The Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association: the Great War, welfare and citizenship

With the creation of Kitchener’s ‘New Armies’ in 1914-15 and especially after the introduction of conscription in 1916, the British Army wife was brought into the public sphere as never before; millions of women entered a previously limited and dynastic sorority. The First World War has been acknowledged as a major period and actor in the development of the British welfare state and the ideal of citizenship. At the heart of those developments, and the gendering of same, was the universal Separation Allowance for soldiers’ wives, and its original distributor: the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (today SSAFA).

That charity represents a place from which we can see the aforementioned issues, their manifestations, developments and impacts, but it was also an actor within the home front space, from the national to the parish level. Thus it is the aim of this paper to use it – 1,100 branches and over 50,000 volunteers – in its role as assessor and distribution agent for the state 1914-15 and assistant to the state 1916-18 to show three things; using a largely bottom-up ‘four nations’ model of analysis. Firstly, how the war perpetuated the shift from away from private philanthropy to state welfare. Secondly, how it contributed to the development of conditional welfare, based on Victorian ideals of gendered propriety and morality, male citizenship and also surveillance. Thirdly, how it empowered women and developed new expectations, namely increased financial claims upon the state and women’s increased perception of citizenship and a place within society.