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Authority to direct any munitions factory
employing more than 250 people to maintain a suitable canteen where hot
meals could be brought by the workers.
Early in 1941, similar Orders were applied to
building and civil engineering works and docks. At the end of 1943 the
number of factories with more than 250 workers, and were there were
canteens, was 4,870; also about 5,700 factories with less than 250
workers have canteens selling hot meals. There were, too, about700
canteens at building and civil engineering sites and 180 at docks.
 The
proportion of workers using canteens varies widely even as between one
factory and another in the same trade and in the same town. There are
still lots of workers, especially middle-aged men, who would rather sit
by their machines eating dry sandwiches than go and enjoy a hot meal,
and a supplementary meat ration, in the work canteen. Some do it out of
parsimony, other out of shyness, and other again from sheer
conservatism.
The canteens themselves vary enormously, of course,
from little places, serving cups of tea and odd snacks, to the gigantic
establishments in the big factories with meals for 3-shift workers on a
24-hour service, vast electrified kitchens and properly equipped stages
for E.N.S.A. or works concerts or other shows and dance bands.
The number of workers served in canteens is
constantly increasing, and now there are some millions of workers
throughout the country who have a full cooked meal there every day. In
some small works, a simple mess-room is set aside, and the cooked food
is brought in insulated containers from a neighbouring British
Restaurant or a large-scale cooking depot set up by the local authority.
There can be no doubt about the value of this great
canteen movement, both to the war effort and the community. It has meant
that vast numbers of workers, with the minimum of trouble to themselves,
can have at least one substantial and wholesome hot meal during the day.
It has enabled the Ministry of Food to meet many special needs without
disturbing the general rationing system. It has helped to eliminate
waste in the use of extra rations, and has done something towards
keeping workers on a reasonably balanced diet.
It has brought together, in companionable ease,
workers of all kinds – and our war factories are now filled with
people formerly belonging to many different cases – and given them an
opportunity to develop a new and wider social life. Finally, it is
helping to make us a more gregarious and perhaps more truly civilized
people. Just because we are finding a new pleasure in eating out among
colleagues and neighbours, and no longer boasting mournfully of “keeping
ourselves to ourselves,” we are beginning to break down old barriers
and forget old prejudices
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