Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Members of the Women’s Land Army harvesting corn at Geli Cadwgan farm, Buith Wells, 1917
© Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

Regrettably, we have no photo of members of the Women’s Land Army in Northern Ireland during the 1940s. Because of the reality that the farms in Northern Ireland already used female family members as regular workers, the Women’s Land Army organisation never really took off there, although attempted. The other factor was that, because of the political difficulties of strong rival nationalist and republican sympathies within the divided communities in Northern Ireland, the British Government never felt able to introduce conscription, which might otherwise have directed women into agricultural work.