Members were involved not only in WI events but in supporting their communities as well.   Our County Chairman in 1993 was one of those volunteers who worked tirelessly providing refreshment for the firemen and those who assisted in bringing the dreadful fire at Windsor Castle under control.

So, what were we wearing in the 1990’s? After the conspicuous consuming years of the 1980s less became more in the 1990s. The silhouette became neater as shoulder pads finally died and jewellery became non existent or chic in its fineness and barely there quality. Occasion wear became less formal while still being fashionable. Simple lines and long gowns returned but with slits and low cut neck lines.
When business rules for dressing relaxed many people lost interest in fashion as necessary and important to their lives. Dressing down in every aspect of life became an acceptable norm and ‘smart casual’ became a dress code. Trousers were in and jeans were everywhere. Women of the nineties learnt how to build capsule wardrobes - one reason why the nineties were so black. After some of the garish hues of the 1980s, black and more black was dominant for some ten years. Women discovered real easy dressing - black goes well with black and other neutrals. Some equally dull, but neutral browns and greys did become the so called new black for a brief season or so.
Individuals felt noticeably conspicuous in bright colours amid a sea of black. Blend in understatement became the way to dress. Only strong individuals had the courage to wear hues that suited their skin colouring rather than draining it.

February 2001 saw an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease at a farm in Northumberland and this spread rapidly. All cloven footed animals were at risk of contamination and culls were made all across the country to try and eradicate the infection. Many perfectly healthy animals were killed if they were feared to have been in contact with contaminated herds or flocks, and the suffering to farmers, as well as to their animals, was horrendous.
On September 11^th terrorists hijacked planes in America and used them as flying bombs. The world watched as the World Trade Centre was hit by two planes and collapsed to the ground killing thousands of people.

On a more positive note this year saw our County Secretary, Valerie Hudson, start work at WI House, and how lucky we are to have her.

2002 saw the death of the Queen Mother, but also the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. The Queen Mother was a member of Sandringham WI, and the Queen still is, although she can normally only attend one meeting a year. 2007 saw the introduction of WI Life.

I should like to finish by quoting the words of our former County Chairman, Judy Palmer, in her 2005 Year Book letter:

“Over the years the needs and aspirations of members have changed enormously. The lifestyle of the twenties and thirties is far removed from the way we live and run our lives today but the aims and objects of our organisation remain the same….How lucky we are to belong to an organisation that really does something for everyone.”