Both her father and her elder brother, John, were called up to fight in the trenches of "The Great War". She left school at the age of fourteen and, from 1914 to 1918, worked full-time at Waverley Cabinet Works as an apprentice French polisher, and became an active member of her trade union. Her one disagreement with the manager was over a discarded picture of Our Lady she found amongst the junk of the cabinet works. She hung it up over her workplace. The manager took it down and each morning she restored it to its place. Margaret, and her sister Bella, struggled to support their mother with their minimal wages and also worked an allotment. It was a cruel struggle to pay the rent and to feed themselves. Whenever her mother broke down and wept, Margaret had one unvarying answer, "Dinnae give in".