THE NWAC did not enjoy the complete confidence of parliament or the national press, but it was geared towards convincing neither parliamentarians nor journalists but the general public. This chapter, therefore, discusses the Committee's public reception. It is difficult to assess individual civilians’ reactions to the NWAC. Diaries and autobiographies rarely mention the organisation specifically, and general allusions to propaganda must be treated cautiously, particularly since such discussion often focuses on the recruitment propaganda of the early years. Nonetheless, it is possible to make some assessment of the NWAC's reception, through official judgements of its effectiveness, including speakers’ reports of individual meetings, through local press reports of events and through public correspondence with the Committee or local newspapers. This chapter examines these various indications of the NWAC's public reception. Each type, in isolation, is limited by possibilities of private, political or official agendas or self-justification. Neither individually nor in combination do they provide anything like a complete image of public reception. However, some suspicions of bias or atypicality can be allayed by comparison of the different forms of evidence. In combination, they suggest the Committee succeeded in gaining receptive and, significantly, often attentive audiences, even in some troublesome areas. While it did not attain universal success, it apparently played an important part in maintaining civilian resolution and effort.

BY July 1917, the War Cabinet had two consistent sources of information on public opinion: the MoL's weekly reports on the ‘Labour Situation’ and fortnightly reports on ‘Pacifist and Revolutionary Organisations’ by Basil Thomson at CID. Neither organisation was entirely disinterested, but equally neither had any incentive to praise or criticise the NWAC. As such, their reports are valuable guides to official assessments of NWAC achievements, and much more impartial than equivalent judgements by the Committee itself or its denigrators. This evidence suggests that, at least until May 1918, the NWAC remained an effective tool of industrial pacification. Thereafter, its efforts are rarely mentioned, although other sources indicate that it continued to pursue active and reasonably effective campaigns.